The sword was pitch-black from hilt to tip, without luster or ornament.
It seemed to absorb all the light and sound around it. A single glance was enough to make one's Divine Soul ache.
At the tip of the sword, a drop of golden blood slowly fell. As it descended, it transformed into countless tiny phantom images of Buddhas.
Under Wang Xian's gaze, they vanished in an instant.
Before her, the hundreds of Buddha statues were slowly dissipating.
Like sand sculptures scattered by the wind, or morning dew evaporating beneath the dawn.
The process was slow, yet irreversible.
One of the Buddha statues resembled an eight-armed asura, but it had three heads. The expression on each head was savage and twisted, filled with unwillingness and venomous resentment.
At the final moment of its dissipation, all six eyes fixed themselves deathly on the woman in black.
The gray-robed monk's face was deathly pale, and a wound deep enough to expose bone slashed across the front of his monk's robe, running diagonally from his left shoulder to his right abdomen.
The wound did not bleed. Instead, golden motes of light continuously escaped from it—the source of his Buddhist power was leaking away.
Yet he stood in the void, back straight, refusing to fall. His eyes held neither grief nor joy.
Suddenly, he sensed something and whipped his head around—
He was not looking at the woman in black, but toward the edge of the illusion, toward where Wang Xian was.
At the same time, a wisp of green smoke slowly rose within the void, gathering shape between the monk and the woman.
The woman in black paid no attention to the wound on the monk's chest, nor did she care in the slightest about the formation of Buddha statues that could completely