Buddha's Face

There were only two people in the entire Pill Tower.

One was Lin Mo, who was bored out of his mind and watching the group of people below with his divine sense.

The other was Zhang Gonglian, who was racing against time to absorb the pill aura.

"Hey, hey, our friends outside are quite passionate. They're about to break in."

Lin Mo's voice sounded somewhat abrupt in the empty Pill Tower. He could clearly sense that the golden talisman at the entrance had dimmed and was on the verge of shattering.

Outside the tower, a monk wearing a Buddha mask was controlling two strings of prayer beads.

The beads were made of neither wood nor stone; rather, they looked as if they were polished from the finger bones of some creature. Each bead imprisoned a vicious soul filled with overwhelming resentment, emitting a nauseating, foul stench.

Who knew where this monk had gotten these vicious souls.

He either cultivated them himself or caught these wild little evil spirits using Poké Balls.

At this moment, dozens of vicious souls transformed into black shadows, fearlessly crashing into the golden talisman.

With every impact, the talisman's light dimmed a fraction, and the vicious souls themselves were scorched by the golden light, tearing hideous fissures across their soul bodies. Yet, they continued to surge forward one after another, as if they felt no pain.

Zhang Gonglian seemed completely oblivious to this. Swathed in pill aura, he was clearly at a critical juncture of his recovery and had no time to be distracted.

Watching this scene, Lin Mo felt the thrill of the hunt... no, rather, a profound sense of compassion swelled within him.

"Alas, what a sin."

He sighed with feigned posturing. "Seeing them in such pain, I can't bear it. I should lend a hand and free them from their misery."

As he spoke, a miniature version of the Human Emperor Banner appeared in Lin Mo's hand.

The banner's fabric moved without any wind, giving a gentle shake.

There was no earth-shattering commotion, nor any flashy, dazzling lights.

It was just that a seemingly bottomless vortex appeared on the surface of the banner.

An irresistible suction force instantly enveloped the area outside the Pill Tower.

Those vicious souls that had been frantically ramming into the talisman suddenly had their offenses brought to a screeching halt, as if destiny had them by the throat.

One second they were fierce and malicious, and the next second they lost all ability to move and were sucked away.

Like snow thrown into a furnace, the dozens of vicious souls didn't even have time to let out a scream before they were swept into the tiny banner, disappearing without a trace.

Clatter, clatter...

Outside the tower, that string of eerie prayer beads lost all its power. The fierce aura within the beads vanished completely. They turned a dull gray, scattered from mid-air, and rolled all over the ground.

The entrance of the Pill Tower instantly returned to a deathly silence.

Lin Mo, on the other hand, examined the Human Emperor Banner in his hand with satisfaction.

The new tenants were huddling and shivering in a corner of the banner's inner space. Looking at this vast, boundless new world and feeling the much purer soul power within, they were both shocked and terrified.

It was essentially a forced relocation from a cramped snail shell into a standalone high-rise, complete with luxury furnishings.

"Come again, come again, the more the merrier."

Lin Mo muttered to himself as he leisurely waited for the monk downstairs to make his next move.

This little appetizer wasn't even enough to fill the gaps in his teeth.

Zhang Gonglian's divine sense naturally caught this bizarre scene as well.

Those dozens of violent auras were wiped out cleanly in an instant. Such a method was completely unheard of to him.

Stormy waves surged in his heart, and countless questions flooded his mind, but he ultimately forced them all down.

The most urgent matter at hand was to recover his strength.

He merely gave Lin Mo a deep look before closing his eyes once more, putting all his effort into refining the pill aura.

The talisman at the entrance of the Pill Tower was about to fail.

But it didn't matter.

At this very moment, two colorful fireworks suddenly shot up from the Pill Tower and exploded in mid-air.

Ghost Face and the others, who were rushing toward the Pill Tower, looked up.

They saw two streaks of colored light suddenly tear through the night sky, soaring straight into the clouds.

"Did they succeed? The defenses of this Pill Tower are nothing much after all!" another man wearing a respirator mask remarked.

"That's not our signal!" Ghost Face coldly rebuked. His voice sounded as if it were squeezed out from behind a metallic mask, devoid of any warmth. "Our signal isn't this color. That is the Celestial Master Mansion's signal."

A trace of solemnity flashed through his eyes.

The release of this signal meant that the celestial masters inside had reached the end of their rope, but it also meant that reinforcements from all directions would be arriving very soon.

There wasn't much time left.

"Advance at full speed!" Ghost Face shouted in a low voice. His figure once again turned into a ghost-like black shadow, moving even faster than before.

Meanwhile, at the entrance of the Pill Tower.

Buddha Face quietly watched as the hundred vicious souls he had painstakingly collected vanished completely into the golden light, without even a wisp of black mist left behind.

The Buddha mask on his face showed neither joy nor sorrow, revealing no emotion whatsoever.

However, if anyone could see the eyes beneath the mask, they would find that instead of anger, there was actually a hint of an amused smile.

It seemed there really was someone hiding inside.

Those vicious souls were merely stepping stones he had tossed out to test the waters. Now that the stones had been cleared, the path was clear.

"I just wonder how Ghost Face is doing over there. If he can deal with the celestial master, it will definitely attract the attention of others," Buddha Face muttered to himself. He rolled his wrists, his joints emitting a series of crisp cracking sounds. "I can't drag this out any longer. I need to finish this quickly."

With this thought in mind, he no longer held back.

Buddha Face slowly opened his right hand, and a mass of golden light, so dense it was almost tangible, gathered and expanded in his palm.

The surrounding air began to distort and heat up!

Buzz!

With a dull hum, the void behind him vibrated, and a golden Arhat dharma idol, several dozen feet tall, materialized out of thin air!

The Arhat glared with wide, angry eyes, its muscles bulging, exuding an unmatched, domineering pressure.

"Arhat Divine Art!"

Buddha Face gave a low shout, performing the exact same motion as the Arhat idol behind him.

Hah!

He threw a punch!

The massive golden fist seemed to push a wall of invisible air. Carrying the weight of a thunderbolt, it smashed solidly against the dimming golden talisman at the entrance.

Thud!

A loud, muffled boom resounded like the beating of a giant drum.

The entire Pill Tower trembled from the impact!

The golden talisman bore the brunt of this devastating blow, and the flowing luster on its surface instantly stagnated.

An extremely faint, yet incredibly clear cracking sound rang out.

Under Buddha Face's cold gaze, a pitch-black crack silently appeared right in the center of the golden talisman like a venomous snake, rapidly spreading outward in all directions.

"It's open!"

"It's finally open!"

From the shadows behind Buddha Face came a few irrepressible, excited whispers.

He himself let out a low chuckle. The laughter carried the grim satisfaction of a hunter locking onto their prey.

"Let's go. Everyone can go and witness the Nine Heavens Divine Pill of Mount Longhu."

Buddha Face withdrew his dharma body, and the other members of the mask society all rushed toward the Pill Tower.

With the entrance no longer protected by the talisman, they charged inside with ease.

However, Buddha Face remained standing outside. Only after watching everyone enter did he leisurely stroll inside.