Tathagata! Tathagata? Tathagata!

The east wind made a thousand trees bloom at night, then blew them down like a rain of stars.

White robes rippled. The radiance of Supreme Techniques bathed him from head to toe. As Qiankun trembled, True Dragons coiled and Immortal Phoenixes cried out; a Wheel Sea Phenomenon of Golden Lotuses carpeting the earth appeared in the Journey to the West World.

"I have to thank you."

The Edge-Less Sword Embryo stirred. A rainbow gleam crossed worlds from beyond an instant of spacetime, shredding the drifting Fire Mulberry petals and carving open the place where the Heaven of Self-Transformation overlapped with the Mind World.

At the edge of the Fire Mulberry Forest stood a figure gazing back with longing. The mulberry-picking girl wore her favorite red dress. Alone in her grief, she lingered in silence until the passage between the Mind World and reality slowly closed.

That was the Huo Ling'er in Shi Hao's memories, and he, too, seemed to have returned to the past.

The flamboyant confidence absent for so long resurfaced on Shi Hao's face. His black hair flowed loose, and surrounded by myriad phenomena, he resembled an Immortal King enthroned high in the Nine Heavens.

"I have no other way to repay you. Accept this sword as my thanks, master!"

But the most shaken of all was Mara.

The spiritual energy between heaven and earth gathered into a pitch-black sea. Every desire of the Human World surged within it, rolling with the tides of the age.

With one hand, "Sun Wukong," his gaze fierce as a baleful spirit's, raised a Jet-Black Iron Rod as broad as a mountain and ten thousand zhang tall.

Boundless Buddha-light dissolved the laws and drowned every calamity between heaven and earth. In an instant, the skies cleared, peace settled over all, and