Chapter 1240 — The Dharma Protector Who Fights with Wrathful Eyes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Heavenly Lord Han rose to meet Li Youran, Emperor Shitian, and stark terror showed in his eyes. In Li Youran's hands those dreadful weapons blazed with a keenness and a ferocity he had never seen before, slicing into his body as easily as a sharp knife through bean curd. Like Cook Ding dismembering an ox, his formation arts -- his pride and joy -- met Li Youran's sabers, axes, and god-weapons and were effortlessly cut apart, pared away, quartered.
In a single clash he was stripped of every cube of his Fortress Wall Formation, and his true body stood bare before Li Youran. He raised a hand to ward it off, but a thousand god-weapons came down, and Heavenly Lord Han heard the sound of his own bones bursting, the sound of his own skull being split open.
He even heard the sound of the great Dao runes within his body being shattered.
Li Youran was like a crazed demon king grown a thousand arms, brandishing a thousand divine weapons, hammering at him in a frenzy -- flattening him, smashing him to pieces, treating him like a lump of stubborn iron, pounding that iron flat and round. The formation Dao runes inside Heavenly Lord Han burst apart with a crackling roar; he tried to restore his flesh, yet no matter how he restored it, it was smashed apart again.
Nor was that all -- the formation Dao runes he could still command grew fewer and fewer, for Emperor Shitian Li Youran had already battered them to a pulp.
Unutterable terror filled his heart. He wanted to beg for mercy, to save his life, but in that moment he could not make a single sound.
Shen Mu stood at a distance, quietly watching the scene. Li Youran had already smashed a great pit into the ground, and the bottom of that pit was a surface of incomparable smoothness -- the rudimentary skill of any blacksmith.
And Li Youran's fundamentals were the most solid of all. Heavenly Lord Han had been hammered into a sheet of thin paper, immeasurably thin, with almost no thickness at all -- yet still Li Youran raged, hammering down in frenzy.
In his fury there was no Buddha-mind, no Buddha-nature, only a boundless, shoreless wrath.
He was a Wrathful Wisdom King.
After a long while, the thunder of blows finally ceased. Amid the blazing wrath of the Wisdom King, Li Youran raised his head, gazing up at the sky, and two trails of fiery tears ran down his eyes.
As a Wisdom King, he could weep no longer.
Behind the flames, Shen Mu saw a Heavenly Palace emerge, likewise blazing with wrath -- the entire palace bathed in fire. Before Lingxiao Hall there was no one; now Emperor Shitian Li Youran's primal spirit sat upon the emperor's throne, his face wrathful, yet his gaze forlorn.
He had not become emperor through the Buddha Dharma; he had become emperor through wrath.
On this day, the world was one Buddha the poorer, and one Imperial Throne expert the richer.
Shen Mu walked forward. In the pit, Emperor Shitian Li Youran drifted slowly upward and came to rest upon the ground.
The Wisdom King's wrath upon his body dwindled; the flames no longer burned so fiercely, yet they never went out.
Nor had he regained his former handsome face -- his features looked somewhat savage now.
"Are you Emperor Shitian now, or Li Youran?
" Shen Mu asked.
"Or should I say -- are you the Battle Wisdom King?
" "I? " Li Youran dispelled his thousand arms and looked down at his own hands, ablaze with the Wisdom King's wrath.
They were no longer fair and delicate as once they had been, but rough and covered in calluses.
Then, calmly, he raised his head, his voice somewhat hoarse: "I am the Battle Wisdom King.
" Shen Mu sighed.
"The Old Buddha passed the Sutra of Immeasurable Kalpas to you in the hope that you would accept the Buddha Dharma and become a Buddha, that you had a Buddha-mind and a Buddha-nature.
He did not wish you to turn that Buddha-mind and Buddha-nature into a body of wrathful fire. " "The Buddha Dharma cannot save sentient beings.
It cannot even save itself.