The next day, a rumor spread across the Three Realms.
[Tang Sanzang's reincarnation is about to appear at Wuyue Mountain. Whoever manages to eat him will instantly become a Carefree Immortal.]
What was a Carefree Immortal? An immortal who belonged to neither the Three Realms nor the Five Elements — utterly beyond the reach of heaven's laws.
There were other rumors too.
[Tang Sanzang did not die because of the Monkey King. He died because Guanyin schemed to steal his golden elixir of many colors.]
Of course, no one believed that one. Anyone who read it only laughed.
But the third rumor was truly shocking.
[Tang Sanzang is the reincarnation of an ancient god, seeking to walk the ancient road to ascension once more and attain the highest bliss.]
What was the ancient road to ascension? Most immortals had never heard of it, and neither had most monsters. But someone eventually dug up a clue, buried deep in an ancient mountain range.
The so-called ancient road to ascension was the very path the Tathagata himself had walked before attaining enlightenment — starting in the east and ending at Spirit Mountain in the west, what was now called the western sky. It was the oldest road of all. Anyone who walked it with sufficient merit would become the next Carefree Immortal.
"Damn, Tang Sanzang's got that kind of background?"
"Who says he doesn't? There's a huge mess brewing right now. A brother of mine went to Wuyue Mountain to look into it and got killed by the heavenly soldiers!"
"Heh. So that's it. I was wondering why all the Bull Demon Kings were gathering there. Should've guessed."
"Well then, we move too. Chief, we can't let them get their hands on Tang Sanzang's reincarnation first."
"That's right... it's time."
In his cave, a Golden-Winged Roc bared a ferocious smile and gave the order. A hundred thousand demon soldiers converged on Wuyue Mountain, and other powerful monsters soon followed.
Once the news reached the Heavenly Court, the Jade Emperor sank into thought. Was there really an ancient road to heaven? And if so, why didn't he know about it?
"Clairvoyance. Where did this rumor come from?"
"Reporting to Your Majesty — it started at an unnamed mountain. A pack of monsters broke in without a sound, and afterward a light flashed and a stone stele appeared..."
"I see..."
"And Your Majesty, that stele has already been taken by Guanyin Bodhisattva."
"What?"
The Jade Emperor's face went pale with fright and fury. Not long ago, he had asked Venerable Kassapa about this very legend, and been told it was nothing but a prank someone was playing. But could a prank spiral into something like this?
"Come. Follow me to Lingshan — I want to hear what the Tathagata has to say about all this!"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"By the way, Your Majesty — what should we do about this round?"
"To hell with the game. I'm the one being played in the dark this whole time. Let's go..."
The Jade Emperor no longer cared what was going wrong with the current cycle, or what the Monkey King's reincarnation had to do with him. All he wanted now was to learn what secret that stone stele was hiding.
Meanwhile, at Wuyue Mountain, the bandits who had once served under Supreme Treasure were hiding partway up the mountainside, drinking and watching the monsters mass below like an audience at a show.
"Boss, I really do admire you. Only you could think of a scheme like this."
"Heh, it's called fishing in troubled waters. All of you ought to learn a thing or two from it. By the way — watching the show's fine, but keep an eye out for monsters tonight. I want a live one."
"Yes, boss, don't you worry!"
The Second Master, the Blind One, and the rest all grinned wickedly.
Naturally, every one of these rumors had been released by the Bodhi Ancestor. A little truth mixed with a lot of lies — that was always what fooled people best. Dealing with the Heavenly Court and Lingshan head-on would have cost them dearly. But Supreme Treasure remembered how Aizen had once toyed with Captain Yamamoto, and it had put some wicked ideas in his head. He wanted to muddy the waters even further.
What Supreme Treasure hadn't expected was that a single lie could draw in so many monsters. Right now they were all hidden inside Wuyue Mountain, shielded by a divine radiance that kept them from being seen.
The divine text and divine markings had been passed down to him by the higher-ups in the chat group. As for the story itself, it was Ye Laohei who was writing it up.
As for why Guanyin was so obsessed with the stele — it was because the lower half of it was inscribed with words that didn't belong to this world. Let alone Guanyin; even the Tathagata himself would be unable to look away. All it took was a trace of divine power woven into the stone, and to this world's natives, it looked like a treasure out of ancient times.
"Now that the first stage has gone off perfectly, it's time for the second — let's make this world even more chaotic..."
Supreme Treasure looked out at the chaos below with a wide grin. The faith was short on manpower, after all.
At Lingshan, the Tathagata Buddha and the other Buddhist masters frowned as they studied the markings on the stele. At a glance, they looked like nothing more than meaningless scrawl, but the aura radiating from them was too mysterious, more esoteric than anything the assembled masters could sense. And even if it had been written by someone, not one of them present could read it.
Venerable Kassapa raised his head and looked at the Tathagata. "My Buddha, did you truly walk the road to heaven?"
"Nonsense. When have I ever walked that road? I only wanted Golden Cicada brought here because I wanted the monkey to behave."
The Tathagata naturally denied it — after all, he had genuinely never done any such thing. But Guanyin frowned and said, "If you never walked it, then could these words have been carved on afterward, by later generations?"
The moment she said it, everyone in the hall froze. Yes — it could certainly have been carved on afterward. The Tathagata breathed an inward sigh of relief. Perhaps someone with great power had simply come to play a trick on him.
He reached out a finger, meaning to leave his own mark on the stone. Instead, a burst of overwhelming power erupted from the stele and flicked his finger away.
"This..."
"It won't take a mark!"
"It even has the power to resist him..."
Everyone on the scene wore strange expressions now. The looks aimed at the Tathagata were laced with both mockery and contempt. If you don't want to tell the truth, don't — nobody here is a fool. You claim you never walked the Ascension Road, and yet the stone stele sits there like an immovable mountain. Even Guanyin found herself unable to believe that the Tathagata had truly never walked it. After all, he had attained enlightenment before any of them. Who was to say what he'd done back then?
Could the road to heaven really exist? Or had they all become his pawns without knowing it? The people gathered here were no small fry — every one of them a Buddhist master — and even so, none of them were willing to simply let the matter drop.
Sensing the mood turning against him, the Tathagata flushed with anger and humiliation. "I said I never walked this ascension, and I never walked it. Do you think I'm lying to you all? If Golden Cicada could become a real Carefree Immortal just by walking one road, I might as well have killed him outright and made someone equal to my own strength instead. What good would that do me?"
"But it's different if you used some secret method to turn him into an external avatar of yourself, isn't it? Am I wrong... Tathagata?"
The Jade Emperor strode in from outside, his expression dark as a storm cloud.
———
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