Chapter 98: Sibling Ambiguity

Chapter Ninety-Eight: Siblingly Allure

This art could only be described as cruelly malevolent. Yang Wei had secretly learned it and quietly built his own faction around it. The thousand-plus bodyguards now following him were all people he had cultivated in secret, each trained in the servant discipline of the Heart Scripture of the Ten Thousand Demons.

In the end, each of them would one day meet their grave, and all their cultivation would return to Yang Wei. When so many men spend years on demonic arts only to end in such a pitiful way, it is hard to call their end anything but tragic.

The other condition of the Ten Thousand Demons Scripture was that the practitioner must have no prior martial training at all. So the guards Prince Yang Wei had chosen were mostly ordinary commoners orphans with no foundation in cultivation.

But moments ago, when one of those guards was enveloped in gold light, a black vapor had burst from his body and was slowly refined by calm, golden vital energy. Yang Wei was astonished.

He had not heard Ma Yanwang muttering to himself, yet suddenly his face turned ashen. Inwardly he called out, What is this method? It can suppress the Ten Thousand Demons Scripture—how terrifying is that?

“Back off,” Yang Wei said, unwilling to remain. The black qi in that guard’s body had been drawn out and clarified, and yet the man remained unharmed, with a peaceful face, sitting in meditation with the others as if nothing had happened.

Yang Wei withdrew with his followers. Outside South City, his expression was fierce and twisted with complex thoughts. Ma Yanwang, meanwhile, wondered what that qi inside the guard had really been. Both men hid intentions of their own, each quietly counting possibilities.

Wu Hong was still in a half-daze. His qi had become increasingly dense and fine; the thousand-armed Buddha made of qi had become so substantial that it was hard to tell it was not physical. Above them, the formless Mahavairocana Buddha radiance shone ever brighter, bathing every cultivator in light.

Suddenly Wu Hong’s awareness returned. He tore open his eyes, and two beams like solid light shot toward the high heavens. In the same instant, the ten-meter golden Buddha above him opened its eyes and sent forth two golden rays. Their glances met in the sky, and everything around became sleek and radiant, as if a realm of Buddhahood had formed, centered on Wu Hong.

At once, the people around him released a flood of golden qi from their bodies and all drew it inward toward Wu Hong. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of rays converged within him. His whole body blazed. The Buddha-form, as if made of actual matter, shone gold as well and slowly merged into one. His brilliance became searingly bright, and the distant townspeople bowed down all the more, now worshiping him like a living god.

Even a current of invisible faith, too subtle for Wu Hong to sense, kept flowing toward him.

Then Wu Hong roared, “Ah—!” His voice split the heavens. It became a golden storm spreading outward. Strangely, that storm harmed none of the people practicing with him or the citizens kneeling to worship him, for their bodies were also wrapped in gold energy from the same source.

But the surrounding grasses, trees, walls, and earth, and even some distant onlookers from the martial circles, were not so fortunate. Wind tore through in fury, sand and stones flying, while low-level cultivators like Duanmu Hengsheng were battered bloody in the head. Even high-level practitioners staggered, barely stable.

As he calmed, Wu Hong realized the truth: the golden Buddha had always been a projection of his own qi. Now it had completely fused with him. He felt his Mahavairocana Buddha qi like a boundless sea, filling his entire being.

Wu Hong rejoiced. He knew he had ascended to the stage of Post-Heaven Great Perfect Completion.

He looked around and saw over a thousand people seated in meditation. He was amazed, and noticed that Li Ruolan and Wu Songran were practicing not far from him.

He glanced above his head and suddenly found that the Mahavairocana scripture no longer drifted back into his mind after practice as it always did.

Its energy was instead casting hundreds of radiant streams, each entering every cultivator present, and even the distant lay worshipers.

He studied carefully. The strength of the gold energy entering each person varied. The most harmonious and natural, and the strongest, were those closest to him: Wu Songran and Li Ruolan.

Wu Hong’s jaw nearly dropped. Li Ruolan, who had never practiced any art at all, had now reached the marrow-refining stage directly. Wu Songran had entered the middle of marrow refinement and seemed moments away from breaking into Great Perfect Completion.

After the hundred rays entered everyone’s body, all at once all eyes opened, and beams shot upward from their pupils toward the great Buddha-manifestation hovering in the air. Then the Mahavairocana Tathagata scripture—whose previous pages were already beyond counting—began turning again. Page after page rustled until thousands had passed before it stopped. Wu Hong stood there, speechless.

Then a striped black-and-white beam struck the scripture. Its energy shifted at once: the once immaculate golden radiance became veiled, almost chaotic, darkening into a muted gold. Wu Hong suddenly realized it was Kun Kun, who had been sleeping in his sleeve, somehow now standing at his feet. As practice ended, Kun Kun had sent two unusual rays of sight into the scripture.

Wu Hong felt another kind of energy stirring inside him as well, but he could not make sense of it.

“Brother, you’re awake. Are you all right?” Wu Songran suddenly said, waking up. She nestled her arm across his, her touch intimate and affectionate. Wu Hong felt soft, repeating friction against him.

Immediately, heat welled in his lower abdomen, and heat surged upward. His nose prickled, then burned, and he felt liquid start to flow.

“Brother, why is your nose bleeding? Did practicing too intensely drive you into a bad state?” she cried, alarmed, and without hesitation moved to wipe his nose with her sleeve.

Wu Hong pulled away and waved her off. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Li Ruolan woke just then. She had seen it happen, and she smiled knowingly, clearly aware of why Wu Hong was bleeding.

Yet she was puzzled. Wu was not a lustful man—how could such a light touch create such a reaction?

Li Ruolan smiled: “Songran, your brother still has a problem. I think he was overexerted in training.”

“Yeah,” Wu Hong said quickly, “Ruolan is right, Songran. Don’t come any closer. I need to settle my breath.”

It was not entirely his fault. Although the Mahavairocana method was a Buddhist art, it also emphasized harmonious yin-yang union and dual cultivation. The phrase “Joyful Stillness” in the text pointed to practice with a woman; Wu Hong simply had not understood that before.

Its qi was overwhelmingly yang. Every new stage brought him impossible changes. Now he had reached Post-Heaven Great Perfect Completion, the advanced phase of marrow refinement. Outwardly he seemed unchanged, but his entire presence had turned over like a world remade.

For many females, he possessed an immeasurable pull. Wu Songran gazed over him from head to toe and found every inch exquisite, almost flawless.

Her heart thrilled at her brother’s advancement. Yet at once, like a startled doe, she felt heat in her face and a bleed at her nose.

“Ah! Why am I bleeding too?” she blurted, then quickly covered her nose with a handkerchief in embarrassed alarm.

Who says only men have their blood heat when they see naked women? A beautiful woman who beholds her beloved man can bleed too. Wu Songran was the clearest proof.

Wu Hong was startled. He did not understand why she had bled when she seemed perfectly well. In one movement he stepped to her side, hand on her back, gently sending qi into her to inspect it.

He found no irregularity except one thing: the nature of her qi had changed.

“Songran, your body doesn’t seem to—”
He had barely spoken two words when his arms felt suddenly heavy with a tender form. Not some stranger—Songran herself, now blushing like a peach blossom, eyes half drunk, lips tiny and tempting.

Wu Hong froze. His head sank lower, their faces drew near, and he was moments from kissing her when he jerked back with sudden clarity.
“Songran, I’m sorry—I—”
He had only reached the word I before she placed her jade-like hands over his lips.

“Brother Hong, you need not apologize,” she said with a laugh. “You are not my blood brother, after all. But with so many people here, this is embarrassingly exposing.”