Chapter 303: The Way Evan Came On Stage
For several years now, ever since he had started practicing Buddhist cultivation method, Patrick had been proud of his emotional stability, more so than his strength.
As someone who had been an Acalanatha in his previous incarnation, he was more stable than anyone else in the world could be. No matter how serious the problem was, he could have dealt with it calmly. As the old saying goes, the Buddha is in one's heart rather than anywhere else. This essentially meant that taking it easy and remaining calm was the way of the Buddhist method. As an expert practitioner, his heart was always like a lake, placid and still.
But today was the day of the storm. Today, the lake was not calm as usual. First there were a lot of ripples and then a large wave had come. With increasing temperature, it was now nearing an active volcano.
Patrick felt like he was going to puke blood. How on earth was Zen doing that?
The Green Lotus Karma Fire was the very definition of torture on Earth. It was extremely powerful and had no defense! Patrick didn't need to be told just how dangerous it was.
He would have felt a lot better if Zen had merely used some secret weapons or some new move to defend himself from the Green Lotus Karma Fire temporarily, but the problem was that he wasn't afraid of it at all. It was almost as if the flame was nothing to him. And the worst part was that there were even whirlpools around Zen that pulled the Karma Fire into themselves.
This was unacceptable for anyone in the world.
When he was fighting against Rocher, Patrick hadn't really shown his cards. He was keeping them safe because as far as he was concerned, those hidden moves were enough for him to beat Zen. But even though all of those moves were new, every single one of them had been completely blocked. Most importantly, Patrick hadn't planned to use the Green Lotus Karma Fire in the first place. He'd never expected that Zen could make him use it.
The moment he was forced to the edge of the arena by Zen's sword spirit, Patrick had started thinking of the possibility that maybe Zen had a way to stand against his Green Lotus Karma Fire.
His initial assessment was that even if Zen could do that, it wouldn't last long. The fire was supposed to last a very long time, and while Zen was busy defending himself from the fire, it would be difficult for him to resist Patrick's other attacks. Patrick was clear about the power of his moves. He knew this one surefire way to make Zen vulnerable.
But Zen had chosen a completely different path. He wasn't defending himself from the fire; he was absorbing it.
Patrick didn't even have a chance to fight. He was too baffled to do that. All he really wanted to do was ask: where had the fire gone?
It would seem that Zen's body had absorbed the fire. But that fire was supposed to be lethal to others. Somehow, it seemed beneficial to Zen. It was something that could refine his body.
Actually, Zen had been beaten by Patrick too many times for his fire to have any effect now. The practice had made the warm currents in his body flow through every one of his vessels which was actually very comfortable.
Now the fire was burning inside him and he felt that he was becoming stronger and stronger instead of feeling a sense of burning. The scalding hot flow inside him didn't make him feel ill, but warm and comfortable instead.
It could be compared to a blacksmith making weapons. First, he needed to melt it, then beat it, and finally, temper it.
Zen had been going through this process since the time his body was refined to the level of a mysterious weapon.
The golden whirlpools around him were absorbing the Green Lotus Karma Fire faster and faster. The fire didn't spread much far since it was trapped in the arena because of the runes on the floor. This apparent concentration made the situation seem worse.
Initially, the Karma Fire had risen high in the sky and seemed to burn more and more furiously.
But as Zen kept absorbing it constantly, it gradually slowed down and became smaller by the second. Now Yan and some sharp-eyed people could finally see the two men fighting in the arena.
As time went by, the Green Lotus Karma Fire became smaller and smaller. The initially dense blaze now looked like small, red, furious clouds scattered in the arena's air and they kept on being absorbed by Zen's whirlpools at a very fast speed.
Finally the last bit of fire was gone. The whole arena was clear again.
Zen's expressions became pleased and happy as a new spiritual texture appeared on his chest due to Patrick's Green Lotus Karma Fire. Now he had three of them which meant that his body had been refined to a top-grade spiritual weapon.
Another such symbol and his body would probably become a fairy weapon! He wondered what that would be like!
After he saw everything that had happened, Patrick shook his head. “Let's stop!” he said curtly, deciding to give up the fight. Although there were several moves that he hadn't used yet, but if Zen had blocked the Green Lotus Karma Fire, Patrick didn't think it would make any difference or indeed, much sense, if he went on fighting.
He actually felt unlucky to have Zen as his rival.
Zen had also defeated Rocher earlier on in the competition, but Rocher hadn't lost as badly as Patrick, who was supposed to be better than him.
An important reason for this was that Zen had defeated, absorbed, or defended all of Patrick's deadliest moves without flinching.
For example, the golden bell defense that he had used in the beginning was of no use when faced with Zen's extraordinarily strong power. After that, he had used the move of the Diamond-like Body, but even that hadn't been able to shake Zen's spiritual weapon like body at all.
And then he had tried the Acalanatha Shadow, which was supposed to deliver quite a fight for Zen since he wouldn't have been able to find a way out.
But at that moment, out of nowhere, Zen's sword spirit Lily had showed up with the sword dance, using her malicious aura to its upmost. Even the Heavenly Punishment Sword was supposed to be no match for the Acalanatha Shadow, but Lily's sword dance had beat it easily anyway.
It had actually taken Zen himself by surprise as he didn't have any idea why and how Lily was so powerful.
And then it came to Patrick's best card—Green Lotus Karma Fire. Anyone who saw it would have thrown in the towel immediately. How could a human body stand that furious fire?
Patrick never could have expected that his best card would turn out to be the reason he would call it quits.
It just happened that Zen was not afraid of any kind of fire. Instead, his body craved fire to refine itself and make itself stronger. The Karma Fire was hell to others, but to Zen, it was like Alice's wonderland. He couldn't like it more; to Patrick's chagrin, he absorbed every bit of it like an alcoholic enjoying a glass of beer.
If it wasn't for that, Patrick wouldn't have lost.
“Patrick, there's no need to feel frustrated. It's not that I am stronger than you. It just happens that some of your best moves weren't as effective as usual, but that doesn't mean they are not powerful enough.” Of course Zen could understand how upset Patrick was. Anyone in his shoes would feel the same. As a warrior, he didn't want his opponent to feel upset.
But to his surprise, Patrick suddenly closed his eyes and took a deep breath with his palms pressed together in front of him. When he opened his eyes again, his face had suddenly become much calmer. “Life is like a river and the Buddhist path is like a raft. Make the best use of the raft and it will take you to the shore. How can I reach the shore if I get upset just because of one failure? Thank you, Zen!”
Karma lies in one's destiny. It was a eureka moment for Patrick after experiencing all the coincidences and witnessing the unusuals these days. He was wise and clever because he had been an Acalanatha in his previous incarnation, and this meant he could get to understand more of the Buddhist Dharma through many trivial things in life. Now his heart was like a calm and still lake again.
He turned around and told the referee, “I give up.”
The referee nodded at him, pleased with Patrick's calm intake of defeat, then announced the results of the All Peaks Competition, “Zen from Drizzle Peak won and Disciple Patrick lost.”
After the announcement, one of the elders came onto the stage and announced the Cloud Sect ranking.
The audience erupted in a buzz of conversation as the results were announced. After the fight going his way just now, it was Zen who now ranked first among all the disciples. While everyone was busy talking about the results, suddenly there was a flash of white light in the south.
It was coming straight towards the stage at a furious pace from far away like a shooting star moving across the night sky.
As everyone stared at it, it got closer and closer.
Both Zen and Patrick stared at it too. When it was only a few miles away, they realized the flash of white light was actually a man flying with the force of his life vitality. The problem was that now he was only a couple of hundred feet from the stage, but he showed no sign of slowing down. It looked like he was going to crash onto the stage head first.
Five hundred feet, three hundred feet, one hundred feet from the stage...
“Hey, watch out!” Zen wanted to warn him, but it was too late.
“Crash!” There was a loud noise.
The man in the white light crashed head first right into the stage. But he didn't stop—the inertia made him roll over and over again on the stage floor like a ball. Finally he stopped and rose to his feet. Since he had landed head first, his neck looked very weird, tilted to one side in a strange way, like it had been broken. But the man held his head with both of his hands and twisted it with a sharp crack. It sprang into position again and now, he looked relaxed and comfortable.
The young man, in his twenties, looked handsome in some ways but not all. There was something strange about his features—his eyes, nose, and mouth somehow didn't look right together, and sometimes they even seemed funny.
The way he had showed up in front of everyone was embarrassing, even shameful. But no one was going to laugh at him or doubt his strength. Anyone else who had hit the floor head first would have died immediately of blunt force trauma; but this young man had survived unscathed, which was clear proof that he was no ordinary person.
Patrick let out a sigh. The man had a habit of always showing up in such unusual ways, causing absolute chaos. But still, he greeted him politely, “Nice to see you, Evan.”
So that was it! The young man was actually Evan Li, the real top disciple of the Cloud Sect ranking and supposedly the most powerful disciple in the entire Cloud Sect.