I am thus—what of you?
Ksitigarbha had asked the same question once before. At that time, with a drop of Buddha's blood, He formed Bodhi, reversing cause into effect, and completed His suppression of Ji Fengzhou.
And the outcome of that time was that Ji Fengzhou swallowed the bitter fruit alone, thereby worsening his injuries.
Now the golden droplets of blood flew like cascading waterfalls; Bodhi sprouted luxuriant branches as well, and Ksitigarbha's wounds signified an even more painful bitter fruit. If all of it were to be borne by Ji Fengzhou, could this Son of Heaven's body—badly wounded, still unhealed, and fighting through hardship—truly withstand it?
"Your Majesty!" Chunyu Gui, commander of the Imperial Edict Army, had kept watch outside the Central Hall. At this moment, he raised the army's momentum into motion, forming a brilliant white celestial dragon, scales growing and horns rising, coiling around the palace. "When the lord is disgraced, the minister dies! How can we indulge this demon monk's question? This general requests battle!"
He was not requesting battle. He was requesting death.
The White Dragon twisted, like a jade belt wrapped around the waist, willing to die in the Son of Heaven's stead!
Chunyu Gui and the Imperial Edict Army under his command were united from top to bottom, of one heart as they marched into danger.
After so many years of reform and transformation, the arts of the Military School had long since departed from the Ancient Era, when warriors had to rely entirely on personal sacrifice in order to merge into a single whole.
The extreme utilization of soldiers' qi and blood had risen from the thirty or forty percent of the powerful armies of that age to more than seventy percent in the powerful armies of Hegemon States today, nearing eighty