Chapter 1419: At Last
Chapter 1419: At Last
Traveling among the radiance and the crimson flames, Qin Sang met an attack at regular intervals.
The weapons the array conjured were never the same. There were monk's staves and alms bowls, golden swords and golden sabers. Fierce as they came, they all shared the same flaw, and he had only to dodge in time to evade them easily.
The journey passed without incident. Guided by the Fire Jade Centipede, Qin Sang pressed rapidly onward.
Throughout it he never let himself relax, devoting his full attention with the Sky-Eyed Butterfly's help to analyzing the array. He had studied Yuanshen Sect's classics thoroughly and had some grasp of the way of arrays and barriers. This was a Buddhist array, but certain principles carried across.
Trapped inside it, however, he saw only the tip of the iceberg. Without knowing the array's full shape, no method of breaking it would come to him in short order, and he could only move as the array dictated. As his understanding deepened with time, the moment to break it would come!
The further he traveled, the more he marveled at the array's ingenuity. Setting aside the celestial barriers of Ziwei Palace, Seven-Kill Hall, and similar places, which lay beyond his comprehension entirely, this was the most complex and grand array he had ever encountered. Whoever had laid it possessed an attainment in the way of arrays that beggared imagination.
He flew without pause for several hours and still reached no end. Counting the time spent in the array's first variation, more than half a day had passed since they entered Pure Sea Sect.
The array could not possibly cover such a vast area. The only explanation was that its maker had used some exquisite method, working miracles in a tight space and confining intruders within a single pocket of heaven and earth.
For Buddhism to possess a master of such caliber, and for that master to remain unknown, made no sense at all.
There was no sign of Valley Master Mu, Chaotic Devil Elder, or any of the others along the way. Qin Sang put it out of his mind.
He then noticed the attacks were coming more frequently. He gathered himself and, rather than slowing, sped up.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Not far along he halted abruptly, his pupils constricting. A Buddha statue barred the way ahead.
Unlike the Thousand Buddha Wall, there was only one here, a colossus spanning heaven and earth with twenty-four heads and eighteen arms, each hand holding a Buddhist treasure: golden sword, chatra, monk's staff, lotus, alms bowl, and more.[1]
Every attack he had faced along the way, it turned out, had been issued from this statue.
The statue had not been spared either. Defiled by the crimson flames, its whole form was a clash of crimson and gold.
The weapons in those eighteen hands were condensations of the array's power. Golden light gathered and gradually solidified before him, and once a weapon took shape it launched itself at him.
Qin Sang closed in. The statue's eyes blazed with wrath. His nerves tightened and he flashed sideways at once.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Two weapons left the Buddha's hands and flew at him together. Only his alertness spared him; otherwise he might well have been wounded.
The attacks grew more frequent, each fiercer than the last. He met them with composure, never taking his eyes off the statue. Then his gaze brightened. He swept his sleeve to summon the devilish banners, and with his phoenix wings beating hard behind him he became a streak of azure light and closed on the statue like lightning.
Boom! The fire dragon struck it squarely between the brows.
Clang! A deafening report rang out. The statue's movements seized up, then it began to crack apart from the point between its brows. Within a blink the whole colossus collapsed, leaving a vortex of crimson and gold.
Qin Sang plunged in without hesitation, ahead of the crimson flames' eruption.
Pop! Between entering and emerging, the scenery changed once more.
Taking in surroundings utterly unlike anything before, Qin Sang knew he had entered the third variation. He rubbed his brow with some weariness. At this rate, there's no telling how many days it will take to find a flaw in the array. Any further delay and more Spiritual Infant cultivators will be drawn in. It will only get messier.
He sighed inwardly, regulated his breathing briefly, summoned the Fire Jade Centipede, fixed his bearings, and set off again.
And in this manner, time slipped slowly by.
Qin Sang charged headlong through the array, encountering every manner of Buddhist technique and coming to understand the Buddhist path better and better. Whether that counted as a blessing in disguise, he could not say.
Before he knew it, he had been in here for nearly five days.
Throughout those days the array's shifting forms had run him ragged, though in truth he had faced genuine danger only rarely. Without the pressure from the Chaotic Devil Elder and his kind, the four of them could have broken the array at their leisure, at the cost of nothing more than additional time.
Inside the array there was no dividing day from night.
Qin Sang stood upon a road paved with golden bricks. It was laid across the void, extending toward destinations unknown.
He sat cross-legged in meditation with the Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet standing guard beside him against any attack that might come. He had just taken several pills and was in the middle of refining them.
He had no idea how much time passed before his eyes snapped open. His spirit was vigorous, his aura restored to its peak, and confidence flashed in his gaze.
Five days of dogged, unrelenting investigation had finally laid bare most of the array's patterns, enough to break it. What was more, he had drawn very close to its core.
He glanced down at the golden bricks, rose to his feet, and flew forward for a stretch before stopping suddenly. He had found a node of the array. Falling back on his proven method, he summoned the Devilish Flames of Nine Hells.
The flames hovered before him.
Without pausing, he drew a set of array artifacts from the Thousand-Jin Ring. He had refined them upon leaving Yuanshen Sect. Their power was middling at best, but they would serve as a supplementary measure.
His hand seals shifted in rapid succession, distributing the artifacts all around him. He paused for a moment, looked down at the golden bricks, and slammed both palms downward.
Crash... The artifacts trembled. Dark-yellow light condensed into a stone spear and drove down hard.
Boom! Golden light sprayed in every direction and the road split apart at the blow. The Devilish Flames of Nine Hells followed instantly, plunging down after it.
In that moment dense crimson and golden light erupted and the devilish banners churned.
Qin Sang narrowed his eyes. His vision was pure chaos. The array's power around him had descended into utter disorder, and immense fluctuations came surging in from all sides as the array began to fight back.
His expression never changed. He plunged sharply downward.
This was a space of purple and red.
Flowing fire filled the sky, and it burned purple, the mark of crimson flame qi concentrated to its absolute extreme. Streams of purple fire coursed through the void like Jiao, radiating terrifying fluctuations. The higher one looked, the more of them there were, until no sky remained visible at all.
Below lay a barren stretch of ground. The area was not large, smaller even than Hundred Flowers Valley, holding only two mountain ranges that crossed and converged at the tallest peak in the center. Traces of rivers ran between the mountains, but all had long since dried up.
From the summit of the highest peak a column of fire erupted, crimson flame qi welling ceaselessly out of it to merge into the purple streams and swell them further.
Across this land, points of golden light could be seen scattered here and there. A golden roof crowned the mountaintop. A pagoda shone with golden radiance.
Qin Sang had finally extricated himself from the array. Carefully avoiding the flowing fire drifting all around, he bent to look at the strange scene below.
"So this is Pure Sea Sect?" he murmured the words to himself.
He looked around and could not see a single figure. Pure Sea Sect lay in deathly silence, its Buddhist disciples long since vanished without a trace. Nor did he see any sign of the Chaotic Devil Elder, Valley Master Mu, or the others.
It seemed like he was the first to arrive.
1. The chatra or chhatra, also known under various translations including the ceremonial, state, royal, or holy umbrella or parasol, is a symbol of royal and imperial power and sanctity in Indian art and a symbol of holiness in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. ☜