I stole divine power in Daxia

Chapter 688 The Last Question

The members of the First Rank felt uneasy seeing Zhou Tieyi distribute all seven opportunities to achieve sainthood.

Previously, they certainly wouldn't have believed there was any chance of becoming a saint.

But now, there's no need to say more about the two ancient deities, Phoenix Ancestor and Thunder God.

Zhou Kun is the reincarnation of the Earth Mother, the Three Pure Ones are the Three Primordial Qi of the Lotus World, and at this time they are also the incarnations of the Three Primordial Qi of the entire world. As for Miaoyu, she has also attained the Xuanpin Dao lineage and is the Daoist partner of the Heavenly Venerable.

Therefore, when these seven opportunities to achieve sainthood were distributed, everyone truly believed in them, since each of the aforementioned individuals deserved the title of "opportunity to achieve sainthood."

"May the Heavenly Venerable have mercy."

The top-ranking officials are quick-witted.

"You just said that there are nine paths to heaven, and you have already seized seven of them. Please, Heavenly Venerable, reveal the other two paths to sainthood."

Zhou Tieyi remained calm and collected, secretly making his own plans.

It would be easy for him to gather two more paths, but he wouldn't reveal which path would lead to sainthood, otherwise he would have to bear the consequences.

There is a simple method: release the opportunity to become a saint. If the person who receives it cannot become a saint, it means that their virtue is not worthy of their position, and the opportunity to become a saint will continue to circulate in the world. If the person who receives it can become a saint, it means that this Heavenly Venerable has not lied to people.

He was very familiar with this kind of rhetoric, so he smiled and said, "The destiny of heaven is inherently difficult to perfect. Very well, since you have begged me, I will point out these two paths to sainthood."

He followed the same method, gathering two more streams of purple energy within the origin of the Great Luo Palace. However, instead of bestowing the purple energy directly, he lowered his palm, allowing the two streams of purple energy to fly out of his hand like swimming fish.

The purple aura flew out from Zhou Tieyi's hand, first dancing in the all-encompassing Great Luo Palace. Just as the First Rank members were about to use their supernatural powers to seize it, the Three Enclosures Palace, symbolizing the future, rippled with the waters of time, stirring the purple aura into it and sending it falling into an untouchable future scene.

Sighs of utter disappointment echoed throughout the Great Luo Palace.

Zhou Tieyi certainly wouldn't let the opportunity to become a saint fall on the people in the Great Luo Palace, otherwise wouldn't it cause a fight before the Investiture of the Gods? He probably wouldn't be able to suppress it even if he wanted to for three hundred years. The temptation of becoming a saint is just too great, and no one can resist it.

"I have already given you the opportunity to become a saint. It should appear in the future, in the vast, unexplored world."

This is Zhou Tieyi's deliberate guidance to expand the human race and the hundred races outwards. Now the origin of the world is showing explosive growth, and internal contradictions can always be transformed into external contradictions.

Afterwards, he would take charge of the Great Luo Palace, and together with Phoenix Ancestor, Thunder God, and many human saints, they would explore the outside world. As long as they found the origins of those planets rich in resources, they could use the characteristics of the high-level dimensions of the Great Xia world at this time to connect those planets and allow the entire world to expand outward at an unimaginable speed.

It's not just planets; the universe is infinite. Sages have already acquired the initial ability to explore the universe. However, in the past, after fully ascending to a higher dimension, they would get lost in the vast ocean of the universe. That's how the Dao Venerable got lost.

However, Zhou Tieyi's current strength is far greater than that of the Dao Venerable back then. Moreover, he himself came from the outer universe and now has a long time to spare. He can slowly try to find the connection point between two different universes using himself as a medium. As long as he finds two points, he can form a causal chain between them.

Then, even if the gods and saints fully ascend to higher dimensions, they will still have a causal chain anchoring them, allowing them to attempt to expand outwards and explore the infinite universe.

The Great Heaven and Earth is now Zhou Tieyi's base camp. As long as he can cultivate more gods and saints, he will have more helpers to help him explore the outside world. Therefore, it is essential to ensure the orderly and healthy development of the base camp.

As the many first-rank cultivators stared blankly at the two vanished opportunities for sainthood, pondering their fates, Zhou Tieyi looked at his disciple Deng Xuehu. Deng Xuehu instantly understood his teacher's meaning, stepped forward, bowed, and asked, "Teacher, if there is no opportunity for sainthood, can one still become a saint in the future?"

Zhou Tieyi smiled and said, "But these nine opportunities to become a saint are obtained from the expansion of the world's origin. As long as this world continues to develop and grow stronger, new opportunities to become a saint will naturally appear."

Hearing the question and answer between Zhou Tieyi and his disciple, the first-rank disciples finally withdrew their burning gazes. After all, none of Zhou Tieyi's three disciples had yet obtained the opportunity to become saints. Now that one of Zhou Tieyi's disciples had asked this question, it also resolved some of the doubts in everyone's hearts.

Even without the opportunity to become a saint in the past, didn't there still come nine saints and three saints who ascended to the throne?

Having answered the last question, Zhou Tieyi waved his hand, and a gentle force began to send the First Rank members away from the Great Luo Palace, allowing them to restrain those below and reduce strife in the human world.

After the First Rank officials completely disappeared from the Great Luo Palace, there was only one thing that had not yet been arranged.

Zhou Tieyi first looked at Fengzu and Leishen, "The Blood Sea Lord has been reborn by seizing flesh and blood, which is an obstacle to the development of heaven and earth. He must be suppressed for eternity. What do you two think?"

Phoenix Ancestor and Thunder God exchanged a glance. They didn't care about the life or death of the Blood Sea Sovereign. The Blood Sea Sovereign had been reborn by seizing flesh and blood, and even his own followers were trembling with fear. How much more so would they, as outsiders, want the Blood Sea Sovereign to be resurrected if they could.

And the future that the Blood Sea Lord initially projected was indeed a very good choice.

“In the Dharma-ending Age, my sons and grandsons will become monks, wearing your robes, corrupting your Buddhist teachings, bearing the name of monks but doing demonic deeds.”

This is what Mara, the demon king, said to the Buddha in the Buddhist scriptures. In this world, it is also the last thing the Lord of the Blood Sea said to the Buddha.

In order to suppress the two, the Buddha had to drag them into the dream world, which led to the overlap of their respective lineages.

The decline of Buddhism was an inevitable event. This flourishing of Buddhism and its southward spread was both the beginning of its great prosperity and a sign of its descent into demonic possession.

The others couldn't understand the pilgrims' tricks, but Zhou Tieyi and several deities could.

The person who went on the pilgrimage was both the reincarnation of the Buddha and the reincarnation of the Blood Sea Lord. When he successfully spread the Dharma, Buddhism flourished. Along with the flourishing of Buddhism, magic also flourished. Monks, under the guise of Mahayana, stopped practicing and chanted the Buddha's name, vainly seeking to ascend to the Pure Land.

At that time, the Buddha and the Lord of the Blood Sea will return simultaneously and become one.

However, unlike Zhou Tiege and the Emperor of Life and Death who divide their authority by Yin and Yang, the Blood Sea Venerable and the Buddha certainly use the good and evil of the human world as the dividing line.

When people do good deeds, the Buddha naturally holds the dominant position; when people do evil deeds, the Blood Sea Venerable holds the dominant position.

This may seem fair, but good deeds are hard to come by, while evil thoughts are easy to arise.

In particular, Mahayana Buddhism teaches that one can be reborn in the Pure Land by eating vegetarian food and chanting Buddhist scriptures. Zhou Tieyi was unable to truly establish a Pure Land where virtuous people could live in the netherworld, so Mahayana Buddhism naturally could not establish such a Pure Land either.

Therefore, the better one thinks, the more evil one does, because all the bad reputation can be attributed to Buddhism. This is what it means to have the name of a monk but do demonic things.

This idea would also spread to the Phoenix Clan and the Thunder God's faith as Buddhism expanded. After the two deities had thought it through, they nodded and said, "That's how it should be."

(End of this chapter)