"I really... deserve to die!"
She Disheng formed the Fearless Great Compassion Seal with both hands and sat cross-legged in midair. The hundred-zhang cliff face crumbled entirely to dust, coating him in frost-white powder until he looked like a freshly carved stone statue. Bereft and spiritless, he sagged like a man on the verge of death.
Two more tears ran down his cheeks, cutting muddy tracks through the powder on his face.
Ksitigarbha had pushed back Yin Guan's ascent and laid the foundations of the Underworld. Then, through She Disheng's office as King Zhuanlun, Yama Lord of Suying Palace, he had granted him the power of a pseudo-Yang God within the bounds of the Underworld, allowing him to crush all the other Yama Kings in strength.
Borrowing the tiger's might to bully a pack of rabbits, he should have been able to handle everything properly.
But he couldn't!
Within that bird-headed, human-bodied monster was hidden River-Subduing True Lord's Red Heart Seal.
Had that contemporary legend, the master of Chao Wendao Heavenly Palace, truly laid plans so far ahead?
Had he actually been waiting here for Ksitigarbha Venerable Buddha?!
His heart was full of grief—rage at his own incompetence, dread at the very name River-Subduing True Lord, and guilt over failing to fulfill the Venerable Buddha's expectations... Yet there was nothing he could do.
That square seal, radiant with red-gold light, simply pushed forward. Every force standing before it was utterly ground away. The instant the seal flew out, he had been fixed in place, like an insect trapped in amber. Other than enduring it, he had no choice.
He should already have died—if not for a Buddha's palm holding him in its center.
The palm stretched flat, blooming like an opening lotus, its upright fingers like mountain peaks, blocking all