Chapter 785
This humble monk says, you are beasts
"What did you say?"
Guangzhi, with his sharp ears, heard Tang Sanzang's whisper, and his smile vanished instantly. He jumped back a step, his right hand flashing as he drew his broadsword from his waist, the blade pointing at Tang Sanzang's nose. "Say that again!"
The knife was a typical demon-head broadsword, with a thick back and a heavy blade, and several notches of varying depths along the edge. The handle was wrapped with coarse hemp rope for gripping, the rope a dark black color formed from years of being soaked in sweat and blood.
Seeing Guangzhi draw his sword, the monks behind him also raised their weapons, creating a clattering sound as swords and spears were drawn. The thirty-odd people quickly dispersed, forming a loose encirclement in the courtyard.
Several bald men suddenly appeared on the courtyard wall, each carrying a crossbow, the arrows pointed at Tang Sanzang at the gate. The crossbows were crudely made, but the arrowheads gleamed coldly in the twilight, clearly well-polished killing weapons.
I'll say it again.
Tang Sanzang slowly turned around to face Guangzhi. The two were only three steps apart. Tang Sanzang looked down at the thin monk who only reached his chest and said, word by word, "This humble monk says that this place is not a Zen temple, but a bandit's den."
Guangzhi's face flushed crimson, and his hand holding the knife trembled slightly from the force. He gritted his teeth and forced out the words, "I think you don't want to live anymore. I'll ask you one more time, are you here to kill and set fires, or are you here to be an idiot? There's no third possibility!"
The moment he finished speaking, Tang Sanzang's brows furrowed sharply. He lowered his head, his gaze sweeping over Guangzhi like a dark cloud obscuring the setting sun. His voice became low and deep, like a resounding drum: "Who are you calling an idiot?"
Guangzhi felt a shiver run through him from that gaze, and his heels involuntarily took a half-step back. But when he glanced at the thirty-odd brothers behind him, the crossbowmen on the wall, and the gleaming swords and spears in the courtyard, his courage returned.
No matter how strong the monk in front of him was, he was still just one person. The thirty-odd brothers behind him were all ruthless characters who had killed people and seen blood, and five or six of them had cultivated to the Qi Refining stage. Any one of them could lift a stone lock weighing several hundred pounds with one hand.
In this remote and impoverished mountain valley, cultivators at the Qi Refining stage are considered top-tier combatants. Within a radius of a hundred miles, apart from the black bear spirit that occasionally descends the mountain, their Guanyin Temple is the strongest.
I'm calling you an idiot!
Guangzhi, his neck stiff, roared back, the tip of his knife almost poking Tang Sanzang's nose, "I'll ask you one last time, where did you come from? What are you doing here?"
Tang Sanzang did not answer.
He stretched out his right hand, gripped the collar of his monk's robe with his five fingers, and pulled it outwards.
The ties on the monk's robe snapped with a crack, and he ripped the entire robe off, casually tossing it onto the white dragon horse beside him. The white dragon horse, its head covered by the robe, snorted, peeking out half an eye from beneath, and silently took two steps back.
Then all the sounds in the yard disappeared.
The rays of the setting sun streamed down Tang Sanzang's bronze skin, revealing sculpted muscles in the light. His shoulders were as broad as two half-open city gates, and his pectoral muscles below his collarbone were as thick as two polished stone slabs.
His biceps bulged high, with tendons winding around his arm like old tree roots, from his wrist all the way to his shoulder. The eight abdominal muscles were sharply defined, each edge as if meticulously sculpted with a chisel.
The trapezius muscles on the sides of the waist stretch out two steep arcs, tucking into the waistband along the ribs.
His back was even more astonishing. When his latissimus dorsi muscles opened up, it was like a tiger spreading its wings, with his shoulder blades rising and falling powerfully under his skin.
Two deep grooves run vertically along the sides of the spine; these are the grooves formed by the extremely developed back muscles, and sweat slowly drips down along them.
The monks in the courtyard were all dumbfounded.
They had seen strong people before, but never anyone this strong. The fat monk in the kitchen who chopped wood every day was also quite burly, but compared to this bald giant, he looked like a pig standing in front of a tiger.
Guangzhi's knife tip began to tremble. He tilted his head back, his mouth slightly open, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.
Tang Sanzang stretched his neck, and his cervical spine cracked. He clapped his fists together in front of his chest, and the sound of his fists hitting each other was like two stones hitting each other, the muffled sound echoing between the courtyard walls.
"Do you know what I've been regretting for the past two months?"
Tang Sanzang looked down at Guangzhi, his tone so calm it was frightening.
Guangzhi asked instinctively, "What's wrong?"
"Everyone I encountered was a beast."
Tang Sanzang said, "I have never encountered anyone."
As soon as he finished speaking, he took a step forward.
With that step, the bluestone ground beneath Tang Sanzang's feet shattered. Shards of stone shot out from under his feet, hitting the legs and faces of the first few monks, causing them to howl in pain.
Using the force of this step, Tang Sanzang's figure crashed into the crowd like a cannonball.
Before Guangzhi could react, he felt a gust of wind sweep across his face.
Tang Sanzang's arm swept past him, the force of the wind it generated stinging his cheek. He instinctively dodged to the side, and when he looked back, he saw Tang Sanzang punch a monk as strong as a black bear in the chest.
The burly monk at the Qi Refining stage was the first to rush forward. The bronze cudgel in his hand was as thick as a bowl, and the shaft was thicker than his own arm. He swung the bronze cudgel with all his might, aiming straight for Tang Sanzang's crown. The wind howled and the sound of the cudgel cutting through the air was deafening.
With the support of Qi Refining realm cultivation, this strike would have a force of at least several thousand kilograms. An ordinary person would have their head explode like a watermelon if hit by this.
Tang Sanzang frowned.
His right fist spun out from his waist, making an extremely sharp sound as it tore through the air, like a whip lashing through the air.
boom!
The fist and the stick collided.
The bronze rod broke in two. The break wasn't a splinter of wood, but rather it dented and shattered as if it had been crushed, the bronze hoops flying off and embedding themselves in the adjacent courtyard wall.
Tang Sanzang's punch did not weaken at all, and continued to strike forward, landing solidly on the strong monk's chest.
The burly monk's eyes widened suddenly, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints, and the blood vessels in his eyes burst open instantly. He opened his mouth to shout, but only a muffled gurgling sound came out of his throat.
Then he flew backward like a kite with a broken string, over the heads of the crowd, over the courtyard wall, and crashed into the tall screen wall at the end of the courtyard.
Boom!
The screen wall was made of yellow clay bricks and was three feet thick. The strong monk's body was embedded in the very center of the screen wall, creating a complete human-shaped dent.
The loess bricks cracked outwards from the point of impact, the fissures spreading out like a spiderweb, with fragments falling in a flurry, raising a cloud of yellow dust. The burly monk was embedded in the wall, head bowed, chin resting on his chest, a stream of dark red blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. The blood dripped onto the ground in front of the screen wall, quickly forming a small puddle.
His breathing was so faint it was almost inaudible; a section of his chest had caved in, and the sound of his sternum cracking was only now being heard, like a series of faint crackling sounds.
The courtyard was so quiet you could hear the wind.
Everyone froze. Some held their knives, forgetting to strike; the blades remained suspended in mid-air. Others held their guns, the tips trembling slightly. Even the crossbowmen on the wall forgot to pull the trigger; the arrows were pointed in Tang Sanzang's direction, but their fingers were frozen on the strings, unable to move.
The air seemed to freeze, with only the sound of the strong monk's blood dripping onto the ground, each drop striking the hearts of everyone present.
Guangzhi's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
He could see clearly that the strong monk from earlier was one of the most powerful cultivators in their courtyard, at the second level of Qi Refining, with the strength of several thousand jin in his arms. He had once single-handedly defeated a caravan of twelve guards with just a stick.
Such a person couldn't even withstand a single punch from Tang Sanzang.
This is no hero from the neighboring mountain. The most powerful bandits and outlaws from the neighboring mountain are only at the third level of Qi Refining; compared to this bald, burly man, they are all trash.
Two big words suddenly popped into Guangzhi's mind.
monster.
This is definitely a monk transformed from a monster. No one but a monster could possibly possess such terrifying power. He broke a bronze staff with a single punch and sent a person flying into the wall. This is a force that no human could generate.
Tang Sanzang withdrew his fist, flicked his wrist, and the blood on his fist was flung to the ground, splattering into a few plum blossom-shaped blood spots. He looked around at the monks who were frozen in place, and a cold smile appeared on his lips.
“I have made myself very clear just now: you are bandits, and I am a monk.”
His voice was exceptionally clear in the quiet courtyard, "Since you are all monks, it shouldn't be too much for this humble monk to perform a ritual for you, right?"
Guangzhi felt a chill run down his spine upon hearing this. He recalled what Tang Sanzang had said before—that he had only encountered beasts, never humans.
Now he understood what those words meant: the monk didn't treat them as human beings at all, but rather as beings that needed to be exorcised.
"Fire arrows! Fire arrows!"
Guangzhi screamed in a hoarse voice.
The archers on the wall finally snapped out of their daze and instinctively pulled the triggers. Five or six bolts flew through the air, their arrowheads aimed directly at Tang Sanzang's back and neck.
Without even turning his head, Tang Sanzang suddenly swung his right arm backward.
When he swung his arm out, he used the force of his whole body, and the air was compressed by his arm into a visible ripple.
The five or six crossbow bolts struck the ripples as if they had hit an invisible wall. The arrowheads stopped three feet away from Tang Sanzang's back, then the shafts trembled twice before shattering into wood chips and iron scraps that fell to the ground.
The crossbowmen on the wall were terrified. One of them trembled, and his crossbow fell down, bounced off the wall, and rolled into the yard.
Sun Wukong squatted on the back of the white dragon horse, his hands supporting his cheeks, watching the battle in the courtyard with a completely expressionless face.
He suddenly turned his head to the white dragon horse and said, "Tell me, what exactly has our master master accomplished in these two months? For a moment just now, I seemed to see Erlang Shen for a fleeting moment."
The white dragon horse snorted and pawed the ground with its front hooves, seemingly expressing its strong agreement.
The battle in the courtyard is not over yet.
Tang Sanzang's turning around and swinging his arm was just an appetizer; his real target was the group of monks in front of him who were armed with knives and guns.
He took a step forward, his whole body pressing down like a moving mountain. The monks at the front didn't even have time to dodge before being knocked away by his shoulder.
A monk wielding a gun gritted his teeth and thrust the spearhead straight at Tang Sanzang's throat. Tang Sanzang neither dodged nor evaded; he raised his right hand, his five fingers opening and closing, and directly grasped the iron tip of the spearhead.
With a flick of his wrist, the iron spearhead was molded into a flat iron disc in his palm like mud. The spear shaft twisted and deformed, and the monk, who was attached to the spear shaft, could no longer hold the handle. His hands split open at the tiger's mouth, and blood flowed freely.
Tang Sanzang casually threw the flattened spearhead on the ground, and with his other hand grabbed the monk by the collar, lifted him up and tossed him aside.
The monk flew through the air in a beautiful parabola and crashed into a pile of firewood in the corner of the yard. The firewood collapsed with a crackling sound, burying the monk inside.
The remaining monks finally reacted, letting out a shout and surging forward. Swords, spears, and clubs came from all directions, but Tang Sanzang stood in the center of the crowd, unleashing a flurry of punches and kicks.
Each of his punches was accompanied by a piercing whistling sound; wherever his fist passed, weapons shattered, people flew backward, and blood splattered.
As the blade came slashing down, Tang Sanzang dodged it by sidestepping, and then punched upwards with his left fist, striking the monk holding the knife squarely in the chin.
The monk's jaw muscles collapsed under the fist, several teeth flew out of his mouth, and the force of the punch lifted him off the ground. He spun twice in the air before landing, his mouth and nose covered in blood, unable to get up again.
A staff swept across, its wind fierce. Tang Sanzang didn't dodge, but instead stretched out his left arm to take the blow head-on. The wooden staff struck his forearm and broke in two, leaving only a faint white mark on his arm.
Before the monk wielding the staff could recover from his shock, Tang Sanzang's right fist slammed into his shoulder socket with a crisp crack. His arm went limp and fell limply to the ground with a scream.
Tang Sanzang charged through the crowd as if it were empty. His figure weaved through the flashing swords and shadows, each punch felling someone, each kick sending weapons flying.
Those monks at the Qi Refining stage were no different from paper in front of him. Whether they were at the first or second level of Qi Refining, he could kill them with a single punch, without even needing to use a second move.
In less than half an incense stick's time, more than twenty monks had collapsed in the courtyard. They lay sprawled on the ground, some clutching their severed arms and wailing, some curled up and coughing up blood, and some simply unconscious and motionless.
Broken knives and spears lay scattered on the ground, mixed with spots of blood.
The remaining dozen or so monks huddled in a corner of the courtyard, their backs against the screen wall, their weapons trembling like reeds in the wind. They looked at Tang Sanzang standing in the center of the courtyard, their eyes filled with fear.
Guangzhi was still standing. His knife was gone, his legs were trembling uncontrollably, and his crotch was soaked with sweat—he didn't know when it had gotten wet. He opened his mouth to speak, but his teeth chattered, and he couldn't utter a single word. (End of Chapter)