Welcoming the Final Echo

Heavy breathing rose and fell in waves.

The Eighteen Arhats soaking in the seawater gradually revived. Their exteriors resembled thousand-meter statues cast from bronze, imposing beyond measure.

Yet they no longer possessed the spiritual intelligence they had before the heavenly calamity, and their movements seemed somewhat stiff.

The monks cried out in reverence and held a grand celebration on the island. Some even carved the titles of the Eighteen Arhats into their own flesh, their kasayas and robes soaked through with blood.

The celebration was called "Blissful Ascension," its creed being that the flesh should decay while the soul ascended to heaven.

The Eighteen Arhats remained as immovable as mountains. Faint Buddhist aura drifted from them, leaving the expressions of countless monks utterly intoxicated.

They deliberately fanned the Buddhist aura toward their faces, wanting only to let their mouths and noses greedily absorb it.

Their consciousness soon blurred, their souls seeming to return to Great Demon Heaven as their senses drowned in indescribable delight. What followed was the gradual rotting of their flesh and bones.

The people on the island gave themselves over to abandon. Some were ecstatic, some sorrowful, their emotions magnified to the extreme before finally turning them into hollow walking corpses.

After a single ceremony, over ten thousand corpses had appeared at the site.

Swarms of carrion insects circled the bodies. The stench of decay was beyond description, while blood soaked the stone tiles, lending the ceremony an inexplicably eerie atmosphere.

More than a hundred corpse-moving monks emerged. Their facial features had already been sealed shut, allowing them to retain their clarity as they took turns carrying the corpses to the flesh palace chambers.

In only a moment, newborn monks were bred and emerged, nonchalantly sweeping the temple streets until they were soon pristine once more.

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