"Rumble..."
Another peal of rolling thunder rang out high above. The seventh bolt of the Thunder Tribulation was about to descend!
Lin Da's brows were tightly knitted, his expression utterly solemn. His hands spun like wheels as he rapidly formed seals before him, and streaks of light began to glow on the Blood Crystal Lotus Platform beneath him.
"Creation in myriad forms, merit without limit."
As he uttered this low chant, the ghostly faces all over his body drew back, freezing against him like sculptures. Gone was their earlier frenzy of bared fangs and waving claws; they looked like lifeless things.
The Blood Crystal Lotus Platform beneath Lin Da spun rapidly and finally began to blaze with light. Slender crystalline threads resembling flower stamens sprouted from it, twisting and winding outward in every direction to connect the ritual altars.
Blood-red runes appeared on every altar, bobbing amid the intertwining crystalline threads as a strange aura began to spread across the square.
"What's going on?" Chan Master Tuolan was the first to notice something amiss and cried out in alarm.
His robes billowed without wind, and a faint white radiance seeped from his skin. Like countless fireflies, it gathered around him and enveloped his entire body.
"Wh-what is this?" someone else cried out immediately afterward.
Not far from Chan Master Tuolan, another Chan master began to glow.
Before long, almost every raised altar in the square shone with light. Some glows were pale white as moonlight, others bright as lamplight; some scattered like starlight, while others resembled a great sun hanging in the sky, forming a disc behind their bearers.
Chan'er alone showed no light at all.
Huh? How could that be? Could I have misjudged him? Lin Da wondered, glancing at Chan'er.
"So merit takes a different visible form for