Chapter 133: The Suddenly Spinning Top

Turning his head, Yusheng saw Gao Tian, Lan Zhu, Jiang Yang, and Wang Wenbo, along with a shabby old man in a military greatcoat.

He realized what had happened. "Has time already been reset?

"Did I meet you in the previous timeline and tell you everything that happened at Longshu Temple?"

Gao Tian nodded. His gaze bypassed him, landing on the utterly ordinary peasant woman trapped in the Buddha's light behind him. "You were already dead then. You had turned into a ghost.

"Relying on a scrap of some secret art and your dying obsession, you managed to make it back to Longshu Temple to demand that I immediately take the Bus and escape."

A rare ripple broke the ancient-well serenity of Yusheng's gaze. "Then why haven't you left?

"Do you want my death, and the deaths of so many others, to be for nothing?

"If you die here, everything ends! To have you take the Time Coffin back—as long as that goal is met, any sacrifice is acceptable!"

He completely ignored the strange old man in the military overcoat standing beside the four.

To him, this old man was likely just a new resident of the Apartment. He looked foolish, entirely irrelevant to the situation.

"You won't die. No one here is going to die today."

Gao Tian said slowly, "This thousand-year farce is finally coming to an end."

Yusheng closed his eyes, as if resigning himself to fate.

He couldn't be bothered to argue with Gao Tian anymore. It was truly difficult to make the residents of the Living Apartment understand just what kind of terrifying monster the "Mother" from the stars really was.

In a thousand years, she had only lost twice. Once to Dharma Master Jingming, and once to the Republican-Era Team.

But those two defeats meant nothing to her. They hadn't ended the time loop at all.

Behind Yusheng, the Mother slowly opened her mouth. Her jaw dislocated, stretching open in a way that defied human anatomy. It opened wider, wider, and wider, until her chin touched the ground, her entire face obscured by her own maw. It continued to expand—an abyssal mouth that seemed ready to devour the entire world.

Inside her mouth, there were no teeth, no oral cavity, no blood-red throat leading to a stomach. Instead, there was a profound and dazzling starry sky. Countless stars were being born at the edge of the universe, expanding, exploring, turning into black holes, before new stars formed once again—the true grandeur of celestial bodies.

Illuminated by the starry sky behind him, Yusheng stood as the fierce wind whipped his gray monk robe wildly about. He merely raised one hand in a Buddhist salute, his expression calm yet deathly pale as he quietly awaited his fate of being devoured.

This time, there wouldn't even be another cycle of reincarnation.

This all-devouring maw would consume even time itself.

Jiang Yang, Wang Wenbo, and the others stared at the Mother's still-expanding mouth, which was now nearing the sky. They watched in a trance, forgetting themselves, standing rooted to the spot as if turned to stone.

A vast, boundless ocean of knowledge flooded their minds. In just a few seconds, it felt like experiencing the lives of tens of thousands of people. Intense love and hate, sorrow, nothingness, parting, the joy of truth, the reality of the universe's borders, the delusions following the shattering of reality—all of it was enough to completely overload and rupture a fragile human brain.

With the endless starry sky as her backdrop, the Mother walked toward the group. Her movements resembled a shifting mountain range.

"Roar—"

The massive sound wave sent the weeds of the nearby wilderness thrashing. That terrifying howl, which would sweep across more than half of the Inner World and guarantee death to anyone who heard it, was about to erupt.

In the next moment, Old Man Sun lowered his Smoking Pipe and slowly shuffled to the front of the group, standing right beneath the starry maw.

Before the boundless universe, the hunched little old man looked like nothing more than a tiny green ant.

He raised his head, roughly measuring its height and pinpointing where its main body was.

Then, he raised his pipe, bent his waist, gathered his strength, and gripped the stem tightly.

Like an elegant golfer, he swung the long rod in his hands with tremendous force.

That single strike shattered the profound, boundless universe filling the heavens and earth, smothering the bear-like roar that was about to sweep across thousands of miles in its cradle.

"Bingo!"

"Hole in one."

Old Man Sun looked very satisfied with his masterpiece.

He slowly lowered the Smoking Pipe and casually wiped away the blood, mucus, and black corrosive gunk covering it.

He took another drag.

It took Gao Tian a long time to piece together the fragmented memories of that moment and what happened afterward.

He and the others had rushed to the Stargazing Platform by the cliff, facing an indescribable entity from the stars that had been looping for a thousand years. While everyone else had their minds overloaded by the vast starry sky, Old Man Sun hadn't been affected in the slightest.

For him, this was just an ordinary afternoon, no different from dealing with the tens of thousands of filthy things he had handled before.

There were no flashy special effects. With just that one simple swing, he smacked the indescribable entity into a spinning top that couldn't stop twirling, sending it flying thousands of miles away—along with the half-universe hidden inside its mouth.

On their way back down the mountain, Gao Tian simply couldn't suppress his curiosity any longer. "Boss—"

Old Man Sun didn't even look up, fully focused on packing gray tobacco into his Smoking Pipe. "Hmm?"

Gao Tian asked, "Where did that thing end up getting knocked to?

"Is it dead?"

Jiang Yang sounded concerned. "Ghosts can't die.

"Is it possible for that not-quite-ghost thing to make a comeback?"

Wang Wenbo speculated further, "Could we still be inside an even larger time loop?

"Maybe when we get back to Longshu Temple, we'll hear an earth-shattering bear roar from afar. Then, while we're chatting and laughing, we'll all just drop dead, and a new cycle will begin."

Such a thought was quite bone-chilling.

Old Man Sun finally finished packing his tobacco and looked up. "It won't be coming back. That thing, I mean.

"I sent it flying straight into a place called Pagoda Primary School with that hit.

"That place is pure underworld. Not just people, but even ghosts can't get out once they enter.

"Whether she's a ghost, a deity, some parasitic organism living on the stars, or anything else, it doesn't matter anymore.

"As long as she enters Pagoda Primary School, her fate is sealed. There's no need to worry about her coming back."

Good lord, the old man was treating Pagoda Primary School like a ghost prison.

He just chucked whatever he couldn't handle directly into it and washed his hands of the matter entirely.

As for whether Longshu Temple's time loop still existed—Gao Tian's and Jiang Yang's mobile phones vibrated at the same time. The messages they received were task rewards sent from the Living Apartment.

Since the Apartment acknowledged they had completed the task, naturally, the time loop had also stopped.

The fourth day was Longshu Temple's final day.

Longshu Temple, which had been frozen for a thousand years, would finally step into a new day.

Gao Tian unlocked his mobile phone and was somewhat surprised to see that he had received two messages this time.

He had obtained two Supernatural Items as rewards.

Because the original task level for Longshu Temple had been seven, as a rookie with only three tasks under his belt, completing it earned him additional rewards.

The downside was that Gao Tian's task level had automatically increased by two. He was now equivalent to someone who had completed five tasks.

It was a mixed blessing.

Gao Tian opened the text messages.

The first item.

[Black Suit]

After activating the Black Suit, the user's strength, speed, stamina, mental resistance, and post-injury healing speed will increase by a certain margin.

However, the consumption rate of the Ghost Luck above their head will also accelerate to a certain extent.

Without Ghost Luck, the Black Suit is merely an ordinary suit.

Prerequisite: Only a person who possesses the Black Tie can receive this reward.

The second item.

[Black Leather Shoes]

After activating the Black Leather Shoes, the user can step on black clouds and fly through the air.

The consumption rate of Ghost Luck will drastically increase by several times.

Prerequisite: Only a person who possesses the Black Tie can receive this reward.

Looking at the messages before him, Gao Tian fell silent for a long time.

So the Supernatural Item, the Black Tie, actually had matching equipment pieces.

Both the Black Suit and the Black Leather Shoes could only be used at the cost of consuming Ghost Luck.

The Black Suit was equivalent to a variant of the Blood Shroud.

The advantage was that injuries could rapidly recover. It wouldn't devour the wearer's main body, and all attributes like strength were improved.

The drawback was that it required the consumption of Ghost Luck and lacked the damage reduction effect of the Blood Shroud.

Which of the two items was superior depended entirely on the perspective.

While the Black Suit's consumption rate of Ghost Luck was still within a normal range, once the Black Leather Shoes were activated, their drain on Ghost Luck would be quite staggering.

Which was more important between the ability to fly and a formidable Fortune would have to depend on the specific situation.

Lost in these thoughts, the group walked back into Longshu Temple.

Although the Mother had been thoroughly sent away, it would likely take a very long time to erase the thousand-year scars she had left on this temple.

The formless monks, the terrifying murmurs of chanting, and the starved ghosts inside the giant Buddha statue who were still waiting for their master to return.

There were also many Fierce Ghosts in the corners of the temple, formed from monks who had died and endured a thousand years of agony.

It was just that Gao Tian and the others hadn't triggered them at the time.

Yusheng offered his deepest, most reverent gratitude to Old Man Sun.

He chose to stay in this Longshu Temple, temporarily refraining from returning to reality.

In the mass grave on the back mountain, he erected an empty tomb for the Mother.

Even though the Mother's remains had already been buried a thousand years ago.

A thousand years later, she had finally found peace once again.

Yusheng would spend the rest of his life finding a way to liberate the souls of his senior brothers.

Ghosts could not be killed, but he could at least try to ease their pain.

Wang Wenbo was also forced to stay behind temporarily.

After all, his task was to end the suffering of the monks at Longshu Temple.

It still hadn't been completed, so he had to remain stranded in the Inner World for a while.

Outside the temple, the rumbling engine of the next Bus 444 was already drawing near.

Old Man Sun, Lan Zhu, and the others waited outside the temple, ready to board the Bus and return home.

Right before leaving, Gao Tian cast a glance at Yusheng sitting in the main hall.

There was still one more thing he needed to discuss with Yusheng privately.

It was regarding the method of using the Time Coffin.

After spending all this time at Longshu Temple, he was certain he had found the answer.