Bodhisattva, please help me in my spiritual practice!

Chapter 233 Painting People and Ghosts, Refining Reality into Illusion

After finishing the landscape painting, Ao Peng was not satisfied. He gestured to the sky and said, "I ask for Master Ai's help."

At this moment, Master Ai had already killed Ghost General Wan Gu Gong. Upon hearing Ao Peng's words, he laughed loudly, pointed his finger, and thousands of Gengjin sword energies fell from the void, turning into a platinum color.

Ao Peng had already cultivated the Subduing Demon Gengjin Qi, but he was not yet proficient. With the help of Master Ai, the thousands of sword energies dispersed into three thousand strands, transforming into numerous sword cultivators from Chengdu, soaring through the air above the Jiangshan Map.

In the netherworld, several plague lords looked solemn. The changes before their eyes had completely exceeded their expectations, and they even didn't understand what Ao Peng was doing.

However, Zhao Gongming, the Plague King who had been making the first move, suddenly exclaimed with delight, "What amazing power! Truly amazing power!"

Having said that, he waved his sleeve, and gusts of yin wind surged forth, transforming into divine power, which also entered Ao Peng's painting. At the Gates of Hell, they transformed into tens of thousands of yin soldiers, confronting the sword cultivator in the sky, perfectly replicating the scene at that moment.

The other plague lords exchanged glances. Among them, the Middle Plague Lord and the Winter Plague Lord had no enmity with Ao Peng.

At this moment, Erlang Shen and Zhao Gongming directly stepped in to help. In addition, with the third power hidden in the Dragon Girl, they knew that they couldn't fight against the powerful. Rather than trying to stop a chariot with their bare hands, they might as well try Ao Peng's painting magic. This is why even Zhao Gongming praised it.

So their divine power was also poured into the painting, making the ghosts even more real.

Above the void, the Old Man of the Moon looked at Guanyin Bodhisattva, "Bodhisattva, shall we join forces?"

Guanyin Bodhisattva looked compassionately down to the mortal realm. This little fellow had indeed found the best solution, but she gently shook her head and said, "I have already taken action and it is inconvenient for me to get involved in the mortal world. You can take care of it, Old Man of the Moon."

Knowing that Guanyin Bodhisattva had gone to great lengths to transfer the flower to another tree, and that she was currently worried about someone else, the Old Man of the Moon naturally wouldn't act rashly. He smiled, and his own divine power of marriage descended, landing on Ao Peng's fingertips, helping Ao Peng draw the beings of this place.

Kong Chan and Zheng Zimo's expressions changed from astonishment to shock. On the illusory painting at Ao Peng's fingertip, mountains and rivers met, and human and ghost figures gathered, descending from Qingcheng Cave, along Dujiangyan to Erlang Zhenjun Temple. It was as if all the people and ghosts in this hundred-mile stretch of mountains and rivers were in the painting.

Zheng Ziming turned to look at Kong Chan, "What does he want to do?"

Kong Chan flicked the prayer beads in his hand. "I know who he is now?"

Zheng Ziming immediately realized, "Is that General Wu, who painted Taodu Mountain, in person?"

Kong Chan nodded. "To paint the illusory into the real in this way is already a feat achieved by the heavens, beyond the reach of human power."

After he arrived here, he heard that General Wu had drawn a picture of Taodu Mountain a few days ago, which he was initially skeptical about.

It wasn't that he doubted the authenticity of Taodu Mountain; such a large mountain runs through the veins of western Sichuan, and one could easily tell the difference at a glance. What he doubted was whether the Dao of Painting could achieve this level of authenticity.

Or is this the will of Heaven, following the story of the Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains, that a celestial being moved Peach Capital Mountain?

Upon seeing Ao Peng truly depict the landscape and the ghosts and humans of Baili Mountain, Kong Chan instantly realized that Taodu Mountain was indeed a painting!

Since it's drawn, then it's a great supernatural power to turn the unreal into the real!

What puzzled Kong Chan was that there was no Taodu Mountain in Sichuan, so Ao Peng drew a Taodu Mountain to suppress the ghosts. But the Dujiangyan Irrigation System was real, so why did he draw a Dujiangyan Irrigation System?

The two looked at Ao Peng with reverence, wanting to see how far the Dao of Painting could go after borrowing the power of Heaven.

Ao Peng painted the entire landscape of this hundred-mile stretch of land, filled with both human and ghostly figures. He gently brushed the painting in front of him, and the masterpiece, with its light and airy ink wash, covered the real hundred-mile stretch of land.

In an instant, the wind stopped, the clouds thinned, and everything seemed to be in a painting.

The first to realize something was wrong were the sword cultivators, the dragon, and the ghosts who were still fighting in the Qingcheng Mountain cave. They seemed to have been possessed and found themselves unable to move for a moment.

It cannot even be described as a simple soul-seizing technique, because the surrounding天地元气 (heaven and earth energy) seemed to have died, completely unmoved. The opponent's supernatural powers and techniques were right in front of them, but they were frozen in the painting. This hundred-mile stretch of mountains and rivers was all captured in a painting!

At this moment, outside a blessed land, Zhang Tianshi looked at the painting of mountains, rivers, humans, and ghosts from afar and chuckled, "Since you can turn the illusory into the real, you can also turn the real into the illusory. You gave me five pecks of rice, so I will share half of this Tai Chi opportunity with you. Originally, I felt that I was at a disadvantage, but after seeing this painting, I suddenly don't feel that way anymore."

Having said that, Zhang Tianshi opened the blessed land before him.

The moment this blessed land opened, the remaining primordial Dao essence within transformed into a black and white Tai Chi Yin-Yang symbol. An old man sat on the Yin-Yang symbol; he had descended to this place a thousand years ago to preach the Dao, and a thousand years later, his figure remained undisturbed, the source of all things in this world.

Before us, the blessed land opens up, and everything within it intertwines with external elements, influencing and interacting with each other.

"The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the named is the mother of all things."

The profound and mysterious sermon transcended time and space, resounding in Ao Peng's ears.

The content of this scripture is both simple and complex.

The reason it is simple is that this statement means that everything is in motion and change. Even the Tao is not immutable. It says that existence and non-existence give rise to each other and reflect each other, so that the existence of the other can be highlighted.

It is complex because a single sentence encapsulates the most fundamental truths of the world.

When this principle reached Ao Peng's ears, he naturally gained a different understanding.

Two illusory yin-yang fish appeared before his eyes, their heads and tails intertwined, entwined and pushing each other.

The next moment, his still painting was propelled by the source of the yin-yang symbol, and the entire painting came to life, with time passing within it much faster than in the normal world.

So Cao Anshi's painting of the white bones of Dujiangyan eventually breached a section of the Dujiangyan dam a few days later, freeing the hundreds of souls imprisoned inside. However, as the dam collapsed, the spring rains created a massive flood that submerged downstream villages, causing tens of thousands of people to be displaced.

Ao Peng looked at Cao Anshi beside him, "Has your resentment subsided?"

Dressed in red, Cao Anshi saw that tens of thousands of people had lost their homes and families because she saved her husband. Her resentment subsided as her husband and son were relieved of their predicament. She bowed down and said, "I am guilty and am willing to await my punishment."

Ao Peng chuckled and said, "How can saving your husband and son be considered a sin? It's a good thing that the resentment in your heart has been resolved."

Having said that, he took out a precious mirror and shone it into his painting. The mirror light reflected the scene of countless displaced people, and instantly the scene in the painting vanished, turning reality into illusion. It transformed the mountains, rivers, people, and ghosts into a dream of upside-down displacement. Only the hundreds of souls that were rescued, along with the people of this place, reappeared in the real world, their expressions dazed, as if in a dream.