951 Rendezvous (1/2)

A spark lit up the somber underground wilderness A plume of smoke cut off the surface of the wilderness and swiftly spread forward towards the huge mount.

At the forefront of the smoke, Jun Mo rode upon the wind and flew fast. The iron sword cracked the wind noiselessly, and moved forward at an unimaginable speed, just like a real sword.

The spark was a warning. As the alarm bell rang loudly in the huge mount, countless monks rushed out of the temples to the mountain pass, and were prepared to deploy the array with an incomparable Buddhist power, in order to repress the approaching enemy.

Jun Mo, after his transforming into the sword, was faster than the light beam from the spark. He had already arrived before the Buddhist Grand Array was even completed.

It was silent and quiescent in the autumn mountain. The green bamboos alongside the mountain pass swayed all of a sudden. The monks felt dazzled, and then saw Jun Mo and the iron sword in his hands at the field.

If the monks in Xuankong Temple were to attack, then Jun Mo would hit back. He was so fast that he had already broken in, before the Buddhist Array was able to form on the mountain pass amid the peaks.

The autumn wind suddenly blew up, roaring around the bamboo forest and the mountain pass. Blood stains fell on the green bamboo joints, which looked like scarlet tear stains.

Whether they were the blood of the monks or Jun Mo, the latter had already entered the mountain. He was swiftly sweeping his own way, the way to pursue a noble character of a gentleman.

Jun Mo, who upheld the Gentlemen's Doctrine, would rather reason with his enemies first. If they were to disagree, the gentleman would sweep away. In the Wilderness down the hill, he had already reasoned with the Xuankong Temple. They clearly held up their beliefs, so he directly pressed down, instead of talking pedantically.

Qi Nian and the Third Elder of the Commandant Court were rushing back from the Wilderness. The most powerful ones in these temples did not have time to react. Jun Mo was rolling all the way up.

Although he was bleeding from every part of his body, he still held his iron sword, and attacked the cliff plateau.

...

...

The edges of the Grand Sinkhole were surrounded by steep precipices, which tore very deep cracks in the Wilderness. These cracks stretched and converted at some point in the distance. It looked extremely astonishing.

With the absence of autumn wind in the wilderness, several lonely bodhi trees were standing not far away. Their green leaves were still thick. Looking over towards the precipices, smoke was coming out.

The so-called smoke was actually a combination of dusts and stones moving at an unimaginably fast speed giving them an appearance of an impalpable silk thread.

The smoke was as long as the precipice, stretching out for thousands of miles without a starting or end point. It surrounded the world down the cliff, and appeared out of nowhere just like a divine manifestation.

In the smoke, shadows of thousands of figures could be glimpsed. In fact, these shadows couldn't be seen. As a result of the illusion caused by extremely fast movements beyond the range of eyesight, they could overlap one the other at countless points every second.

The shadows of the thousands of figures were actually made by only two people.

Two people had been chasing.

All of a sudden, a distant and loud bell tone came from the huge mountain far away.

Thousands of miles of smoke at the edge of the precipices was abruptly static, and then fell down slowly, returning to the Wilderness.

Two figures appeared at the point where the smoke fell.

The scholar in quilted jacket wore a cotton belt around his waist, with a common wooden stick in it. He looked gentle, dusty yet very clean. He was the First Brother of the Academy.

The middle-aged man of letters on the opposite had a flagon in the waist was the Drunkard.

Hundreds of white thread-lets, oozed from the quilted jacket on the First Brother, were dragged for thousands of meters, and blown up by the autumn wind. It looked very elegant, yet had a trace of unavoidable strangeness.

It was a chasing race in Distanceless State, which was all too fast.

The First Brother's quilted jacket was not ordinary clothing because it didn't fall apart during high-speed movements. On the contrary, the cotton in and between the interlayer was squeezed out of the fine meshes of the cloth, and became superfine cotton threads.

Hundreds of cotton threads were drifted away at the back. The image was hard to describe. Especially when it was gradually changing with the wind, the cotton threads fell on his face in a funny or cute appearance.

The Drunkard took off the flagon and drank an everlasting volume. Even after such a long time of chasing in the Distanceless State, he was still relaxed, besides his quivering hand that held the flagon.

The First Brother said nothing while looking at him drinking.

When the wine flowed through his system, his wine bowl was filled for this moment. The Drunkard put down the flagon, looked at the other one and said with complex sentiments, ”Li Manman, you are getting faster, but still slower than me.”

The First Brother replied with a warm smile, ”My senior, you haven't caught up with me.”

The Drunkard asked after a silence, ”Why?”

There were so many whys in the world, roughly speaking for at least ten thousands. His actual question was why the Academy had fought against Buddhism, in order to confirm whether they were on the side with Haotian.

”Actually sometimes I ask the same question to myself.” First Brother thought for a while and answered, ”Later on, I figured it out. My Little Brother and Haotian were trapped in the chessboard. Due to their relationship, we must save Haotian if we want to take our Little Brother out. We have no intentions of becoming the enemy of Buddhism, or becoming allies with Haotian. We only want to save people. For the Academy, rescuing people is of the utmost importance. It doesn't matter who we save, whether it is any human or our Little Brother. They are the same in this regard. The pros and cons should be the second thing to think about. Once we start to compromise the basic rule of loss and gain, the Academy wouldn't be able to hold up our core value any more.”

The Drunkard slightly frowned and asked, ”What is exactly the Academy up to?”

The First Brother replied with a smile, ”The Headmaster has his own thoughts, while the students have our own plan. What the Academy is up to may be a little absurd in your opinion, but it must be interesting.”

The Drunkard said, ”The Buddha has his own plan. He has been waiting for countless years, up until Haotian was weakened by the Academy. Now, she has become more like a mortal at the State of Knowing Destiny. For the Academy that has always acclaimed to act for the sake of humans, it should probably be the last and the only hope. How could you sabotage it?”