It's over!
Master Chunji failed!
In the darkness, compared to Puxin who was already screaming, Jiang Che was actually very calm.
He wasn't afraid of death either... anyway, he was definitely going to die.
Whether that demon sword became active or, after the [Golden Blossom Protective Boundary] vanished, the endless demon monsters outside surged in, he had no possibility of surviving.
However, things obviously were not going to end so easily.
Just when Jiang Che thought everything was over, an extremely strong attractive force instantly seized Jiang Che's heart.
The purple light on the demon sword flickered incessantly in his eyes, calling out to him to walk over, grasp it, and pull it up.
He was falling for it!
Jiang Che bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, and the piercing pain entering his mind allowed him to regain a shred of clarity.
Yet even though he had experienced it once, he still found it extremely difficult to resist.
And what was worse, he also heard footsteps beside him.
It should be Puxin.
He couldn't even withstand it himself, let alone this little novice monk.
Jiang Che reached out, grabbed Puxin by the wrist, and pulled him back hard. The little monk wasn't big, but right now his strength was monstrously huge! Jiang Che was already weak, and at the moment he was pulling someone with one hand while simultaneously resisting the temptation, causing cold sweat to pour down in streams immediately.
He probably could only hold on for the space of a few breaths at most.
Then in the next moment, golden light surged brilliantly!
Chunji's figure, which had already been swallowed by the darkness, reappeared from before the Buddha! He stood before the demon sword with golden light boiling all over his body and his kasaya fluttering violently; that handsome and gentle face was currently as solemn as a vajra.
The darkness was driven away, and the attractive force that had been gripping Jiang Che and Puxin loosened instantly, causing the two of them to stagger and sit down together.
"I still underestimated this evil object..."
"It connects to the Demon Abyss and has already formed a climate, which cannot be refined by poor monk's strength alone. If we keep holding out like this tonight, poor monk's magical power will be exhausted, and then no one will be able to keep it in check."
He turned his head slightly to look at Jiang Che:
"Benefactor, poor monk has a matter to entrust to you."
"Please speak, Master!"
"After going out, please ask for reinforcements from your Azure Mystic on poor monk's behalf, and tell them that if this sword is not eliminated, it will commit atrocities every seven years and trigger a demon calamity. Tonight is the first time, and poor monk can suppress it, but it must be dealt with swiftly and cannot be delayed."
Hearing these words sound so much like arranging last rites, Jiang Che already felt that something was amiss, and Puxin beside them could hear it just as well, hastily shouting out:
"Master! Master! What are you going to do..."
Master Chunji, however, did not reply again. He simply opened his arms and embraced that struggling, wildly shrieking demon sword entirely into his arms.
Instantly, golden light exploded from his embrace!
The entire main hall and the entire little temple were submerged in brilliant gold. Jiang Che was stimulated to close his eyes and tried hard to open them again, and by the time his vision recovered, the white-robed monk was no longer there, leaving only the chanting he had heard all night echoing and gradually fading away, with a single sentence carried within it:
"Benefactor, if possible, please help poor monk look after Puxin."
The moment the golden blossom receded, daylight happened to break. The endless demon monsters outside the hall, along with the demonic qi churning all across the mountain, had all completely vanished. The bamboo waves rustled, and bird song rang out clean as if that entire night of bitter fighting had merely been a dream.
As for the demon sword that had caused everything, it stood obliquely inserted upon the green bricks, its entire body covered in scorch marks and cracks. It was dilapidated and no longer possessed that evil and bizarre feeling.
Judging from its appearance, compared to last night, it was actually closer to the one he would see fourteen years later in the old city of Haze Approach.
Jiang Che gritted his teeth, his injured leg stepping forward, and tentatively picked it up. There was a slight sensation of dry heat upon contact, but besides that, there was nothing else unusual.
Beside him, weeping sounded once more.
Jiang Che let out a long sigh.
How could I possibly look after him?
He squatted down, imitating Chunji's appearance from past days, and gently stroked the little monk's bald head: "Puxin, don't cry. Master Chunji is a towering, upright monk of great virtue, possessing a boundless sea of Buddhist dharma and ultimate compassion. You must follow his example well and hold up this Little Hidden Temple so as not to let him down."
"Follow Master's example?" Puxin abruptly raised his head, his face covered in tears, "What is the point of following Master's example! To be like Master and sacrifice yourself, throwing your life away for a broken sword?! Master is dead, so what about me? Doesn't he know how much heartache I will feel! Now there are only the two of us left, and I still have to run around for this sword!"
There were not two of them left.
Jiang Che opened his mouth, wanting to offer a few more words of consolation-to speak of the Master's grand vow, to speak of the original intent of compassion, to speak of how your master still cared for you...
Yet before any words could be spoken, a familiar pulling force enveloped his body and mind.
The heavens and earth grew illusory, and the Bamboo Mountain, the Buddha hall, and the morning light were all fading.
The instance dungeon was coming to an end.
"Benefactor? Benefactor, why are you also..." Puxin watched as Jiang Che's figure grew faint; his weeping stopped, then abruptly spiked higher.
He pounced forward, but grabbed empty air: "Benefactor! Benefactor!"
This tearful cry, chasing after Jiang Che's dissipating divine soul, was the last sentence he heard in the Little Hidden Temple in the fifteenth year of Xianxi.
Within the pure white Consciousness Space, Jiang Che's spiritual body hovered in mid-air, remaining still for a long time.
This time he wasn't sent back by death, lacking that bewildered feeling of regaining consciousness after dying.
Yet the aftereffects seemed even greater than dying and coming back to life.
The crying that had been by his ears just a moment ago obviously could not be heard at all right now, yet it still echoed repeatedly in his heart, leaving him feeling utterly bereft.
Master Chunji, who sacrificed himself to perish together with the demon sword and suppress the demon calamity, no matter how one looked at it, performed superbly in this instance dungeon-he was a good man without a single flaw to pick out.
In history, he should have met the same ending. Only, in the end, no one was able to entrust his disciple Puxin to anyone.
In the instance dungeon, it could indeed be entrusted to Jiang Che, but...
How was he to look after him?
He naturally knew that this was merely a remnant of history, a fragment of time, and in the future he could farm it over and over again. As for the real Master Chunji, he had long since died in that dawn when the light was just breaking in the fifteenth year of Xianxi, leaving no bones remaining. He, Jiang Che, was merely a latecomer, a spectator who could change nothing and didn't need to shoulder anything.
Yet having walked through it in person, having eaten that bowl of coarse grain rice, having listened to that night of chanting, and then recalling Puxin's hands grasping at empty air, his heart still felt painful.
Sigh... the dead are gone, and what he can do has never been in the fourteen years ago, but in the fourteen years hence.
Pulling himself together, Jiang Che controlled his spiritual body to drift slowly forward, approaching the towering Buddha statue.
His experiences in the instance dungeon flashed past scene by scene, finally freezing on the image of Puxin weeping at the end:
[D-Rank Rating]
[Reward: Candlelight Thousand-Jin Finger, Seventh-Rank Cultivation Method]
A warmth gushed out from the Buddha's body, merging into his spiritual body, and countless pieces of information poured into his mind accordingly.
This was a Buddhist finger technique consisting of a single move. It used force to condense a point of candlelight at the fingertip, and when executed, it landed with fierce and ferocious weight akin to the DemonSubduing Vajra Pestle, possessing a momentum of a thousand jin.
One part illumination, one part weight-using a minuscule light to direct a thousand-jin force and illuminate the darkness was the very essence of this method.
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