Equivalent Exchange

Southern Wilderness.

Blood wound like a stream, mingling with rainwater as it flowed from the cracks between the mountains and gathered below. The wind sounded like demons wailing in grief.

"Ghk..."

The middle-aged Ascetic Monk with the Buddhist name Kong Wen was covered in blood. He had gouged out his own eyes, suffered grievous wounds all over, and had one arm torn away. His ruined body crawled through the muddy ground strewn with severed limbs.

"Ugh!"

A black deluge of rain circled through the sky, swallowing the wind and rain along its path.

A slender figure emerged from the darkness, and a cold, clear voice drifted down.

"Monk, you're the eleventh..."

Kong Wen's heart was as dead as ashes. How many of his brothers, who had cleansed their six senses and attained profound Buddhist wisdom, had died like this?

In Six Desires Heaven, even ordinary people could resist it to some extent. Yet these disciples of Buddhism could not even look at her. Even gouging out their eyes beforehand was useless; they were affected in an instant.

Only a true Buddhist grand cultivator could see her real form with his own eyes... though even he no longer dared be certain.

Despair filled Kong Wen's heart. Within that endless darkness, he seemed to see—

The collapse of the entire Buddhist sect.

Kong Wen's thoughts began to scatter. Like a puppet on strings, his hand seized his own neck and slowly tightened. He muttered incoherently:

"Bring her back to the mountain, refine her for a thousand years, and produce a... Bodhisattva... who walks the mortal world..."

Yan Yushu stood in the drizzle. Hearing this, she snapped angrily:

"Monk, go on and keep dreaming your spring-and-autumn fantasy!"

"Crack!"

Kong Wen's head finally fell to the ground. He had actually used his own fingers to pinch through the flesh and snap the bones of his neck.

His head landed face-up, a bizarre, peaceful smile hanging from its lips. It was horrifying to behold. "Bod... hisattva..."

Yan Yushu stared coldly at the head on the ground, then suddenly snatched it up and hurled it hard against a distant tree. Trembling with rage, she shouted, "Bodhisattva your mother's head!"

"Ahem."

Suddenly, her chest heaved violently. She bit down hard on her lip. "Damn it, the backlash from Six Desires Heaven... I can't suppress it anymore..."

Something churned within her chest. The Water Virtue Black Qi in her eyes faded away, and a thread of blood-red began to surface.

The side effect of using Six Desires Heaven repeatedly had erupted!

Yesterday, she had devoured the cultivation of a monk, but had desperately suppressed the backlash.

Today, however, dozens of Feather Transformation cultivators had surrounded her. She had been forced to devour another monk on the spot, erupting with power to flee by force.

"All gifts of fate have their price secretly marked."

Yan Yushu murmured to herself. Every time she used Six Desires Heaven, an overwhelming malice surged forth like mountains collapsing into the sea, demanding its price.

At this moment, that malice erupted several times over, rapidly sweeping through her entire body like a blazing fire and leaving her barely able to control herself.

"It's over..."

She staggered into the darkness, thinking... As if things weren't bad enough, this time tonight, I won't be able to escape.

In the distance, one streak of golden-white Buddhist light after another continued to flare. More powerful enemies who had received the news were closing in from all sides.

"Smack!"

A black cat like a lump of coal leaped down from a tree and walked across the mountain slope, where blood flowed in streams and corpses covered the ground. A jade tablet around her neck radiated a hazy white light.

She gazed in the direction Yan Yushu had left, a trace of pity showing in her eyes. "Immortal pill..."

"Rustle, rustle..."

Countless death-money offerings of corpse-white paper fluttered down. Prayer banners swayed, and a pair of golden pupils lit up.

The Small Underworld had descended!

"Whew..."

Chen Xuan's consciousness drifted through the darkness like a small boat bobbing on the sea. He was deep asleep.

Suddenly, a white point of light flared in the void. Immediately afterward, a vast, ancient domain rose around that point of light and unfolded in an instant.

"Ghk..."

His eyes suddenly grew hot. Heartfast issued a warning, informing Chen Xuan that the Small Underworld had descended in the mountains more than ten miles away!

Chen Xuan instantly awoke. After hesitating for a moment, his consciousness swam toward the distant white point of light that represented the Mystic Cat Goddess.

Ever since entering the Yellow Millet Dream, the range of Heartfast's perception had increased to twenty miles!

"What happened?"

Soon, Chen Xuan entered the Mystic Cat Goddess's body. When he saw the blood-soaked scene before him, his heart jolted.

More than a dozen Ascetic Monks lay dead across the land. Their bodies were mangled, not one of them intact—it was a sight too terrible to endure. A human skin even hung from a distant tree, swaying in the wind like a hanging ghost, sending chills down the spine.

"Did Yan Yushu do all this?"

Chen Xuan stood dumbfounded. He had expected to see the corpses of the middle-aged Daoist and the burly man, but he had not expected to arrive here first!

An image of Yan Yushu rose in his mind. Although she looked delicate and pure, inspiring a desire to protect her, even while fleeing in disarray, she revealed a hidden steadfastness, like an exiled immortal who had strayed into the Mortal World yet remained unstained by the mud.

Once she fought with magic, however, she was terrifying to this degree. Even he felt a chill in his heart. The contrast was enormous.

"This woman is not to be trifled with..."

Chen Xuan muttered inwardly, then followed the Mystic Cat Goddess in sweeping the battlefield and recovering the monks' past experiences. Suddenly, his gaze sharpened.

"Huh? A new trick?"

Joy rose to Chen Xuan's brows when he discovered that some of the monks with formidable cultivation had mastered two tricks.

"Little Mammoth Trick, the trick inheritance of Hanging Temple."

Chen Xuan learned the name of the technique from the memories' projections of light and shadow.

It was a body-tempering trick. Once mastered, it would massively strengthen the physique, physical power, and bodily resilience.

Among the tricks he had previously mastered, Little White Ape Trick raised everything evenly and comprehensively. Little Green Deer Trick focused more on agility and speed, while Little Firebird Trick increased the strength of the soul's three thoughts.

"Now I possess four tricks and one true scripture."

Chen Xuan calculated his own "foundation," finding it extraordinarily rich. Even setting the Yellow Millet True Scripture aside, merely in terms of the number of tricks, he probably surpassed some of the qi-refining Aristocratic Clans in Red Crow City.

Not to mention the Chu Family and Li Family—small households with shallow roots, clinging pitifully to a single trick across generations. If Chu Huo Gun learned of Chen Xuan's wealth at this moment, he would probably sell Chu Qing Ling to him on the spot in exchange for a trick.

"Haha, Yan Yushu was fighting nearby, and I ended up picking up a huge bargain."

Chen Xuan laughed helplessly, then said, "But too much has happened lately. No matter how many tricks I obtain, I don't have time to practice them now."

If anyone else heard him complain like that, they would probably be so depressed they would bang their heads against a wall. He was truly living in the midst of blessings without recognizing them! He had so many tricks that he could not even find time to learn them—those words alone would make people green with envy.

Soon.

The Mystic Cat Goddess finished sweeping the battlefield, yawned, and once again gazed toward the direction Yan Yushu had left.

She caught the scent of death lingering in the air. "Tonight, more fighting will still break out..."

Chen Xuan guessed the same. He had already noticed countless lights flickering beneath the night on every side, with some of them rushing toward this place. They would soon discover the traces of Yan Yushu's escape.

But when Chen Xuan saw that the Mystic Cat Goddess was not moving, he decided to leave for the time being. He had no interest in peeking at what the Mystic Cat Goddess did during her free time after "getting off work." Rather than waste time on such idle curiosity, he would prefer to return and practice his tricks a few more times.

If the fighting later still took place within the area covered by Heartfast, he could naturally come through the Mystic Cat Goddess to pick up the scraps and observe the tricks.

But at that moment—

Chen Xuan's heart trembled, and the view before him shook.

"Heartfast has reacted to a second stimulus and issued a warning!"

He saw that beneath the distant night sky, the outline of some astonishing thing was rapidly manifesting into a vast image that transcended all imagination and exhausted every measure of majesty.

It was—

"Six Desires Heaven..."

Wilderness.

Cold rain struck the stream, splashing up rings of ripples.

Yan Yushu submerged her entire body in the stream, but even the icy water could not extinguish the blazing fire burning within her.

"Mm..."

The wind and rain wailed mournfully. She tilted back her head and let out a muffled groan, her body scorching hot like a furnace burning in the snow.

"I might as well die..."

Yan Yushu stepped out of the stream and sat beneath an old tree, hugging her knees. Raindrops slid over her crystalline, jade-like beauty and her exquisitely curved, delicate chin before tracing down her snow-white, slender neck and disappearing into the depths...

"It'll count as doing myself a favor!"

Yan Yushu muttered resentfully. She knew that what she was about to do would make even the most ascetic man lose his reason upon seeing it. A difficult-to-describe shame rose in her heart.

If anyone caught sight of her, she would immediately jump into the river and drown herself!

"Six Desires Heaven, if you've got the ability, then drive me to death..."

Yan Yushu's eyes turned alluring as she half-bit her lip, her fingers beginning to exert force...

Under the night's radiance, the snowy mountains rose and fell like waves, gleaming like a halo blooming around the full moon.