Hui Kong nodded and placed his right hand together in a palm shape over Mu Kui’s head.
He murmured the sound of Buddha, and the Buddhist teachings within him began to circulate.
Soon, his right hand emitted Buddha’s light, which entered Mu Kui’s brain and his consciousness. The Buddha’s light instantly invaded Mu Kui’s sea of consciousness.
The sea of consciousness of an ordinary cultivator is like a world, where all memories appear in succession like a lantern show.
But for Mu Kui…
Aside from the blood-red figure with its back to Hui Kong at the forefront, there was nothing else!
A complete blank!
Such a bizarre situation was something Hui Kong had never seen before.
He cautiously approached, wanting to glimpse the true face of that blood figure.
But just as he took a step forward, the blood-red figure suddenly turned around.Looking directly at that person, Hui Kong’s eyes widened in shock and horror!
He saw an emperor!
An Emperor is standing on the fragments of an imperial throne, bathed in blood, with eyes full of madness and unwillingness, disheveled hair, and bare-chested, like a madman!
And this emperor’s facial features were exactly like Mu Kui’s!
“Get out!” the blood-soaked emperor suddenly spoke.
A simple word, but it instantly shook Hui Kong out of Mu Kui’s sea of consciousness and back to reality.
“Ahhh!!!”
Hui Kong clutched his head and screamed in shock.
The Emperor’s words and gaze still surfaced in his mind incessantly.
No matter what he do, he couldn’t dispel them.
That gaze, like thousands of sharp knives, pierced through his soul in an instant, and those words, like thunder shaking the earth, shattered his sea of consciousness in a moment.
After the screaming stopped, Hui Kong was left with a vacant look in his eyes.
“High monk?”
Mu Kui blinked and leaned in to ask, “Why did the high monk scream?”
“Mad… madman!!”
Pointing at Mu Kui’s nose, Hui Kong screamed again.
Having said that, he turned and dashed away, breaking through three walls in succession before fleeing in a frenzy.
Mu Kui watched with a face full of question marks.
Wasn’t it said that if someone’s sea of consciousness was probed, they would feel pain?
He didn’t react at all, but instead, it was Hui Kong who was in unbearable pain.
Wasn’t he supposed to be guided?
They hadn’t even started, and Hui Kong had already run off!
“Ah, it looks like I’ll have to switch to another temple to chant and pray. Why it’s so hard to get a Dharma name,” Mu Kui sighed.
As a form of recognition, only monks who are qualified in chanting and praying are granted a secular Dharma name by the preaching monks.
In plain terms, this is a method of brainwashing.
It is said that many disciples from other sects, after incessant chanting and praying and receiving a secular Dharma name, truly believe they are fated with Buddha and directly defect to join the Buddha Temple.
This is also why the relationship between the Buddha Temple and other righteous sects is not as harmonious as it appears on the surface.
It’s just that everyone is from a righteous sect, so they haven’t torn their faces apart.
……
This time, before leaving his sect to go to the Buddha Temple, Jiang Chen decided not to take a spiritual boat but chose to walk instead.
He had to keep a low profile.
Being too high-profile would allow those bald monks at the Buddha Temple to recognize his identity as the young master of the Jiang family.
If Lin Feng had already entered the Six Prisons, no matter how much he caused a commotion, those bald monks would probably be wary of taking action against him.
To successfully achieve his goal, Jiang Chen even chose not to let the elder Chen Sheng follow him.
Of course, knowing Chen Sheng, he would not truly ignore him and was probably closely monitoring his situation from a hundred li away.
At this moment, the group had been walking for many days and was only a few hundred miles away from the Buddha Temple.
“Eldest Senior Brother, are we going to the Buddha Temple to drive Mu Kui mad?” Little brother Liu Wen suddenly came up and asked.
“Drive him mad?” Jiang Chen frowned.
Liu Wen chuckled with a ‘don’t pretend, I know it was you’ look.
It’s not surprising he thought this way.
When Jiang Chen was at the Jiuyan Sect, Jiang Lianyue and Lin Mubai went mad, then after a trip to the Hengduan Mountain Range, Qingning went mad.
After returning to the Jiuyan Sect, even Peak Master Xiao Hongyi had gone mad! How could this not be related to Jiang Chen?
That’s what the others at the Jiuyan Sect used to think until the Old Ancestor of Jiuyan fooled them into blaming it on a nonexistent demonic seed.
Liu Wen and Liu Wu, the two younger brothers, had their memories of the sermon erased by the Jiuyan Old Ancestor, so they naturally still thought the same.
Of course, Jiang Chen himself thought the same way.
Glancing at the intermittent appearance of a red figure not far behind, he was pretty much convinced that he was poisonous.
“That Mu Kui can’t go mad,” Jiang Chen said, looking away and shaking his head.
“Why not?” Liu Wen was puzzled.
Jiang Chen didn’t reply. He just continued shaking his head.
The answer was simple. Because Mu Kui was already a madman!
A madman reincarnated from a Martial Emperor!
Jiang Chen looked up at the sky, feeling enlightened.
This is a vast world, and although there are ten smaller worlds beneath it, they all exist under the same Heaven’s Will.
In this vast world, everyone aims to become an emperor, and the word ‘ascension’ is rarely mentioned.
This is because… Although ancient texts record that during the ancient times, some cultivators managed to ascend to the heavens, since the end of the ancient era and the establishment of order, no one has ascended for tens of thousands of years.
Over time, most cultivators lost the concept of ‘ascension’, believing that becoming a great emperor was the ultimate goal of cultivation.
Only a few know… It’s not that cultivators have lost the path to ascension but that they have taken the wrong path!
To become an emperor, one needs the heavens’ recognition, which is what most cultivators believe today.
Little do they know… Emperors recognized by the heavens are actually, in his words, false emperors. Emperors who willingly become vassals of the heaven’s will!
To become a true emperor, one must comprehend and prove their own Dao!
Only when they achieve their Dao can they break through the heavens and ascend!
The ancient cultivators were able to ascend because they defied the heavens.
How can today’s cultivators, who follow the Heaven’s will and take pride in being recognized by the heavens, break through the heavens and ascend?
But Jiang Chen also knows that today’s cultivators can’t be blamed, as the suppression from the heavens above is currently indeed too strong.
Hasn’t he failed in his nine attempts to defy the heavens?
It’s worth mentioning that in his nine cycles of reincarnation, Lin Feng’s path to proving the Dao using the Heartless Blade was also because he realized this point.
Ironically… Lin Feng, the Son of Destiny, ultimately chose the path of defying the heavens.
And Heaven is indeed a good father.
Despite foreseeing Lin Feng’s final choice, the Heaven still took great care of this son.
Such behavior, in Jiang Chen’s view, is like the mountainous “fatherly love,” preferring the son to break through and defy him just to send the son to a higher place.
Apart from Jiang Chen and Lin Feng, those who know this are the false emperors recognized by the heavens.
Most of the false emperors have chosen to comply, and only the Martial Emperor before his reincarnation as Mu Kui insisted on resisting.
That Martial Emperor sealed his memory and reincarnated to cultivate anew before his imperial essence collapsed and formed an emperor’s throne.
In order not to be influenced by Heaven’s Will, he even abandoned all wisdom except for his comprehension of the martial path.
Mu Kui’s dullness is for this reason.
When Jiang Chen said Mu Kui was mad, he didn’t mean madness in the sense of demonic possession but rather in the sense of true madness.
Because he is a true madman who, despite being able to stand at the pinnacle and enjoy worship by simply choosing to comply, insists on defying the heavens, seeking to prove the Dao through martial arts, break through the heavens, and ascend.
In his nine cycles of reincarnation, Jiang Chen had tried to awaken Mu Kui’s memory early so that they could defy the heavens together.
But without exception, they all failed.
Because the seal on that Martial Emperor’s memory was too strong, beyond his ability to break.
And every time Mu Kui’s memory began to awaken, it was just before his death.
In the original story, Mu Kui went to another realm after his memory began to awaken.
This was probably a foreshadowing by the original author. But when the writer who took over hastily concluded the story, this foreshadowing naturally went unused.
Therefore, what ultimately happened to Mu Kui, Jiang Chen also did not know.
The only thing he knew was if Mu Kui became completely enraged, he would break a seal on his memory and enter a state of madness.
Although he would return to normal soon after, his combat power would skyrocket during that period!
Even if Jiang Chen wanted to play the villain in this life, he didn’t want to mess with Mu Kui.
That time he publicly mocked Mu Kui was because he was certain that doing so would not completely enrage Mu Kui.
“Remember, stay away from Mu Kui. If you anger him, I might not be able to save you,” Jiang Chen sternly warned.
Hearing this, the brothers Liu Wen and Liu Wu quickly nodded in agreement.
The big White Tiger following behind also nodded, but it was clearly not enthusiastic, looking dejected.
“Jiang Chen, why don’t you ride me? I can run really fast!” Xiaobai finally voiced its doubt.
Along the way, Xiaobai had suggested many times that Jiang Chen should ride it. If so, they would definitely be able to greatly reduce the time to reach the Buddha Temple.
But every time, Jiang Chen just gave him a cold look!
This made Xiaobai feel like he might be disliked…
“Xiaobai, wait a bit longer!”
Jiang Chen said seriously while patting Xiaobai’s tiger head, “Such matters should wait until after you’ve transformed.”
Xiaobai didn’t understand at all.
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