He has been reincarnated through countless worlds, adorned with billions of mythological terms!

The old monk's chanting suddenly stopped.

He stood at the breach in the city wall, his gaze passing over the collapsed crenellations and looking toward the two young men who had reappeared at the bottom of the pagoda.

Those eyes were as calm as a stagnant pool.

Then he turned around and faced the sand dune.

Behind the sand dunes, a figure is slowly emerging.

Many people came.

Some came barefoot from the deepest part of the desert, their monks' robes tattered, carrying a rusty copper lamp in their skeletal hands.

The wick ignites spontaneously without a flame, its pale golden light flickering uncertainly in the wind and sand—it is the light of a Buddhist ascetic.

Some rode camels out from the other side of the sand dunes, their faces covered in white robes, with crescent-shaped sand bandit daggers tucked diagonally into their belts.

The gemstone on the hilt had lost its luster due to the wind and sand, but the blade still gleamed coldly.

Some stood atop sand dunes, with a towering, hundred-foot-tall statue of yellow sand behind them.

The colossus's face was blurred, but its outline resembled a fierce Vajra magnified countless times.

Some rose silently from the depths of the sand, their skin grayish-white, their bodies wrapped in shrouds soaked in corpse oil.

Between the strips of cloth, the dry muscles and angular bones were faintly visible.

Ascetic monk, sand bandit, sand tribe priest, corpse refiner.

The four most troublesome types of beings in the desert appeared simultaneously outside this abandoned ancient city.

Bai Lu's face turned completely pale.

She could tell, of course, that these were all natives from the Land Immortals.

Damn it.

What's really going on in this world?

Why are there so many outrageous indigenous people?

Fang Zhe bit his tongue, and his blood essence drew an earth-yellow rune in his palm, indicating that the Great Teleportation Talisman was about to be activated.

But the old monk did not enter the city.

The other indigenous people did not set foot in the ancient city either.

They just stood there quietly, as if waiting for someone.

Suddenly, a crack appeared in the ground in the center of the ancient city.

A giant hand formed from yellow sand pushed the ground open from below—its five fingers spread out, each finger measuring ten feet in length.

The giant hand ripped open the ground, creating a hole large enough for dozens of people to pass through. Sand slipped through its fingers, revealing the entrance to the tunnel buried underground.

A light shines deep inside the tunnel.

The wick was a fist-sized luminous pearl, emitting a soft and even light that illuminated the dense murals on both sides of the tunnel.

The mural depicts a war: extraterrestrial demons unleash carnage, mortals rise up in resistance, mountains and rivers are shattered, and blood flows like rivers.

The person holding the lamp emerged from the tunnel.

Fang Zhe and Bai Lu finally saw the true ruler of the endless desert.

The man was of medium height, wearing a faded gray cloth robe with a hemp rope tied around his waist and straw sandals on his feet.

Her hair was sparse and gray, and she had tied it into a bun at the back of her head with a withered twig.

The most striking feature of his face was his eyes—his left pupil was normal, but his right eye had no pupil at all; the entire eyeball was a perfectly round piece of topaz, with a tiny golden dot of light slowly moving within it.

When the yellow jade right eye swept across the bottom of the pagoda, Fang Zhe felt an invisible hand gently pinch his dantian.

It didn't hurt, but all the true energy in my body stopped circulating at that moment.

"Another one."

The old man holding the lamp spoke, his voice hoarse and dry, like wind blowing through the pores on the surface of a sand dune, "You extraterrestrial demons, you just can't stop."

"With chaos erupting in Xianyang, does the Endless Desert also want a piece of the action?"

Fang Zhe abruptly interrupted the Great Teleportation Talisman he was halfway through forming. His true energy surged wildly through his meridians, and the backlash from his fingertips burned all the way to his shoulder blades. He couldn't care less about that now and took a step forward.

He knew that with his current cultivation level, he was no match for the group of natives in front of him.

But those who reincarnate can live to sixty-one worlds not only because of their cultivation level, but also because of their judgment in assessing situations and their decisiveness at crucial moments.

"senior."

He clasped his hands and bowed, saying, "We have only stumbled into this endless desert by mistake and have no intention of offending anyone."

"If you are willing to let us leave, we will leave immediately, we will never—"

"Stumbled upon by mistake?" The old man holding the lamp chuckled, a smile that appeared extremely eerie against the backdrop of his jade-like right eye. "Of all the endless deserts stretching for thousands of miles, why did you insist on passing by the underground cave where I once secluded myself?"

The old monk chanted a Buddhist prayer outside the ancient city wall:

"Amitabha."

"Abbot, the aura emanating from these two benefactors is the same as that of those extraterrestrial demons from back then."

"When I found them at the site of the Kugu Temple, three hundred miles away, they were excavating the stupa in the underground palace."

The old man holding the lamp's face darkened.

He stared intently at Fang Zhe with his topaz right eye. The light shone through the topaz, refracting into eerie golden fragments that fell on Fang Zhe's face like countless fine needles.

"Seventy-three fellow disciples who died in battle are buried in the underground palace of the Kugu Temple."

The old man's voice softened, "Where are their relics now?"

Fang Zhe felt cold sweat trickling down his forehead.

He took a cloth bag from his storage bag and presented it with both hands.

When the cloth bag was opened, it contained more than a dozen crystal-clear relics, each radiating a pale golden Buddhist light.

The elderly man holding the lamp reached out and took it.

The moment the finger touched the relic, the golden light in the right eye of the yellow jade suddenly magnified, like a miniature sun burning in the eye socket.

He counted them once.

Thirteen.

There should be seventy-three in the underground palace of the Dry Bone Temple.

"What about the rest?"

Bai Lu peeked out from behind Fang Zhe, holding a cloth bag containing more than twenty relics.

Her voice trembled slightly:

That's all.

"When we arrived, most of the relics in the underground palace had already been stolen."

"We didn't do it, and we don't know who did it."

The old man holding the lamp stared at Bai Lu for a moment with his right eye.

Bai Lu felt as if that eye had hollowed out her entire being, from her flesh to her bones, and from her bones to her soul.

Then the old man holding the lamp withdrew his gaze and handed the two cloth bags to the old monk.

The old monk took the relics, holding them one by one in his hand, and the sound of chanting sutras slowly flowed from his chapped lips.

The ascetic monks standing on the ancient city wall simultaneously clasped their hands together and lowered their heads, chanting sutras along with the old monk.

The sound of chanting echoed among the ruins.

The bas-reliefs on the pagoda, blurred by wind and sand, glowed faintly in the sound of chanting.

The old man holding the lamp was silent for a moment, then raised his head and waved to the sand tribe priest standing on the city wall.

The sand tribe's sacrificial ceremony involves descending from the top of a sand dune.

The towering yellow sand statue behind them collapsed and turned into a cloud of dust that was swept away by the wind.

"I remember you said that a few extraterrestrial demons have recently arrived in that oasis in the eastern desert."

The old man holding the lamp looked at the Sha tribe priest and said in a tone as if he were talking about a trivial matter, "Go and take care of it."

"While we're at it, let's see who dug up the underground palace of the Temple of Dry Bones."

"Relics are useless to extraterrestrial demons; they have no reason to take them."

"Who is collecting Buddhist relics in this endless desert?"

The ascetic monk spoke:

"Buddha and Mara!"

"Only this way would people gather strength."

The moment the words fell.

The ancient city ruins were quiet.

While everyone's attention was focused on the words "Demon Buddha," Fang Zhe and Bai Lu exchanged a silent glance.

Fang Zhe crushed the teleportation talisman hidden in his sleeve.