Chapter 469: Words Become Law!

Immune to all Heavenly Dao Law!

Jieyin and Zhunti's faces turned deathly gray in an instant.

They wanted to run.

Their legs wouldn't obey.

Bodhi's "have a cup of tea" was like an invisible shackle locked directly onto their divine souls; their legs felt as if filled with lead, unable to move.

Zhunti's six arms were still dripping blood, his swollen facial skin twitched a few times, trying to maintain the last shred of a Saint's dignity.

He couldn't do it.

Because Bodhi was watching him.

That pair of gray eyes swept over indifferently, as if looking at two weeds by the roadside.

Zhunti's knees buckled.

Jieyin's knees also buckled.

The two Saints of the Western Teaching, supreme beings who had cultivated through countless eons, knelt on both knees in the void, foreheads touching the ground, and kowtowed with a bang.

"Senior, spare my life!"

"We have eyes but no pearls, failing to recognize your true visage, Senior!"

"It's all that old coot Hongjun's coercion! It has nothing to do with us!"

Zhunti kowtowed until his forehead turned bruised, his voice trembling with sobs.

Jieyin even pressed his wrinkled, bark‑like old face against the void ground, rubbing it forward incessantly.

A proper Saint.

They knelt no different from two stray dogs.

Sun Wukong, shouldering his iron staff, watched this scene and snorted a cold laugh from his nose.

"Yo, isn't this a Saint?"

"Just now, when you were chasing and beating me, you were pretty imposing, huh?"

"When you were swinging those six arms at me, why weren't you this polite?"

Zhunti's body shuddered, but he dared not speak; his head knocked even louder.

Bodhi didn't look at those two.

His gaze swept past them, landing on a certain direction in the distant void.

That direction was Ling Shan.

The Western Heaven's pure land.

The foundation of the Buddhist sect for myriad years.

The old man's lips moved.

The sound was not loud, like muttering to oneself, yet also like announcing a verdict.

"The Buddhist sect is hypocritical."

"Fortune must be cut."

Six words.

Light and airy.

Like a teacher casually reciting a line of poetry in class.

But the next moment.

The entire universe trembled.

From the distant direction of Ling Shan came a muffled roar that tore heaven and earth.

That sound was so loud it made everyone's eardrums buzz.

Sun Wukong followed the sound and, with his heavenly eye, saw what was happening far away.

Upon Ling Shan, the nine‑grade golden lotus that had borne the Buddhist sect's incense and faith through countless eons snapped at the middle of its stem.

It was not shattered by a blow.

Nor was it torn apart.

It broke of its own accord.

As if the lotus itself had endorsed those words.

As if the concept of fortune, at the very moment Bodhi spoke, carried out his command.

The upper half of the lotus fell from high above, crashing onto Ling Shan's Daxiong Baodian and crushing half of the hall.

The lower half of the stalk withered rapidly, its golden sheen fading as the jade‑green leaves curled and yellowed.

All color drained from Zhunti's face.

He jerked his head up, eyes wide, lips trembling violently as he looked toward Ling Shan.

That was the painstaking effort of countless eons that he and Jieyin had poured into it.

It shattered.

Say it breaks, and it breaks.

A single word and it shatters.

"No! No!"

Zhunti's voice sharpened to distortion: "That's the root of the Western Teaching! Our root!"

Jieyin's body went limp in the void, the flesh on his old face seeming to have been drained of moisture, drying out even more severely.

He opened his mouth but could not make a sound.

And throughout the Three Realms, countless Buddhist practitioners felt this catastrophe at the same moment.

The arhats meditating on Ling Shan horrifiedly discovered their golden bodies were fading.

The bodhisattva subduing demons felt his magic ebb like a retreating tide.

The high monk lecturing sutras heard his Buddha chant turn pale and feeble, the characters of the scriptures vanishing one by one from the scroll.

Accumulated over several eons, a single sentence—returned to zero.

The Tathagata lay in the ruins, his body emitting crackling sounds.

That was his remaining golden body shattering.

Cracks spread from the hole in his chest, spiderwebbing across his whole body.

His realm was falling.

The Buddha-realm collapsed.

The Bodhisattva-realm collapsed.

His cultivation regressed wildly, impossible to halt.

The Tathagata opened his mouth, voicelessly howling, his features twisted beyond human shape.

It hurt him more than killing him.

Because cultivation is his everything.

Sun Wukong watched the Tathagata's miserable state, the corners of his mouth twitching upward.

Satisfying.

Really damn satisfying.

But Bodhi did not stop.

The old man's gaze swept over the battlefield, where heavenly soldiers and generals and Buddhist followers lay prone or kneeling.

He spoke.

"All the heavenly gods and buddhas."

"All are ants."

This time even Sun Wukong felt it.

It was not power.

Not sorcery.

Not supernatural abilities.

It was the very rules being rewritten.

With those words spoken,

The weapons in the heavenly soldiers' hands first dimmed.

Then the magical patterns on their armor faded.

Finally the auspicious clouds beneath their feet dispersed.

A hundred thousand heavenly soldiers and generals, three thousand arhats and buddhas, simultaneously lost the ability to fly.

As if kicked off the clouds by a foot.

Like raindrops.

A dense mass of figures fell from the sky, accompanied by wails, cries, and the clatter of weapons hitting the ground.

Someone broke a leg.

Someone lost a tooth.

Someone fainted outright.

Scattered among them were their shattered Dharma treasures and broken banners.

The once-lofty heavenly soldiers and generals now smashed to the ground like dumplings being dropped.

In the very center, the one who fell hardest was the Jade Emperor.

The purple-gold crown symbolizing supreme authority over the Three Realms slipped from his head, rolling on the ground a few turns.

The Jade Emperor collapsed, his hair splayed across his face, his dragon robe tattered like a beggar's rags, no part of him unscathed.

He dared not lift his head.

He lay there prone, hardly different from an old turtle withdrawn into its shell.

Sun Wukong stood where he was, iron staff planted on the ground, head raised, watching the falling 'immortals' fill the sky.

He laughed.

He laughed openly.

He laughed until his eyes curved like crescent moons.

Back when those damned things pressed him under Five Elements Mountain.

Back when those people sat in high office, pointing at the rivers and mountains.

Back when they looked down their noses at him.

Who could have imagined today's scene?

"Exhilarating."

Sun Wukong uttered a single syllable, yet it summed up all his feelings.

Bodhi withdrew his gaze.

The old man lowered his gaze, looking at the trembling Jieyin and Zhunti before him.

Zhunti had already wept, nose running and tears streaming.

Jieyin lacked even the strength to kowtow, just lying there like a withered log.

Bodhi raised a finger.

Zhun Ti's pupils suddenly contracted, fear reaching its peak.

"Don't! Senior, I beg..."

Bodhi's finger dropped.

Gently touched Zhun Ti's brow.

No explosion.

No Cànjiào.

No blood.

But something was drawn out from Zhun Ti's body.

That was the Saint's fruition.

It was the foundation he had cultivated over several eons, having withstood countless heavenly tribulations before condensing.

Zhun Ti's body was shrinking.

His six arms disappeared.

His towering Dharma body disappeared.

The Saint's dignity disappeared.

Finally, kneeling there was a withered yellow sapling.

Bodhi tree.

Zhun Ti's true form.

A half-dead sapling, its leaves nearly all fallen, a broken sapling.

Jie Yin didn't even dare to look.

But Bodhi's finger had already turned toward him.

A point.

The same process.

Moments later, another sapling appeared on the ground.

Even worse than Zhun Ti's sapling.

Branches and trunk dry and cracked, roots exposed, like the last struggling sapling in a century‑dry wasteland.

Sun Wukong crouched and brushed away the dead leaves of the two saplings.

"Saint?"

He snorted with laughter.

"Just this?"

Bodhi patted his sleeve, turned, and walked toward Sun Wukong.

The old man's expression returned to its usual calm, as if what he had just done was as easy as taking a sip of water.

"Left."

"Where to?"

Sun Wukong followed.

"Ling Shan."

Bodhi's voice was very flat.

"The score with the True and False Monkey King must be settled in the Tathagata's lair to have enough face."

Sun Wukong's eyes lit up.

But just as master and disciple took a step, a tremor came from a deeper void.

That tremor did not belong to any known power system.

Bodhi stopped.

His gray eyes gazed into the deepest part of the heavens; on his usually bland face, a subtle gravity appeared for the first time.

"Master?"

"Something has awakened."

Bodhi's voice was very soft, very soft.

"Something that shouldn't have awakened."