"Ah?"
Cheng Tian leaned out from the bow, trying to see if anything remained of Mad Ksitigarbha after the ship had run him over.
Naturally, he did not see so much as a hair. He had no idea whether Mad Ksitigarbha had truly been crushed to pieces or had taken the opportunity to fake his death, just as the evaluation had said.
It could only be said that anyone in Black Spirit Mountain who wanted to stay clear-headed and refused to go along with the environment had to pay a necessary price.
Erlang Shen had endured the torment of his memories until his personality had been warped into male chauvinism. Golden Cicada had been demoted to a mortal, reincarnated as Tang Sanzang, and made into a scripture seeker. Monkey Brother had paid with his life outright.
Ksitigarbha was part of Black Spirit Mountain's system. Bound by the shackles of Buddhist teachings, he nevertheless despised, from the bottom of his heart, the Buddha's exploitation of mortals. Thus, over all these years, not only had he refused to turn those pitiful souls into Yin Soldiers and Generals who could neither live nor die as Black Heavenly Court had, he had also refused to extract what little spiritual essence they had left. Instead, he had constantly operated at a loss, subsidizing them out of his own pocket.
After going mad, he was not quite at the end of his tether, but he was certainly exhausted in both body and mind. Once someone in that state fell, they truly would never rise again.
Of course, Mad Ksitigarbha was not afraid of falling. What he feared most was that one day, unable to bear that pressure any longer, he would touch Black Spirit Mountain's spiritual essence system with the thought, "Just one sip, just a