MM Racing Chapter 7, The Crocodile Ancestor Falls, First Time Absorbing Destiny! [New book, please read!]
Chapter 7, The Crocodile Ancestor Falls, First Time Absorbing Destiny! [New book, please read!]
Su Ye was the first to step onto the ruins of the Great Thunderclap Temple. The red sand beneath his feet was ankle-deep, and the aura of millennia of desolation rushed towards him.
He closed his eyes and unleashed his divine sense, which covered a hundred feet.
A faint golden light flickered in the ruins, a testament to the power of vows emanating from the scattered fragments of Buddhist artifacts.
At the same time, divine sense locked onto two places. Deep inside the main hall, there was a seated human-shaped object. Divine sense was directly swallowed up and rebounded back to an ancient and chilling will.
A horizontally placed cuboid above the doorway creates a strong sense of repulsion but is not aggressive.
Su Ye understood immediately: the former was a bronze Buddha statue, a forbidden artifact of a quasi-emperor, and the latter was a bronze plaque of the Great Thunderclap Temple.
He quietly bypassed those two places and walked towards the ruins of the side hall.
Su Yexing arrived at the collapsed roof of the side hall, circulated the power of the Nine Yang Scripture, and a faint golden light emanated from his palm. He then used this power to lift the broken bronze lamp that was half-buried in the red sand.
The lamp emerged from the water, turning into a blue light that entered the sea of suffering below his navel.
The second item, a wooden fish split into three pieces, bounced up from three directions, reassembled in mid-air, and transformed into a stream of light that entered the body.
Then, several fragments of artifacts, including half a vajra, a chipped bronze bowl, and a fragment of a Buddhist bell, floated into the air and disappeared into the sea of suffering one after another.
Pang Bo stared in disbelief, exclaiming, "This...this is divine intervention? Where did the item go?"
Without turning his head, Su Ye said calmly, "After a cultivator opens up the Sea of Bitterness, they can store their items inside."
"The dantian, three inches below the navel, is the starting point of the Sea of Wheels Secret Realm."
"If you embark on the path of spiritual practice in the future, you will be able to do the same."
Zhou Yi seemed to understand something, and said, "This is the legendary... storage space?"
Su Ye nodded.
Lin Jia stared blankly at Su Ye's back, her judgment becoming clearer: this Taoist priest was not of this world.
As Su Ye collected the remnants, the World Tree seed automatically stripped away the ownerless fortune attached to each Buddhist artifact.
Although its remaining fortune has thinned to almost nothing after a thousand years of wear and tear,
But as nearly a hundred fragments accumulated, the golden, thread-like energy gathered in the sea of bitterness into a pale golden mist, slowly swirling around the seed.
After collecting the remaining artifacts from the outer perimeter, Su Ye stopped ten feet away from the ruins of the main hall.
The bronze Buddha statue sitting on the stone platform is only a little over a foot tall, its body covered in mottled patina of copper, except for two dark red spots of light seeping from its eye sockets, like congealed blood or embers.
When his consciousness touched the Buddha statue, it was swallowed up again, and he felt an added layer of dread from being watched.
That was an ancient will in slumber, eyeing its passing prey through the sealed iron fence.
In the original story, after Li Xiaoman took the Buddha statue, she was possessed by the Crocodile Ancestor's divine power, and her personality changed drastically from then on.
Su Ye took a step back.
A forbidden artifact for quasi-emperors, sealing the core of the array; it must not be touched.
He looked up at the bronze plaque above the door.
The material is neither gold nor wood, and the surface has a dull Buddhist light. When the divine sense touches it, runes and patterns emerge layer by layer, and every ripple is connected to the sealed body deep in the foundation.
In the original story, it was when Pang Bo removed the bronze plaque that the Great Thunderclap Temple collapsed on the spot, and the Crocodile Ancestor broke free from his seal.
Su Ye turned to the crowd, his expression serious, and said, "The Buddha statue deep inside the main hall cannot be touched, nor can the bronze plaque on the door."
"These two items are the sealing core of the array; touching them will cause a great catastrophe!"
Ye Fanmin noticed the seriousness in Su Ye's tone, nodded, and made a note of it.
Although Pang Bo was curious about the bronze plaque, he suppressed his curiosity when he saw Su Ye's unusually serious expression.
Liu Yunzhi's gaze lingered on the bronze Buddha statue for a moment.
Li Changqing, who was standing nearby, leaned over and whispered, "That Buddha statue looks quite valuable..."
He was then silenced by a single look from Liu Yunzhi.
After Su Ye drew the red line of the forbidden zone of the Great Thunderclap Temple, everyone searched for unclaimed Buddhist artifacts in the ruins.
Ye Fan found a Bodhi seed deep in the rubble behind the side hall.
It is about the size of a finger joint, with dry skin, but when the fingertip is rubbed, it reveals an extremely fine and dense ring of golden light.
A thought flickered in his mind, and he immediately put it away close to his body.
This was left behind by Su Ye on purpose.
He knew that this item was destined for Ye Fan, so there was no need to seize the fortune that belonged to him.
Moreover, Su Ye didn't want to get involved with a quasi-emperor of Buddhism for no reason.
Pang Bo found a Zen staff under a broken beam. The staff was dark gold and had not rusted for a thousand years. The nine copper rings on the staff head rang clearly.
He hoisted it onto his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.
Lin Jia picked up a string of eighteen Buddhist prayer beads at the base of the crumbling wall, wrapped it around her left wrist, and felt the beads against her skin.
Zhou Yi pulled out a bronze mirror from a pile of broken tiles.
The mirror reflected a closed-eyed Buddha image, not his own, and he quietly slipped it into his pocket.
Wang Ziwen picked up the broken inkstone.
Zhang Ziling held tightly to the bronze lamp whose oil still emitted a faint glow.
Li Wen found a copper bell, and when he heard the sound of the bell, the swelling in his ankle seemed to lessen.
Liu Yunzhi chose a vajra, the tip of which still bore dark red marks, and it felt good in his hand.
Li Changqing took a small bronze lamp with a chipped rim and said, "The smaller one is mine," but his eyes glanced at Zhang Ziling's more complete lamp.
Su Ye made a point of observing Li Xiaoman.
After hesitating for a moment, she picked up a jade hairpin on the other side of the ruins. The hairpin was cold to the touch, and her palm felt cool when she touched it.
The jade hairpin is not a Buddha statue.
Su Ye withdrew his gaze and continued to collect the last few broken artifacts.
With Su Ye's reminder, everyone held a Buddhist artifact in their hands this time.
A faint golden light emanated from the surface of the ritual implement, forming a light protective shield to isolate it from the harsh Martian environment.
The ruins of the Great Thunder Temple remain well-preserved. Deep inside the main hall, the red light in the eyes of the Buddha statue remains constant, and the runes on the bronze plaque are as dark as ever.
Deep underground, the dormant divine consciousness of the Crocodile Ancestor slowly emerged to the surface.
It sensed that the key sealing array had not been touched, but nearly a hundred auxiliary Buddhist artifacts on the periphery had been swept away by this group of ant-like mortals.
The seal itself remained intact, but the outer layer of restrictions had thinned considerably—by a tiny bit.
The crocodile ancestor was momentarily confused.
Just as the group reached the middle of the wasteland and returned to the bronze coffin.
A muffled thud suddenly came from underground, followed by a second one.
The roar of hatred, accumulated over thousands of years, pierced through the rock layers, through the red sand, and struck everyone.
"roar--!!"
Startled, Li Xiaoman immediately gripped the jade hairpin tightly.
"run!"
Su Ye spoke up.
More than twenty people ran wildly, and the golden light of the Buddhist artifacts drew a band of light across the wasteland on the red sand.
The tremors underground subsided shortly afterward.
Crocodile Ancestor judged that forcibly breaking through the seal would consume far more resources than it would gain, so he temporarily suppressed his anger back into the abyss.
Panting, everyone rushed back to the bronze coffin, and the Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin Start Program was automatically triggered.
The dark red rust marks between the scales of the nine dragon corpses slowly faded, and the coffin slowly rose from the surface of Mars.
Just then, a hissing sound came from the depths of the Great Thunderclap Temple once again.
Crocodile Ancestor sensed that the Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin was about to leave through space. It only passes by once every few thousand years, and if it missed this opportunity, it didn't know how many years it would have to wait.
Without hesitation, it concentrated its remaining power into a single point, sacrificing most of its cultivation to tear a half-finger-wide crack in the weakest point of the outer restriction. A colossal hand formed from divine power burst forth from the crack.
Inside the coffin, through the gap in the not-quite-closed coffin door, everyone could see the dark red sky below.
A gigantic hand, a blend of eerie green and dark red, rose from the direction of the ruins. Its five fingers spread out, obscuring half the sky, and its long fingernails ripped through the air with a terrifying hiss.
A giant hand reached out to grab the coffin from the Nine Dragons, turning the red of Mars into dark green.
Pang Bo held his staff horizontally in front of Lin Jia, his lips trembling but he refused to back down.
Ye Fan gripped the wooden fish tightly, golden arcs of electricity crackling between his palm and the fish.
Liu Yunzhi leaned against the coffin wall, the Vajra pestle held horizontally across his chest, cold sweat pouring down his forehead.
The moment the giant fingertip touched the outer aura of the Nine Dragons Coffin, a ring of golden light faintly illuminated the bronze coffin.
Extremely light, faint, and thin, yet it was wiped away on the spot by the giant hand.
It wasn't a collapse or a repulsion; it was utter and complete annihilation.
Golden light poured into the underground seal through the spatial rift torn open by the giant hand, precisely disappearing into the half-finger-wide crack.
The ground was blown through.
The crocodile ancestor's enormous body crumbled inch by inch in the golden light, its scales turned to ash, its soul fire extinguished, and its demonic energy evaporated.
The golden light and the radiant light emanating from the bronze Buddha statue deep within the ruins mingled and then both sank into silence.
"No--!!"
The Crocodile Ancestor's final scream tore through the Martian sky.
The people inside the coffin collapsed to the ground.
Zhang Ziling was panting heavily.
After a long pause, Pang Bo managed to squeeze out, "Dead?"
"That thing... is dead?!"
While the people inside the coffin struggled between despair and relief, Su Ye's sea of suffering turned upside down.
After the Crocodile Ancestor perished, the fortune accumulated over thousands of years was completely absorbed by the World Tree seed in his Sea of Bitterness.
An ancient demon saint, personally suppressed by Shakyamuni, possesses a fortune far exceeding the sum of all previous fragments of Buddhist artifacts.
The combined fortune of the nearly one hundred fragments of Buddhist artifacts surrounding the Great Thunderclap Temple is less than 20% of its total fortune.
The golden veins on the seed's surface weave, converge, and merge at a breathtaking speed, eventually forming a crack at the top.
A tiny, almost transparent green sprout, no bigger than a sesame seed, peeks out from the seed coat, yet it shines brighter than anything else on the vast, bitter sea.
Golden light enveloped the bud tip, and the bud tip slowly unfurled its first leaf.
The leaf is only one-third open, but the veins are so clear that they are exactly the same as the golden veins on the surface of the seed.
The World Tree has sprouted.
Su Ye closed her eyes, a very faint smile curving her lips.
A thought popped into my mind: sprouting is just the beginning.
The roots of the World Tree can penetrate all the heavens and myriad realms, and once it has accumulated enough fortune, it will cover the heavens and beyond.
All the myriad realms and other planes of existence are within the reach of the tree's roots.
The bronze coffin was completely closed.
Nine dragon corpses dragged the coffin through the Martian atmosphere, leaving the red wasteland and the ruins of the Great Thunder Temple behind them.
The twenty-odd people inside the coffin slowly recovered from their shock.
Some people were thanking God, some were checking if the Buddhist artifacts were damaged, and some were sitting slumped in silence.
Ye Fan held the Bodhi seed in his palm and rubbed it, his gaze sweeping over Su Ye, who was sitting with his eyes closed.
Pang Bo rested his staff on his knees and whispered to Ye Fan, "That monster just now... was it this coffin that did it?"
Ye Fan was silent for a moment, then said, "I don't know."
The bronze coffin tore open a spatial rift in the starry sky.
Next stop, the Big Dipper, the desolate and forbidden land.
Su Ye opened her eyes in the darkness inside the building, then closed them again.
The World Tree sapling in the Bitter Sea stands quietly on the golden sea of bitterness, with only a sesame-sized bud and a third of a leaf.