In the void above the Western Region.
A faceless Buddha statue with three heads and six arms drifted slowly through the void, seemingly merging with the surrounding gray-black light.
Or rather, it was the evil itself, the source of that gray-black light!
As time passed, billions of rays of gray-black light continued to spread. They had long since surged beyond the Western Region, crossing the boundless surrounding seas and expanding rapidly in every direction.
Even the pillars of teleportation light rising from the teleportation arrays could not shake that gray-black radiance.
Countless corpses lay strewn around almost every teleportation array-all Buddhist cultivators of the Western Region who had tried to teleport to safety!
These Buddhist cultivators were not disciples of Esoteric Buddhism, though they did have some ties to it.
The cultivation methods they practiced had special effects that repelled evil and warded off malign forces, yet they proved utterly useless against the gray-black light. They merely allowed them to hold out a little longer than the villagers in the wilderness.
Hum...
A faint pillar of white light suddenly rose from the teleportation plaza at the center of Sacred Heart City.
A man and a woman slowly emerged from the pillar, then stopped in their tracks.
"Is this... really Sacred Heart City?"
Lin Mo surveyed his surroundings. The black-and-white light clearly could not obstruct his vision, and the sight laid bare before him made his heart tremble.
It was too horrific!
He had been deeply impressed by Sacred Heart City's prosperity when he had last teleported here with Luan Xiuping and the others.
Millions of Buddhist cultivators lived here, along with nearly ten million mortals in the outer city. It was one of the largest cities in the entire Western Region.
Now, however, all of Sacred Heart City lay deathly