Chapter 109: Until the Human Realm Is Emptied, I Vow Never to Become a Buddha!

“Kill a Loose Immortal...”

As Ji Wuhen's words faded, the paper figure of Wang Ping narrowed its eyes. Rather than rushing to answer, he studied Ji Wuhen closely.

Just how strong was a Loose Immortal?

Objectively speaking, they likely couldn't match an outer sect disciple of the Immortal Gate, but their cultivation bases were on par. Both were practitioners who had passed the Human Tribulation and forged magic power.

As a martial artist who had personally experienced the terror of the Immortal Gate's practitioners, Wang Ping would have outright rejected this audacious proposal in the past. Now, however, he couldn't help but feel tempted. The reason was simple: Chenlong was right beside him.

‘It seems... this isn't completely impossible?’

After all, as a Martial Dao Grandmaster Rank expert of the Imperial Tribute Hall, Chenlong bragged to him every other day, claiming his martial arts were more than enough to challenge a Loose Immortal.

He had to have some real skill, right?

Especially after personally experiencing the profundities of the Martial God Pictorial Record and the Sacred Lord of Five Weapons, Wang Ping had formed a preliminary judgment of Chenlong's strength.

At the very least, he wasn't inferior to Longxing County's Perfected Wandering Spirit.

‘Besides, I'm currently using Ye Chao's Child of Destiny experience card. In theory, any crisis that befalls me should turn into a delivered opportunity.’

After thinking it over, Wang Ping finally made up his mind.

‘I can give it a try!’

With that decided, Wang Ping finally replied, “Brother Ji, please describe this Loose Immortal's appearance, methods, and any distinguishing features in detail.”

Hearing this, Ji Wuhen immediately knew there was a chance. Overjoyed, he quickly described Master Kongzhi's bizarre dual-gendered face.

“A monk... with the faces of both a man and a woman?”

Wang Ping froze.

Ji Wuhen's description had violently unearthed a memory from the depths of his mind. ‘Desire Realm Celestial Body... the Other-Transformation Freedom Control Desire Realm Celestial Manual?’

He remembered the very first cultivation method he had obtained from Daoist Nun You. That manual had helped him survive his most difficult early days, and if he remembered correctly, during his cultivation of the Desire Realm Celestial Body, his own flesh had once exhibited the exact same anomaly of bearing male and female faces!

Coupled with the monk's attire.

“This is one of the Brahma Cultivators!” Wang Ping’s mind suddenly cleared as he grasped the crux of the matter. “Brahma Nation and the Immortal Gate have always been at odds. He's an intruder!”

Wang Ping didn't know much about the Brahma Nation.

He only knew they were the mortal enemies of the Immortal Gate. Every so often, everyone from lowly disciples to high-ranking Qi Refining practitioners would engage in a massive magical war.

This was known as the Immortal-Brahma Sword Battle.

Aside from that, Wang Ping had never actually seen a Brahma Cultivator in person... Therefore, the news that the target was a Brahma Cultivator instantly swept away his misgivings.

The reason was simple: this was the Eight Trigrams Furnace.

The Immortal Gate's territory!

‘If a Loose Immortal is killed, it might draw the Immortal Gate's attention. But if a Brahma Cultivator dies here, absolutely no one will care. I won't have to worry about any subsequent investigations!’

This was a godsend!

At this thought, Wang Ping immediately sent a voice transmission. “I can cooperate, but I don't trust you, Brother Ji... Since you are interested, why don't you come to the County Yamen to discuss the details first?”

“That would be difficult.”

Ji Wuhen frowned slightly. “It's not that I don't want to, but that Loose Immortal might be watching me right now. I cannot let him notice any clues beforehand.”

“I won't hide it from you, Brother Wang. My plan is simple. I will pretend to assassinate you, and we will put on a show. Then, I will intentionally lose to you. That Loose Immortal answers to Vice Minister of Rites Li Wenzheng; seeing me defeated, he won't be able to hold back from striking. When he does, we will suddenly launch a sneak attack and take him down.”

“This...”

Wang Ping furrowed his brow, not answering immediately. In his heart, he instantly crossed out Ji Wuhen's plan, judging it to have virtually zero feasibility.

To put it bluntly, the man simply didn't understand immortal cultivation.

‘A Brahma Cultivator—and one who managed to infiltrate the Eight Trigrams Furnace at that—possesses strength that absolutely cannot be compared to these local extraordinary person Loose Immortals.’

The proper benchmark for him would be Daoist Nun You.

‘That venomous woman's cultivation base is the same as a Loose Immortal's. Both are at the Tribulation Transcending First Layer Perfection, a level where they have refined magic power. But in a real fight, the difference between them is like heaven and earth.’

‘It's better to overestimate the enemy. For a Brahma Cultivator who dares to sneak into the Eight Trigrams Furnace, it's best to assume his strength is higher to leave enough margin for error... With Ji Wuhen's plan, there might be a thirty or forty percent chance of killing an ordinary Loose Immortal. With Chenlong added in, it would be an absolute certainty.’

‘But killing Daoist Nun You?’

‘Not even close!’

However, Wang Ping quickly noticed a blind spot. ‘Wait... according to Ji Wuhen, that Brahma Cultivator came here to kill me. That's not right!’

He was currently Book Mountain's Child of Destiny!

And Book Mountain clearly had ties to the Immortal Gate. Unless that Brahma Cultivator had eaten the heart of a bear and the gall of a leopard, how would he dare come kill him? Wasn't he afraid of alerting the Immortal Gate?

Unless—

‘That Brahma Cultivator has already contacted Book Mountain, and the two sides reached an agreement?’ Wang Ping's mind raced. ‘Yes, that's the only possibility!’

‘After all, according to my previous guess, the founding patriarch of Book Mountain dares to smuggle magical treasures, launder dharma currency, and resell the Immortal Gate's assets inside the Eight Trigrams Furnace. For such an outlaw, what's colluding with a Brahma Cultivator...? But in that case, the Brahma Cultivator has no reason to kill me.’

Because that didn't align with Book Mountain's interests.

‘As the Child of Destiny, Book Mountain obviously wants me alive. If that Brahma Cultivator reached an agreement with them, he couldn't possibly violate this major premise.’

‘So Ji Wuhen got it wrong.’

Wang Ping was certain:

‘The Brahma Cultivator can't be here to kill me. He likely wants to use Ji Wuhen to stage an assassination, only to step in and save me at the critical moment!’

‘As for his goal, it's most likely the same as Book Mountain's: he's after the Child of Destiny's destiny. To that end, Book Mountain gave me opportunities, sent me cultivation methods, and even sent me a woman... This Brahma Cultivator is probably doing the same. He most likely wants to give me something to forge a karmic bond.’

In an instant, Wang Ping's eyes lit up.

‘This is my chance!’

‘To forge a karmic bond with me, he has to give me something good. Once he gives away his good items, he'll be left vulnerable. I can take his life while he's weak!’

In magical battles between practitioners, magical treasures came first, and spells came second.

Whether or not one had a handy magical treasure severely impacted a practitioner's strength. And if everything went as he predicted... he might actually have a real chance!

Wang Ping grew increasingly excited. After all, this was a Brahma Cultivator whose strength was likely on par with Daoist Nun You's. Killing him would be equivalent to killing an Immortal Gate true transmission disciple. How much good loot would he drop? He might even gather all the weapons needed to cultivate the Sacred Lord of Five Weapons in one fell swoop!

With this thought, Wang Ping finally made the call:

“Let's do it!”

He didn't plan on modifying Ji Wuhen's scheme, as doing so would require exposing Chenlong's existence, and he wasn't going to casually reveal that trump card.

As the saying goes, one must always maintain a guarded heart against others. Therefore, it was better to outwardly follow Ji Wuhen's plan while secretly making his own preparations in the background.

“Tomorrow at midnight, come kill me, Brother Ji. I'll be ready.”

“It's a deal.”

As his voice fell, Ji Wuhen's figure completely melted into the crowd, leaving no trace behind. Wang Ping then found a secluded spot and dispelled his paper figure clone.

.............

High in the sky.

The sea of clouds surged, reflecting golden light before ultimately transforming into a brilliant golden lotus dais. Master Kongzhi sat upright upon the dais, his monk robes snapping wildly in the wind.

In front of him hovered a Round Light Mirror.

The mirror reflected the figures of Ji Wuhen and the paper Wang Ping, showing them crossing paths, followed by the paper Wang Ping spontaneously combusting and disappearing.

“Strange...”

Master Kongzhi muttered under his breath, pondering to himself. “They crossed paths but didn't fight. Could it be he noticed it was just a paper figure and not his true body?”

Although he had never seen this so-called Child of Destiny before, the man's destiny—harder than vajra—was glaringly obvious to anyone well-versed in the arts of divination. Therefore, it was impossible for Master Kongzhi to have mistaken him. Yet for some reason, he still felt a faint sense that something was wrong.

Thus, he began to divine even more earnestly.

Unlike the Book Mountain Sect Master, his own destiny was equally tough. While he couldn't deduce all of the Child of Destiny's information, he could still glean fragments from the periphery.

“Hmm? This is...”

Suddenly, Master Kongzhi's gaze shifted slightly, and he stood up from the lotus dais. “Desire Realm Celestial Body. This Child of Destiny has cultivated the Other-Transformation Freedom Control Desire Realm Celestial Manual?”

That was an inheritance of the Brahma Cultivators. Where did he get it?

This was truly...

“...Excellent, excellent, excellent!”

Immediately, Master Kongzhi couldn't help but roar with laughter, filled with absolute joy. “With this karmic connection, I will definitely be able to claim a much larger share of this Child of Destiny!”

The more of his destiny he siphoned, the more Brahma Cultivators he could usher into the Eight Trigrams Furnace, preparing in advance for the next Immortal-Brahma Sword Battle.

It would be a tremendous merit!

With this thought, Master Kongzhi looked at Wang Ping in the mirror again, growing increasingly satisfied.

The Brahma Nation was different from the Immortal Gate.

The Immortal Gate's philosophy viewed all living beings as livestock. It was the naked law of the jungle: lower practitioners devoured Mortals, high immortals devoured lower practitioners, all the way up to the apex of the Immortal Gate.

The Brahma Nation believed this was far too extreme.

“Beneath the Immortal Gate, all living beings suffer. At its core, it is simply because they had bad luck during reincarnation. They were born into the wrong wombs and lack sufficient cultivation talent.”

The Immortal Gate's solution to this was to fully exploit the unlucky ones. Using a ‘big fish eats small fish’ approach, they forced those born into the wrong wombs to act as livestock, elevating those born into the right ones. Those who cultivated first drove those who cultivated later, passing this down from generation to generation until eventually achieving immortality together.

Destiny was born exactly for this purpose.

However, in the eyes of the Brahma Nation, this method was simply too inefficient. After all, everything was just a matter of luck during reincarnation.

This problem couldn't be fixed.

Since that was the case—wouldn't increasing the number of reincarnations solve it? Given absolute volume, even the smallest probability would infinitely approach one hundred percent.

Thus, the Brahma Nation's philosophy was very simple:

“All living beings should not be livestock; they should be food.”

“We should not divide living beings into rigid classes. Instead, we should treat them equally, consume them as quickly as possible, and increase the number of times they reincarnate.”

“This way, they can reincarnate into a good life sooner, and we can also increase our cultivation to better deliver all living beings from suffering.”

“This may seem like an atrocity, but it is actually true mercy. After all, all living beings suffer, and the faster they die, the less they have to suffer in the mortal coil.”

This was exactly the saying: until the human realm is emptied, I vow never to become a Buddha; only when all sentient beings are saved will I attain Bodhi!

“What a pity this Child of Destiny was born into the wrong womb and ended up inside the Immortal Gate's Eight Trigrams Furnace. Oh well, let me help you start your next life as quickly as possible.”

“Excellent, excellent.”

Master Kongzhi chanted the Buddha's name, sighing softly. “My Buddha is merciful. This disciple has given so much for the Mortals, yet can only gain a meager amount of cultivation in return.”

“It truly is far too strenuous for this disciple.”