Besides the vajra, several others had found damaged incense burners, rulers, bronze bells, fish drums, and similar objects.
Among them, the female classmate whom Ye Fan had pitied — the one who had appeared haggard and worn at the class reunion — found a particularly special artifact. It was a complete set of prayer beads, only six in total, translucent and glistening, of a pale golden hue, clear as crystal, each one as large as a longan fruit.
“Could these possibly be made from relics?” someone nearby said with startled uncertainty.
All six beads were pale golden crystals, resembling magnificent gemstones, and easily brought to mind the relics left behind after an ancient Buddha’s passing into nirvana. After all, these were artifacts found within the Great Thunder Sound Temple, and their material was surely anything but ordinary.
This string of prayer beads was far from ordinary — the female classmate had discovered it by chance atop the stone Buddha’s head. Six beads were threaded together on a transparent thin line, and each bore a blurry human figure in a different pose.
This was the third intact and undamaged artifact, following Ye Fan’s bronze lamp and Zhou Yi’s alms bowl. Of course, it was still the bronze lamp that drew the most attention — after all, it was the only ancient lamp untouched by dust, burning endlessly without extinguishing. Anyone could see at a glance that it was extraordinary.
Within the ancient temple, several burning gazes occasionally swept toward the bronze lamp. Ye Fan sensed them, yet showed no reaction, facing it all with perfect calm.
The Buddhist hall of the Great Thunder Sound Temple had been thoroughly searched; no other artifacts remained. Everyone withdrew from it.
Pang Bo was the most disgruntled of all. More than ten people had found ancient objects one after another, and he had been the first to enter the temple, yet even now he had come away empty-handed, finding nothing whatsoever.
Standing before the temple and re-examining it, Pang Bo’s eyes suddenly lit up. He strode forward in great steps, moved several large stones to use as a foothold, and lifted down the bronze plaque engraved with the characters for “Great Thunder Sound Temple” — instantly leaving many of those present utterly dumbstruck.
The crowd soon came to understand. This bronze plaque was surely extraordinary — having endured countless seasons of wind and frost, weathered by time, it bore not a single speck of dust and was completely clean. Bear in mind that among all the artifacts within the ancient temple, only that bronze lamp was free of even the finest particle of dust; the bronze plaque was the same, clearly no ordinary thing.
“This really is heavy…” Pang Bo said, dragging the bronze plaque as he walked back. The moment he stepped away from the temple, the entire ancient structure began to shake, and the stone Buddha inside suddenly fractured, emitting sharp cracking sounds.
Then the six-word Buddhist mantra rang out: “Om… Ma… Ni… Pad… Me… Hum…”
A vast Buddhist resonance echoed through the heavens, shaking the firmament, causing all six directions of heaven and earth to tremble!
The compassionate, solemn, profound, and mystical sound of the Zen chant was incomparably immense — washing away all impurities, cleansing the mundane world. The surroundings of the ancient temple were bathed in a sacred and peaceful radiance.
This time it was absolutely no illusion. Not only did Ye Fan and Pang Bo hear it — every single other person stood like clay figures and wooden sculptures, too stunned to speak.
At that same moment, every artifact found within the Buddhist hall, whether intact or broken, all emitted a gentle radiance, their brilliant light shining forth and filling each person with awe.
But in the end, with a thunderous boom, the stone Buddha inside the ancient temple shattered and dissolved into flying ash. The Great Thunder Sound Temple itself then crumbled to dust in a gentle breeze.
“Pff!”
At that same moment, the ancient bodhi tree that had stood beside it also crumbled apart — no wood shavings, no dry branches, only drifting ash falling in all directions.
Immediately afterward, the Buddhist artifacts in everyone’s hands dimmed, their radiance fading as they returned to an ordinary appearance.
Everyone stood in a daze, not knowing why any of this had happened. Could it be because the Buddhist artifacts had been taken from the temple, and the bronze plaque removed?
The ancient temple left behind nothing but a ground full of drifting ash. After gazing at it for a moment, Ye Fan said: “By taking away the various Buddhist artifacts and removing the plaque from the ancient temple’s entrance, we stripped the already long-abandoned Great Thunder Sound Temple of its reason to continue existing. Perhaps that is why it scattered with the wind.”
Zhou Yi, usually gentle and refined, was now extremely agitated, his eyes glowing with a strange light. He said: “I am now more convinced than ever — there truly are gods in this world. Perhaps we can follow in the footsteps they have left behind. What we have encountered today may be an immense opportunity for us.”
Gods, Buddhas, immortality… these far-fetched legends, now being spoken of aloud, struck no one as excessively absurd. The facts before them suggested that many common truths could be overturned — gods were not absolutely nonexistent.
“Following in the footsteps left by gods… easily said, but I see no hope.” Pang Bo cast a sideways glance at Zhou Yi and said: “Right now, figuring out how to stay alive is the most important thing. This wasteland has no villages ahead or behind us, no water source, no food. In another seven or eight hours, things will likely become extremely dire.”
“Every indication points to this planet being Mars,” Li Xiaoman said. Clear and beautiful, she had grown increasingly composed after the series of events, and continued: “If gods truly exist, then perhaps that can explain all of this — this place may simply be a small patch of sanctuary on Mars.”
Her words had barely fallen when the reddish-brown ground suddenly erupted with a series of rumbling sounds. The vast open earth began to shake, as though ten thousand horses were galloping across it, as though furious ocean waves were surging.
“A sandstorm… a super-massive storm on Mars!” Kai De, who stood beside Li Xiaoman, changed his expression drastically and cried out in broken Mandarin.
Mars is shrouded in raging sand for a quarter of every year. The strongest typhoons on Earth move at over sixty meters per second, but storms on Mars can reach one hundred and eighty meters per second — super-massive storms capable of sweeping across the entire planet.
Never mind people — even a heavy tank would be sent flying into the sky!
In just an instant, every star and moon completely vanished; endless reddish-brown dust and sand utterly blanketed the heavens, and a great storm began to sweep across all of Mars.
“No — there’s no storm here where we are…”
Many had just been gripped by terror, thinking catastrophe was upon them, but in that moment the crowd realized that though a raging tempest raged in the distance, immediately before them it remained perfectly calm.
With the five-colored altar and the Great Thunder Sound Temple as the axis, a hazy dome roughly over a thousand meters in diameter had formed, covering the air above this area and isolating it from the outside world.
What Li Xiaoman had said proved true — this place was indeed a small patch of sanctuary. Some supernatural force had warded off the storm, indirectly proving that gods may exist and that this place may have been under their protection.
“Something’s wrong — that hazy dome is dimming, it’s going to disappear!” A female classmate who had been looking up at the sky went pale as snow.
The faint dome overhead was gradually fading, and it would likely vanish entirely before long. Upon seeing this, everyone’s expressions changed; death was so very close, and no one could remain unperturbed.
“What do we do — are we… truly going to die here?” Some people’s voices were trembling.
“I don’t want to die…” Several female classmates began to cry aloud.
“If the dome disappears, we’ll be crushed by the super-massive storm!” Even the male classmates were overcome with panic. The only sanctuary on Mars would cease to exist; there would be nowhere left to survive.
“Rumble, rumble…”
The storm thundered like muffled thunder, the entire expanse of earth seeming to shake along with it. Heaven and earth were blanketed in a haze; raging sand was everywhere, and the atmosphere of fear among the crowd continued to spread.
Ye Fan’s eyes remained clear and calm. Gazing out at the all-consuming sandstorm, he opened his mouth and said evenly: “Right now, there may be only one path to survival.”
“We can escape? Quickly, tell us — what’s the plan?”
“This sanctuary won’t last — where else could we possibly survive?!”
At this life-or-death juncture, everyone was in extreme agitation; quite a few had lost their composure entirely.
“We follow the road the gods once walked and leave this environment where we cannot survive.” That was what Ye Fan said.
Some people immediately grasped Ye Fan’s idea, while quite a few others still did not understand.
“Indeed, this may be the only path to survival.” Zhou Yi nodded in agreement.
Following Ye Fan’s reasoning, in that distant past, gods had blazed an ancient cosmic road connecting Earth to Mars — but this place was likely not the final destination.
Mars also had a five-colored altar, which very possibly connected to an even more distant stretch of the cosmos. This was the road that gods had once traveled. Now, with their backs against the wall, their only hope for survival was to continue forward along this ancient road and leave Mars.
At that moment, everyone understood. They rushed toward the five-colored altar.
Though it was only a thousand meters away, the crowd felt as though a vast ocean separated them from it. This stretch of distance determined whether they lived or died — if the dome in the sky shattered before they reached the five-colored altar, every last one of them would certainly perish.
The vast ruins of the heavenly palace were strewn with rubble everywhere; it was a difficult stretch of ground to cross. Because they were running so frantically, someone twisted their ankle, yet dared not stop even for a moment. They endured the pain, pressed forward rapidly, unwilling to fall behind.
Even if they reached the five-colored altar safely, whether they could open the ancient cosmic road was still an unknown — a great shadow looming over everyone’s heart. On Mount Tai, everything had been passive. But right now there was no choice; it was their only lifeline, and they had no option but to get there first and figure the rest out from there.
“Ah—!” A female classmate who had been running through the ruins suddenly let out a scream, and with a heavy thud, fell face-first into the dust and moved no more.
Her face was frozen in an expression of sheer terror. On her forehead was a blood-red hole the width of a thumb, from which blood flowed freely. Before she died, she appeared to have witnessed something utterly horrifying.
“What happened?!” The crowd felt a chill run down their spines, hearts filled with dread. A living life had just suddenly been extinguished — she had been with them only moments ago, yet was now gone forever, so sudden and so inexplicable.
“Don’t go near her!” Ye Fan called out to stop two male classmates who had been about to approach the body. He thought of the snow-white skull he had seen on the way here — it too had a finger-width hole in the center of its forehead, the same manner of death — and a sense of foreboding rose in his heart.
“We desecrated the Great Thunder Sound Temple — surely this isn’t… a god’s punishment.” A female classmate’s voice was trembling, her heart filled with terror.
“Even if gods exist, the Buddha is compassionate.” Zhou Yi cut off her words, trying to prevent a spreading atmosphere of terror, and said: “We have no way to bring her with us right now. We can only let her rest here. We must get back to the five-colored altar immediately.”
No one hesitated. In this moment of life or death, there was no time to spare for that female classmate’s body.
“Clang—!” Suddenly, the sound of a bell rang out — deep and resonant, solemn and vast, reverberating like a great bell.
Dazzling golden light burst forth from Wang Ziwen’s location. His entire body was enveloped in a brilliant golden radiance, as though he had donned a thick suit of golden armor — extraordinarily brilliant, like golden divine flames burning. In Wang Ziwen’s hands, the broken bronze bell was trembling lightly. The tremendous sound was emanating from it, and so was that dazzling golden light.
“What’s happening?” Liu Yinzhi, who was closest to him, asked in great anxiety.
“Something just attacked me just now…” Wang Ziwen was ordinarily mild and refined, but at this moment, wreathed in golden divine flames as though garbed in a golden suit of armor, he radiated an imposing air — truly as though a god had descended into the mortal world.