Chapter 503: Ksitigarbha 3D Puzzle

Ao Yulie was about to say something more when, from that direction, the sudden sound of gongs and drums rang out; the sedan bearers hoisted the ghost sedan and prepared to move on to the next stop.

Tang Luo shoved the severed-head banner into Ao Yulie's hands: "Go block it — evil ghosts react to Ksitigarbha's hand and won't attack it; it has some effect."

"Oh, okay." Ao Yulie took the severed-head banner, thrust it forward, and planted himself in front of the lead guide.

The evil ghost's footsteps halted, the eerie, grating tune it had been singing also ceased at once, and simultaneously the band beside the ghost sedan fell silent.

"Looks like it works," Tang Luo said. "You hold it here for now; if you can get inside, go in and tell Bajie — I'll go down into the water first to take a look."

"Master, be careful." Ao Yulie said, walked up to the ghost sedan, lifted the curtain, and stepped inside.

With the severed hand there, he instantly felt no panic.

After Ao Yulie left carrying the severed hand, the evil ghost angler on that side turned and walked toward Tang Luo, treating him as the new bait.

Tang Luo gave these evil ghosts no chance; he leapt up and plunged into the bone-chilling water.

The sensation upon entering the water was extraordinarily heavy — not at all like jumping into water, more like being poured into a concrete block, sinking straight down.

A stone sinking into the sea.

The water surface didn't stir a single ripple, utterly still.

The human-faced fish nearby swam over, opened its mouth as if trying to swallow Tang Luo, but because of the size difference it merely circled around him once and gave up.

Tang Luo let his body sink slowly; after a while he brushed against hair in the lake water.

Those strands, though there was clearly no undercurrent, swayed and instantly coiled around Tang Luo's feet, dragging him downward.

The sinking speed accelerated at once; Tang Luo plunged straight into the "aquatic weed thicket."

All around was nothing but black long hair; it twined around his hands and feet, his torso, his neck, pulling him down with force.

Tang Luo's body sank bit by bit into the mud at the pond bottom; beside him were head after head, eyes closed, the portions below their necks all buried in the pond-bottom mud.

Before long Tang Luo's lower half was completely embedded in the mud.

The black hair on him had already loosened; the mud itself possessed a tremendous suction that dragged Tang Luo down bit by bit.

Before long, just like the heads beside him, Tang Luo's white hair began to sway in the water.

The suction stopped at that same moment — its purpose already achieved.

"Seems this pond ends here," Tang Luo thought to himself, but he did not choose to burst out; instead, his body continued sinking deeper.

The whole person vanished completely.

Tang Luo felt that the mud beneath his feet was not the pond bottom; deeper down, there seemed to be more space.

So he intended to go further down and see.

The restrictive force in the mud was no more severe than in the water; Tang Luo could move in the mud just the same, continuing to sink downward.

Pitch black all around, he couldn't see his hand before his face, barely able to discern up from down.

Who knew how long he had been sinking — maybe a minute, maybe an hour.

Suddenly Tang Luo's feet touched something hard, halting his further descent.

"Bottom?"

Unable to see anything at all, unable to perceive, Tang Luo simply reoriented himself and reached out to touch.

The feel in his hand: icy cold, hard — he seemed to have indeed reached some unknown bottom.

Like a blind man feeling an elephant, Tang Luo groped all around, finding a raised area of no small size.

"This is..." Tang Luo raised his hand and threw a punch.

Hard — the feedback was far harder than any other spot he had felt.

"Could it be?" A guess formed in his mind; Tang Luo "swam" to the side, hands forming claws, and dug into the "hard ground" beneath his feet.

Sure enough, the sensation of piercing in carried a faint, barely perceptible elasticity.

"Rise!"

With a low murmur, Tang Luo's hands erupted with force.

On shore, Ao Yulie and Howling Celestial Dog stood as close to the ghost sedan as they could, staring at the pond, searching for Tang Luo's figure.

At the ghost sedan, Zhu Bajie held the severed-head banner; that severed hand swayed to and fro near the ghost sedan, suppressing it from continuing forward.

"Second Senior Brother, is this hand Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's?" Ao Yulie asked.

"Probably," Zhu Bajie said. "The severed-head banner isn't something just any 'person' would possess; what did Master say?"

"Master said it's Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's severed hand," Ao Yulie said. "I remember Master saying his Vajra Bones were forged with the Karma Fire when he fought Ksitigarbha's demonic thoughts."

"Looks like Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva really has met with mishap," Zhu Bajie said, quite worried.

Ksitigarbha King — who is Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva?

The Bodhisattva closest to Buddhahood; beneath the Three Buddhas — Dipamkara, Tathagata, and Maitreya — stands he.

Even Guanyin and Samantabhadra must stand behind this Ksitigarbha King.

He can be called a top-ten big shot of the entire Mountains and Seas Realm in both cultivation and strength.

Demonic thoughts alone would be one thing.

They might have been self-severed by Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, but now this is Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's severed hand — the problem is rather serious.

Not to mention the weakened Little White Dragon; even at full condition there's still a gap to Zhu Bajie.

Even if both were at peak state, before Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva they'd both be little brothers.

Whether Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva is trapped in this hell, or this hell has intricate ties to him — neither is good news.

Just as he was thinking, the earth beneath his feet suddenly trembled.

The ground shook and mountains swayed; the originally placid pond began to boil.

The surrounding evil ghosts suddenly reacted, emitting incomparably shrill ghost howls; their originally at-least-humanoid bodies began to twitch and twist eerily.

As if countless giant hands were kneading them at will, constantly forcing them into various anti-joint poses.

"What's going on?"

"Master intends to dismantle the 'house'?" Perhaps because of the severed hand, Zhu Bajie and the others were unaffected.

The trembling beneath their feet grew more and more violent, the rumbling already drowning out the ghostly howls.

"Crash!"

The boiling pond erupted like a geyser, a massive black shadow drilling up from underground.

Rather, it was yanked out by someone with brute force.

The square pond was destroyed, the nearby ground torn up, the terrain thoroughly wrecked.

Pond water flowed everywhere; many corpses could be seen buried in the black mud.

Long hair covered their heads; quite a few limbs and torsos were exposed as the terrain changed.

The human-faced fish's limbs were mere ornaments, utterly useless; once ashore, they could only keep flopping and biting!

Their targets included their own kind, those corpses emerging from the mud, and the evil ghost anglers caught up in the fray.

A chaotic mess.

This was still the first time Ao Yulie and the others had seen evil ghosts killing each other; the scene... well, actually not intense at all.

The evil ghost anglers simply would not resist, letting the human-faced fish bite them continuously.

And the human-faced fish's bite force was frighteningly low; they bit for half a day and couldn't bite anything off.

"Master, that is..."

Zhu Bajie turned his attention back to Tang Luo.

The tremor just now was because Tang Luo dug a colossus out from underground.

Now held aloft in Tang Luo's single hand, it presented an elongated shape; because it was too large, part of it was obscured by the surrounding darkness, its appearance not particularly distinct.

"A leg." Tang Luo tossed the thing in his hand downward.

The ground shook once more.

"Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's?" Ao Yulie and the others retreated to the limit, barely making out this thing — it did indeed seem to be a leg.

"That I wouldn't know." Tang Luo said.

The severed hand held a head stupa, still recognizable.

This true thigh has no adornments whatsoever; identifying a person by their leg — Tang Luo doesn't have that skill.

"Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva was dismembered?" Ao Yulie swallowed hard.

A dangerous possibility occurred to him.

Ksitigarbha's true body dismembered, buried throughout hell?

Good heavens!

Why is this mission so difficult.

"Possible." Tang Luo stroked his chin and said, "First a hand, now a leg... Right!"

He clapped his hands: "How many times did you stop before this?"

"Once." Zhu Bajie said.

"What were the circumstances when you stopped that time?" Tang Luo asked.

"Tree branches reached into the ghost palanquin and took several people away." Zhu Bajie said, "Don't know what conditions need to be met."

"Outside is actually a tree, covered in human heads." Tang Luo said, "I wanted to catch up to you at the time, so I didn't look closely; looks like..."

"There too?" Ao Yulie said.

"Possible." Tang Luo said, "You wait here, I'll go back and check."

"... Okay."

Zhu Bajie and Ao Yulie didn't say anything like "be careful"; at first these evil ghosts had indeed made them worry for Tang Luo's safety.

After all, they were unprecedented, unkillable, nearly a natural law of "enemies".

But by now Tang Luo was wrecking the place like a husky, and these evil ghosts still couldn't do anything to him.

So the two stopped worrying.

Through the constant ghost encounters, Ao Yulie and Zhu Bajie had realized the evil ghosts' lethality has a limit!

Currently that limit is still insufficient to pose a fatal threat to Tang Luo.

Unless they stop being "ghosts".

Only one road, no need to worry about getting lost; on the return trip Tang Luo quickly reached that big tree, those human heads making "gurgle gurgle" sounds, as if welcoming a new member.

The branches had just begun to sway when Tang Luo went up and struck with a Great Hand Seal.

He held nothing back; vast power blasted onto the human-head tree.

At the same time, those branches also pierced Tang Luo's neck, trying to pierce through and pluck his head off.

This scene, in a sense, was an all-out offense with no defense from either side.

Neither side could inflict truly effective lethal damage on the other.

The human-head tree was shattered by Tang Luo, the remaining trunk fell, the massive root system completely uprooted; the human heads suffered no damage, falling to the ground and rolling.

A large number of mutilated corpses appeared with the tree's disappearance; these things had originally been inside the main trunk and the root system.

"As expected, there are."

Tang Luo stepped forward two steps, grabbed through the air, and pulled out three ribs.

He pinched hard twice; not a single mark appeared on the three ribs.

"Ksitigarbha jigsaw puzzle." Tang Luo turned and headed back.

Soon he returned to the ghost palanquin's position; the ghost palanquin and the wedding escort procession remained utterly motionless.

However that true thigh had already become normal-sized.

Its form fully revealed, identical to the severed hand on the head stupa.