Chapter 642: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (18)

For an old monk, perhaps he is acting his age.

Lhundup Rinchen barks at his disciples.

“[Even at this moment, think of our people oppressed under the yoke of the Middle Realm! Are we to sit on the ground and quail!]”

To Qing, who sees and hears from every direction at once, it’s a ridiculous line.

What is this? You’ve slaughtered to the last the people who weren’t oppressed—so where exactly does this “people” of yours exist?

A “great cause” is by nature a dangerous thing.

Once seized by it, one goes blind and deaf, can no longer see or hear the world, and takes every one of one’s acts as righteous—the posture of a great person.

So Qing’s appraisal is simple.

Mm. Killers.

“[Master?]”

“[Up—stand up. Something is most certainly wrong. Either His Majesty is in danger, or the formation has gone awry and run amok. The more it is like this, the more we must keep our heads.]”

“[B-but—did not His Majesty say it was an extermination array with no Life Gate? However we try—]”

“[Silence! What formation has no Life Gate! He said it was that difficult. Clear your minds and rise! Will you crouch and wait for rescue that may never come!]”

“[But—where are we to go...!]”

Someone objects in a damp, tear-laced, choked voice.

After all, an empty space where nothing exists.

A silver surface like mercury, slopping to a shallow fill—and beyond it, nothing but a boundless horizon in every direction, not a mote of dust.

Then—SMACK!

Ohh, Qing is a little impressed by the stinging slap he lays on.

Lhundup Rinchen thunders:

“[Weak talk! With such a heart, how will you achieve great merit, guide our Tibetan people, and lead them to the Pure Land! If we do not go to Hell, who will!]”

The lamas of Blood Thunder Sound Temple steady one another and stand. Fear sits plain on their faces, but they look to each other and strive to master it.

“[Tie your hems fast to one another, and keep your hands gripping those hems! The formation’s directions differ from the real—at any slip you’ll scatter!]”

So the lamas knot their hems together and form a long line.

Qing considers, just a moment.

The head bald-donkey has some nerve.

He’s in the way—shall I drop him for a bit?

Or... mm. No. Not that.

Qing smiles a sly smile.

To crush villains, the part of her brain she doesn’t often use is humming at full tilt.

The formation gives a great lurch, then boils and bucks, and the hollow ring of the array ripples and writhes like a snake.

It’s nothing grand.

She merely moved arms and legs; as the formation is her, this is what appears.

How do my limbs move?

How far can they move if I swing them?

A formation is distortion, in the end.

At the Celestial Demon Tomb, that ironwork—half-span? was it?—wove the very structure of the tomb into channels of distortion and planted an almost permanent formation.

In an open space like this, you need fuel to govern the flow—and that fuel is human parts, three thousand in all.

I’m not keeping this one long in any case; burn the fuel at maximum.

The sacrificed dead—if their organs are used to torment their enemies, won’t they be satisfied in the other world?

Qing rewrites the Great Blood-Annihilating Heaven Array.

She drags the felt time long, stretches it taut.

Let’s see... a door—shall I hang a door?

And beyond it—mm—that’ll be fun too.

As the sacrifice burns fast, she narrows the range of effect to the lamas’ perimeter to raise the output.

Selection and focus.

The lamas cross a land where nothing exists.

Their faces remain nothing but uneasy.

They walk and walk, and all that comes up is a horizon stretched to the far-off far.

Their napes go stiff; they force their eyes forward—an effort to avert their gaze from the empty heavenly body above: fear made manifest.

How long does it pass like that?

Felt time, stoked high by burning through that vast offering.

An hour? Two?

When there is no stimulus at all, that is when a person most keenly feels the magnificent flow of time.

In a world where nothing changes, even the flow of time seems to halt—only long, only endless.

The lamas’ faces darken, slowly.

Heads droop toward the ground; despair spreads in their pupils; the sheen dies.

“[Th—there! There!]”

One shouts; the lamas, who had only stared blankly and trudged after the man ahead, all lift their heads as one.

A single paper lattice door stands on the silver surface.

No frame, just a door set all alone—a sight strange to the point of grotesque.

Linked together, the lamas reach the lattice door.

They examine it—but what could you learn by looking?

There is only one answer: open it.

They cannot trudge forever across a silver sea where nothing exists.

Lhundup Rinchen bobs his throat, grips the door, and slides it sideways—scrrrk.

And beyond the door spreads a familiar scene: the interior of the Main Hall—the sanctuary of the principal Buddha—of the Blood Thunder Sound Temple.

Not merely a hole in empty air; it matches perfectly the view when you slide open the Main Hall’s lattice door.

“[Oh! The Life Gate—the Life Gate!]”

“[Surely His Majesty set this for us!]”

“[We’re saved—ha-ha—Mahavairocana!]”

The lamas enter through the door, their smiles bright as if they’d never been downcast.

The great statue in the hall—Vairocana—greets them with a subtle smile.

They slump down in relief.

One even dares to sprawl before the statue; another sits and lets the piled fatigue drain out with a vacant stare.

Lhundup Rinchen looks displeased at the sight, but thinking of what his disciples have suffered, he swallows it down.

“[Master?]”

“[Rest. The Principal Buddha, mindful of what you have borne, will not deem it irreverence. I will go pay my respects to His Majesty.]”

At times, a kindness shames more than a scolding.

Only then do the disciples, suddenly abashed, correct their postures, kneel in order before the statue, and begin their bows.

Smiling, Lhundup Rinchen looks over their backs, turns, and moves to open a door of the Main Hall—then halts.

He leaves the door they entered by; instead he slips the latch on an unused side door and pushes.

Scrrrk—as the door opens, his face goes stiff.

The court beyond should show the yard crowded with little stone stupas of the Main Hall—

but there is only a solid wall.

Scrrrk. Scrrrk. He keeps opening doors.

Wall. Wall. Wall. And at last, when he opens the easternmost door along the south side—finally, not a wall, but a scene beyond:

The inside of the Main Hall.

Precisely—the inside of the Main Hall as seen when opening a door from the back room behind the statue of the Principal Buddha—and beyond that, the inside of the Main Hall as seen through the open door—and beyond that, the inside of the Main Hall through another open door—and beyond that—

An infinite Main Hall, carried through to the far-off end in the shape of doorframes.

Lhundup Rinchen’s fingertips tremble.

“[Master?]”

A lama comes, worried for the abbot whose body shakes—and witnesses the same sight.

“[Gasp.]”

He recoils in fright, then, face gone urgent, he wrenches open the doors on the east side.

The Main Hall as seen through the west doors unrolls without end.

Like the world between two facing mirrors—only there, it does not reflect their images.

At that, the disciples, almost tumbling and scrambling on all fours, scuttle across and yank open the doors on the west.

In every cardinal direction—east, west, south, north—stretches the infinite interior of the Main Hall.

And perfect stillness.

The lamas wear twisted expressions, as if they’d forgotten how to breathe—no sound at all—

tok... tok... tok. A drip of water.

“[Hiiik.]”

One lama drops on his rump and crawls backward on hands and feet.

Bloody tears, beading and falling from the chin of the great statue of Vairocana.

And now the statue’s face glares, nothing in it but hatred.

SCRRRK!

In an instant, every door slams shut at once.

“[Hiiik—c-cursed! This place is cursed! I—I have to get out!]”

A lama, panicked, bolts.

No sense left to work a door—he smashes the lattice—crack!—and dashes into the Main Hall beyond, then—crack!—into the Main Hall beyond that.

Then the innards tremble—r-r-r-r—

thick dust laid on the rafters shivers down as a quake begins; in front of the statue of the Principal Buddha the ground splits—skreee—and sinks.

Fwoom! A plume of black flame shoots high and falls; the stench of sulfur rises, stabbing the nose.

“[Damn it! Tie your hems again! We have to get out! Move! Faster!]”

The lamas’ hands shake as they knot hems in haste.

Even so, the fissure widens; the hole torn in the sanctuary grows; one disciple, all alone, breaks and sprints into the next Main Hall.

“[Quickly! Quickly! Hurry!]”

The lamas, hems linked anew, file out of the Main Hall.

As if it had waited, the quake—r-r-r-r—chases them; the lamas, scared witless, vault door after door, crossing Main Hall after Main Hall, and another Main Hall—

Endlessly.

Mm. Look at them go.

Qing snickers and moves to the finish.

She draws her forearm with a thread of qi at her fingertip; sskt—blood runs and she lets it flow into the heart of the formation.

The victims’ flesh—the minced meat—meets Qing’s blood and begins to burn in silence, like incense.

Until all the flesh is consumed, the state of Man-and-Formation-as-One, in which I am the formation, will hold.

It won’t last long.

This is no place to wallow forever in the omnipotence of Man-and-Formation-as-One and set the world in order.

The feeling that anything is possible is exhilarating—but in the end it’s only intoxication with making phantoms and false things.

Above all, this is no place for a child.

Qing looks down at the child in her arms.

Since the formation’s core passed to Qing, the child’s face has gone peaceful, sleeping.

Carefully, so as not to wake the child, Qing shifts her hold and leaves the cellar.

But the flesh at the formation’s core is still burning, isn’t it.

The Blood Thunder Sound Temple lies open to her view within.

Kunlun’s warriors—all are safe, save a few with light wounds.

However many Blood Fiends there are, there are four in Harmony, and the rest are Kunlun’s elite besides.

With the Foremost Under Heaven rampaging at the front, anyone hurt in this mess would deserve scolding.

So—Gunyeong, was it?

No—who hit a woman’s face?

Cheek swollen and lip split—and after reaching Super-transcendent, why are you going around getting smacked like this?

(Whoever pummeled her to make her come to her senses—Seol Iri will find it very unjust.)

Hee-mae is not merely unharmed—she’s flying; Kunlun’s warriors keep sneaking awed looks her way.

After you watch her grab a Blood Fiend by each leg and swing them two-fisted—well, awe is natural.

Among them, the Jade Dew Sword with a dazed face and a single tear running down the cheek—mm, how to put it—magnificent.

San is fine, of course.

And on the temple’s far side, the Translucent masters are in a blood-fight—a blood-fight... mm.

Qing watches their high-order battle from every direction.

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign is getting beaten like a dog.