Nightfall

The younger sister is going to cross the river. Who is going to carry me? I want to carry you…Ning Que hummed the tune, carried Sangsang on his back and walked to the woods by the river. He was extremely happy, for he defeated Ksitigarbha and was able to wildly release the pressure that had been accumulating.

There were countless Buddhas in the field at the west of the river looking for and wanting to kill him and Sangsang. But he believed that these Buddhas couldn’t cross the river, for there were innumerable disgruntled souls and skulls in the river.

Those things in the river were not very smart but very capable. Without the commands of Ksitigarbha, they couldn’t distinguish their friends from their foes and attacked these Buddhas. The Light of Buddha could suppress the ghosts, but also was excellent nourishment for ghosts. Ning Que and Sangsang could purify them with Haotian’s divine flame, but those Buddha couldn’t deal with them.

Approaching the woods, the humming sound suddenly stopped. Ning Que kneeled on the mosses and was vomiting blood. He turned extremely pale due to the severe pain.

Ksitigarbha was very powerful and it took a lot of power to kill him. It wasn’t until this moment did Ning Que find out that he was severely injured and covered in wounds and blood, as if he had just survived a bloody battle. It was difficult to find a good bone on his body and the Psyche Power in his ocean of consciousness was in chaos.

He managed to turn around and he sat down against a hard redwood. Breathing heavily, he held Sangsang in his arms and said, “I’ve felt this kind of pain before. You are too fierce when you are fighting.”

Sangsang asked in his heart, “So what?”

“This is my body. You should take care of it.” Ning Que was helpless, for he remembered that she didn’t even blink while she was fighting against Ksitigarbha and just let the Pennant of Human Skulls hurt him like this.

Sangsang said, “Why should I take care of your body?”

Ning Que answered angrily, “I understand that when you want to win, you don’t value your life too much. I just want some nice words from you. We have been together for so long, how come you’ve never said sweet things to me?”

The “together” in his words of course meant something else.

Sangsang said, “I don’t care whether your body is ruined or not.”

Ning Que was furious. He turned her body over and spanked her heavily, “If you act like this again, I will be rude to your body.”

Sangsang seemed to be a little tired and didn’t react to him. It was not fun to fool around alone. Ning Que leaned against the tree and looked at the scenery on the other side of the river to pass time.

He should have been eager to meditate at this moment to heal the injury and restore his Psyche Power, but he did nothing. As time went by, the injury would be healed by themselves.

Haotian had bonded with him. There was no one better than him when it came to restoring Psyche Power at this point.

Ning Que stood up and was preparing to carry Sangsang on his back and leave. Suddenly he saw many Lights of Buddha appearing in the redwoods on the other side of the river and then heard the sound of chanting.

Every golden light was a Buddha, and they were all Buddhas who had met them before or were injured by them. Thus the number of Buddhas in the redwoods was far more than what he saw.

Thinking that these Buddhas couldn’t cross the river, Ning Que was not worried at all, and he looked to the other side with a smile and even waved to a Buddha at the front. He was an acquaintance. He and Sangsang used to buy opera tickets from him back in Chaoyang City, but they didn’t know what Buddha he was at this moment.

The dark sky gradually became bright. The Light of Buddha gradually flourished, and the sound of chanting gradually lowered. They didn’t know how many Buddhas came to the other side of Styx River and watched the other side silently.

Ning Que looked solemn at this moment. With his eyesight, he couldn’t figure out how many Buddhas there were. What shocked him even more was that the Buddhas actually began to walk toward the Styx River.

Thousands or tens of thousands or more of Buddhas bypassed the collapsed redwood trees, walked through the soft river beach, and silently walked into the clear, as if they were an army crossing a river.

There were more disgruntled souls and skulls in the depths of the Styx River. They sensed the Lights of Buddha and Breaths of Buddha on these Buddhas, but didn’t sense the power contained in the Pennant of Human Skulls of Ksitigarbha. After a moment of hesitation, they failed to suppress their love for lights in the instinct and rushed to the pure Breaths of Buddha greedily.

The clear river turned black at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the calm river suddenly became very torrential. The Buddhas who had relatively low cultivation levels were directly taken away by the river and then turned into food for these disgruntled souls. The Buddhas who had high cultivation levels were surrounded by dozens or hundreds of disgruntled souls, which looked extremely terrifying.

What puzzled Ning Que was that during the whole process, not a single Buddha made a sound. They walked into the water silently, were taken away by the river silently, and turned into countless pieces of golden lights silently. And they even stopped the chanting which clearly could scare the disgruntled souls away, which seemed that they were deliberately seeking their doom.

The same was true for the dozens of Buddhas who had achieved high states of Buddhism. If they had wanted, they could not only protect themselves but also save the Buddhas who were sinking into hell. But they did nothing. They were only putting their hands together and walking to the depths of Styx River silently.

Numerous Buddhas walked into the vast and gruesome Styx River and were crowded with each other. From time to time, there were Buddhas who were swept away by the water, dragged away by the disgruntled souls, and torn into pieces by the claws of the skeletons.

Seeing this, Ning Que was no longer regarding them as an army crossing the river. He just felt that they were like countless bisons being eaten by crocodiles while crossing the river in the savannah.

But why? Why were these Buddhas seeking their deaths so silently and calmly? Ning Que even saw that a Buddha had such a determined face when he was swallowed by the disgruntled souls.

At this moment, the earth suddenly trembled. Ning Que looked back at the place where the trembling originated, only to see that the sky in the east suddenly became bright and there was a mighty Will of Buddha coming from there.

The Light of Buddha instantly came to the riversides of Styx, illuminating all the life in and around the woods.

The lights were coating the clothes of Ning Que with a layer of golden light. He felt an extremely powerful pressure and also felt that Sangsang was becoming weaker and weaker, so he opened the big black umbrella quickly.

The Light of Buddha also fell on the Styx River. The dark river did not become clear, but rolled up fiercely, as if someone had placed a fire under the Styx and boiled the river water.

In the boiling Styx River, countless Buddhas still kept walking silently, the disgruntled souls that were swallowing the Breaths of Buddha all raised their heads to look at the Light of Buddha earnestly, and the skulls that were tearing the bodies of Buddhas all stopped but dared not to look at the Light of Buddha directly. The disgruntled souls and skulls gradually became a very fine light spot.

The dense light spots, like fireflies, floated in the boiling river water and fell on the Buddhas who were still alive. The Buddhas who were still alive kept walking toward the other side of Styx River with even more determination.

“Tens of thousands of Buddhas going to meet their ancestors?” Ning Que murmured.

“Tens of thousands of ghosts crossing the river,” Sangsang replied disdainfully.

Whether it was tens of thousands of Buddhas going to meet their ancestor or tens of thousands of ghosts crossing the river, Ning Que still didn’t know the reason for the actions of these Buddhas or the reason why the ghosts who swallowed these Buddhas could be attached to these Buddhas. But he did know that these Buddhas became stronger and scarier, and he even saw that thousands of disgruntled souls in the boiling river water became a green lion. And an unknown Buddha was carried by the green lion and walked on the surface of the river. Was he a Bodhisattva?

Even one Ksitigarbha had put Ning Que and Sangsang into such a desperate situation. If there were several more Bodhisattvas who were as powerful as Ksitigarbha, how could they survive?

There was no room for them to think straight. The Light of Buddha at the distant east gradually dimmed, and countless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas were about to reach the other side of the Styx River. Ning Que carried Sangsang on his back and started running.

They kept running for a hundred days.

Ning Que couldn’t figure out how far he ran in the one hundred days. He only knew that he must run desperately and get rid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas behind them.

On the journey of running, there were plateaus, meadows, lands, enclosed seas, and steep mountains. He didn’t know where he was. He only knew to go to the far east.

From the fourth day, he could no longer hear the chanting sounds behind him. When he turned back occasionally, he could no longer see the Light of Buddha. But he knew that those Buddhas would never stop, and they would catch him and Sangsang if her were to stop or slow down.

There was a whole world out there. He kept running for another hundred days but still didn’t see the end. Fortunately, he did not need to discern his direction or worries about running back to the original place, for Buddha was just in front of him.

The Light of Buddha was becoming clearer and clearer, which meant that the Buddha was getting closer and closer. What amazed them was that the Lights of Buddha made them feel comfortable, quite different from the previous ones which made them suffer.

Although they felt comfortable, they didn’t have a light heart. Ning Que and Sangsang talked less and less these days, and they were silent for a long time while running. His silence was because he was burdened by the fact that they were about to encounter Buddha and gamble their life. Her silence was because she was thinking about something.

If you were to want to worship the Buddha, then you must see the Buddha first. Buddha would wake up from Nirvana, and whether he was dead or alive remained a mystery. Haotian was the most powerful being, the Headmaster of Academy ranked the second and the Buddha ranked the third. But at this point, Sangsang was too weak. If the Buddha was still alive, she and Ning Que would definitely die.

Ning Que and Sangsang were each other’s natal item, so he was supposed to know everything in her mind. But the thing she was pondering was too complicated and esoteric this time. He could sense her thought, but couldn’t understand. Thinking about this, his mind was weighed down with anxiety. Even Sangsang can’t come up with a solution. What should we do when we actually meet the Buddha?

One day, they came to a meadow and there was a snowy peak in the distance. He broke the silence which lasted for many days and said, “I went to gamble when I began to learn how to cultivate, which indicates that I am probably a natural gambler. Now we have a fifty percent chance of winning, so I have the courage to put up all I have.”