Chapter 157 : Disturbance at the Pagoda
As soon as Tan Xin appeared, he became the primary target of the demonic cultivators. Fortunately, his cultivation was already impressive, and now after listening to the old monk's sermon, he was in an excellent state. When facing these demonic cultivators who had just battled with Yun Qingyue, he handled himself quite capably.
The lead demonic cultivator watched his subordinates engage in another round of fighting, his face extremely grim.
A subordinate at his side cautiously asked, "Sir, what should we do now?" Was it worth continuing this prolonged battle?
The demonic cultivator glanced sideways at his subordinate, then darkly looked at Tan Xin, before finally moving his gaze to Yun Qingyue: "Leave some people to keep them occupied. The rest will come with me."
As his words fell, his subordinates immediately divided into two groups. When confronting Yun Qingyue and Tan Xin, they no longer focused solely on aggressive attacks as before. They began employing tactics to delay, and with various techniques deployed simultaneously, they genuinely managed to impede Yun Qingyue and Tan Xin's movements.
The little white cat observed carefully and saw that those demonic cultivators were indeed heading toward the pagoda behind the main hall, though their intentions remained unclear. In contrast, Tan Xin, witnessing the same scene, had his suspicions—a pagoda, also called a stupa, was generally where temples enshrined sarira, sutras, and ritual implements. In other words, the most precious and valuable items in this temple would be housed in the pagoda!
Tan Xin didn't know what treasures Foguang Temple contained, but these demonic cultivators rushing toward the pagoda clearly had a specific objective. Naturally, neither he nor Yun Qingyue would allow those demonic cultivators to easily achieve their goals.
Seeing that most of the demonic cultivators were heading for the pagoda, Yun Qingyue suddenly called out: "Jianbing."
Before the demonic cultivators could react, a small white cat descended from above. The cat immediately transformed into a white tiger that roared powerfully—ten times more majestic than the ice tiger Yun Qingyue had previously formed with her sword intent. As the white tiger roared, the demonic cultivators saw golden light flash around them, and when they looked again, they found themselves trapped in cages—the white tiger hadn't taken their lives but had captured everyone in one swoop.
The white tiger belonged to the metal element, so creating several cages was certainly no challenge. The trapped demonic cultivators didn't panic excessively. They were not ordinary people after all, and the cages hastily formed by the white tiger shouldn't be unbreakable for them. They immediately raised their magical treasures and began attacking.
Yun Qingyue didn't pay much attention to this scene, considering it merely a delaying tactic. She raised her sword, intending to deliver an additional strike to the caged demonic cultivators. However, before she could swing her sword, the white tiger stopped her.
Looking again at the cages, she saw that the various attacks from the demonic cultivators were proving almost completely ineffective.
Yun Qingyue was extremely surprised. She lowered her sword and turned to ask the white tiger: "What's going on?"
The white tiger looked somewhat smug, glanced at Tan Xin, and finally explained somewhat vaguely: "It's those companion ores you dug up last time, Senior Sister. I've been studying them when I had nothing to do recently, and I reinforced them a bit."
Hearing this, Yun Qingyue immediately understood—the white tiger was referring to the companion ores of the Spirit Crystal. Back then, mining in the Stone Forest had been tremendously difficult for her, and now these companion ores had been reinforced by the white tiger. One could imagine their level of hardness—very different from randomly formed metal using the gold element. At the very least, temporarily confining these demonic cultivators posed no problem at all. With the white tiger personally standing guard, they could even be kept imprisoned this way indefinitely.
The intentions of these demonic cultivators remained unclear, and Yun Qingyue certainly harbored doubts. Therefore, since they could be captured alive, she wasn't in a hurry to kill them. Tan Xin had even less interest in dealing with them; as soon as the white tiger had confined the demonic cultivators, he had already started pursuing those heading toward the pagoda.
Seeing this, Yun Qingyue didn't linger either, quickly following toward the pagoda, with the white tiger running on all fours, moving even faster than she did.
The two people and one tiger arrived quickly, but the demonic cultivators who had gone ahead were clearly not slow either. By the time they reached the pagoda, they witnessed the lead demonic cultivator splashing something onto the pagoda's main gate. Immediately afterward, demonic energy surged skyward, suppressing the pagoda's Buddha-light and beginning to rapidly corrode it. Before Yun Qingyue or Tan Xin could even shout "Stop," the Buddha-light on the pagoda had completely vanished.
The young monk's face became extremely dark, his handsome and refined features rarely showing such anger. But the demonic cultivators who had broken through the pagoda had no intention of engaging further. They turned and led their people into the pagoda, though the leader's pupils contracted momentarily upon seeing the white tiger.
Tan Xin, as a disciple of the Buddha Sect, naturally couldn't actively attack the pagoda. Seeing the situation, he hurriedly pursued them.
Yun Qingyue and the white tiger exchanged a glance and likewise gave chase.
However, before the two people and one tiger could get close, let alone pursue into the pagoda, the demonic cultivators who had entered first must have triggered something, causing sudden changes to the pagoda before their eyes...
No one knew how many years this Foguang Temple had stood here. Though some traces of age were inevitable, the monks' maintenance had kept it clean and fresh. But at this moment, the once-pristine pagoda suddenly emitted an aura of decay—exterior walls peeling, timber rotting, the copper bells at the eaves no longer ringing clearly, and even tiles on the eaves falling off in numerous places.
As if in just an instant, the pagoda before them had experienced a millennium, abruptly decaying. And the changes weren't limited to the pagoda alone; they expanded outward with the pagoda as the center.
The railings and stone steps outside the pagoda began to show damage, and weeds finally broke through the pressed bricks and stones, growing lushly, only to yellow and wither in a short time. Time mercilessly rolled over the entire temple. In just the blink of an eye, the scenery before them had become completely unrecognizable, and the continuous Buddhist chanting that had lingered in their ears also abruptly ceased at this moment.
Witnessing this transformation firsthand, Jiang Mo was startled, especially when that formless energy spread to her feet. She instinctively retreated several steps. In the end, unable to avoid it completely, she worried that she might age along with the temple.
The system, sensing her thoughts, coolly remarked: "Host is overthinking it. A thousand years is a long time for others, but for you... You were underage to begin with, and after a thousand years, wouldn't you still be underage? What's there to worry about?"
The tiger cub in the body of a great tiger: "..."
The underage white tiger found herself speechless. She stepped on the broken ground with her paws, somewhat embarrassedly looking toward her Senior Sister. Her Senior Sister had naturally not changed either. In fact, the only things affected by the decay were the temple buildings themselves.
She merely frowned as she looked at the pagoda before her, with some concern in her glazed pupils, no longer daring to pursue inside as directly as before.
Tan Xin had looked toward the main hall the moment the Buddhist chanting stopped. The young monk's face showed no surprise, but in his clear black and white eyes, a trace of sadness emerged—he possessed Wisdom Eyes and had perhaps long detected something amiss in the temple. But all the monks in the temple had shown him no malice; the old monk had carefully imparted Buddhist teachings to him and held a semi-mentor relationship with him.
Jiang Mo watched as the young monk pressed his palms together and bowed once toward the main hall. When he rose again, he seemed to have composed himself. Then he turned back, facing the now unrecognizable pagoda without hesitation, and stepped forward to enter.
Seeing this, Yun Qingyue hesitated for a moment before also stepping forward to follow, with the white tiger once again closely behind.
The two people and one tiger entered the pagoda and saw that the interior, like the exterior, had been completely eroded by time. Upon entering, they were greeted by a room full of cobwebs and a thick layer of dust on the floor. Strangely, though a group of demonic cultivators had just entered, the accumulated dust on the floor remained completely intact, showing no traces whatsoever.
Of course, it wasn't difficult for cultivators to levitate, but walking with feet on the ground was a habit ingrained in human nature. No one would stop walking after learning to fly, especially after the previous confrontation, when those demonic cultivators' energy expenditure had been considerable.
With just one glance, both Yun Qingyue and Tan Xin sensed something amiss. The two immediately began examining the first floor of the pagoda.
Without much effort, they discovered several corpses near the main door and the staircase. Or perhaps "corpses" wasn't quite accurate—they were skeletons. Like the suddenly decayed pagoda, these skeletal remains seemed to have experienced a millennium of time, with dust covering their bodies and flesh long gone. If not for their familiar-looking ceremonial robes, one might not have connected them with the previous demonic cultivators.
Additionally, from the postures of these skeletons, it was evident they had died instantly without any warning. They had originally been hiding near the door and staircase to set an ambush, and their positions hadn't changed until the moment of death.
The white tiger was genuinely startled and timidly hid behind her Senior Sister—since coming to this cultivation world, she had seen corpses before, but this was her first encounter with such an eerie situation. If nothing else, Nascent Soul cultivators had a lifespan of a thousand years. Even if this pagoda had truly experienced a millennium in an instant, it shouldn't have been enough to kill these demonic cultivators outright! So how exactly had they died?
No one could provide Jiang Mo with an answer. Neither Yun Qingyue nor Tan Xin seemed surprised. Tan Xin merely pressed his palms together and recited a Buddhist invocation, offering these people a final acknowledgment before saying: "Let's go upstairs and have a look."
Yun Qingyue didn't refuse. She casually stroked the white tiger's head before continuing upward.
The pagoda's staircase had decayed, but this was inconsequential for cultivators. The two people and one tiger quickly flew to the second floor, where they unsurprisingly found two more skeletons at the staircase entrance. They searched as before, found nothing, and then proceeded to the third floor, the fourth floor... The pagoda at Foguang Temple wasn't the tallest, but it still had nine levels. Only upon reaching the ninth floor did they find the lead demonic cultivator.
This demonic cultivator clearly had the highest cultivation among the group. Even after experiencing the pagoda's transformation, silently perishing here, his flesh hadn't been eroded by time. When Yun Qingyue and the others found him, he still appeared as he had in life, his gaze eagerly fixed forward.
What was he looking at?
The two people and one tiger simultaneously followed his line of sight and saw a Buddha statue enshrined at the top of the pagoda. Having endured the ravages of time, the statue had decayed like the pagoda, with only a vague trace of its benevolent features remaining visible. However, the statue wasn't the focus—the true focus was the crystalline glass lamp held in its outstretched palm, still radiating Buddha-light despite the passage of time.
"What is that? Is that what those demonic cultivators came for?" Having witnessed the pagoda's eeriness, the white tiger didn't dare approach, but curiosity prompted her to ask.
Yun Qingyue wasn't a disciple of the Buddhist path and didn't know the significance of the glass lamp. But Tan Xin seemed to know something, or perhaps had guessed something. He stepped forward, pressed his palms together in respect, mumbled something indistinct, and finally took two more steps forward, intending to retrieve the glass lamp.
But just at that moment, a strange wind blew past, and the glass lamp suddenly vanished.