Everyone inside Daluo Temple wore grave expressions. Since three days ago, the temple had announced its closure to the public. The area around the temple’s lake had been sealed off and was patrolled by vicious-looking pet beasts. Even the rectors weren’t allowed to step foot inside.
Most of the monks had no idea what that thing from three days ago was, nor what it did. Only a handful of intelligent monks managed to come up with plausible explanations, but even they did not dare to speak of it nor discuss it in private.
For the past three days, the atmosphere in Daluo Temple was rather mysterious and heavy.
Inside a private room in Daluo Temple, Lin Jin fiddled with a needle as he sat cross-legged on the bed, allowing his mind to wander wherever it wanted to. As usual, Goldy strolled around aimlessly, and the six-tailed fox sat on the ground, staring up at Lin Jin’s face. There was a sudden knock on the door and the fox turned toward the door.
“Come in!” Lin Jin called.
Xuan Jue and the abbot entered his room.
Only two of them had come this time.
Over the past three days, they had been daily visitors to Lin Jin’s room.
Lin Jin had already told Xuan Jue and the abbot what happened three days ago. Buddha was only halfway through his sentence when he abruptly sensed something wrong. Then came a loud noise from above, and what followed was a beast claw that reached down and took the Buddha away.
Lin Jin was barely able to react in time as the events unfolded.
Of course, he could have taken action right after regaining his senses. However, upon retrieving his needle, he heard the Buddha’s voice.
“Do not interfere. My good man, this shall be where we part ways!”
If Lin Jin could react in time, the same went for Buddha, whose skill far surpassed his own. However, he was captured by the beast claw without so much as putting up a fight.
Why was this so?
This problem has been troubling Lin Jin for three days now.
Lin Jin had conveyed his frustration to Xuan Jue and the abbot. Of course, there were some details he left out, for example, the fact that he had managed to pierce the giant beast claw with his needle.
In other words, the museum now had a record of this massive claw’s owner.
Lin Jin felt fear for this exact reason.
At the present stage, the strongest beast Lin Jin had ever recorded in the museum thus far was the ‘Golden Crow’. He had done so by acquiring one of its feathers from the Nine-heaven realm.
The Golden Crow was a legendary bird of Rank 7.
It remained the highest-ranking creature up until three days ago.
“Immortal devouring beast, Rank 9…”
That was the information Lin Jin managed to obtain from the giant claw and it was also why his fingers were trembling.
A Rank 9! At Lin Jin’s current strength, he couldn’t possibly put up a fight against such a creature. That creature was probably at the peak of all organic life!
Lin Jin was able to see the full image of the Rank 9 immortal devouring beast in the museum. No doubt, it was the largest creature he had ever come across. No, it was no mere creature, It was a monster! A real one!
If the creature had revealed itself, it would have been as large as a mountain.
For the past three days, besides contemplating the incident, Lin Jin was also recuperating and waiting to see if Buddha would return. Lin Jin wanted to hear the rest of the story that Buddha was trying to tell him, as well as what happened over the past three days.
However, it seems that his wait would be fruitless.
Not only was it a fact, but after a round of analysis, Lin Jin arrived at a conclusion.
In terms of combat power, even when he was at his strongest, Buddha probably wouldn’t have been able to defeat the immortal devouring beast, what more to say of the state he was in prior to the attack. He was already showing signs of death, what common folk referred to as ‘the decay of an angel’.
Even if the immortal devouring beast’s attack did not occur, Buddha’s time was already running out.
Also, Lin Jin was wondering why the immortal devouring beast would attack so suddenly. More importantly, he realized that Buddha had been expecting it all along.
Now inside Lin Jin’s room, Xuan Jue took his seat. The abbot, on the other hand, did not dare to sit down.
After all, according to seniority, Xuan Jue was like an ancestor to the abbot. He remained on his feet as a sign of respect for the ancestral figure. Even when he accompanied Xuan Jue over for the past few days, he would stand silently behind Xuan Jue.
In other words, he was just here to listen to Xuan Jue and Curator’s conversation.
After making himself comfortable, Xuan Jue asked, “My good man, have you thought of something new?”
Most of Daluo Temple’s monks were powerless against the attack three days ago. That claw came and went so quickly and it was too mysterious that no one knew what it was, so it wasn’t like they could strike back any time soon.
Xuan Jue knew how ‘unusual’ Curator was so he placed his hopes on Curator, wishing for an explanation.
Lin Jin refrained from telling them some of the facts he had learned because there were many things he still could not understand. Fortunately, after three days of deep thinking, he was able to come up with a theory.
It may not be true, but at least it gave them a sense of direction.
Looking at Xuan Jue’s expectant expression, Lin Jin shook his head. Xuan Jue’s expression faltered. “Are we to stand around and do nothing?”
Lin Jin asked instead, “Master Xuan Jue, how long have you been with Buddha?”
Xuan Jue pondered slightly before answering, “A hundred and thirty years ago, I met Buddha by chance and I have remained by his side since then. I closed myself off from the world and dedicated my soul to learn the teachings of Buddhism.”
Lin Jin nodded. They must have been hiding in the realm below the lake all this while. A secret barrier had been cast there to conceal their aura that’s why no one managed to uncover what lied at the bottom of the lake for the past hundred years.
Or rather, Buddha had actually been there for more than a thousand years and not a single person picked up on his presence.
Buddha probably allowed Xuan Jue to enter his realm because he wanted to find a successor. Although Xuan Jue’s cultivation level was far from Buddha’s, he had been focusing on immortal cultivation techniques, so he might just be inferior only to immortals.
In other words, Xuan Jue’s cultivation was focused completely on his own being, so if they were to estimate based on spirit stones, the world’s strongest friar probably couldn’t even compare to Xuan Jue.
However, Xuan Jue’s cultivation path was no longer suited to today’s environment. He had only managed to improve over the hundred years with Buddha’s help, and now that Buddha wasn’t here anymore, it was next to impossible for Xuan Jue to improve his cultivation level. That was unless he switched to blood pact cultivation and raised a pet beast.
Nevertheless, even without doing so, Xuan Jue’s strength was still one-of-a-kind. Even without the help of pet beasts, he was probably on par with the abbot’s four guardian beasts.
In a sense, Xuan Jue was the person who had stayed with Buddha for the longest time.
“Master Xuan Jue, do you know why Buddha decided to take refuge in the realm below the lake?” Lin Jin asked. Xuan Jue shook his head cluelessly.
Buddha clearly had his reasons for staying there, but since he wouldn’t speak of it, Xuan Jue dared not ask either. He had his own suspicions too but he could only suppress them.
And so, Lin Jin proceeded to tell him about the theory he had come up with.
“For that beast claw to suddenly appear, what I’m guessing is that it has something to do with the earth changing and the demise of all immortals…”
This was the conclusion Lin Jin had pondered on a great deal for three consecutive days.
In other words, Buddha had probably been hiding from a tragedy all this while. As Buddha had experienced the period of the immortals’ extinction, he must have a lot of inside information. His being able to live this long was a mystery in and of itself.
Xuan Jue was an intelligent man so he immediately figured that something was off. “Could it be that the claw that came down from the sky three days ago…”
He was trying to say that it had something to do with the demise of all immortals.
