Unsheathed

To the north of the Locust Flower Nation was the Deity Visage Nation, the latter of which was a Buddhist haven, filled with countless monasteries.

While at the border pass, Chen Ping'an had collected another stamp on his passport, and he would flip it open to take a look whenever he had the chance. His current passport was a new one that had been arranged for him by Wei Bo. His previous passport was already completely covered in stamps, and it had been left in the bamboo building.

He was in his usual get-up, holding a hiking pole in his hand, wearing a conical bamboo hat, while carrying a bamboo bookcase on his back. He traveled on his own, occasionally taking an aerial route via flying sword, but always choosing to walk through mortal cities. At the moment, he still had a long way to go until he reached the Spring Dew Garden that was home to Song Lanqiao.

On the way from the Silver Screen Nation to the border of the Deity Visage Nation, Chen Ping'an had encountered many southbound spirits, but aside from that one occasion where he had sprung into battle in the Ritual Baton Prefecture, he had chosen to passively observe from afar on all other occasions, finally beginning to display some of the lofty detachment befitting a cultivator.

Ever since leaving the Malicious Ghost Valley, he had begun focusing wholeheartedly on practicing his six-step walking meditation, planning to reach the milestone of two million repetitions before thinking about anything else.

If he hadn't encountered that group of four demon slayers earlier, Chen Ping'an's original plan would've been to slay all of the ghosts on his own, then stay for an additional few days at the Golden Bell Monastery, during which time he would ask about the golden Sanskrit text on the on the azure pages of the scripture.

Of course, he would break the text down into parts and ask the monk about them on multiple, separate occasions. The text didn't contain many characters, only 260 in total, and there were some repeated characters used, so it shouldn't take long to decipher the entire script.

The allure of wealth was always prone to bringing out the worst in people, as had been the case for the martial artist master and disciple duo of the Golden Bell Monastery, so precautions had to be taken.

After passing through two of the Deity Visage Nation's southern cities, Chen Ping'an noticed that there were many wandering monks in the area. They were all very thin and emaciated, trudging along with bowls in their hands, surviving off the generosity of others.

Upon encountering one such traveling monk, Chen Ping'an would raise a hand vertically in front of his own chest to extend a Buddhist salute.

Not only was the Deity Visage Nation rife with monks and monasteries, martial artists were also extremely common here. On this day, Chen Ping'an encountered a party of armed escorts traveling toward the north in a yellow desert. Their camel-drawn wagons were packed with the goods that they were escorting, and hanging from the camels were tinkling camel bells.

All of the male armed escorts were very physically imposing, and the female ones had dark complexions and a heroic aura about them, displaying a different sense of beauty than what was regarded to be conventional and traditional.