Chapter 280: Erasing Karmic Sin

Before Ding Songyan could observe his surroundings, he saw a clear, dark gleam flash through the eyes of Monk Faxin, whose throat had nearly been pierced through.

His vision suddenly went dark, as if he had plunged into a boundless, deep abyss of sea.

Monk Faxin’s figure grew immensely huge, drifting in the darkness, holding hooked sickles, small knives, and the like. He seized Ding Songyan in one hand and began tearing at his hair, peeling his skin off bit by bit.

Unimaginable agony drilled into Ding Songyan’s mind, yet he couldn’t move and could only watch helplessly as his skin separated from his flesh.

In his sea of consciousness, a warm, dim candle flame lit again, resisting the onslaught of extreme pain so his spirit wouldn’t be thrown into chaos, collapse, or madness.

After the flaying came an impalement. Sharp stones pierced through Ding Songyan’s head, throat, torso, and limbs, one after another.

Next came burning. A raging fire blazed up and charred Ding Songyan’s flesh.

The flames soon weakened, and bitter, freezing cold descended, freezing all of it.

The candle flame in Ding Songyan’s sea of consciousness wavered, on the brink of extinguishing.

Suddenly, crimson-gold flames fell from the sky one after another, igniting the transparent ice, devouring the remaining fire, and burning away every instrument of torture, including the mountain of knives and the cauldron of boiling oil.

In an instant, hell was emptied and fell utterly silent.

From the depths of that silence, a sense of rebirth emerged, nourishing Ding Songyan, who had been tortured until no part of him was left whole. It steadied the yellowish candle flame in his sea of consciousness and gradually drove off the invading pain and darkness.

The whole of hell rapidly fell apart under the crimson-gold fire.

The flames were not yet done. They burned onto Faxin, softening him like a candle until he snapped into piece after piece.

Following some invisible link, the crimson-gold fire surged ferociously into the depths of the darkness that had already gone to nothing, like a lance of flame that reached up to heaven and down to earth.

What goes around comes around!

After the "lance" extended far, it suddenly stopped, as if it had lost its target.

This patch of heaven and earth collapsed in an instant.

The darkness peeled away from before Ding Songyan’s eyes piece by piece, and at last he saw the pattering cold rain, saw Monk Faxin, already breathless, toppling onto the packed-earth ground, and saw that at some point his sword tip had stopped holding "unification."

Twelfth Madam Luo had come to his side from the courtyard gate, her hatchet hanging in midair as if she had swung it halfway and found no enemy.

The shopkeeper put the hatchet away and said in a low voice, "Tan Guanchan isn’t nearby, but he isn’t far either. Using Faxin’s heart demon, he made your body the arena and remotely traded two moves with me.

"I can’t acquire his trail now."

It really is the Demon Sovereign? He can even strike from afar through someone else’s heart demon? Ding Songyan, a sword in one hand and an umbrella in the other, was both frightened and astonished.

He was suddenly hit with a headache, as if a thousand steel needles had been driven into his skull.

The "Hell Realm" cycle of reincarnation he had just gone through was only an experience of the mind, but it had left him with considerable mental trauma.

Had Twelfth Madam Luo not been beside him, he would either have developed a heart demon or gone completely mad.

The Candlelight Sword Intent flared up on its own, bringing a resilient warmth to Ding Songyan’s mind. At the same time, the whole small courtyard turned light and peaceful, as if a faint fragrance had spread, quickly soothing the pain in his spirit.

As if sensing the question in Ding Songyan’s mind, Twelfth Madam Luo thought for a moment and said, "Tan Guanchan truly lives up to his reputation.

"But he can’t use everyone’s heart demon like this. Faxin’s heart demon was peculiar and had some special connection with him."

That’s a relief, at least. Otherwise Tan Guanchan would be akin to a Heavenly Demon descended to earth, unaffected by the heaven-earth severance... Ding Songyan had barely eased when he frowned slightly again.

"Has Tan Guanchan sunken that deep in the Way of Heart Demon?"

Doesn’t he cultivate the Accumulated Evil Scripture?

Twelfth Madam Luo mused for a moment.

"He may have merged the Heart Demon Scripture into his own martial arts, the way the Body-and-Will Heterodox Sect’s divine monks of old folded the Immaculate Divine Art into the Buddha-Spoken Nine Realms Sutra and the Wondrous Dharma Arising and Ceasing Sutra."

This... a genius for the ages... Even as an enemy, Ding Songyan couldn’t help marveling.

Twelfth Madam Luo glanced at the body on the ground and added, "Faxin seems to have gone wrong while cultivating the Nine Realms True Words and sunk into the Hell Realm. Ask him during spirit channeling whether that’s so."

Ding Songyan collected his mind, opened his yin eyes again, and looked at Faxin’s ghost drifting beside the corpse.

"Why did you serve the Accumulated Evil Way?"

He isn’t Two-Faced either...

Faxin’s ghost still carried the terror and trembling of being burned by the crimson-gold flames, and, stacked on Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil, he offered no resistance and didn’t even dare call himself "this old monk."

"I forced myself to cultivate the Nine Realms True Words, deviated, and fell into the Hell Realm, unable to extricate myself. I became obsessed with making others suffer, with bringing hell to the human world.

"Such cases aren’t rare in our Body-and-Will Heterodox Sect. I should have reported it to the eminent monks and asked them to use Buddhist teachings to pull out my heart demon. But the first time I deviated, I was discussing something with someone in a hidden spot outside the temple, and when I came to, I had skinned that person alive.

"I feared punishment and didn’t dare report it. I couldn’t control the sadistic heart demon either, so I secretly bought a courtyard, built a secret chamber, and now and then brought in slaves to satisfy my urges.

"I knew the Martial Prohibition Bureau would find out sooner or later that I carried great evil, yet I couldn’t control myself, and I was both terrified and thrilled.

"Later, the Accumulated Evil Way discovered my secret and threatened me into cooperating with them. They would provide places and targets for my enjoyment, and the Demon Sovereign also told me he had a way to erase my karmic sin.

"I couldn’t refuse..."

Truly trapped in the cycle, fallen into the Hell Realm, but as the torturer, not the tortured... If the Nine Realms True Words are cultivated rightly, one becomes an eminent monk. Cultivated wrongly, a demon monk... Ding Songyan pressed, "How does the Demon Sovereign help you erase karmic sin?"

"First he puts an Immortal Seed into my body and fuses it with my heart demon, then forcibly takes it back into himself. That makes my heart demon vanish for a long while, and the karmic sin I had accumulated is transferred to the Demon Sovereign. He takes others’ karma as his own, which not only helps me but strengthens his Accumulated Evil Divine Art." As supervising monk, Faxin spoke rather fluently, though he was cowering now.

So the Demon Seed has that use too? I guessed it could be retrieved, but never thought it could be retrieved while a Demon Seed Two-Faced was still alive, or that the Demon Sovereign could "accumulate evil" with it... Is a person still Two-Faced after retrieval? This Tan Guanchan is even more terrifying than I expected, and I’m already one of the few people in the world who takes him most seriously... Ding Songyan couldn’t help exchanging a look with Twelfth Madam Luo.

No wonder the Martial Prohibition Bureau couldn’t see Faxin’s karmic sin, while Twelfth Madam could tell his virtue was severely lacking.

Still, even if some Five Saints Sect powerhouse had noticed it early, the Martial Prohibition Bureau would only have assumed Faxin had done a lot of dirty things as supervising monk, never imagining anything this terrible.

Ding Songyan pressed further, "Did you never feel remorse even after the Demon Sovereign took away your heart demon?"

Was his earlier heart demon fused into the Demon Seed and returned to the Demon Sovereign, which is why the Demon Sovereign could strike from afar through his current heart demon?

"I did, but they had leverage over me, so remorse was useless." Faxin’s ghost looked a little twisted.

That means the remorse wasn’t enough... Ding Songyan waited for Faxin to go on.

Faxin’s ghost continued, "Maybe that’s it. After my heart demon vanished for a while, a new one would gradually grow, and I couldn’t help accepting the Accumulated Evil Way’s ’banquet’ again. Every year I needed the Demon Sovereign to erase my karmic sin once."

"When you received the Demon Seed, did you turn Two-Faced?" Ding Songyan asked thoughtfully.

"The Immortal Seed stayed in my body only briefly, and I barely managed to suppress it, so I didn’t turn Two-Faced." Faxin’s ghost shook his head.

That can’t confirm whether someone already turned Demon Seed Two-Faced still has a second face after the seed is retrieved... Afraid Faxin might scatter before long, Ding Songyan turned to the main question.

"Why did you tell Tan Guanchan about Hu Chaohui developing a heart demon?"

Faxin’s ghost said tremblingly, "One night, the heavens were in disorder for a while, and the next day the Demon Sovereign found me and told me to watch for anyone who had recently developed a heart demon.

"Later, when Benefactor Hu suddenly said he wanted to recuperate at the temple, I grew suspicious, asked carefully, got the general picture, and reported to the Demon Sovereign that same night."

If the Accumulated Evil Way checked where Hu Chaohui was that night, they could basically confirm he was the target... So the Demon Sovereign must already know someone entered Hu Chaohui’s dream and drew the Celestial Thearch’s gaze. Add that the male "Jade Maiden" who attacked Hu Chaohui the first time used an art that seemed like the Returning Abyss Divine Art, and it’s only natural Tan Guanchan connected it to a Chaos legacy... Ding Songyan not only had a headache, even his teeth hurt too.

He steadied himself and asked Monk Faxin, "Hu Chaohui had concubines and courtesans attending him inside the Zen monastery. Did you indulge that on purpose?"

"As long as those who come to the temple for quiet recuperation don’t go too far, we don’t interfere." Faxin’s ghost thinned a little. "But I also knew the Demon Sovereign would take advantage of such a situation."

"Did Tan Guanchan live in this side courtyard before?" Ding Songyan asked gravely.

Faxin’s ghost slowly nodded, with fear and reverence.

"When did he move in?" Ding Songyan pressed.

"A few days before Hu Chaohui came for recuperation, two days before the heavens fell into disorder." Faxin’s ghost dared not hide it.

Tan Guanchan did enter the capital soon after I killed Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang... Ding Songyan changed his question.

"And when did he leave?"

"Just before you came looking," Faxin’s ghost answered.

Just before? Did he sense danger, or notice us even earlier? Ding Songyan’s mind raced as he searched for any detail that might hold an important clue.

Right, why did Tan Guanchan stay at Shilin Temple in the first place?

The Accumulated Evil Way shouldn’t lack hiding places, and Tan Guanchan is at his peak and can keep his subordinates in line...

Just to stage a play of a giant of the heretical path hiding in the pure ground of the Buddhist gate?

Does he have another purpose?

Is something hidden at Shilin Temple or near it?

Ding Songyan looked at Faxin’s ghost, which had thinned a bit more.

"Why did Tan Guanchan hide at Shilin Temple?"

Faxin’s ghost slowly shook his head.

"I don’t know."

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