Chapter 276: Chapter 276 This is really a fierce person_1
BUZZ!
The sound that could control people’s minds grew increasingly sharp. Su Xuan exerted all his strength to resist it. He didn’t know what was emitting the sound, but it was very similar to the high-voltage hum of a transformer.
At this moment, Zhao Yuansi and Old Man Zhou had already succumbed to its influence, kneeling on the ground as if they had committed some unforgivable sin. Before them was the Bodhisattva Upside-Down Sitting, refusing to turn around.
Su Xuan looked again at the figure in red. Under the influence of the sound, her silhouette flickered in and out of view, like an unstable TV signal. She lifted her head and quietly observed the Bodhisattva, as if reminiscing.
Just then, something even more astonishing happened.
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
The strange sound intensified, and the dome overhead suddenly erupted with multicolored light! The light spilled onto the floor, projecting a flowing scene like a movie.
Su Xuan watched, transfixed. The content of the "movie" was peculiar. A group of people in ancient attire, their hair tied up in buns and wielding swords and other weapons, were besieging a young man in white clothes who was holding an iron rod. The young man was handsome, nearly four-fifths as attractive as Su Xuan himself!
He swung the iron rod, and with each strike, he felled another person. He even shattered the weapons in their hands with ease. In no time at all, scores of people lay at his side, their blood flowing freely across the ground, making him look like a dashing god of slaughter. But his opponents were simply too numerous. For every ten he struck down, twenty more surged forward to take their place.
Soon, he was already injured.
Soon, he was overwhelmed by the surging crowd of adversaries.
When his opponents scattered, he lay in a pool of blood. He gazed up at the sky with a satisfied smile on his lips before slowly closing his eyes.
"What a fierce man!" Su Xuan couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration.
At the same time, Su Xuan was extremely interested in the iron rod’s fate. He could tell from the scenes that it was a ridiculously awesome divine weapon. He roughly counted that the handsome young man had knocked down at least seventy or eighty people with it and broken fifty or sixty weapons—a staggering number!
The projection hadn’t faded before it suddenly changed. The men who had besieged the young man were now escorting a white-haired elder into a temple. The elder held something in his hands: the invincible iron rod.
Inside the temple sat a statue of a Bodhisattva. The elder bowed to the statue and then placed the iron rod across its hands. Afterward, the elder led the crowd away.
As soon as they left, two lines of bloody tears streamed from the Bodhisattva’s eyes. Then, something eerie happened. The Bodhisattva slowly turned around until it was in the Upside-Down Sitting position. Its posture was identical to the statue in front of Su Xuan.
I’m almost certain these two Bodhisattvas are one and the same.
Then the light and shadows completely dissipated, and everything returned to normal. The buzzing sound also ceased.
Su Xuan stretched, feeling no restraint. But Zhao Yuansi and the others remained kneeling on the ground, motionless.
"Old Zhao! Old Zhou!" Su Xuan immediately went over and patted their shoulders, but he couldn’t rouse them.
At the same time, the figure in red beckoned to him and moved behind the Bodhisattva.
I should go take a look.
Filled with curiosity and hope, Su Xuan also walked behind the Bodhisattva. His eyes instinctively fell upon the statue’s hands, and he couldn’t help but stare. The Bodhisattva’s hands rested on its knees, palms up, with its fingers positioned as if holding a flower.
Laying across its hands was the iron rod.
And there were rust-colored tear stains on the Bodhisattva’s eyes.
The figure in red pointed at the iron rod, signaling for Su Xuan to take it. Su Xuan had wanted the rod from the start. Taking a deep breath, he walked over and reached for it. He was extremely cautious, first tapping it quickly with a fingertip. When nothing unusual happened, he dared to pick it up completely. In all the movies he’d ever seen, something bad always happened when the protagonist got a treasure, like the building collapsing.
Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened here.
SWOOSH! SWOOSH!
He swung the iron rod a few times. It was a perfect fit, both in shape and weight. He was eager to test if this rod was as powerful as the one in the "movie," but there was nothing to test it on. He certainly couldn’t go around smacking the Bodhisattva or Zhao Yuansi and the others.
Holding the iron rod, Su Xuan returned to where Zhao Yuansi and the others were, and another unexpected event occurred. He wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, but wisps of red mist began to seep from the brows of Zhao Yuansi and the others, converging on the iron rod.
The next second, Zhao Yuansi and the others slowly opened their eyes.
"What just happened?"
"Why am I kneeling here?"
"How long have I been kneeling?"
"Boss Zhao? Boss Zhao, why are you here? Did you come for us?"
"Didi driver, how did you get here too?"
Everyone had woken up, including the construction workers who had disappeared earlier and the couple from Su Xuan’s Didi car yesterday. They looked as if they had just woken from a long dream, their faces etched with confusion.
RUMBLE!
The moment everyone woke up, the Bodhisattva Upside-Down Sitting suddenly twisted its body, turning around to sit upright. The scene startled everyone, and they scrambled backward in terror.
"The Bodhisattva turned back!"
"It turned back!"
"The Bodhisattva has forgiven our sins! We’re okay now! We’re okay!" Old Zhou shouted with excitement, his voice echoing through the stone temple.
"Alright, alright, stop shouting," Su Xuan said, walking up to Old Zhou with the iron rod. He spun a tale, "The Bodhisattva’s base was just jammed. I fixed it, so naturally, it can sit straight now. Yeah, there’s a mechanism under the base."
He had a reason for saying this. A scientific explanation would calm everyone down and stop them from spreading even more fantastical stories. If the matter blew up, it would be even harder to continue construction on the tunnel.
"Really?" Old Zhou’s mouth twitched. He clearly didn’t believe a word of it.
"Why would I lie to you?" Su Xuan waved the iron rod in his hand. "This was the thing that was jamming it."
"Ah..." Old Zhou’s eyes widened. "For real?"
"Of course."
Su Xuan then addressed the still-shaken crowd. "Everyone, let’s get out of here. The oxygen is thin, and the atmosphere is oppressive. It’s not good to stay here too long."
With a mix of coaxing and deception, Su Xuan led everyone out of the stone temple.
As he left, he glanced back at the Bodhisattva’s face. Its lips were slightly upturned in a smile.
He didn’t plan to tell anyone what happened here; he would treat it as another one of his secrets, like his biggest secret: the System. This experience made him believe that this world was very different from the one he thought he knew, hiding countless unspeakable secrets. Were those scenes he saw real? What kind of backstory did they hide?
Moreover, he never could have anticipated how profoundly the iron rod he had acquired would impact his life, far beyond his wildest imagination...
「Once outside the tunnel」
Old Zhou suddenly became anxious...