Mahakasyapa scrambled awkwardly to his feet. After a long silence, he finally managed a faint smile.
"As expected of you..." He shook his head and said slowly, "I thought I could fight you to a standstill without relying on Buddhist arts, but your Way still stands a cut above mine."
"Hmm?" Black Impermanence tore a sleeve off his clothes and bound it tightly around the wound in his lower abdomen. "You still have another trick?"
"Hehehehe..." Mahakasyapa picked up his staff and examined the blood on it. "Black Impermanence, this humble monk now knows your suffering."
"Oh?" Black Impermanence snorted coldly, picking up his soul-hooking chain and swinging it in circles through the air. "I don't recall ever hiding anything. So what if you know?"
"Hehehe..." Mahakasyapa kept flashing grotesque smiles as he murmured to Black Impermanence, "So the person you 'most want to kill' in this world is already gone?"
Black Impermanence frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Let me see..." Mahakasyapa wiped Black Impermanence's blood off the wooden staff with a finger and put it into his mouth. He savored the blood as though tasting a rare delicacy, then said slowly, "Oh, this humble monk was mistaken. That person isn't gone. Rather, he exists inside another person's body in a most wondrous way..."
Black Impermanence stared coldly at Mahakasyapa, the hairs on his body standing on end one by one.
"That person is called... Zhan Qisheng?" Mahakasyapa asked tentatively. "Is that right?"
Black Impermanence's eyes flew wide. Only he and Xie Bi'an knew about this, yet this strange monk before him...
"You wanted to kill him, but couldn't find him for nine hundred years. When he returned, he played an indispensable role, leaving you no way to strike... This has always tormented you. Has this humble monk said anything