A Pearl in the Mouth

"Is this... Naihe Bridge?"

Understanding dawned on Xu Chunliang. He remembered why he was here.

He and Li Baiyi had wandered into the forest of steles, a Buddhist holy site, where Buddhist guardians had killed them and cast them into hell, never to be reborn.

"Li Baiyi, Li Baiyi! Where are you? Are you dead?" Xu Chunliang shouted, but received no answer.

With the chains pulling him along, he could only move slowly forward across the stone bridge, which was like a single-log bridge.

One step, two steps...

After walking for who knew how long, he finally reached the end of the bridge. The vast expanse of fog finally vanished as well.

A gigantic buddha stood at the end of the bridge, covered in gold paint and looking much like a clay statue worshipped in a temple.

But where his head should have been, where there should have been a buddha's head with a kindly face and long earlobes, there grew the head of a house centipede, its appendages thrashing.

The centipede head dipped down from time to time, plucking a figure from the crowd crossing Naihe Bridge and swallowing them whole.

Why does he have a head like that? How can a buddha have such a terrifying head? Xu Chunliang pondered for a moment, then thought no more of it.

He was dead already. He might as well await reincarnation in peace. Besides, he had died so many times anyway.

Xu Chunliang smiled self-mockingly, then his heart jolted!

No! Something's wrong!

That's it. A buddha's head should have a kindly face. If it doesn't, I'll carve every last one of them into that shape.

And I shouldn't have died here. I'm immortal! Even [Death] high in the heavens can't kill me, so what gives a few puny buddha guardians like you the right to kill me?

Once Xu Chunliang understood all this, the scene before him shattered like a mirror. He was back in the pagoda forest.

Before him were eighteen buddhas sitting cross-legged on the ground and chanting sutras, with coffin nails driven into their heads as ordination scars. Beside him, Li Baiyi had fallen to the ground, his face deathly pale, constantly muttering, "This is Naihe Bridge."

Xu Chunliang smiled cruelly, reached out and picked up the sword Li Baiyi had dropped. Wielding it like a saber, he unleashed Eerie Tiger Splits the Earth.

Saber qi burst from his body and slashed into the bodies of five buddhas chanting sutras before him. In an instant, the gold paint on their skin churned wildly as if caught in an earthquake. Immediately afterward, it cracked apart like the earth in a quake.

Before the other buddhas could awaken, Xu Chunliang struck again, unleashing a slash of Eerie Tiger Howls at the Heavens. He smashed another three buddhas apart.

Looking at the coffin nails scattered across the ground,

he grabbed the slowly awakening Li Baiyi by his stylish hair, passed over the shattered remains of those buddhas, and raced down the mountainside, dragging him along.

"Ahem, ahem..."

"Where am I? Didn't I die?"

"Fuck, my scalp hurts. Why does it feel like someone dragged me over a mountain by my hair?"

Beside the woods, Li Baiyi rubbed his scalp as he woke from his daze. Looking at Xu Chunliang, he asked:

"Yeah, you were struck by those buddhas with coffin nails in their heads and fell unconscious on the spot. Maybe those bald donkeys were jealous of your stylish hair, so one of them yanked some out."

Xu Chunliang secretly rubbed away the few black hairs caught between his fingers, then said to Li Baiyi, "Luckily, I still had a top-tier killing move that put me in mortal danger before giving me a chance at survival. I used it to severely injure them, and only then did I manage to rescue you and escape here with great difficulty. Otherwise, I'm afraid the two of us really would've been done for this time."

As Xu Chunliang spoke, lingering fear washed over him. He had thought that with Death Reset, he was unbeatable. He had never expected the zombie buddhas that appeared in the pagoda forest to have such powerful illusion-inducing abilities.

If they had created something other than hell, Xu Chunliang might actually have been fooled.

Life isn't a power fantasy. Death Reset is awesome, but it isn't completely unbeatable. I have to keep that in mind from now on. He silently reminded himself, then asked, "Brother Li, you know more about the Ruin Realm. Tell me, are there any conditions we have to meet to get out?"

Li Baiyi frowned and thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know either. I grew up in the capital and had only heard of the Ruin Realm. I'd never actually encountered it. This is my first real experience with it too."

"There's no Ruin Realm in the capital?" Xu Chunliang asked curiously.

Li Baiyi looked at him in surprise, not understanding why he would ask that. With Xu Chunliang's abilities and mental fortitude, he shouldn't have asked such a question.

"You really don't know?"

Xu Chunliang shook his head.

"All right. Three hundred years ago, our Great Yong's imperial preceptor, Xuanyuan Baixie, led the foremost figures of four groups—the Buddhists, the Daoists, the Wandering God Palace, and the Dragon Dancers—and sacrificed 36,381 people alive to create the Dust-Sweeping Formation in the capital.

"With the Dust-Sweeping Formation suppressing it, no Ruin Realm can open in the capital."

Xu Chunliang's mouth twitched. He increasingly felt that this world was insane. He didn't ask Li Baiyi whether the 36,381 people sacrificed alive had been Great Yong commoners or refugees captured from foreign countries.

Coming from Blue Star, he simply couldn't accept the sacrifice of living human lives.

As expected, this world is insane!

All of this has to change!

Xu Chunliang shook his head, setting aside the distant goal of changing the world, and continued, "You may not have encountered the Ruin Realm before, but you must have heard things about it, right? Have you heard anything about how to leave it?"

Li Baiyi pondered for a moment, then slowly said, "I've heard a few things. Some people found a weird object dropped by a powerful eerie in the Ruin Realm and gained a chance at survival. Others were transported out of the Ruin Realm after passing a test set by an eerie. Still others simply walked and walked until they were out. There's no single reason. Anything is possible.

"I originally thought that if we could get the pearl the Pearl Buddha Maiden was holding in her mouth, we might be able to leave. That's because there's an old saying passed down from ten thousand years ago, whose origins can no longer be verified:

"[With a pearl in your mouth, you can come and go as you please.]

"I don't understand why holding a pearl in your mouth would let you come and go as you please, but I thought that with the pearl in our mouths, we might be able to find our way back."

Xu Chunliang scratched his head. He didn't think it made much sense, but he still took a pearl from his robes and handed it to Li Baiyi.

"See if this is the pearl."

Li Baiyi took it and looked, then couldn't help freezing. "This really is the pearl from the Pearl Buddha Maiden's mouth, but how did you get it?"

Xu Chunliang smiled sheepishly and said:

"Haha, after I smashed that sarira and everything turned dark, I jumped down from the buddha's hand and stepped on this pearl..."

Hearing this, Li Baiyi became even more convinced that Xu Chunliang was blessed with providence, the legendary son of providence. He secretly resolved that once they were out of the Ruin Realm, he would bring his younger sister to meet Xu Chunliang as a prospective bride.

If Xu Chunliang liked her, he would have his sister marry him as his wife. If Xu Chunliang didn't like her, he would have her become his maidservant, then hope that love would grow over time...

Xu Chunliang knew nothing of the jumble of thoughts in Li Baiyi's head. He merely pointed at the pearl he had placed in Li Baiyi's hand and said:

"Now that I've given you the pearl, whether you can come and go as you please depends on how you hold it in your mouth."