"That's right. That is our abbot, Dharma Master Huiming."
The monk Miaoxin spoke with a mournful face.
Hearing this, Xu Taiping's heart sank, and he thought:
With the abbot dead, where am I supposed to find the Buddha Child?
According to what Miaoxin had just said,
the woman about to give birth to the Buddha Child had been hidden away by the abbot more than ten days ago. No one but the abbot knew where she was hidden.
"By all rights, with the Barrier outside our Vairocana Chan Temple still intact, Demonic Beasts at the Demon Venerable level couldn't possibly get in. The abbot's cultivation was no weaker than a Demon Venerable's, either. As long as he was inside the temple, no one should have been a match for him."
Miaoxin muttered in utter bewilderment.
"This person must have caught the abbot off guard and succeeded with a sneak attack."
Xu Taiping shook his head.
"Wait..."
He suddenly realized something. Rubbing his brow in thought, he murmured, "These Demonic Beasts didn't strike at the abbot earlier or later. They struck only after I arrived at Vairocana Temple."
"Could some of them be waiting until the Buddha Child is born to seize him, rather than kill him outright? So they've been lurking in Vairocana Temple all along."
"And my arrival disrupted their plans, making them fear they couldn't stay hidden any longer, so they chose to strike at the abbot ahead of time?"
At this thought, Xu Taiping's heart tightened.
"So it was actually my arrival that stirred the grass and startled the snake, getting the abbot killed."
The more Xu Taiping thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
Boom!
But just then, a terrifying surge of aura suddenly enveloped him and Miaoxin beside him.
Then a man's voice, laden