One year later.
To Jiang Ming's surprise, he encountered the true and fake Monkey King storyline. This part was rather dangerous precisely because this was a Parallel Primordial Universe. There was no telling what might happen; playing by no recognizable rules was the reality here.
Sure enough, Jiang Ming soon noticed something wrong. This world's Six-Eared Macaque had actually been brought in by Tathagata specifically to pluck the ripe fruit of another's labor and seize the opportunity to murder that destabilizing element, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.
By all rights, given the Buddhist School's methods and all those members of the Interception Sect already among its ranks, it should not have been so petty. But this was a Parallel Primordial Universe. What happened depended entirely on improvisation.
There was no helping it.
Jiang Ming could only improvise too.
When the true and fake Monkey Kings took their quarrel all the way to the Great Thunderclap Temple in the Western Heaven, Jiang Ming simply staged a true and fake Tathagata Buddha act. He seized the opportunity to suppress Tathagata, stole this world's Ninth-Rank Innate Merit Golden Lotus, and merged it into his own Merit Golden Lotus.
The next moment, Jiang Ming's Ninth-Rank Innate Merit Golden Lotus transformed into a Tenth-Petaled Merit Golden Lotus.
Still not enough.
Soon, Jiang Ming's eyes lit up. He remembered the parallel universe of Fairy Zixia and Zhi Zunbao that he had visited. On that occasion, he had completely forgotten to take that world's Merit Golden Lotus.
So Jiang Ming went straight there, took the Merit Golden Lotus, and merged it into his own. It still was not enough.
To advance it to an Eleventh-Rank Innate Merit Golden Lotus, he would have to steal another Nine-Petaled Merit Golden Lotus.
This time, Jiang Ming went straight to