The disciples he had brought were all standing woodenly in the alley now, their expressions frozen in smiles so devout they were eerie.
"Go!"
Mingdeng roared, and a golden wave of mental energy burst from him, jolting all the disciples awake.
But before the confusion could fade from their eyes, the black mist had already licked its way to the corner of the alley.
Then... there was Konghai.
Konghai, too, shuddered violently.
He was holding a crystal bone, with a wisp of freshly extracted Buddha nature still wound around his fingertips.
The instant that razor-sharp aura from Mechanical City swept over him.
It was as though someone had struck his eardrums with a heavy hammer, knocking him out of his state of near-maniacal excitement.
He snapped awake.
What was I doing?
Konghai looked down at his hands.
The skin on them had a faint, unnatural golden sheen.
It was not the warm gold of Buddha Light shining from within, but a hard, thin golden membrane clinging to his skin.
He tried clenching his fist, and the skin over his knuckles gave a faint creak.
Within moments, he had regained complete clarity.
He broke into a cold sweat, almost as though blood would seep from his pores.
He looked around and found the ruins of the bone houses he had smashed stretching back behind him.
Traces of his own Buddha Light remained in every ruin.
Then he looked ahead again...
He had already reached the center of Bone City.
Not far ahead lay a vast open space, with tier upon tier of white bone steps leading down to an enormous being at their end.
That was...
Konghai's pupils contracted as he saw it.
A bodhisattva statue built from white bones.
No, not a statue.
It was alive.
Its robes were moving,