Chapter 358: War, Buddha, Palm (6)
At that moment, a great sound echoed from the sky’s void.
Beyond these countless and boundless worlds numbering in the hundreds of thousands and millions, there existed a world known as the Saha World.
In that world resided a Buddha called Śākyamuni.
……
The Tathāgata cleared his throat once,
And flicked his fingers once more.
Then all the worlds in the ten directions shook in six ways.
『The Lotus Sutra, Chapter 21 – The Power of the Tathāgata』
Mang-hon understood.
He was the one who knew more of the world’s secrets than anyone else. He had existed in this world for thousands of years already.
Though the ancient Mang-hon and the one here now had different bodies, they were undoubtedly the same person.
It was because their soul was the same, and their memories were the same.
The lama monks of Potala Palace venerate reincarnated beings as Rinpoche, considering them sacred.
But it was Mang-hon, whom they despised and antagonized, who was truly a reincarnated one.
A reincarnated being who, unlike the Dalai Lama, has never lost his memories—not even once—one without the Mark of Oblivion.
And it wasn’t just Mang-hon. The other Cardinals of the Evil Cult were the same.
‘This is the worst.’
Even for someone like Mang-hon, this time, he truly felt threatened.
Buddha.
Among the countless Buddhas, Śākyamuni held the highest rank.
He was not someone who should be able to appear in a place like this.
Even if offerings were made and his descent was begged for, Śākyamuni the World Honored One could not simply come down.
Even a Buddha could not ignore the law of cause and effect and interfere in the mortal realm at will.
However, those lama monks offered up all the karma and souls they had accumulated over a thousand years as reincarnated beings.
With that, they secured the causality required for Śākyamuni Tathāgata to intervene on Earth.
It was excessive, if it was only to eliminate a single Cardinal of the Evil Cult. As frustrating as it was, even Mang-hon had to admit that.
But precisely because of that, it caught him completely off guard.
‘I won’t go down without a fight.’
Mang-hon had no intention of being extinguished here.
Never. Absolutely not.
That’s why he had to try everything he could.
Buddhas, especially the seven who held the highest seats, each possessed their own unique domain.
That domain was what was known as the Pure Land.
Śākyamuni Buddha’s Pure Land was called the Pure Land of Martial Victory.
That Pure Land of Martial Victory was encroaching upon this area.
Multicolored clouds and water, lotuses—and above all, the inability to speak—made it clear.
In the Pure Land of Martial Victory, one could not fight with words, and thus, no voice could be raised.
One could not stir up dust or rampage; thus, the sinful could not take a step.
Mang-hon had to act before Śākyamuni Tathāgata fully descended.
Blaming himself for having let his guard down, he bit into his own thumb.
Snap—
Blood flowed down in a stream.
He was, after all, the High Priest of the Evil God.
He bore the karma of thousands of years.
Securing just enough territory to speak aloud was an easy task.
“Yellow Insect! Scream!” Mang-hon shouted.
And the Yellow Temple Insect he had launched from his bow alongside the first shot went into a frenzy.
‘Kkyaaaargh!’
‘Gguhk!’
Two voiceless screams rang out.
For Mang-hon, it was a stroke of tremendous luck.
He had scattered about five Yellow Temple Insects.
They were so rare that even Mang-hon couldn’t manage to use more than that.
Fortunately, it seemed two of them had burrowed into the bodies of the surviving lama monks.
‘Got them!’
The new insect, crafted by refining the old Guiyi Gu formula, drove even high-level lama monks insane.
Suddenly, those monks began forming mahamudras and slammed their fists into the heads of the surrounding chanting monks.
Puh-seok!
Caught off guard by the unexpected assault, two lama monks had their skulls burst open.
Panchen Lama reacted the fastest.
He stepped in himself and cut down the throats of the monks thrashing from the insects’ frenzy.
It was an execution without a shred of mercy or hesitation.
But in that brief moment, the offering ritual wavered just slightly.
Mang-hon was now able to move.
With his remaining eight fingers, he formed an intricate sequence of hand seals.
“You think you’re the only ones who can perform offerings?!”
Then, with his blood-soaked thumb, he drew a red line across his own throat.
By nature, Mang-hon held the role of a priest.
He was not like Heuk-am, the solitary shadow that rampaged like a blade, nor like Gwi-ryeong, who changed faces and wove conspiracies from the dark.
He was the one who commanded others and offered sacrifices.
And here, too, there were “offerings.”
‘Ugh.’
‘Aaah…’
The strongest squad leader in the Mad Wind Army, and the captains under his command.
The leaders who had reached high levels of cultivation and shed the most blood.
Roughly thirty of them clutched their throats.
Chuk—
Their heads were severed all at once and tumbled to the ground.
Mang-hon had already enslaved the squad leader and the bandits of the Mad Wind Army during his time with them.
Blood spurted from the severed necks, staining the ground.
The blood flowed as if alive, rushing toward Mang-hon’s feet.
The insects clinging to Mang-hon’s body crawled down and absorbed the blood.
Inshingongyang —human sacrifice—could take humans as offerings.
Mang-hon took the offerings and used them to empower himself.
The Dalai Lama was enraged by Mang-hon’s brutal act.
‘This wicked—!’
“Shut your mouths, you damn monks!”
Mang-hon raised his hand into the air.
His insect-covered hand, now enormous, suddenly bulged, and an Aura Sphere forged of dark Aura Qi shot forth.
That dark mass of Aura Qi flew straight at the diamond where the lama monks’ karma had been stored.
A powerful explosion shook the earth.
But Mang-hon’s face was still twisted with frustration.
The diamond was unharmed.
The ritual was still underway.
Beyond the five-colored clouds, a fingertip emerged.
That massive hand, seemingly carved from a mountain, rose into view.
It was the very hand that Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Heaven’s Equal, had seen at the end of the world when he ran from Śākyamuni Tathāgata.
In the end, Mang-hon grit his teeth and considered an even greater loss.
A ritual offering where he used his own body as the sacrifice.
Though the damage would be difficult to recover from, it didn’t matter. There were always loopholes, after all.
The sooner the resolve, the better.
Pung–!
Mang-hon’s entire left arm was blown off.
But without a hint of pain, he raised his right hand high.
Once again, Aura Sphere poured forth.
Only this time, there were dozens of them.
Puh-puh-puh-pung!
The Dalai Lama cried out in a sharp, metallic voice, “We must stop it!”
But they couldn’t.
And the proof came in the form of sound.
The diamond cracked, and the circuits engraved over a hundred days and nights were broken.
Lama monks seated in meditation above the altar, chanting sutras, all coughed blood and collapsed at once.
With the offering ritual broken, Śākyamuni the Honored One’s descent was halted.
A victorious smile crept across Mang-hon’s lips.
“Ha… ha…!”
But once again, joy and despair were split.
The five-colored clouds dispersed, and the lotuses blooming on the ground withered in an instant—but Śākyamuni’s hand did not vanish.
Instead, that colossal hand began rising higher into the open sky.
The Dalai Lama, renewed with hope, cried out, “Lamas, do not stop the chant! The World Honored One shall strike with that palm!”
Śākyamuni’s hand pierced through the five-colored clouds.
A hand that filled the entire open ceiling.
That enormous hand began to descend.
It wasn’t moving fast, but it only looked that way.
Mang-hon realized it was a type of attack that could not be evaded.
It was a palm imbued with all the karmic causality that Śākyamuni Tathāgata had already taken on.
Mang-hon recognized that technique, too—Śākyamuni Tathāgata’s very move.
A descending palm from the heavens like Mount Tai.
Its name: Divine Palm of the Tathāgata.
Mang-hon curled into himself desperately.
The insects clustered around him in a circle, as if to protect him.
Soon, the hand of the Tathāgata descended upon Mang-hon.
A beat later, a deafening roar exploded outward.
Kwahhhhhhng!
The earth shook violently, and the solid stone floor caved in.
The surviving bandits were all thrown aside, and none of the lama monks remained unscathed.
Because of the roar, a sharp ringing beeeeep resounded in everyone’s ears.
The Dalai Lama, who had also been knocked down, quickly rose to his feet.
Most of the souls and karma had already been offered up as sacrifice.
The lama monks, himself included, were now no different from the Divine Monk.
But that didn’t matter.
The majesty of the Divine Palm of the Tathāgata shook their very hearts.
With tears in his eyes, the Dalai Lama looked upon the Buddha’s right hand that covered the ground.
“It is done! It’s done!”
Could anyone have survived beneath that?
Though Śākyamuni Tathāgata’s descent only summoned his right hand into this world, the result was something that could open one’s eyes.
The right hand covering the earth dissolved into petals, as if its purpose had been fulfilled.
Inside the grand hall with its open ceiling, lotus petals danced in a dreamlike display.
Only a massive handprint remained on the stone floor.
There was no trace left of Mang-hon.
The other lama monks also shed tears while chanting, “Namo Śākyamuni Buddha.”
“W-wait a moment…”
The Dalai Lama, overwhelmed with joy, suddenly froze.
At the center of the giant handprint carved into the earth, at the palm center, something was embedded.
It had been buried in the ground, which is why no one noticed at first.
It looked like a black metal plate, but it was actually an insect.
Its specially cultivated exoskeleton had been compressed under extreme pressure, hardening to resemble metal.
Like a bird cracking through its shell, it slowly began to split open.
What emerged was a blood-soaked hand.
That hand pressed against the ground and pulled its body up from below.
A figure drenched in blood.
Black blood gushed from all seven orifices, one shoulder was completely collapsed, and several ribs were protruding from his abdomen.
“Hh, hh, hhhh…”
And yet, Mang-hon laughed.
Even as broken teeth and blood poured from his mouth.
“The Buddha’s hand… that hand… is pretty… spicy.”
A grotesque monster, its form gleaming with madness.
The Dalai Lama and the other lama monks realized their grand plan had already failed.
The offering ritual had collapsed, and they had failed to eliminate the Cardinal of the Evil Cult.
The palm strike delivered by the Tathāgata had indeed been tremendous.
It had caused another earthquake here in Lhasa.
And even before this, the strange quakes had already caused the lake of Potala Palace to rise several times.
Even the thick ice, which hadn’t budged when a gang of bandits passed over it, cracked apart with sharp splits.
Still, the water was impossibly cold—far too cold for any human to swim in.
Breaking through the icy surface and emerging from that water should have been impossible.
Amidst the silence—
Something shot up from the center of the ice.
Jjeo-eong!
What broke through the ice from below was a single sword.
Or rather, it was more fitting to call it a shard of metal than a blade.
It was White Fang, the new sword Yi-gang had obtained.
It hovered briefly in midair, then plunged back into the ice.
Then it shattered the ice, dove back in, and emerged again, repeating the motion.
It was carving a circle as it smashed through the ice.
Soon, someone burst out from the deep blue water.
“Puh-hah!”
It was Yi-gang.
As expected, Yi-gang’s entire body was soaked.
When he swept his jet-black hair back, it instantly frosted over white.
It was cold enough to freeze him to death, but his muscles and meridians had not frozen.
Proof of that was the warm steam billowing from his body.
Such a level of metabolic activity was unprecedented—without training in the Marrow Cleansing Tendon Changing Sutra, he wouldn’t have escaped so easily.
「Feels like I’m freezing to death.」
Agreeing with Bodhidharma’s grumbling voice tied to his arm, Yi-gang tucked the wooden puppet made by Dam Hyun, the one who had guided his path, into his coat.
「Don’t hesitate. Go.」
Yi-gang started to run.
The moment he unleashed his light footwork to the fullest, his wet robes flared and froze midair.
He ran like the northern wind and snow had taken human form.
Yi-gang sprinted up the stairs.
Countless corpses were strewn along his path.
Horses lying dead with their tongues hanging out.
Bandits with broken necks, thrown to the ground.
A lama monk with a spear pierced through his belly, dead.
The presence of evil grew denser and denser.
By the time Yi-gang passed through the shattered temple gate, it had reached its peak.
「Act the moment you see it.」
Even without Bodhidharma’s advice, Yi-gang already knew.
He had sensed it while swimming through the water—
A massive and divine being descending upon Potala Palace, and another—evil and strangely familiar—facing off against it.
At last, Yi-gang had infiltrated the central chamber of Potala Palace.
There, he saw the Dalai Lama and the remaining lama monks still alive.
On the ground at the center, for some reason, was a massive handprint—and atop it stood a blood-soaked man with one arm raised.
The enemy was clear.
Lightning surged through Yi-gang’s meridians from head to toe.
In his head, a thunderous rumble echoed, and his eyes turned deep blue, like the sea.
Through the Heavenly Thunder Bell, he gained an extreme burst of acceleration.
Then he drew the Shooting Star Fang.
White and blue Aura Qi surged violently from the blade of the Shooting Star Fang.
The White Fang, which had returned to his back, let out a sharp cry as it shot into the sky.
The blood-soaked man, Mang-hon, sensed something.
He had been about to sweep away the lama monks but turned his head too late.
Puk—
White Fang buried itself into his body.
Slash!
Yi-gang swung the Shooting Star Fang and cleaved Mang-hon’s waist in two.