The Buddha hall was silent.
Monk Tan Duan had vanished without a trace, leaving not even a speck of dust behind.
Chen Cuo narrowed his eyes and quietly took stock of what he sensed.
At the very last moment, some inexplicable connection had formed between him and Tan Duan. It had given him an insight, a faint guess at the monk's true nature.
So Chen Cuo was not surprised to find him gone.
With the monk no more, Chen Cuo's mind eased, and his presence grew ever more ethereal.
"This way of cutting down an external demon certainly works quickly, but it does feel like taking a side path. No wonder most sects stress quiet cultivation, untouched by the dust of the mortal world..."
As he reflected on the change within him, his presence gradually returned to normal.
"But Monk Tan Duan truly was formidable. The breadth of his learning was astonishing! This time, I took a shortcut. I used the link between the Golden Man and the Remnant Souls, with the monk as a conduit and the Remnant Souls as my aid, to gather Buddhist thoughts and Buddha Light. Only then could I glimpse a sliver of Buddhism's secrets of Longevity. Yet even with that monk's knowledge and vision, he still came to feel the urge to take refuge and admire the strong. It makes one wonder—how long would it take to fathom all the tangled depths of the human heart?"
With that thought, he walked slowly forward and turned his gaze toward the back of the room—
The Divine Altar had collapsed, but the Golden Man had not fallen. It hovered in midair.
Cracks burst across the Golden Man's surface, and Remnant Souls kept seeping out through them. Yet it remained intact, with no sign of crumbling. Instead,