The Ancient Bronze Coffin.
Fang Yang took out a Bodhi Leaf and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing it over and over. Its slightly bitter juice spread across his palate and lingered.
Faintly, a Daoist chant echoed in his ears:
"The way of Heaven is to diminish what has excess and replenish what is lacking..."
Fang Yang eagerly committed to memory the scripture for repairing the Immortal Domain.
Even if the scripture would be of little use while his cultivation was still weak, memorizing it at the cost of just one Bodhi Leaf was still a very worthwhile deal.
People couldn't focus only on the present. They also had to invest in the future.
Time passed, second by second. Once he had memorized the entire scripture, a violent tremor nearly knocked Fang Yang off his feet.
The seal had been lifted!
On the first level of Hell, some of the Crocodile Ancestor's descendants had already escaped and begun hunting down Ye Fan and the others.
"What the hell is that?"
As he ran toward the Ancient Bronze Coffin, Ye Fan saw one of his classmates lying dead, his forehead pierced by some unknown creature. His eyes blazed with fury.
He had already done his best to urge his former college classmates to hurry back to the Ancient Bronze Coffin.
But few of them had listened.
Liu Yunzhi had even slandered him, asking if he meant to keep the Buddhist artifacts left behind by Sakyamuni all to himself.
Ye Fan was furious, so he simply left with the few people he was on good terms with.
However, after they had gone only a hundred or two hundred meters, Liu Yunzhi had spotted the plaque and stolen it, taking the Great Thunder Sound Temple Bronze Plaque.
That caused the entire Great Thunder Sound Temple to collapse. A storm swept across Mars, forcing everyone to return to the Ancient Bronze Coffin and pray they could follow the path of the ancient sages to the next stop, escaping the natural disaster.
Who could have guessed that Fang Yang's words would come true?
The demons once suppressed by the Buddha had truly broken through their seal and returned to the world, even killing his college classmates.
"Everyone, gather around those who have Buddhist artifacts!"
Ye Fan shouted.
He didn't need to say more. Many had already realized that everyone who died had been without a Buddhist artifact, and they began crowding around those who had one.
Pang Bo's face darkened. He hadn't found a single Buddhist artifact, so he could only stay beside Ye Fan and rely on the Bronze Ancient Lamp to protect himself.
After a chaotic scramble, only twenty-three of the thirty people managed to make it back to the Ancient Bronze Coffin.
When they saw Fang Yang standing inside the coffin as if nothing had happened, they all looked astonished.
"Did you know all along that something dangerous would happen?!"
Liu Yunzhi shouted angrily. He looked furious, as if mourning the classmates who had died.
As soon as he said this,
the others' gazes shifted from surprise to anger, hatred, indifference... All sorts of emotions showed on their faces.
"So what if I did?"
"You believe Sakyamuni existed, but you don't believe in Cause and Effect? You don't think stealing Buddhist artifacts will bring down Heaven's wrath?"
Fang Yang sneered coldly.
Naturally, he didn't believe that taking the Buddhist artifacts would bring retribution. But that didn't stop him from using the claim to condemn these people.
Many were left speechless. If they really thought about it, they were the ones who had caused their classmates' deaths.
But some didn't care about logic at all. They just wanted to bring Fang Yang down and scheme to get the Vajra Pestle he carried.
"You're a murderer!"
A woman jumped out, pointing at Fang Yang's nose as she berated him.
"Heh."
Fang Yang had nothing to say to a bunch of people who twisted right and wrong and threw accusations around at will.
He casually reached toward his waist with his right hand, concealing the strange fact that a pistol had appeared out of thin air.
"I'm a murderer, am I? Then what do you want to do about it?"
He asked with a smile.
"Hand over the Vajra Pestle in your hands and atone for the dead!"
A man named Li Changqing eagerly jumped forward, greedily eyeing the Vajra Pestle.
He and Liu Yunzhi had carried the Great Thunder Sound Temple Bronze Plaque together. It was far too inconvenient.
"And the rest of you?"
"Tell me what you want me to do."
Fang Yang swept his gaze over the crowd. His calm expression left them baffled.
Why wasn't he afraid?
"We're all civilized people. Hand over the Vajra Pestle, and I'm sure Li Hua and the others will forgive you from beyond the grave," Liu Yunzhi said with feigned sincerity.
"He's right!"
"Hand it over!"
Two men chimed in, shouting along.
"You've gone too far!"
Ye Fan frowned. He wanted to speak up for Fang Yang, but someone else cut him off:
"Ye Fan, you and Fang Yang went to high school together. Stay out of this."
The speaker was Li Xiaoman. Her gaze was cold as she spoke without the slightest courtesy to Ye Fan, her ex-boyfriend.
Ye Fan looked as if he'd swallowed a dead child. His face grew horribly grim, and he was left speechless.
Fang Yang watched the show with amusement. He hadn't expected the future Heavenly Emperor Ye to be such a hopeless romantic, still hung up on his ex-girlfriend to this extent.
He had no interest in playing around any longer. He pulled out the pistol he'd prepared earlier and aimed it at the people who had just demanded he hand over the Vajra Pestle.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Liu Yunzhi, dead!
Li Changqing, dead!
Unnamed woman, dead!
Unnamed man, dead!
Unnamed man, dead!
Five in all. Every one of them had been shot in the chest. There was no chance they would survive. They died right there inside the ancient coffin, saving the cost of buying coffins.
The smell of gunpowder spread through the Ancient Bronze Coffin.
Everyone was horrified. They stared at the gun in Fang Yang's hand, having felt the power of this deadly weapon firsthand. They all trembled and dared not speak.
Could sheer numbers really match a pistol?
"You! You!"
Li Xiaoman stammered, no longer acting high and mighty. She looked like a clown in a circus.
"What do you mean, 'you'? Want to find out what a bullet tastes like?"
Fang Yang wasn't going to indulge her.
She was Ye Fan's ex-girlfriend.
Not his.
After using his foreknowledge to amass enough wealth on Earth to last him a lifetime, he certainly wasn't going to be short on women.
Li Xiaoman was certainly beautiful, but there were plenty of women on Earth more beautiful than her.
If he weren't worried that killing her might let the Crocodile Ancestor possess him, Fang Yang would have taught her a lesson.
"Fang Yang, could you do me a favor and let her go?"
Ye Fan spoke up, trembling.
He was brave, but that didn't mean he wouldn't react to a deadly weapon like a pistol.
Especially one that had just killed five people.
"You owe me another favor."
Fang Yang lowered his gun and spoke flatly.
"I'll remember that."
Ye Fan let out a breath of relief and replied with a wry smile.
The Bodhi Seed and his ex-girlfriend.
He had no idea how he'd repay Fang Yang for those two favors.
"I don't need you to save me!"
Li Xiaoman snorted.
"Li Xiaoman, don't be so ungrateful."
Pang Bo snorted too.
He could finally see what Ye Fan's ex-girlfriend was like: a snob who sucked up to the powerful and fawned over foreigners.
Just because Ye Fan had taken her virginity, did he owe her for the rest of his life?
Caught between his best friend and his ex-girlfriend, Ye Fan didn't know whom to side with, so he could only duck his head and pretend he hadn't heard.
Fang Yang ignored the farce and turned his attention to the information that had just appeared:
[Eliminate enemies, remove threats, kill Liu Yunzhi, Li Changqing... five people] [Fate Points +366]
The corners of his mouth lifted.
Another five or six hundred Fate Points, and he'd be able to do another ten-pull.
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