I have Immortality In The Cultivation World

Buddha's Birthday.

Devotees randomly selected gathered at the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple to attend the ceremony.

In front of the Great Heroic Treasure Hall, it was a sea of people, all in gray monk's robes, standing in neat rows, silent as the grave.

All around were long banners of bright yellow erected, adorned with twisting, bizarre patterns, the result of a fusion between Buddhist scripture and forbidden formation runes.

Beneath the banners, high monks sat in meditation, chanting scriptures in unison, their droning voices like a demon's incantation piercing through the ears.

The youths attending the Buddha's Birthday ceremony, who had never endured such torment, thought it a test of their Buddhist practice. The prospect of witnessing the Buddha ascending to Ultimate Bliss and their families enjoying wealth and honor made them grit their teeth and persevere.

From dawn until midday, under the scorching sun, they were tormented until their vision blurred.

The chant of "Amitabha Buddha," "Our Buddha is merciful," still droned in their ears, and hallucinations appeared before them: flowers raining from the sky, golden lotuses sprouting from the ground, as if ascending to the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

Inside the hall.

Ben Kong lightly stroked his long eyebrows, his face showing a benevolent countenance, as his gaze swept over the tens of thousands of devotees outside, all of whom were in a daze.

"Light the Soul-igniting Incense, present the Buddha's treasure!"

Immediately, a monk lit the Soul-igniting Incense, and a faint spiritual energy wafted about; eight sturdy Martial Monks carried the altar to the outside of the hall, where the supreme treasured Bodhi Dharmachakra was enshrined.

The Artifact Spirit, sensing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, like a parched person finding water, instantly manifested a sixteen-foot-tall Golden Buddha and began to absorb the energy desperately.

The sparse spiritual energy was not enough to satiate the Buddha's treasure. During its breaths of consumption, it also devoured the vital essence and spirit of the devotees.

As spiritual objects in the world became increasingly scarce, the high monks of Buddhism, after meditating on the divine skills left behind by the sage Miao Shan and revising them, transformed them into a ritual that could make use of the essence and souls of the common people as a sacrificial substitute for some of the spiritual energy needed to nourish the Buddha's treasure.

The flaw was that the Buddha's treasure was tainted by resentment, and the Artifact Spirit already showed signs of demonization.

The utterly exhausted devotees outside the hall, in their delirium, saw the Golden Buddha descending to earth, feeling lighter and lighter, as if they were ascending to immortality.

"Amitabha Buddha!"

Ben Kong's face showed an expression of reluctance, reciting a hundred and thirty years' worth of Buddhist scriptures, always talking about compassion, yet he had become the executioner slaughtering the Buddhist devotees.

"They die for the prosperity of our Buddhist order. Remember to elevate their families to second-class status, allowing them to enter the temple for three generations for cultivation."

The other monks nodded slightly, praising Ben Kong for his great compassion, saying that merely dying one's offspring was already a great honor under the Buddha's blessing.

At this moment.

The ceremony had reached its climax, and under the blessing of the Buddha's treasure, the chanting spread from the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple down the mountain.

From a distance, the mountain shone with a brilliant golden light, and the giant Buddha carved into the mountain peak came alive under the glow of the Buddha light, smiling while holding a flower!

The monks and commoners who came to worship on their own, seeing such a spectacle, knelt on the ground, chanting devoutly. They envied the monks participating in the ceremony, and wished to take their place.

Zhou Yi transformed into a yellow-robed monk, using his mana to survey through his eyes. The light bursting from the mountain was not Buddha light but rather a cloud of resentment formed by the Yin Sha energy.

"In this degenerate age, to condense such resentment, at least tens of thousands must have been blood sacrificed!"

Within the cloud, countless souls of the wronged writhed and wandered, seeking to break free and torment the living, but they were suppressed by the Buddha's treasure's circumscribed spell, only able to emit pained wails.

"If it's capable of such might within the world, it could be none other than a supreme treasure of the Buddhist order. The virtuous elders who crafted this treasure, had they known their descendants would bloody sacrifice it to demonic beings, would they not leap out of their coffins in fury!"

With this thought, Zhou Yi manifested Buddha light under his feet, conjuring golden lotus thrones.

The treasure, which he obtained from the Blood Moon Demon Venerable, was surrounded by dual layers of illusion techniques; to the mortal eye, it appeared as shining Buddha light.

Above the mountain was a True Demon, while Zhou Yi was a false Buddha!

The monks and commoners beside him, chanting and kneeling, saw the golden lotus ascending into the sky. Initially shocked, frenzy soon took them; they hailed the descent of the True Buddha, heedless of the grave sin of blasphemy, and madly rushed toward the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple.

The golden lotus flew to the airspace above the Great Heroic Treasure Hall; Zhou Yi looked down and spotted the Buddha's treasure devouring people's vital essence.

"Audacious demon, I recognized you as a Demon Head with one glance. Reveal your true form to me!"

Emboldened by the Secret Technique, his voice thundered like a tempest, resounding for dozens of miles.

Devotees immersed in the illusionary realm abruptly came to their senses, feeling weak and limp in their limbs as if they had been celebrating nonstop for half a month, and with a thud, they collapsed to the ground.

At the same time.

Looking up, they saw a golden palm that shielded the sky, descending from the heavens and smashing the thirty-foot Golden Buddha into powder.

Hiss!

The Buddha treasure emitted a feral screech, no longer able to maintain the illusory Buddha light.

The entangled black and red Yin Sha energy erupted, mingling with countless wronged souls and fierce ghosts to form a ghastly and terrifying ghost's face, trying to resist the golden palm.

"Petty trickery, how dare you play the lute to a cow, Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon..."

Zhou Yi sensed the power burst from the Buddha treasure and immediately felt relieved, barely equivalent to a casual blow from a Golden Elixir True Monarch; it couldn't even break through his own defensive spell.

The golden palm manipulated the spell, morphing into a hundred-yard Golden Dragon, which opened its mouth and swallowed the terrifying ghost face into its belly.

There was no explosion of a world-shaking battle; everyone breathed a sigh of relief as if the forces of Buddha and demon had been equally matched, the aftermath would have reduced everything to ashes.

The mountain breeze blew away the evil aura; had it not been for the Golden Dragon spiraling in the sky, everything just then would seem like a dream!

"We bow before our Buddha!"

"Our Buddha is merciful!"

"..."

Not knowing who started it, the devotees knelt down one after another to worship, praying for the True Buddha's blessing.

The only silence was inside the Great Heroic Treasure Hall, where the monks, usually most devout to the Buddha, stood dumbfounded, utterly horrified.

How could there be a Golden Elixir True Monarch in this world!

The high monks of the various temples, whose authority rivaled emperors and who enjoyed all the glory and wealth of the world, had long ceased to believe in Buddha or karma and retribution, seeing them merely as means to enslave the populace.

Zhou Yi landed his escaping light, step by step blooming lotuses beneath his feet, and entered the Great Heroic Treasure Hall, saying in a cold voice.

"You have all turned into Demon Heads, using the Dharma assembly to perform a Blood Sacrifice on the disciples of the Buddhist sect. The Buddha knows of this matter and has sent this poor monk to cast you into the eighteen levels of hell!"

"You are the demon, the incarnation of Bo Xun, who disturbs our Buddhist sect!"

Ben Kong's Qi-Blood exploded within his Dantian, and with a crackling sound like bursting firecrackers, his withered body inflated like being pumped with air, expanding into a twelve-foot giant.

"To defile the Buddha is to be executed!"

With his gaze lowered, Zhou Yi recited the heavenly laws, and the impressive Ben Kong burst into flames all over his body. He did not even emit a scream before burning to black ash.

A remnant soul fell into Zhou Yi's hand, and he immediately used the Soul Search technique, learning all the secrets of the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple.

Pu Ji was so frightened that his forehead sweated, no longer daring to question whether it was the True Buddha or not, and knelt on the ground, thumping his head in worship.

"We bow before our Buddha."

The rest of the high monks suddenly came to their senses and quickly prostrated themselves, swearing allegiance to Zhou Yi's command.

With such a powerful figure as a backer, the Buddhist sect would certainly become the master of the Nine Continents. Whether it was Buddha or demon did not matter at all.

In this world, the strong are always revered!

"You have defiled the Buddha; you shall be punished!"

From the remnant souls, Zhou Yi learned that all the monks present in the hall supported the Blood Sacrifice and some had even presided over Blood Sacrifice rituals.

"Senior, you need us to control..."

Before Pu Ji could finish speaking, the Spiritual Fire ignited from his heart, first burning his internal organs, then his sinews and outer flesh, and his sins turned to ashes and scattered with the wind.

Zhou Yi had no desire for the power of the Buddhist realm; he gathered the threads of remnant souls, and through the Soul Search, he learned the secrets of various temples and the monks involved in the Blood Sacrifice.

"What monks of the Buddhist sect, not a single clean soul among you!"