Both start in hell: but their talents are multiplied a hundredfold.

This is what the people in the imperial city saw.

In the sky, the black centipede that blotted out the sun pounced on the monk with the halo hanging behind his head with earth-shattering force.

Then, the centipede crashed into a ball of light that wasn't too bright, and instantly half of it melted away.

The remaining half of the centipede demon's body suddenly stopped.

"Hmm?" Shen Jue's voice echoed throughout the entire imperial city.

"I don't feel anything."

"Please give it your all."

"You don't even have the strength to hit someone, yet you have the nerve to call yourself a demon and demand that humans be buried with you?"

Pudu Cihang remained silent, his remaining anger and madness buried by his intense will to survive.

The remaining half of the centipede's body trembled violently in the air, and black blood cascaded down like a waterfall, staining half of the imperial city's long street black.

Its remaining consciousness struggled frantically, driving its tattered body to turn around, its hundred legs paddling as it tried to escape into the clouds.

It was fast, but Shen Jue's palm was even faster.

Shen Jue simply raised his other hand casually, his fingers slightly spread, and gently flipped it towards the fleeing centipede.

Suddenly, the world was bright.

Everyone in the imperial city involuntarily looked up and saw a hand slowly taking shape above the clouds.

That hand is too big.

So vast that it covered half the sky, so vast that the sea of ​​clouds flowed like a stream between one's fingers, so vast that everyone in the imperial city couldn't distinguish it for a moment.

Was it a hand that fell, or the sky that collapsed?

The palm lines are clearly visible, each line flowing with the luster of the Great Yuan's magnetic power, like golden rivers flowing across the land.

When the five fingers came together, a deep, rumbling sound filled the air.

Before the palm print even touched the body of the thousand-meter-long centipede demon, Pudu Cihang, its shell began to crack inch by inch simply because the palm wind arrived first.

Those exoskeletons, harder than gold and iron, were as fragile as dried mud in the face of absolute power, peeling off piece by piece, crumbling, and turning into ashes.

Its demonic body, cultivated for a thousand years, didn't even have the right to struggle in front of this palm.

The golden palm print that descended from the sky gently pressed onto the centipede demon's remains, as if crushing a grain of dust.

There was no blood mist or residue left behind; the centipede demon's consciousness, body, and other evidence of its existence had completely vanished.

However, Shen Jue's seal did not dissipate.

It passed through the airspace where the centipede demon had disappeared and continued to press towards the continuous mountain range outside the imperial city.

In the eastern suburbs of the imperial city, a mountain range known locally as "Iron Ridge" stretches across the land for hundreds of miles, with sheer cliffs thousands of feet high at its most precipitous points.

Legend has it that the founding emperor once stationed troops here, praising it as "impregnable and impregnable."

At that moment, the palm print landed.

The golden palm print was pressed lightly and undeniably into the mountain, as if the entire mountain range were nothing more than a castle built by a child on a beach.

The rocks melted in the golden light, the soil evaporated in the magic, and the entire mountain seemed to have been gently wiped away by an invisible hand.

The palm print pierced through the mountain, leaving a gaping hole in the mountain range.

The edges of the cavity were as smooth as a mirror, without even a single crack spreading outwards.

Looking out from the direction of the imperial city, a perfectly shaped notch in the shape of a hand is clearly visible on the spine of Iron Ridge.

The gap runs through the entire mountain, and through it, you can see the sky and clouds on the other side of the mountain.

In the imperial city, all was silent.

Everyone was looking up, mouths agape, their eyes practically popping out of their sockets.

When the centipede covered the sky, they thought they were doomed.

When Shen Jue emitted golden light, they thought it was a manifestation of Buddha.

Now, those with good eyesight, looking at the enormous palm print that had appeared on the Iron Ridge that had existed for millions of years, had only one thought in their minds.

Is this a Buddha or a monster?

On the long street, someone knelt down first.

Then, the massive crowd, like wheat fields blown down by the wind, knelt down in unison.

Some people kowtowed repeatedly, chanting Buddhist mantras with tears streaming down their faces, while others collapsed to the ground, too weak to even kneel.

In the sky, Shen Jue, with a halo hanging behind his head, finally nodded.

With this palm strike, he also wiped out the powerful demons and monsters in the mountain range, while the humans and a few cultivators in the mountain range were instantly teleported away by him.

Shen Jue patted off non-existent dust from his monk's robe, glanced at the palm print gap that pierced through the mountain on Iron Ridge in the distance, and suddenly smiled.

"Tsk." He muttered to himself, a hint of mockery in his voice.

"Where did this stray dog ​​centipede demon come from? I thought it was a speed bump."

"Never mind," Shen Jue quickly stopped worrying about it, waving his hand as if shooing away a fly.

That's fine.

"Next, it's time to deal with the demons and monsters of this world."

"Experience the awe-inspiring power of the Heavenly Righteous Qi Method."

Shen Jue stepped down from the void, and the halo behind his head quietly disappeared.

He found Yan Chixia and Ning Caichen among the kneeling crowd. The two were still looking up at the sky, their faces filled with shock.

"Don't just stand there, let's go." Shen Jue called out, leading the two of them straight towards the location of Commander Zuo.

"Hehe," Shen Jue chuckled ambiguously when he saw Commander Zuo, "Brother Zuo."

"Now that the centipede demon is dead, it's time to carry out our plan."

Amidst Zuo Qianhu's shock and helplessness, Shen Jue burst into laughter.

Two weeks later, in an unnamed small mountain village.

The morning mist had not yet dissipated, and the roosters had just stopped crowing when a monk in a gray robe walked along the dirt road at the village entrance.

The monk, though covered in dust from his journey, walked with remarkable steadiness.

He stopped in front of the simple school at the edge of the village and knocked on the half-closed wooden door.

In the school, a young teacher wearing a blue long gown was tidying up the books on his desk.

This man's surname was Pu, and the villagers all called him Master Pu. He was the only literate person within a radius of thirty miles.

After failing the provincial examination last year, he returned to the small mountain village where he was born and raised, and converted his old house into a school to teach more than a dozen children in the village to read and write.

Upon hearing the knock on the door, Master Pu looked up.

The monk standing outside the door put his hands together and chanted a Buddhist prayer.

"My Buddhist name is Huiming, and I come from Jinshan Temple."

Master Pu was taken aback.

He knew about Jinshan Temple; it was a famous temple in Jiangnan, at least 800 li away from here.

What is a monk from Jinshan Temple doing in this remote and impoverished place?

Huiming seemed to see through his doubts and smiled, "This humble monk has been traveling here and found the atmosphere here to be pure and serene, with a restrained spiritual energy. I suppose there must be scholars living here."

"This humble monk has a scroll of scripture that I wish to give to someone who is destined to receive it."