091 The Buddha Radiance of the Great Sun’s Lapis Lazuli Jeweled Flame

The Boundless Light Buddha stood in midair, three concentric halos of Buddha-light blazing behind him as waves of Sanskrit chanting rolled out.

Take refuge... take refuge... take refuge...

The radiance spread everywhere. Within a radius of a hundred li, all was cast in a red-gold glaze, like a Buddhist paradise.

When Shi Qi and Shi Lin were bathed in that light, their bodies instantly became nearly transparent. Their cultivations were forcibly refined by the Buddha-light, transformed bit by bit into Buddhist power.

Without a word, the two men turned into twin streams of Buddha-light and shot into the golden Buddha's back.

Even the black bird beneath Elder Cha was stripped of all its demonic power; every feather upon its body turned red-gold, and it too plunged into the radiance.

Elder Cha's expression grew grave. Spiritual light surged over his body like a tide as he resisted the peril of being converted by the Salvation Art.

"So you still had such a trump card. This must be a guardian Buddha image forged by a great monk of the Heavenly Zen Sect!"

He urged his power, and two lifelike giant azure hands materialized, reaching for the Boundless Light Buddha.

A strange smile appeared on Elder Cha's face. "Pity. This Buddha image is mine now."

"With this Buddha, the Jin family’s Golden Core cultivators will be nothing to fear!"

Pang Yue floated up and stood upon the golden Buddha’s shoulder.

The golden Buddha opened its great hand, and dense, almost solid golden Buddha-light gathered into a golden disciplinary blade.

Countless scriptures flowed across that blade. It brimmed with Zen serenity, yet also carried a fierce, rule-breaking killing intent.

A crystal-clear Buddhist flame ignited along the blade and spread with the blade-light.

The golden Buddha casually slashed downward with the disciplinary blade, and two streaks of blade-light instantly blocked the giant azure hands.

In the next instant, the blade-light trembled lightly and split the giant hands apart.

For some reason, the moment the Buddhist flame appeared, Elder Cha suddenly felt a chill of imminent danger.

After shattering the giant hands, the golden Buddha swept its blade in a flawless arc and slashed toward Elder Cha from afar.

A golden blade radiance tore through the air.

Elder Cha raised both hands and slammed them together.

Before him, another pair of giant azure hands appeared, abruptly夹ing the golden blade-light between them.

He gave a low shout and violently channeled his power.

With a grinding crash, the azure hands crushed the golden blade-light into fragments.

The crystal Buddhist flame was dazzling beyond words. It spread across the azure hands in an instant and burned the two giant hands away.

The golden Buddha struck again.

Golden blade-light appeared soundlessly from the void, quiet and without the slightest trace of killing intent.

The arc it drew was elegant and exquisite, descending before Elder Cha with perfect, almost transcendent refinement.

Elder Cha thrust out a palm.

With a dull thump, the halo burst apart.

Blade-light and giant hands vanished once more.

Before Elder Cha could think further, another streak of blade-light came slicing in.

The golden Buddha's blade technique appeared simple, yet it concealed myriad transformations and endless follow-up moves, impossible to predict.

Each strike forced Elder Cha to meet it with his full strength, leaving him no room to evade.

Blade followed blade, unbroken and relentless.

Elder Cha's expression grew darker by the moment.

What shook him most was this: wherever that blade-light and its Buddhist flame shone, all became crystal-clear and ethereal, leaving nowhere for secrets to hide.

Under that Buddhist flame, every possibility of changing and redirecting the mana in his Azure Gang Grand Seizing Hand was shattered.

Once the flame burned, even a giant hand condensed with unimaginable force and power was reduced to a mass of ragged, scattered mana... and gradually dispersed.

From afar, it looked as though the sword-light in the golden Buddha's hand grew ever brighter, the area it covered ever larger.

Those golden blade-lights, each a hundred zhang long, danced through the sky and painted a scene of breathtaking beauty.

And Elder Cha could only struggle desperately within that scene, as though fallen into a prison from which he could not break free.

The chanting thundered on, battering his spirit ceaselessly, while an utterly strange, invisible force crashed against his protective light, trying to refine his mana into Buddhist power.

"This Buddha image is far too strange. If this goes on, I'm in trouble!"

As a great master of the demonic path who had roamed the outer seas for centuries, Elder Cha had seen every kind of battle there was.

He had endured several hundred blade attacks in succession, and now felt his mana slipping away. Retreat began to form in his mind.

"So be it!"

He let out a long sigh and shouted, "This old man still has pressing matters today. I'll spare you for now!"

As he spoke, azure light blazed around him. A giant azure hand suddenly shoved outward, splitting the curtain of golden blade-light and forcing a path open as he broke free.

On the golden Buddha's shoulder, Pang Yue smiled faintly. "Senior, please stay a while longer. This junior still wishes to learn a few more moves!"

With that, Buddha-light erupted from the golden Buddha. Lotus blooms rose one after another beneath its feet as it gave chase, seeming slow yet moving at astonishing speed.

Elder Cha cursed under his breath and turned, shouting, "Does that golden Buddha of yours not consume spirit stones? Why are you so willing to waste them!"

His tone was thick with frustration.

A dignified Golden Core grand cultivator like himself had actually been driven to flight by a Foundation Establishment cultivator's clone and a puppet Buddha image.

And the key reason was astonishingly that his own mana could not match that puppet.

One had to remember: because of the cultivation methods practiced by the cultivators of Soul-Eating Island, all their wealth and resources were spent on a single word—eating.

Spirit stones, magical treasures, and other such worldly possessions were either unaffordable because they lacked the stones to buy them, or had long ago been sold for food.

Every cultivator on Soul-Eating Island was a pauper.

But if anyone tried to compare mana reserves with a cultivator from Soul-Eating Island, that person was courting death.

In the entire East Sea cultivation world, even the cultivators of the Sea-Covering Sect, famed for their vast mana, had to bow in defeat before Soul-Eating Island.

Even so, Elder Cha still had to admit that he truly could not outlast that golden Buddha puppet.

"When did disciples of the Demon Talisman Sect become so wealthy?"

Naturally, Elder Cha assumed that all the expenditures of the golden Buddha puppet's combat techniques came from spirit stones...

The two of them, one in pursuit and one fleeing, traversed a thousand li in the blink of an eye.

Elder Cha did not dare return to Soul-Eating Island’s main isle. Fierce battle still raged there, the Golden Core cultivators of both sides gathered together and fighting so violently that heaven and earth seemed ready to collapse.

The golden Buddha trailed Elder Cha from afar, occasionally sending out an arcane blade-light, forcing Elder Cha to stop and resist with all his might.

Once the distance between them closed again, Elder Cha would once more erupt with secret techniques, surging with mana to increase his escape speed and widen the gap.

Back and forth, the toll on his mana only grew heavier.

One day later, the two of them came out above the vast open sea.

Within a radius of ten thousand li, there was nothing but endless water.

Elder Cha was already on the verge of exhaustion and cried out in rage and despair.

"You little devil, my Soul-Eating Island merely killed one of your spirit beasts. Do you really have to drive me to utter destruction?"

Pang Yue urged the golden Buddha again, slashing out with another blade as he called coldly, "Please, senior, go on your way."

"You...!"

Elder Cha glared with bulging eyes and exhausted his last reserve of power to block the blade-light.

At this point, he could no longer even drag the other side down with him.

His opponent was only a clone of a Demon Talisman; as long as the true body did not die, the talisman would not be destroyed.

Another blade-light flashed in like lightning, and Elder Cha could only sigh inwardly.

In the next moment, this mountain-of-flesh grand Golden Core cultivator was split in two by a streak of blade-light that broke through his protective spiritual radiance.

Pang Yue lifted a hand and pointed.

Two streaks of dark sword-light flew out.

One wrapped around Elder Cha's storage pouch and brought it back.

The other, as deft as a butcher dismembering an ox, stripped all the flesh from Elder Cha's body in an instant.

Above the sea, a vast, snow-white skeleton of crystal brilliance gleamed under the daylight.

A ball of Great Sun Glazed Treasure Flame rose from the golden Buddha's hand and instantly broke through the restrictions on Elder Cha's storage pouch.

Pang Yue eagerly swept his spiritual sense inside, and his face at once showed contempt.

"So he's just a pauper."