Chapter 297 - 296: Sacred Grounds (4)

"This poor monk is Ku Ming," he introduced himself, his golden eyes rising to meet Lin Yuan’s deep purple gaze. "I welcome fellow Daoist and his esteemed Dao Companion to the sanctuary of the ancient era. The winds of the Central Continent have carried the scent of your tribulation even to these isolated grounds."

"You possess the eyes of a man who sees past the flesh, Ku Ming," Lin Yuan replied smoothly, his tone respectful but retaining its sovereign edge. "Your aura is unique. You do not hail from the Central Continent."

"Daoist’s perception is flawless," Ku Ming smiled softly, the Sanskrit runes on his red skin glowing warmly. "I am of the Red Skin Monk Clan, hailing from the absolute western edge of the Western Continent. I have traveled a great distance to sit upon this jade and await the opening of the abyss."

Lin Yuan’s mind accessed. "The Red Skin Monk Clan?"

"Indeed, One of the Three Great Monk Clans of antiquity" Ku Ming nodded, a faint, melancholic shadow passing over his serene features. "In the ancient era, before the Great War, the Three Great Monk Clans—the Golden Bone Clan, the White Lotus Clan, and my own Red Skin Clan—sought enlightenment together beneath the Bodhi tree. We were the absolute vanguard of the Buddhist Dao in this world."

Ku Ming slowly lowered his hands, looking up at the violet-leaved trees bordering the plaza. "But when the universe was cleaved in twain, the path of our lineages fractured. The Golden Bone Clan and the White Lotus Clan, possessing the cultivation foundation required by the new laws, ascended entirely. They passed through the gates and took up residence in the Imperial Domain. They left the lower world behind."

"But your clan remained," Lin Yuan deduced.

"We are the only ones left in the Nine Provinces," Ku Ming confirmed, his voice ringing with a quiet, tragic pride. "Our ancestors made a vow. They swore that so long as the demonic sea of the Hollow Beyond still raged, and so long as the mortal dust still suffered the karmic weight of the Great War, the Red Skin Clan would not ascend. We bound our flesh to the suffering of this broken world. We remained behind to ferry the lost, to guard the borders, and to face the demons our brothers abandoned."

Lin Yuan looked at Ku Ming, his respect for the monk deepening into something profound. In a world defined by ruthless, self-serving ambition and the desperate scramble for ascension, the Red Skin Monk Clan had deliberately chained themselves to a sinking ship out of pure compassion.

"A heavy vow," Lin Yuan noted quietly. "But a necessary one."

"Amitabha Buddha. You speak the truth of the era," Ku Ming bowed his head once more. The monk then turned slightly, sweeping his hand gracefully toward the assembled crowd of monsters. "Since you have just arrived, Almsgiver Lin, allow this poor monk to serve as a humble guide to the currents of this courtyard. You have already swept your divine sense over the gathering; your eyes have caught the dragons hiding in the shallow water."

Ku Ming pointed toward the center of the plaza, directing Lin Yuan’s attention back to the woman in the iridescent white robes, who was still performing her slow, mesmerizing sword dance.

"You have seen her," Ku Ming said softly. "That is Daoist Su Yao of the Eastern Continent. She is a marvel even among the geniuses gathered here. The heavens of the East are chaotic and storm-ridden, yet she managed to sit within the eye of the hurricane and condense not one, but two Dao Fruits."

Lin Yuan watched the two perfectly formed, crystalline spheres of pure, materialized Dao law hovering above Su Yao’s crown. The spheres pulsed in perfect, harmonic synchronization, radiating an esoteric truth that completely bypassed standard Qi.

"She is a genius of the highest order," Ku Ming continued, his golden eyes reflecting the mesmerizing dance. "To form a Dao Fruit is to physically manifest the absolute comprehension of your existence into a consumable, externalized core. It is the ultimate crystallization of truth. But as you surely knows, typically, forming even a single Dao Fruit is an act of sheer impossibility in the outside Nine Provinces."

"Because the Dao laws are damaged," Lin Yuan supplied, recalling the history Emperor Tianxu had shared just an hour prior.

"Precisely," Ku Ming nodded. "In the Central Continent, the North, the South... the ambient laws of reality were irreparably fractured during the war with the Demon Realm. The spiritual Qi is too thin, the conceptual fabric too brittle. If a cultivator attempts to solidify their philosophical truth into a Dao Fruit in the outside world, the localized laws simply collapse. The fruit shatters before it can form, often taking the cultivator’s Primordial Spirit with it."

Ku Ming spread his arms, gesturing to the sprawling jade plaza and the towering, primordial forest surrounding them.

"But here," the monk breathed, his voice filled with reverence for the ancient environment. "In the Sacred Grounds, the laws are preserved exactly as they were in the ancient era. What is a suicidal impossibility in the Nine Provinces is made easy here. Daoist Su Yao spent merely three years within this temporal dilation to coax her twin fruits into reality."

Lin Yuan listened, and his deep purple eyes ignited with a brilliant, terrifying light.

His comprehension was already running trillions of simultaneous calculations. He possessed the Tri-Dao intersection. He wielded the Dao of Three Rebirths, seamlessly merging Thunder, Rain, and Three rebirth into a supreme law.

But if he could externalize it?

If he could utilize the ancient laws of the Sacred Grounds to physically manifest the Dao of Three Rebirths into a tangible, crystalline core?

A Dao Fruit formed from the path that leads to Reincarnation would not just be a weapon. It would be a supreme, self-sustaining battery of absolute conceptual authority. It would elevate his True Elemental Body into a realm of combat efficiency that would make the Void Refinement demons of the Hollow Beyond look like fragile, glass toys.

Lin Yuan turned away from the dancing woman and looked directly into Ku Ming’s golden eyes.

"Ku Ming," Lin Yuan asked, his voice low, intense, and vibrating with profound intrigue. "How does one form a Dao Fruit?"