Spirit Mountain, Grand Hall of the Great Hero.
Tathagata sat cross-legged atop the Nine-Rank Merit Golden Lotus.
Above his head, three illusory figures sat cross-legged, arranged in the positions of the Three Talents.
The illusory figure on the left had a compassionate face, Buddha-light shining all around him.
The illusory figure on the right had baleful qi soaring to the heavens and wore a black robe.
The illusory figure in the center showed neither sorrow nor joy, his aura the deepest of all.
They were precisely his Good Corpse, Corpse of Evil, and Obsession Corpse.
Vast waves of peak Quasi-Saint magic power circled around the Three Corpses.
Each of the Three Corpses occupied one side and gradually fused, yet they could never fully draw close.
Tathagata drove the last of the merit power within him, turning it into a golden chain as he tried to pull the Three Corpses together and make them one.
The instant the chain touched the Three Corpses, a tremendous force of repulsion exploded from between the three.
This was already the fourth time.
The first three times, every attempt had ended the same way.
Once the Three Corpses drew close to a certain distance, an extremely powerful repulsion would arise.
That repulsion did not come from any outside force, but from the Three Corpses themselves, as if they were never meant to be joined together by nature.
After the previous failures, Tathagata had still been able to console himself—perhaps the timing had not yet come, the heat was not yet right, his state of mind was not pure enough.
But Jieyin and Zhunti had exhausted Buddhism's fortune to protect his path, and his merit power had already become abundant to an inconceivable degree.
Under such circumstances, the conditions to prove the Dao had definitely been