Only at the hour of Hai the following day did the smoke hanging over East Third Guard Island gradually disperse.
It was as though a nightmare had finally reached its end.
The Lotus-Platform Golden Hall, once flourishing with incense offerings and thronged with worshippers.
Now it was unrecognizable, reduced to shattered walls and rubble.
The Gilt Buddha Crown, once towering high above and glittering with golden light, had been cleaved in two by a fierce stroke of the Pojun Battle Halberd in Qing Chen's hands.
Clusters of Śarīra had helplessly tumbled into the bloody water, their radiance lost, dull and lightless.
Of the White Jade Pillars, once white as jade and covered in scriptures, some had broken into several sections, while others had been frozen black all over by the piercing chill released by the Mystic Ice Silkworm Formation.
The Sanskrit on the pillars had long since been stained with blood and filth, stripped of its former solemnity.
Looking out, the outlines of the Nine Great Guard Islands loomed faintly over the sea.
But the curling wisps of incense smoke that had once risen there had now vanished without a trace.
The entire island lay deathly silent, like a forgotten, solitary grave.
"Ugh... my leg..." A pained wail struggled out from somewhere beneath a pile of rubble.
A monk soldier dragging half a severed leg was desperately trying to crawl toward the distant reefs, leaving a long trail of blood behind him.
His monastic robes had been slashed to tatters, and poisonous baleful intent burrowed frantically along his wounds into the gaps between his bones, making his entire body convulse with pain.
A woman's stifled sobbing came from a stretch of ruins nearby.
It was a nun holding a boy's corpse.
The boy looked barely in his teens, his monk's