Chapter 183 Ghost Buddha (1)
Luo Xuanyi's descent seemed endless, disappearing into the abyss. With her deathly aura gathered, she naturally attracted the rising evil energy, engulfed by it and obliterated. If Luo Xuanyi were allowed to fall into the abyss, Yun Po would likely have difficulty catching her again.
Therefore, Yun Po followed without hesitation. White light flashed into the abyss, suddenly illuminating a line of darkness and illuminating the monks who were looking up.
"This aura... is it from some senior?"
Yun Po didn't recognize the male cultivator who spoke. His cultivation was only at the early stage of the Golden Core stage. Wearing the monastic uniform of the Lihuo Sect, he had only penetrated less than thirty feet into the earth when his face turned pale, and a thin layer of spiritual light tightly enveloped his surroundings.
In this vast darkness, this spiritual light can only be regarded as the tail light of a firefly.
He was surrounded by spiritual light and a bronze fragment was moving around him. It exuded an ancient aura, as if it was some ancient treasure handed down from generation to generation. Unfortunately, it was broken and could only barely resonate with the spiritual light that protected his body.
But he still gritted his teeth and persevered, falling into the endless darkness.
Yun Po ignored him and just followed Luo Xuanyi closely, glancing at the other cultivators with his peripheral vision.
Although they were chasing downwards quickly, the abyss was so bottomless and dark that Yun Po felt as if he, Luo Xuanyi, and other cultivators were just stagnant in mid-air, immersed in darkness.
The spiritual light on their bodies is very weak. Due to the erosion of blood rain and evil spirits, they have to continuously output spiritual power to protect themselves, and they cannot obtain spiritual power replenishment from heaven and earth through the circulation of the meridians.
Just diving into the abyss consumes a huge amount of energy.
Yun Po glanced briefly at the monks. The closer they were to the cave entrance, the lower their cultivation. The Lihuo Sect monk they had just encountered, whose protective aura was the strongest among all the monks, was only like the tail light of a firefly. This showed that this evil aura was probably not something that could be resisted simply by relying on cultivation and spiritual power.
The Internal Affairs Hall had underestimated the Ghost Buddha and hadn't dispatched a truly powerful force. But someone should have sent a message to the Internal Affairs Hall, right? I heard that Master Ding Jing was stationed in Longlan City. This thought flashed through Yun Po's mind, but he turned around and stared intently at Luo Xuanyi.
The closer Luo Xuanyi got to the bottom of the abyss, the more comfortable she felt. At the moment Yunpo was distracted, she felt even further away from him.
Yunpo immediately accelerated to tamper with the rules to catch up.
The speed of change stirred up the dead silence of the darkness. Yun Po passed by the monks who seemed to be standing still, and before they knew it, he had caught up with the monks at the front.
The white light that broke through the clouds was as dazzling as a small sun in this dark and deep underground.
"...Yunpo?" Finally, among the cultivators who had dived the deepest, a female cultivator who had reached the Great Perfection of the Golden Core was the first to recognize her. Yunpo paused slightly when she heard this gentle voice, as soft as water.
Yun Po knew without even looking that this female cultivator was Dong Dai, a music cultivator from Xinghai Palace and Dong E's sister. Unlike the swift and decisive Dong E, Dong Dai was gentle and especially compassionate towards the human world, and she occasionally kept in touch with Yun Po.
It was said to be contact, but in fact Dong Dai unilaterally regarded herself as an elder sister. She always wanted to take Yun Po to do some missions of traveling in the human world, and tried her best to persuade her that "mortals are also creatures of heaven" and "you should not kill people at will to achieve your goals", etc.
Yun Po didn't bother to understand the mortal world, but Dong Dai's gentleness and softness overwhelmed her. Therefore, even though their views on mortals didn't match, they kept in touch intermittently. Dong Dai was almost the person Yun Po talked to the most besides his master Fu Ya.
Unexpectedly, Dong Dai was sent here to explore the ghost Buddha. However, Yun Po thought about the Taoism that Dong Dai practiced, and roughly understood why Dong Dai, a music cultivator, was sent here.
Dong Dai's eyes lit up when she saw Yun Po's white misty shadow. She knew Yun Po too well, so she took out her lucky seal and painstakingly searched for Yun Po's location within the evil aura. Finding that her location had indeed been eliminated, Dong Dai immediately confirmed that Yun Po had vanished into nothingness.
Then the breath before us must be the breaking of the clouds.
Dong E dove into the abyss, hoping to investigate the ghostly Buddha Fu Wenta had mentioned. But the deeper she descended, the more terrified she became. The perpetually surging evil energy from this bottomless abyss watched for weaknesses in the cultivators, waiting for an opportunity to invade and destabilize their minds. It also exhausted the cultivators' fighting spirit and drained their spiritual energy.
The fellow cultivators who had originally explored this place with Dong Dai also exhausted their spiritual energy and were sent back to Longlan City by Dong Dai. However, if this continued, there would be no way to explore the true form of the Ghost Buddha, and it would instead consume the spiritual energy and even the state of mind of a large number of cultivators.
Although the fellow Taoists of the Black Wood Sect in Longlan City have begun to intensify their efforts in refining medicine in the furnace, preparing to refine a large number of elixirs to restore spiritual power, the number of alchemists is limited after all, and it is not certain that a furnace of medicine can be fully refined into elixirs.
The method Ding Jing Zhenren had previously proposed, using magical instruments and spirit beasts to explore the abyss, had also ended with the instruments being destroyed and the spirit beasts disappearing. If there were other methods, cultivators would not resort to such a foolish method.
While Dong Dai was constantly thinking about how to break the game, Yun Po appeared.
Perhaps there was a way to break through the formation.
Did he run into someone he knew? Luo Xuanyi, keeping a close eye on Yunpo's movements, was slightly surprised. But this was more effective. Luo Xuanyi fell with interest, watching Yunpo.
Yun Po hesitated for a moment.
At that moment, Luo Xuanyi suddenly devoured the surrounding evil energy and released her own death energy. However, she appeared shaky and battered, with a huge wound running from her shoulder to her waist, and a large amount of blood gushed out from the wound - Luo Xuanyi had smeared it with the blood rain she had secretly collected with the death energy.
The prominent aura attracted the attention of all the cultivators and also made other cultivators notice the white mist that was closely following Luo Xuanyi.
As if cornered by Yun Po, Luo Xuanyi coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. After confirming that the surrounding cultivators, including Dong Dai, had all noticed her, she closed her eyes and fell unconscious once again into the abyss. Luo Xuanyi erased the dead energy that had disguised her as a living being, and in her original form, she portrayed a dead body after a final burst of life. She was then dragged to the bottom of the abyss by the newly added evil energy and vanished in an instant.
The eyes of the other monks fell on the bright light of Yunpo.
"Yun Po?" Dong Dai's voice came. But Yun Po did not reveal herself. She only paused for a moment before continuing to pursue Luo Xuanyi to the bottom of the abyss.
Sister Yi improvised
PS I have guests at home for the Lantern Festival, so I will make up for it on Monday if I don’t update on Sunday ()