Chapter 1688 - The True Face of the High God!
Bang!
Wang Chong hastily turned his palm over, gathering Stellar Energy within it, and thrust it upward. A moment later, the two palms of starkly different sizes slammed against each other.
Kaboom! A heaven-sundering explosion resounded through the world, and the earth itself rippled like the waves as it cracked and was shorn away.
The immense wave of power instantly left the King of Foreign Lands Residence devastated.
Power!
The energy in that palm had been vast beyond imagination. When their palms had clashed, Wang Chong felt like he had been fighting a mountain. The terrifying energy had hammered Wang Chong’s feet into the earth, burying him past his kneecaps.
A Subtle realm expert! realized Wang Chong. This was not a power any ordinary peak Saint Martial expert could possess. This foe had already reached the Subtle realm.
Wang Chong’s expression froze as he looked to his right.
In the dark shadows, next to a large scholar tree, there was a massive, clattering idol, its six arms moving and its frigid eyes looking down at him.
Six-armed Guanyin!
Wang Chong’s expression darkened. He could see that this was an idol from a temple, and six-armed Guanyins were a very common sight in the capital. But this one was different from the others.
Its body was pitch-black, making it seem frightening and sinister.
Clangclang!
As Wang Chong looked over, the idol said nothing, but the iron poles in its six arms shot toward Wang Chong as quickly as lightning bolts.
Boom!
Suddenly, the six-armed Guanyin erupted in black flames, its six arms and massive body moving with incredible agility as it rained down attacks on Wang Chong with mountain-sundering strength.
A single arm carried such power that it warped space by simply moving, as if space itself was unable to bear the load. This kind of power would make the majority of top-class experts take fright and flee.
But Wang Chong’s eyes merely flashed coldly before he immediately began his counterattack.
Boom! Wang Chong stomped forward, and then he hurtled out like a cannonball. At the same moment, his body erupted with golden light, the boundless and blazing energy of the Subtle realm shrouding Wang Chong and turning him into a massive golden fireball.
A heaven-shaking roar came from the golden fireball, and then, clangclangclang! Scarlet arms emerged from the fireball like the petals of a blooming flower. A moment later, a massive six-armed demonic god had manifested.
The Six-Armed Ksitigarbha Vajra Guardian!
This was a secret art that Wang Chong had obtained from a Tibetan general long ago in the war of the southwest. This was a rather low-level martial art, but Wang Chong had extracted the essence and fused it with his own martial arts to create a six-armed Origin Ksitigarbha Vajra Guardian, developing a Subtle realm martial art.
The moment this Origin Ksitigarbha Vajra Guardian appeared, it erupted with a storm of energy that was even stronger than that of the six-armed Guanyin.
Boomboomboom!
The two six-armed idols soon clashed with their arms in the air, sending shockwaves of energy sweeping through the area and stirring up such great clouds of dust that it was impossible to differentiate direction. But it was soon apparent that Wang Chong’s Ksitigarbha Vajra Guardian had not only stopped the six-armed Guanyin’s storm of attacks, it was even beginning to push the Guanyin back.
However, it was also apparent that the six-armed Guanyin was only a tiny bit weaker than the Origin Ksitigarbha. A swift victory was absolutely impossible.
But then the unexpected took place. Clang! The Origin Immortal Sword rang out as it shot out from Wang Chong’s waist. It sliced through the air like a bolt of lightning, and crackling electricity instantly engulfed the entire estate.
The lightning flashed for mere moments before winking out of existence. The fierce battle outside the main hall of the King of Foreign Lands Residence came to a sudden halt. Amidst churning dust, the two idols, black and gold, were in a stand-off.
All the other men in black stared warily at this eerily calm sight, not understanding what was going on.
Crack!
Suddenly, a smooth and glossy wound appeared on the six-armed Guanyin’s massive body, stretching from its right shoulder to left abdomen. Fwoomp! The two halves slid away, the upper half of the idol thudding into the dust while the lower half remained as unmoving as a mountain.
Clang!
Wang Chong turned his hand around and returned the Origin Immortal Sword to its sheath. This sword he had gained from his journey to the northwest possessed inconceivable power. At Wang Chong’s current strength, not even the six-armed Guanyin could take a blow from the Origin Immortal Sword.
All was silent, a deathly stillness shrouding the King of Foreign Lands Residence. The many men in black had fearful expressions, none of them daring to come forward or daring to escape. To be more precise, they didn’t even dare to move for fear that Wang Chong would kill them.
Suddenly, an eerie voice broke the silence. “Haha, good! As expected of the Child of Destruction! Destroying my six-armed avatar with a single sword strike!”
Wang Chong’s heart thumped as he turned his head to the northeast corner of the King of Foreign Lands Residence. Two ghostly figures had appeared on the wall, tall and thin.
The man on the left, with his wide-sleeved black robe, was clearly a monk. As for the man on the right, Wang Chong immediately noticed his eyes: cold, domineering, and utterly emotionless, like the stars studding the blackness of the night. In front of this man, all the other men in black seemed like ants.
This was the leader of these men in black!
Wang Chong immediately understood that these men in black weren’t running not because they were afraid of him, but because they were afraid of their tall and slender leader.
“Why are you not coming forward?! You regard yourselves as gods, but you seem to perpetually be attacking from the shadows like frightened children!”
Wang Chong jeered at the figure, but despite his flippancy, his heart was cold.
Strong!
Extremely strong!
The moment this man appeared, Wang Chong felt an immense threat. This man was doing his all to restrain his power, but the remaining power was still enough to make Wang Chong feel like he had a dagger at his back.
“Impudence! You dare to speak with such rashness before the High God!?” rebuked the black-robed monk, coldly staring at Wang Chong.
The other men in black also angrily stared at Wang Chong, but they dared not speak out of turn when that man was present.
“The High God?”
Wang Chong’s brow creased, but he quickly remembered something and sneered.
“Ah, so you’re that High God who had that message delivered to me in Zhangchou Jianqiong’s estate! What? Still not ready to give up on the Commander Tally?”
Wang Chong was now the Minister of War, so he had taken Zhangchou Jianqiong’s half of the Commander Tally. The Commander Tally was clearly safer at his side than with Zhangchou Jianqiong, and given the extent of the men in black’s intelligence network, they had probably figured out where it was.
“Heh, the Commander Tally is something we will take, but so is your head. More importantly, we’re not the only ones who want you dead!”
The eerie voice was like the call of an owl. The first half was said from the distant wall, but for the second half, the tall figure had appeared like a ghost to the left and front of Wang Chong.
Wang Chong’s heart fiercely thumped. Even with his abilities, he had not been able to see how the High God had appeared in front of him. It seemed like he had never moved, like he had always been standing there.
But what Wang Chong was more concerned about was the implication in the High God’s words.
“So, the First Prince sent you?”
Wang Chong’s pupils constricted.
The First Prince’s collusion with the men in black had originally been a great secret, but ever since the attempted assassination of Zhangchou Jianqiong, everything was out in the open.
“Heh, you’ve done too much recently, and that Highness is extremely displeased. Although this god doesn’t like these secular Princes, if they ask me to kill a Child of Destruction, this god won’t be stingy.”
The High God smiled.
Wang Chong inspected the leader of the men in black. This ‘High God’ appeared extremely young. Despite his prodigious strength, his skin was fair and tender, and his appearance was that of a thirty-some-year-old scholar. Anyone who didn’t know the truth would find it very hard to imagine that this middle-aged scholar was a lofty High God of the Celestial God Organization.
But Wang Chong was more concerned about the faint mark on his forehead, that of six small stars.
Wang Chong didn’t know what it was at first, but then he had a flash of insight. Wang Chong had examined star charts before, so he recognized that the six stars on the forehead of the High God were the six stars of the Southern Dipper.
(TN: In Chinese astronomy, the Northern Dipper is the ‘Big Dipper’ of western astronomy while the Southern Dipper is part of the Sagittarius constellation.)
