"Ascension?"
The Buddha Land shattered. Everyone inside and outside stared at the scene, dumbstruck.
"Monk Tanyan actually ascended?" The young man surnamed Yu froze, then looked to Lin Mai for confirmation.
Lin Mai drew a deep breath. Divine light flared in his eyes as he studied that figure from head to toe. When he finally looked away, his expression had changed.
"It is Tanyan. He..." Lin Mai looked almost dazed as he gazed down at the collapsing Buddha Land. "He must have used a Divine Ability beyond the Return to Truth level in the Mortal World, and the power of Heaven and Earth cast him out!"
The young man surnamed Yu frowned. "Wasn't he fighting Master Soaring of Great Hua Mountain? Why was he forced to ascend?"
"Could someone from Great Hua Mountain have intervened?" Lin Mai pondered for a moment. "Daoyinzi's depths are unfathomable. If he acted, Tanyan could indeed have been caught off guard and forced to use a Divine Ability from Beyond the Mundane..."
As he spoke, the monk drifting through the sky suddenly gave a long sigh. Then he said to Chen Cuo, "At this point, I am somewhat inclined to believe that fate decreed you would break the Bronze Man, my lord. Though you have forced me to leave, I must still thank you. With this debt of cause and effect settled, my ties to the great formation are severed completely. Nothing will bind me to it again."
He pressed his palms together, smiling.
"This ending, too, was fated for me. Farewell."
With that, the monk became a streak of light and shot into the depths of the sky, vanishing from sight.
Then a ray of golden light descended.
Across a hundred li, all beings of flesh and blood, birds and beasts, even flowers, grasses,