Chapter 167: Abstinence Monk
Helpless, Jiang Li could only take the initiative to influence the outcome.
His method was also very simple. Through the secret gathering of the ‘good friends’ network through the Spiritual Root Branch, he would let those talented disciples with good backgrounds influence the elders of the various sects.
In the Misty Mountain Range, among the cultivators who were parasitized by Jiang Li, a total of 11 were from various sects.
Jiang Li had thought that they might be useful at that time, so he did not kill them. Instead, he turned the spiritual root seed that he had taken control of into the Nine Nether Earth Fruit and fed it to them.
Not long after, it came in handy.
One had to know that this Medicine Garden Mystic Realm actually did not have a true master. It was a place jointly managed by the various sects in the cultivation world of the Great Mountain Region.
Everything here was decided by the representatives of the various large sects.
The opinions of these sect elders meant the decision of the competition authorities.
It was up to these elite disciples to make requests. Not to mention that it could play a decisive role, as long as the outcome was slightly affected, one or two fruits would actually be enough.
Jiang Li himself also made a rare request to Elder He.
Elder He’s answer was that even if two Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruits were to be distributed as rewards, they would at most be the first two places in this competition.
If Jiang Li was at his prime, there would naturally be no reason for him to not agree. But now, wouldn’t it be better to distribute it to the sect before obtaining it through the sect’s channels?
With the status of the Scripture Storage Valley, obtaining a number of the Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruits was inevitable, but Jiang Li was worried that something unexpected would happen if it was delayed.
Right now, in the Medicine Garden Mystic Realm, the sect leader was far away. Elder He’s status as the Head Elder of the Demon Vanquishing Hall allowed him to directly make decisions and participate in a joint resolution.
However, if that spiritual fruit returned to the sect, there would be more than one or two people who would covet it.
Powerful experts, sect elders, and descendants of high-ranking elders. There were only a few fruits in total, and the probability of it being Jiang Li’s was truly quite low.
But here, if they decided to distribute it, then as long as he became the final winner, he would definitely obtain it.
To him, this was much simpler.
However, the final result was not out yet. It was hard to say if the competition authorities would agree to take out this kind of fruit.
After waiting for a long time, the final round of the competition finally began.
Twelve beautiful female cultivators flew out in long dresses that were dozens of meters long. They danced in the air dreamily.
The beautiful dance of immortals was mesmerizing to the tens of thousands of cultivators below.
On the other hand, Jiang Li noticed that Senior Sister Qi Yu of the Rejuvenation Hall was surprisingly amongst them.
In this grand meeting of the cultivation world, besides the official Black and White Rankings, there was also a Goddess Ranking Board spread among unofficial channels.
On the Goddess Ranking Board, strength and cultivation were not important. It only judged the female cultivators’ looks and figures.
Those female cultivators from the sects usually stayed in their own territory and rarely went out. There were not many opportunities for outsiders to see them. Now, they had gathered in this distinguished meeting.
In an instant, hundreds of flowers blossomed.
Since ancient times, everyone loved beauty. This naturally attracted the enthusiasm of many cultivators.
Especially among the rogue cultivators, the discussion about this was no less intense than the official competitors.
There were also many talented people who made a killing by selling the portraits and statues of many female cultivators on the Goddess Ranking Board.
The female cultivators’ dance quickly ended. They flew towards the two mountains in the fog and scattered two spiritual lights.
As the spiritual light descended, dense fog slowly scattered, revealing the final battlefield of this competition.
The two mountains had clearly been modified by the competition authorities.
On the mountain, many of the tall trees that could easily obstruct one’s sight had already been eradicated, there was a flight of steps around the mountain.
Along the way, flat and hard arenas were distributed all the way to the top of the mountain. On these two mountains, on one side were 50 arenas for the Foundation Establishment realm and 100 arenas for the Qi Refinement realm.
Two stone paths on the mountain circled upwards. When one reached the end and held on for three days, they would obtain the highest honor among the younger generation of the Great Mountain Cultivation Realm.
When one was at the peak, he would become famous overnight and everyone would know about it!
Jiang Li looked at the highest combat ring on the mountain. Who else could be there but him?
Standing at the top of the mountain and trampling on everyone was not very polite. At that time, he liked it.
Of course, before reaching the peak, the ten of them still had to accept the challenge first.
As first place, Jiang Li would be the first to attempt to reach the top.
“Junior Sister Qiuhua, I’ll wait for you at the top of the mountain.”
Before they left, Jiang Li smiled at the sword cultivator woman by his side, and then he took out a scroll from his pocket and handed it to her. It was a painting of her.
Shenshan Qiuhua took the portrait and looked a little red as she replied softly, “Senior Brother Jiang Li, you can do it!”
After that, Jiang Li took a few steps forward and flew to the entrance of the stairway.
Going up the stone staircase that had just been built not long ago, after only moving a hundred meters, a figure blocked the stone staircase.
“Amitabha. Junior Brother Jiang Li, sorry for offending you.”
The person in front of him had nine dots on his bald head. His yellowish-brown monk robe was stretched open by his strong muscles, revealing bronze skin that glowed with a metallic luster. This image did not look like compassion at all.
As the top of the rankings, Jiang Li would encounter five people who blocked his path.
If Jiang Li lost, the person who blocked his path would continue to ascend the peak in Jiang Li’s place and accept the test of another five people blocking their path again.
Furthermore, as long as one stepped onto this long ladder, they would no longer receive any external assistance. No medical cultivator would heal the challenger from the five consecutive battles until they lost. They could only rely on medicinal pills and themselves.
If one did not have strength that surpassed those of the same level, it was actually quite difficult to reach the top.
Due to the rumor of Jiang Li being attacked, most cultivators treated him as a weakling.
As long as they defeated a person who had yet to recover from serious injuries, they would have a chance to become a disciple of the peak. The competition for the right to stand here as one of the five obstacles was naturally quite intense.
The person standing in front of him was a monk from Benevolent Travel Temple. His Buddhist name was Zheng Tu. People called him the Abstinence Monk who guarded his precepts and did not kill.
Jiang Li had heard his senior brothers mention this person before. Supposedly, he was extremely renowned in the Grand Competition, and it was even to the extent that many people felt he was a hot favorite to win the championship.
However, although this person was known as the one who ‘did not kill’, it seemed that the casualties of the cultivators he fought were very high.
Of the cultivators he had fought, not many were left intact.
Jiang Li walked forward and bowed to the other party.
Observing the other party’s body at a close distance, he had to admit that Benevolent Travel Temple’s body refinement methods were quite good.
His muscles were simply like a mountain of flesh that was piled up. At least in terms of appearance, no matter if it was his body size or the extent of his muscle mass, he was much more exaggerated than Jiang Li.
Jiang Li himself wore a larger disciple uniform. His strong body did not appear too conspicuous, but the other party simply had a few pieces of cloth barely covering his body, his clothes were simply like decoration.
“I heard Junior Brother Jiang Li is also a body cultivator. Today, we will have a proper spar. Please!”
The other party waved his hand and led Jiang Li towards the combat ring at the side.
“Senior Brother Zheng Tu is too polite. Please!”
Under their humble and friendly appearance, they revealed a sense of hostility.
Benevolent Travel Temple had always been recognized as the overlord of body cultivation in the Great Mountain Region, and practically no one could surpass them! Buddhist cultivation methods and body cultivation methods complemented each other, causing them to be renowned in the cultivation world.
As for the Scripture Storage Valley’s Elder He, he was an exception. The physical cultivation of the disciples under his faction were extremely shocking. They could compete with Benevolent Travel Temple’s monk cultivators and sometimes even suppress them.
Ever since ancient times, only first place mattered, nobody cared about second place. This situation made Benevolent Travel Temple very dissatisfied.
Despite how the group of monks from Benevolent Travel Temple chanted Buddhist scriptures every day, the vigorous vitality of body cultivators determined that they did not have a gentle personality.
They usually abstained from greed, anger, and hatred, but as long as they were following their principles, they could boldly and righteously fly into a rage in battle.
Ever since they had a conflict with Elder He’s lineage in terms of body cultivation status, these monks wanted to compete with him whenever there was a chance to prove their dominance in body cultivation.
The two of them turned around and walked into the ring beside the staircase.
As for Monk Zheng Tu, the moment he turned around, it was revealed that he had been carrying four huge blades on his back.
Monk Zheng Tu was more than two meters tall. The four huge blades were almost the same height as him. As he walked, they would drag across the ground, bringing about sparks.
The width was even more astonishing. It was not an exaggeration to say that even if he let Shenshan Qiuhua and Senior Sister Little Four hide behind the huge sabers, they would still be able to cover them completely.
Hmm… Senior Sister Qi Yu could not hide completely. A part of her was too big.
Jiang Li glanced at the four overlapping sabers, and his expression could not help but become strange.
This was the first time he had seen a monk use such a weapon. Furthermore, it was said to be a monk who did not kill.
Could it be that the four sabers were just for show?
There was still some blood on the blade. Clearly that was not the case.
When they entered the arena, the two of them immediately pulled apart a distance. Because there was no referee in the arena, as long as they entered the arena area, it meant that the battle would begin.
If either side was ambushed and defeated, there was nothing much to say.
Clang!
The sound of metal colliding rang out as Monk Zheng Tu grabbed a saber in his hand.
He looked more like a butcher than a monk.
“How did Senior Brother Zheng Tu manage to not kill with these weapons? Can you enlighten me?”
How hard would it take to survive a slash by those giant blades?
Jiang Li looked at the bloody weapons and felt that it was still a little strange, so he asked.
Abstinence Monk Zheng Tu opened his mouth and smiled. Then, he raised his hand and threw the saber in his hand.
The wide saber landed on a corner of the arena. The metal hilt was completely inserted into the ground, leaving only the 1.8-meter wide blade standing there.
Following that, three metallic sounds were heard as the other three sabers were thrown out.
The four large swords stood in different directions of the ring, the blades facing inward, surrounding the two people standing opposite each other.
“About that, there’s no harm in telling Junior Brother. I don’t hold the sabers in my hand, and I don’t brandish them either. Cultivators who fight with me all commit suicide by charging into the blades.”
“As for why they are so eager to reincarnate, Junior Brother will soon know.”
The smile on his face vanished instantly. His burly figure still exploded with terrifying speed.
However, in the next second, a smile that had already turned ruthless appeared before Jiang Li, and then a large hand pushed towards his chest.
From the direction he was pushing, it seemed like he was going to push Jiang Li towards the large blade behind him, making him collide with it and be directly cut into two.
Jiang Li was speechless at this forced realization.
The twisted logic and double standards of the Buddhist sects really made people speechless.
Jiang Li’s figure flashed to dodge the hand, and then he turned around to stand behind it before pushing the other party forward.
He immediately increased the speed of his opponent’s charge to a point where it was difficult to control.
Zheng Tu’s control of his speed was obviously inferior to Jiang Li.
After being pushed from behind, his burly body could not stop at all and directly collided with the blade.
Pew!
The hot blood of a body cultivator splattered across the sky. The other party’s chest directly collided with the blade that was nearly his height.
The saber was still very sharp. It easily broke through the body cultivator’s skin and stabbed deeply into his flesh. Hot blood flowed out and dyed the saber red.
“If you’re eager to reincarnate, I should help you like this, right? Senior Brother Zheng Tu, you’re right. This kind of feeling of not killing has indeed calmed my heart greatly.”
“After all, Senior Brother, you crashed into it yourself, right?”
Jiang Li had a smile on his face. He seemed to have truly understood some philosophy and seemed to have gained some enlightenment.
When the monk heard this, he did not dare to breathe or speak, because the blade was still embedded in his body. Even the slightest movement would cause his injuries to worsen.
Pew!
More blood spurted from his body.
There were already many open wounds in the chest and abdomen. Even the bladder had a small incision.
However, this kind of injury seemed to be nothing to a body cultivator. It was not to the extent where it could incapacitate him.
Both his hands grabbed the blade and he pulled himself away from it.
A bloody line that did not stop bleeding from top to bottom seemed to want to split the other party into two, but the burly figure still did not fall.
Jiang Li gave him a thumbs up. This guy was a ruthless person.
The muscles on the cut area of the wound tightened. He forced himself to block the long and narrow wound and stop the bleeding. He could still barely fight.
“Let’s go again! I was just careless!”
Zheng Tu raised his head to look at Jiang Li, and he was about to retaliate.
However, in the next moment, Jiang Li’s hand appeared on his chest and pushed forward lightly.
Abstinence Monk Zheng Tu collided with the huge blade again. The blade was 70% bone deep this time!
If it was any deeper, this guy would have been split into two.
“It’s… over?”
“The Abstinence Monk was actually defeated so quickly. How is this possible?!”
“Isn’t the first place… isn’t he heavily injured?”
When the large number of cultivators at the foot of the mountain saw such a strange battle, an uproar arose. They were completely unable to understand it.
With Jiang Li’s current speed, it was already very rare for a Foundation Establishment cultivator to be able to catch his shadow. Most of the ordinary cultivators watching the battle at the foot of the mountain did not see what he did at all.
They only saw that the famous monk who did not kill had inexplicably collided with his own saber. After two strikes, he lost the ability to fight and was defeated cleanly.
In this strange battle situation, some people even felt that Zheng Tu had really committed suicide because he regretted using the method of “not killing” to kill too many people.
The way he was defeated was the same as those cultivators he had defeated before. It was abnormally tragic. Just looking at the terrifying wound made one’s scalp turn numb.
After leaving this arena, Jiang Li started to continue climbing the stairs.
Not long after, another cultivator and an arena appeared before him.
What slightly surprised him was that this person seemed to be a rogue cultivator.