No Grief, No Pity, No Deliverance—Heaven and Earth in Turmoil.
Heaven-Stabilizing Continent, Central Region.
A child stood before a towering "cliff" as smooth as a bronze mirror, more than a hundred zhang high.
Within that smooth, metallic "cliff" was a blurred figure.
Curiously, he stretched out his grimy little hand toward the blurred figure within the "cliff."
At the same time, the figure inside the "cliff" also extended its hand toward the child outside.
Just as the child's fingertips were about to touch the figure within the "cliff"—
A rough, calloused hand suddenly pressed down on the child's head, brutally forcing it downward.
The child dropped to his knees. The ground beneath him was just like the "cliff" before him—smooth, with a metallic sheen.
His forehead struck the ground with a dull thud.
And the ground likewise reflected that blurred figure.
"All living beings are mud. All living beings are earth. All living beings are dust.
"The Sage knows life, knows death, knows suffering.
"The Sage feels no grief, no pity, and offers no deliverance..."
A woman's prayerful chanting came from beside the child.
The woman wore plain clothes, worn and tattered.
The child turned his head and looked at his mother's gaunt face, its wrinkles carved deep as knife marks.
Her eye sockets were sunken, and her eyes cloudy.
Yet deep within her pupils was a fanatical, almost deranged obsession.
The woman rose, seized the child by the arm, and dragged him forward.
Stumbling, the child looked back.
Behind him, a black tide of figures surged from the horizon, carpeting the wilderness.
They were packed as densely as a moving forest.
Every few steps, they knelt, pressing their foreheads into the dirt, against shattered stones, into the footprints of the person before them.
Low, repetitive chants, their words indistinct,