Chapter 81: I'll Protect Her

Chapter 81: I'll Protect Her

"The wrath of evil thoughts is the seed of the hell realm. Li Jun, if you do not wish to fall into the Avici Hell, then quickly bow your head and accept the precepts!"

"Just because you want to stick a brain-computer interface in me?"

"Restrain the monkey-mind, subdue the intent-horse, enter the Buddha-land and uphold the Vajra precepts. This is the only way to cleanse your sins!"

"Yap, yap, yap, damn your excessive nonsense!"

Cursing in Sichuan dialect is the most satisfyingly thorough.

If you want to fight, fight; what's with all the trash talk!

Li Jun lunged forward with a stride, his speed surpassing a galloping horse; in three zhang before Mu Chi, he stepped and arched his back, interlocking his hands like a sledgehammer smashing down.

Wind pressure bore down overhead, the monk's robes fluttering violently.

"Obstinate and unenlightened."

Mu Chi narrowed his eyes in a cold sneer, swinging that staff-like, blade-like Vajra Pestle up toward the crown of his head!

*Dong!*

Flesh and iron collided, unexpectedly erupting with a dull, bell-striking resonance, washing the chanting that filled the sky into a faint murmur.

Mu Chi's swarthy face suddenly flushed crimson, and he stumbled back several steps uncontrollably; the golden bricks beneath his feet were all stepped into spiderweb cracks.

The Vajra Subduing Demons tattoo covering his left chest revealed a bloody glow, flickering bright and dark as if breathing.

Looking closely, the red lines of the tattoo pattern were actually tiny metal wires.

Upon them, engraved with miraculous micro-carving technique, were Buddhist Sanskrit characters, rapidly dissipating the surging giant force transmitted from the Vajra Pestle.

Li Jun had just landed when he attacked again, his blood-shot pupils radiating a thrilling, blood-pumping delight.

Hot blood runs hot; now is the time to slay Buddhas!

Crowding a step to seize the center gate, backhand slapping away the Buddha staff, Li Jun's right five fingers clamped onto Mu Chi's face, and in an utterly brutal manner, he swung this terrifying Buddhist Bhiksu down into the ground.

"With just this little skill you dare play at delivering salvation?"

The cold smile at the corner of Li Jun's mouth had yet to fade when a piercing sound of tearing air assaulted him from the side.

A sweep from the corner of his eye revealed that guardian mechanized beast topped with a little girl's face had already pounced close.

Li Jun stomped down, stepping Mu Chi and the Vajra Pestle blocking before him into the pit, twisting his shoulder and waist to throw a punch at the mechanized beast.

Despite its body still lunging forward to kill, the childish face on the mechanized head shut its eyes in terror.

"Uncle, don't hit me."

Li Jun's eyebrows shot up in a fury, his thin lips pressed tight, yet the fist he swung still involuntarily hesitated for a fraction.

*Puchi!*

In that moment of hesitation, a whip shadow struck like lightning, flinging Li Jun heavily away.

Li Jun, having tumbled to the ground and just risen, felt a piercing pain in his right arm; the cotton armor on his shoulder was whipped into shreds, and the flesh beneath rolled open into an inch-long gash.

"I'm sorry, Uncle, I'm sorry. If I don't sell flowers he'll beat me, I'm scared, I'm afraid."

Snot and tears covered the girl's small face, wrinkled with guilt; her childish voice carried a fear that seeped into the marrow.

Yet the beast body carrying her swayed its tail-blade like a sharp knife, posturing with a show of might before Li Jun!

"Small problem, wait for Uncle to help you achieve liberation!"

Li Jun grinned, revealing a mouthful of snow-white teeth stained with blood.

The Leaping Abyss Step, having ascended to the Great Perfection realm, made his speed ghost-like; one step out, and his figure was already before the guardian mechanized beast.

*Hu.*

That tail-whip lashed out to kill again, but was easily caught by Li Jun, who backhanded and twisted it off directly.

"Ah!"

The girl cried out in pain, tears falling incessantly from her eyes.

"Don't cry!"

Li Jun shouted sternly, flipping around with a whip kick to deflect the sneak-attacking Vajra Pestle, sinking his shoulder to crash the mechanized beast onto the ground, one hand pinning the shoulder, one hand gripping the neck.

"Be good, close your eyes. One moment of pain, and you'll never have to be a beast again."

That beast body had already anticipated the outcome; its four claws raked deep grooves into the golden bricks.

"Mm."

The girl seemed to have an inexplicable trust in Li Jun; hearing this, she obediently closed her eyes, a row of fine baby teeth biting down hard on her lower lip.

*Puchi!*

A spine was ripped root-and-branch from the chest cavity; indescribable agony made the girl instinctively bite her lips into a bloody pulp.

She couldn't even let out a scream before the pupils in her eyes abruptly dilated and scattered.

"What is real, what is fake? If you believe she is real, do you think doing this can save her?"

Mu Chi stood in the distance, Vajra Pestle in hand, quietly watching this scene.

"Don't play word games with me, you bunch of dream-stealing yellow-millet giant rats, pretending to be what fucking Buddhas."

Li Jun, stripped to the waist, used his martial uniform to tightly bind the girl's skull to his back, staring at the red-robed monk with blood-red eyes.

"This is your Buddha-land, and also my illusion. Your Buddha-thought can command her here; can my willpower not protect her?!"

Belief brings existence, disbelief brings void; this is the foundation of faith, and the underlying logic of the Buddha-land's descent.

The roar echoed before this holy Buddhist temple, the voice seemingly containing some magical power; suddenly, from the bundle on Li Jun's back came the girl's intermittent, stifled groans of pain.

She seemed to be clenching her teeth, desperately enduring that unimaginable suffering.

Mu Chi's face was indifferent, "The Buddha-land never guards against sentient beings; what you say is no secret at all. Right now you have fallen into wrath; even if this remaining will protects her, how much is left to contend with me for Buddha-land authority?"

"Contend?" Li Jun laughed loudly, "I said there's no need for such trouble; smashing your damn Buddha-land to pieces works just fine."

Mu Chi looked at the wound on Li Jun's shoulder, the corner of his mouth slowly hooking into a cold sneer of disdain, "How much injury can your willpower support you through?"

"Then how many cycles of reincarnation can your Buddha-thought endure?"

Mu Chi's lips moved, about to speak, when a black shadow had already silently filled his field of vision.

This Bhiksu of Terror and Magic instantly gathered his focus; the Vajra Pestle scraped out a piercing shriek, sweeping horizontally before him.

"Close-quarters brawling with me? You're not qualified!"

Li Jun's eyes looked down with disdain; left arm blocking the pestle, right elbow like an iron spear thrust out, driving straight into Mu Chi's chest.

The monk's spine hunched, the clothes on his back exploded, broken mechanized bones pierced through flesh and blood, revealing a sharp, broken tip.

This was only the beginning.

Li Jun reached out to grab the neck; Mu Chi, not yet flown back, was shackled in place once more.

Feet advancing another step, sinking shoulder and crashing body, the giant force of rivers surged rampantly within a square inch.

Great Perfection Eighth Grade Martial Art, Bajiquan, Iron Mountain Lean.

The crimson monk’s robe flew backward, inverted; the vajra pestle slipped from his grasp and crashed to the ground, clanging against the golden bricks before falling somewhere far off, its fate unknown.

What good is a vajra body?

Li Jun tossed aside a mangled section of windpipe, the muscles of his left arm knotting tight, staunching the flow of blood from the wound left by the pestle.

The churning stench of blood in his nostrils stirred the savagery deep in his heart; the sting of the wound only made the ruthlessness in his very bones boil over.

He patted the bundle on his back with a backhanded slap, murmuring softly, "Don't rush. Wait for Uncle to kill him a few more times, and we can leave this place."

".Mm."

The child's voice had barely fallen when the scene before Li Jun’s eyes abruptly transformed!

The Buddhist chants ceased, the temple vanished, and a wave of scholarly ink fragrance assaulted his nose.

A room permeated with an air of refined elegance materialized before Li Jun.

Behind the desk, Gu Yong, clad in a Confucian scholar’s cyan robe, looked as if he had ingested Five-Stone Powder; his features twitched neurotically, contorted into a mask of manic delirium, his eyes shot through with crimson threads.

This was greed.

A greed sufficient to make one forget life and death.

"So this is the mind of a Zhuangyuan? This feeling is exquisite. Now I am the Zhuangyuan; I am the true scholarly seed of the Gu clan!"

Gu Yong caressed his own face with both hands, his expression one of obsessed infatuation.

"As for this knife of yours, I originally intended to discard it once used."

Gu Yong lifted his gaze to Li Jun, smiling broadly: "But I’ve changed my mind. You have to die. Once you’re dead, no one will know I swallowed Gu Xi’s slices whole."