All the demon soldiers and generals who had penetrated deep behind enemy lines had already retreated to the main battle formation, drawing a distinct line from the Buddhist army. Only along the colliding edges were there slight friction and skirmishes, while the rest remained in a standoff.
The images projected from the black hole just moments ago had left them still dazed, lingering in a state of slight trance.
One by one, their eyes were blank as they stood dazedly in place with their weapons, or pressed their palms together with lowered heads, wondering what to do. Others raised their heads high, only to find that the black hole in the vault had long since vanished, leaving only the lofty and boundless sky, and when they looked into the distance to search for those strange warships that had swept across the air, they could not find a trace of them either.
That orderly, fantastical, and novel world was like an illusion; they had inadvertently peeked at it through a crack in a box, but that was merely the grace of a single glance, and the next second it turned into a reflection in a mirror and the moon in the water, completely out of reach.
The demon kings stood suspended in the air while the bodhisattvas stepped upon lotus thrones, and they stopped fighting each other, falling into silence.
No one noticed that within a golden fissure overhead, a monk stood with his palms pressed together, staring blankly at the now-empty vault, his mouth still unconsciously reciting a string of scriptures in Sanskrit.
It was none other than Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva!
He was reciting the Subduing the Mind chapter of the Diamond Sutra, known in the East as the Mahaprajnaparamita Great Bright Mantra Sutra, which Xuanzang later retranslated and named the