Du Yuexin tilted her face toward the sky and sighed deeply. "This was meant to be a place for quiet cultivation and a clear heart, yet after thousands of years, it has turned to trickery and plunder. When a nunnery owns hundreds of thousands of mu of fertile fields and a hundred li of waters, collecting land taxes far and wide, where has it put the original heart of the Buddhist Path? I will give you two a choice: relinquish all these fields, houses, forests, and waters and return to the original heart of the Buddhist Path-or force me to dissolve the Falling Blossom Nunnery today?"
Miaoyu slowly raised her head and drew a deep breath, gradually bringing her palms together before her chest. "Amitabha Buddha. I accept your decree in full, Senior Sister. I will immediately hand these seventy-nine people over to Lord Su, and surrender all our properties to the authorities. I will then enter the Buddhist Hall and repent of my faults before the Buddha. Until I recover the original heart of the Buddhist Path, I will not emerge from seclusion."
Her hand traced a gentle circle, and she plucked all seventy-nine people from across the mountain in a single grasp.
With a thud, she dropped them before Lin Xiaosu.
Knowing they had no way out, one of them-no one knew who-roared, "Kill this cur of an official!"
With a whoosh, the entire group sprang up and charged at Lin Xiaosu, bristling with murderous intent, hoping to trample his corpse and embark on a life of flight through the martial world.
And indeed, all seventy-nine were expert cultivators who had received the Falling Blossom Nunnery's true teachings.
Their combined charge filled the skies with manifestations of their arts, their momentum shaking the heavens.
Yet Abbess Miaoyu's expression