In the abyss-like darkness, the golden Buddha quietly gazed at Zanxing.
Then, like a porcelain vase suddenly cracking, from the golden Buddha’s head to its feet, it began to be covered inch by inch with fissures. Those cracks rapidly spread across the golden body, becoming fragments that scattered in all directions through the air.
The shattered pieces flew toward the depths of darkness, while the Buddha statue in its original place disappeared.
All the golden light was dispersed. Below the Buddha’s body was a familiar shadow.
Black long hair, black robes, pitch-black eyes as silent and cold as an abyss, even the long staff in her hands had become a pitch-black zhang.
Standing before Zanxing was herself – a completely different version of herself.
This Zanxing had cold and violent features between her brows, looking at herself with a gaze that was both mad and harbored a trace of viciousness. As if there were an invisible mirror between them, the mirror’s inside and outside reflected two people who were identical yet completely different.
“Buddha and demon are one face,” Zanxing realized: “So this is your obsession.”
Master Jingshan of the past, under the pleas of ten thousand people, had spared Yang Zifeng. He saved all the people under heaven, but never managed to save himself. Even after his death, his obsession couldn’t let him release his hatred.
This obsession was twisted and stretched, becoming an undissipating heart demon that fused with the Buddha pagoda, becoming an invisible trial within the pagoda. Zanxing had previously thought that in Master Jingshan’s choice, putting down the butcher’s knife to save ten thousand people was the correct answer to pass the trial. But originally, refusing to let go was what would reveal the trial’s true nature.
Master Jingshan hoped for one person – one person unwilling to let go – to tell him the answer to his long-standing confusion.
And the final trial of the Five-Ring Pagoda was to face one’s heart demon.
So beneath the shattered Buddha statue, a heart demon, Zanxing, completely different from herself, was born. This Zanxing seemed to encompass all her dark aspects – a cold, evil version of herself.
“Fighting myself?” Zanxing murmured. Before her words finished, she saw the heart demon already wielding a pitch-black long staff, charging toward her with fierce momentum.
At the front of the azure long staff, countless brilliant flowers suddenly bloomed. These flower cascades were like an endless torrent, but when they touched the other pitch-black long staff, they came to an abrupt halt, suddenly bursting into countless starlike silver flowers in the air. The silver flowers carried enormous yuanli as they rushed toward Zanxing. She rolled sideways to dodge, concentrating demonic yuanli at her staff tip, raising her hand to grip the long staff and fiercely strike down toward the opponent’s head.
“Bang—” A tremendous sound rang through the void, as if something had been overturned.
The surging yuanli spread enormous tremors through the air. Zanxing was forced to fly backward by this torrent, gripping the Wuyou Staff tightly before finally steadying herself. She looked sharply toward the heart demon before her, her expression growing ugly.
The heart demon stared at her with cold malice.
This heart demon looked exactly like Zanxing, even her cultivation level was the same as Zanxing’s. When Zanxing used Jing Hua Shui Yue, she used Huo Shu Yin Hua. Identical techniques, identical cultivation – the heart demon even understood Zanxing’s weaknesses better than Zanxing herself. After just one exchange, Zanxing felt this would be troublesome.
Indeed, no one in the world could understand oneself better than oneself. And heart demons were inherently good at capturing people’s weaknesses. Otherwise, why would Master Jingshan, a great master, be bound and entangled by his heart demon, unable to break free even a hundred years later?
The next moment, the heart demon again wielded her long staff and charged toward Zanxing.
Black yuanli surged from the front of the black long staff. Unlike Zanxing’s gentle and enveloping yuanli, this was violent and filled with killing intent, seeming to want to shatter everything around it. Zanxing held the Wuyou Staff, and when the two staffs collided, Yuanli exploded. The spiritual meridians in her body felt like they might be shattered by this yuanli. Zanxing flew backward, intense pain coming from her chest as she suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.
This wouldn’t work. Her cultivation was evenly matched with the heart demon’s, but the heart demon wouldn’t be injured, while the harm she suffered here was real. If they kept fighting, in the end, she would only be exhausted to death.
Dying at the hands of her heart demon.
The “Yang Zanxing” standing opposite locked her pitch-black eyes on her. Seeing her spit blood, a trace of bloodthirsty interest seemed to flash in her gaze.
Zanxing frowned slightly. Speaking of which, she considered herself gentle-natured, not fond of petty calculations, loving the world, with no particular obsessions about the past. She didn’t even know she had a heart demon. Moreover, this heart demon was so dark and mad.
Was this her heart demon?
Or was this just a heart demon imagined by Jingshan?
Master Jingshan had lived an unfair life, unable to let go of his obsession with revenge, yet also having to maintain the compassion required as a virtuous living Buddha. Under extreme guilt and self-torment, he believed he might have fallen into the demonic path.
And the version of himself he imagined falling into the demonic path was selfish, vicious, heartless, and ruthless.
“Why is this necessary?” Zanxing sighed. Good people always make things difficult for themselves through self-reflection. In this broken world, no wonder being a bad person is much more pleasant.
A heart demon that could replicate her past techniques and had cultivation evenly matched with hers. To defeat it, she might need to find another way.
Speaking of which, ever since she entered the Demon Realm, she had been cultivating that “Peerless Heart Sutra” and hadn’t had a chance to properly look at the “Qing E Nian Hua Gun” again. During this Five-Ring Pagoda’s eight sufferings reincarnation, although she hadn’t understood everything by the final round, her enlightenment and insights from the earlier parts weren’t fake.
“Either Buddha or a demon?” Zanxing looked at herself before her and suddenly smiled: “That’s not how it is.”
Being a Buddha in others’ eyes but unable to let go of hatred in one’s heart didn’t mean he was a vicious, fierce, evil demon. Moreover, what were demons really like?
The demon clan she had seen in Heishi City could cry and laugh, could tell two-part allegorical sayings, would retort when bullied, and would even wear shining clothes to dance. They weren’t at all like this bloodthirsty and cruel appearance before her.
Buddha or a demon didn’t depend on others’ perspectives. What you believe yourself to be, that’s what you are.
A ray of azure light suddenly burst forth from her forehead. She released her Demon Lord yuanli to wrap around her long staff, and azure yuanli carrying black demonic yuan instantly flowed throughout the entire Wuyou Staff.
The surrounding darkness was suddenly torn open with a long gash.
In the dazzling azure-green light, countless azure lotus flowers bloomed. These azure lotuses were initially just buds, then slowly unfolded their petals to bloom. Though it was clearly darkness, it was like the azure sky above, below the Buddha’s seat. In an instant, spiritual light radiated in all directions, causing ten thousand things in one’s heart to be cleansed.
And among the twin-stemmed azure lotuses, there seemed to be a Buddha child smiling toward all living beings, with golden light stretching ten thousand zhang and Buddhist essence flowing.
“Flowers bloom to see Buddha—”
The azure long staff met the black long staff. Countless azure lotuses scattered from the air, those lotus flowers blooming and withering in the air, their falling petals like bright lamps, gradually illuminating the darkness around them.
The other Zanxing slowly faded away from before her. The darkness was gradually replaced by bright light, and everything before her eyes became bright.
In the silence, a teeth-aching sound rang out.
“Creak—”