Chapter Ninety: The Changing Perception of Liu Zong Among the Crowd

Yu Zong, thinking of this, slowly remembered how he had obtained the Titan relic, and a look of reminiscence gradually appeared on his face.

In the eyes of Lu Shang, Xu Ying, and the others, that expression at once grew mysterious. They all assumed that Yu Zong was deducing the problem of the Ghost King sect.

At once, their attitude toward him changed. At first they had merely regarded him as a player certain to reach Level Four, an attitude born of awe for power and strength. But now, in their eyes, Yu Zong had become a being of profound wisdom, someone they could turn to whenever trouble arose.

Even Reina, who had always looked down on mortals, changed her opinion of him. In her view, the librarian had indeed been right.

At that moment, Yu Zong slowly came back to himself. The instant he did, he found Lu Shang and Xu Ying staring at him, and he grew tense as well.

Seeing their expressions, Yu Zong could not say that he had thought of nothing. Nor could he find an answer in the soul fragments. So he could only ask hesitantly, “Xu Ying, when your Ghost King sect first took the Tantric path, did you directly define yourselves in terms of the Eight Classes of Divine and Nonhuman Beings?”

“Yes. Our founding patriarch lacked the aptitude for any other path,” Xu Ying said with some embarrassment. “But he was considered a man of great wisdom. From only half a volume of Buddhist scripture, he carved out his own road. If not for an insufficient foundation, he might have gone even farther.”

“Then I can understand the White-Bone Armor in the Diamond White Bone, but what exactly is the White-Bone Vajra? Does it turn you into skeleton soldiers?” Yu Zong asked again.

“No, it is a matter of using white bones as weapons and techniques,” Xu Ying replied at once.

“Then what about the Arhat ethereal body? Does everything become incorporeal?” Yu Zong continued.

At that, Xu Ying rose to his feet at once. It seemed he sensed that Yu Zong had struck upon something crucial, yet he could not quite say how it related.

In the end, Xu Ying only said, “Choose one from among the Five Hundred Arhats. Once the body becomes ethereal, it can be transformed into that Arhat. It’s just that after the choice is made, the path is fixed. We’ve never been able to determine what attribute should be matched with which of the Five Hundred Arhats, or later, what attribute should be matched with the Bodhisattva path.”

Yu Zong shook his head. “That is not what I mean. Is the Arhat body itself wholly transformed into an ethereal form, even the armor and so on?”

“Of course. If it isn’t ethereal, how could it become an Arhat?” Xu Ying answered.

“Then if everything is already ethereal, why can it only become one kind?” Yu Zong asked again.

Xu Ying thought for a moment before saying, “Because each Arhat has a fixed treasure. In truth, the Arhat’s appearance remains our own; what is fixed is the form. For example, the Subduing Dragon Arhat stands with a dragon beneath him, and the Subduing Tiger Arhat rides a tiger.”

“So what is fixed are the Arhat’s characteristics, not the Arhat itself. Then why, at Level Three, did you believe what needed strengthening was the Bodhisattva’s bloodline, rather than the Bodhisattva’s mount or the magic treasure in hand?”

At those words, Xu Ying’s expression changed. He stood frozen for a long time before finally muttering, “That’s right. The first two transformations were not transformations of the self. Why, then, should the third step be a transformation of the self, rather than of the magic treasure or the mount?”

Thinking of this, Xu Ying immediately said to Yu Zong, “Mr. Yu, I may need to return first. Please wait for me a little while longer. By tomorrow morning at the latest, I will definitely be back.”

With that, Xu Ying rushed straight out of the classroom and ran toward his teacher’s room.

Watching him go, the others wore different expressions. They could all see that Xu Ying was hurrying back with such urgency entirely because Yu Zong’s words had made sense.

This was tantamount to Yu Zong, in merely a moment of thought, having solved a problem that had plagued an entire sect for years. Setting aside the difference in wisdom, that alone was a favor sufficient for Yu Zong to walk sideways through Yangcheng.

One had to know that the reason the Ghost King sect was considered a minor sect in Yangcheng was entirely because its disciples had been stuck at Level Two for many years.

If what Yu Zong said was true, then in a very short time this sect would see a flood of Level Three practitioners, and might even have the chance to challenge the threshold of Level Four.

What had Lu Shang and the others joined Yu Zong’s team for, if not to have him lend them a hand on the road of growth? Now that Yu Zong had revealed such talent, naturally they would not act recklessly and ruin their own fortune.

In the end, this gathering concluded with polite exchanges among the few of them. They agreed on the time for entering the battlefield map tomorrow, then parted ways. Yu Zong did not even have time to present the gift he had prepared.

Leaving aside Yu Zong’s side, when Xu Ying left the classroom and returned to his teacher’s room, the middle-aged man was somewhat puzzled by his hasty return, but he was not in a rush. Instead, he let Xu Ying sit down first before speaking.

Unexpectedly, Xu Ying did not stand on ceremony. He simply recounted everything Yu Zong had said, word for word.

As the middle-aged man listened, he broke into a cold sweat. While listening, he recalled the cultivation method of his sect, and discovered that, just as Yu Zong had said, the first two steps were not transformations of the self. Why, then, should the third step transform the self?

At that thought, the middle-aged man opened his eyes and lifted a hand. All the eyes in the room vanished at once. Laughing loudly, he said, “So it really was my mistake. This Thousand-Armed, Thousand-Eyed Bodhisattva was already on the wrong path from the beginning. The thousand arms must have thousand armaments. My initial route was wrong, and the later choices were even more mistaken. Xu Ying, it seems that man truly can see through the path. You must follow him well.”

Having said that, the middle-aged man’s body turned lightly, and Xu Ying only felt the aura around him change.

Then the middle-aged man’s eyes, too, shifted from their original silver-white to an ordinary color, and behind him appeared a shadow identical to his own.

This shadow was precisely the middle-aged man’s body in the game. At Level One, only certain objects could be projected into reality in a limited way. At Level Two, because the game body’s bloodline was strengthened, it could be attached to the real body and use skills in the real world.

As for Level Three, the requirement in the game was to produce a domain. Through this domain, the body in the game could be projected into the real world, like a doppelganger in reality. Fighting through such a body was far more powerful than fighting while attached to one’s true body.

The shadow beside the middle-aged man was exactly like that. It first became a white elephant, then the white elephant turned to white bone, then transformed into an Arhat riding a white-bone elephant. Finally, countless arms sprouted from that Arhat, and in the palms were innumerable silver eyes. Yet at that moment, the middle-aged man grit his teeth and actually tore off all those arms and eyes, throwing them onto the white-bone elephant.

After this transformation, two new pairs of tusks grew beside the white-bone elephant’s original tusks, and the middle-aged man seated upon its back also turned silver, as though cast from pure silver.

In the end, all of this was drawn back into the middle-aged man’s body. He opened his eyes, looked at Xu Ying, and nodded. “This path, plan confirmed.”