Death.
This was the only clear imprint etched into Ming Xin's consciousness before it sank into boundless darkness.
The bone-piercing cold, and the despair in the girl's eyes as she was dragged into a filthy van, were the final images frozen in his fading vision.
The trafficker's twisted, leering face; the dull sound of a dagger plunging into his abdomen; warm blood soaking through his plain monk's robes—then everything abruptly ended.
There was no Buddhist Pure Land, no Sanskrit chants from the other shore.
There was only Chaos—void, cold, like sinking into an abyss of ten-thousand-year black ice.
[ Ding! Deduction System activated. Detected a soul of high compatibility entangled with 'redemption' and 'karma'... Binding successful... Insufficient energy... Initiating emergency transfer protocol... ]
A cold, emotionless mechanical voice abruptly pierced the endless dead silence.
Transfer? Where to?
Ming Xin's consciousness was like a dying candle in the wind; even a question could not take shape.
An immense, irresistible force suddenly seized his remaining soul, brutally tearing and dragging him free from that void of death.
The sensation of the world spinning and space-time twisting instantly swallowed him.
It was as though he had been thrown into a violent torrent of space and time. Countless bizarre, shattered, distorted fragments of imagery madly washed over his consciousness before being instantly crushed to pieces.
Pain! Pain worse than death itself pierced every inch of his consciousness! It was the torture of a soul being forcibly torn apart and remade.
He felt like raw iron thrown into a furnace, beaten again and again beneath an invisible Giant Hammer, screaming soundlessly.
Fragments of his past life as Buddha's Son—the tranquility of a blue lamp beside an ancient Buddha, the melodic chanting of sutras, Master's kind face, and the girl's despairing eyes—blurred amid the violent tearing.
Distant, like a faded mural that could collapse completely at any moment.
Who knew how long it had been? Perhaps an instant, perhaps billions of years.
At last, that violent force subsided.
Ming Xin's consciousness, like discarded wreckage, came to rest upon a kind of "ground" unlike anything he had ever known.
There was no solid sensation of earth, no movement of air—only an incomparably viscous, heavy sense of "existence," saturated with endless decay and destruction, enveloping him.
He "opened" his incorporeal "eyes."
There was no light, no color—only an eternal, suffocating Chaos woven from thick dark gray and black.
Countless tiny, sharp particles brimming with malice—solidified Demonic Energy!
Like billions of greedy venomous snakes, they seeped through every opening, gnawing and biting at the resilient shell surrounding his consciousness.
Every bite brought soul-piercing agony and a coldness that sank into his bones.
Was this his new "body"? This shell resisting the erosion of endless Demonic Energy?
An instinctive realization surged into his Consciousness Core: he was no longer Ming Xin—at least, no longer the flesh-and-blood Buddha's Son he had once been.
He was an artifact. An Innate Spiritual Treasure born when heaven and earth first opened in the most barren, desolate region of The West in the Primordial World.
His "body" was the embryonic form of a strange seal, neither metal nor jade, neither stone nor wood. Its knob was indistinct, carrying an ancient, desolate air of incompletion.
Upon its surface, an exceedingly dim yet remarkably resilient and pure pale golden Buddha Light flickered stubbornly, struggling against the endless Demonic Energy outside.
This Buddha Light was the final remnant of his Buddhist nature from his past life, the last imprint of Buddha's Son's golden body. It was his only barrier now.
[ Host form confirmed: Supreme-grade Innate Spiritual Treasure—Slaughter Buddha Seal. Current coordinates: Primordial World, core of The West's earth veins (severely contaminated zone). Environmental threat: Erosion by extremely high concentrations of Chaos Demonic Energy. Status: Extremely weak. Origin Buddha Light continuously depleting... Estimated annihilation time: three hundred Primordial World days. ]
The system's cold voice rang directly within the depths of his consciousness, declaring the cruel reality without a ripple of emotion.
Primordial World! The West! Demonic Energy! Slaughter Buddha Seal!
Every word was like a thunderclap, leaving Ming Xin's remaining consciousness buzzing.
This was the Primordial World? The legendary Primordial World of dragon-phoenix rivalry, conflict between Dao and demons, and Sages reigning supreme?
And he had actually become an Innate Spiritual Treasure that should not exist, in the barren wasteland of The West—land so utterly corrupted by Devil Ancestor Rahula that not even Sages wished to spare it a glance?
And a Buddha Seal named after "Slaughter," at that?
An immense sense of absurdity and icy despair seized him. The Buddhist Sect spoke of compassion and laying down the butcher's blade, yet this spiritual treasure of his bore the name "Slaughter"?
In this deadly land where Demonic Energy reached the heavens, even existence itself was a luxury!
Bzz...
The dim Buddha Light enveloping his embryonic form trembled sharply, like a guttering candle in the wind, and its glow weakened further.
The Demonic Energy around him, thick as tar, immediately let out greedy hisses and surged forward with even greater frenzy, seeking to snuff out this final resistance completely.
Pain! The pain of icy erosion piercing deep into his soul!
[ Warning: Origin Buddha Light is about to fall below the critical threshold for maintaining form! Initiating emergency protocol... Deducing... Deduction complete. Plan: Passively absorb trace amounts of ambient Demonic Energy. Using the origin of 'Slaughter' as a guide, construct a prototype Buddha-demon balance field. ]
The system's voice remained cold.
Passively absorb Demonic Energy? A Buddha-demon balance?
Before Ming Xin could understand what the plan meant, an even more powerful and tyrannical force suddenly erupted from the depths of his consciousness—from the core origin of the Slaughter Buddha Seal!
This force was cold, murderous, and pure, carrying a terrifying will to sever all things and bring everything to an end!
It did not come from the system, but from the Origin Dao Rhyme innately bestowed upon the Slaughter Buddha Seal!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Invisible threads of the Killing Law shot out from the surface of the Buddha Seal's embryonic form like hungry venomous dragons!
They did not attack the Demonic Energy. Instead, like greedy straws, they actively and violently pierced into the viscous Demonic Energy around them!
Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!
Pure Chaos Demonic Energy was forcibly drawn out and devoured! A cold energy far more sinister, violent, and filled with the desire for Destruction than before—
rushed madly into the Buddha Seal's embryonic form along those threads of law!
"Urgh—!"
Ming Xin's consciousness let out a soundless scream. The agony of Demonic Energy entering his body was a hundred times stronger than the external erosion from before!
It crashed through him violently, contaminating the trace of Buddhist nature remaining in his consciousness, as if it intended to drag his soul completely into an infernal demon realm!
Just as his consciousness was about to be completely drowned by Demonic Energy and descend into madness, the Buddhist nature from his past life, imprinted deep within his soul, was provoked by this ultimate filth and erupted in one final counterattack!
Bzz—!
The once-dim protective Buddha Light blazed brightly! It was no longer pale gold, but a pure, resilient grayish-white radiance carrying the meaning of Nirvana and Transcendence!
This light was not warm. Instead, it carried a biting chill that seemed capable of ending all things, like the ashes left behind by Nirvana.
It firmly resisted the violent Demonic Energy crashing within him, forcibly confining it to a certain area in the embryo's core and preventing it from completely polluting the spiritual treasure's entire origin.
At the same time, the system's cold power operated in the depths of his consciousness like the most precise carving blade.
Countless minuscule runes manifested from nothing, taking the Killing Origin as their core, the incoming Demonic Energy as their "ink," and the erupting Nirvana Buddha Light as their "brush."
They forcibly constructed an incomparably complex, fragile, yet exquisitely subtle miniature energy circulation system.
The violence of the Demonic Energy was forcibly suppressed and neutralized by the Nirvana intent of the Buddha Light. The Buddha Light's Nirvana, in turn, was stimulated and tempered by the destructive nature of the Demonic Energy.
It became more condensed and resilient. Meanwhile, the Killing Origin acted as a ruthless arbiter, coldly maintaining this fragile balance.
Greedily absorbing the wisps of pure energy produced when Buddha and demon clashed and annihilated each other, strengthening itself.
The pain did not disappear. Instead, it became an eternal backdrop. Coldness and Nirvana, violence and Terminus.
Two utterly opposite powers, which should have been as irreconcilable as fire and water, were forcibly kneaded together and warped within his tiny embryonic form, reaching a precarious balance.
[ Prototype Buddha-demon balance field successfully constructed. Status: Extremely unstable. Host consciousness stabilized... Entering deep hibernation... Passively absorbing ambient energy for maintenance... ]
The system's voice seemed to come from the distant horizon.
After enduring endless painful tearing and the torment of ice and fire, Ming Xin's consciousness finally could bear no more and completely sank into boundless darkness.
Like a cold Unpolished Stone buried deep within a filthy mire, only that faint yet resilient grayish-white Nirvana Buddha Light remained.
It flowed and pulsed with extreme slowness across the surface of the seal's embryonic form, resisting the eternal, surging torrent of Demonic Energy outside.
Time lost all meaning in this forgotten dead land of The West.
Ming Xin's remaining consciousness drifted within the cold furnace formed by the Buddha-demon balance field, like stubborn iron alternately tempered by ten-thousand-year ice and Netherworld Demon Flame.
Pain was the eternal undertone as Nirvana Buddha Light and Chaos Demonic Energy waged their endless tug-of-war within his embryonic form.
Whenever the Buddha Light was suppressed by Demonic Energy, his consciousness fell into a bone-chilling demon realm filled with illusions;
Whenever Demonic Energy was purified and annihilated by the Buddha Light, it was as though he had been cast into Nirvana ashes that burned away all things, leaving only cold emptiness behind.
[ Energy accumulation... 1%... 5%... 10%... ]
The system's cold, rigid progress prompts were the only coordinates in this eternal torment.
No one knew how many Primordial World eras passed. Perhaps a thousand years, perhaps ten thousand.
The strange seal embryo buried deep in the polluted core of The West's earth veins now bore grayish-white Nirvana Buddha Light condensed almost into substance, forming a thin, translucent crystalline membrane.
The seal's outline had also grown clearer. Upon its ancient, desolate square body, the knob had faintly condensed into the blurry seated form of a figure—neither Buddha nor demon, its face a haze of Chaos.
It carried a contradictory Dao Rhyme that ended all things while containing a Thread of Life.
After prolonged tempering by Buddha-demon energy, the Killing Origin had become restrained and profound, like a cold dark star beating at the seal's core. It silently radiated the law fluctuations of severing Cause and Effect and ending Reincarnation.
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