"Who are you?" Quinn Shepherd cried out in shock.
A voice came from his mouth, crisp and clear, yet brimming with innocent evil: "I am..."
Above his head, the great Buddha's hand was already descending. Quinn suddenly felt another 'self' awakening inside him—a sensation so strange, it was as if he was splitting into two.
...Fenix Greenwood Keane!"
As that voice fell, Quinn's original consciousness was forced into the background, becoming nothing more than a spectator!
Even more terrifying, the other 'self' appeared—a surge of power from nowhere suddenly flooded his body, so vast, so dreadful, so evil, that Quinn's own cultivation could only cling to a corner of his mind, watching as this evil force took over.
"I've snatched too few Primordial Spirits—not nearly enough to break Tu Bo, the Earth Sovereign's seal. Tu Bo, that rotten bastard... But if I kill this Buddha, I'll be able to break even more seals!"
Quinn heard an unfamiliar, arrogant baby voice coming from his own mouth. It was laced with evil—a kind that made one's skin crawl. The words he spoke were in the tongue of the Netherworld (Youdu), charged with a strange magic: brazen, fearless, and filled with endless greed, as if all negative desires were rolled into one.
"Where I stand, there is the Netherworld (Youdu)—"
Quinn saw darkness spreading from within him, staining the supreme Buddhist realm of Great Brahma Heaven. The eternal daylight and golden sea of Great Brahma Heaven suddenly dimmed over a vast expanse!
The golden sea was like a bowl of clear water touched by a drop of black ink—darkness invaded, corrupting the golden sea, turning it black. The area shrouded in darkness grew ever larger.
The supreme holy ground of the Buddhist realm was turning into the Netherworld.
The Buddha's giant hand had already fallen, radiating Buddha-light, but it was instantly swallowed by the darkness.
The Buddha cried out in alarm, yanking his hand back from the dark Netherworld aura—only to see his plump, golden Buddha hand turned to bone, the flesh gone without a trace.
It was a kind of divine art utterly different from those of Everpeace, High-Emperor Heaven, the Buddhist realm, or the Heavenly Court—an art that ruled over death, stealing the vitality of all existence for itself.
Quinn leapt up, laughing wildly, his fingers splayed as he pressed his palm down on the Buddha's head.
Boom!
A violent shockwave erupted—the Buddha was slammed down onto a golden island, shattering it in a thunderous explosion as the sky and earth seemed to collapse.
Quinn saw his body undergoing strange changes—growing wildly, taller and larger, while his apparent age seemed to regress, becoming younger and more childlike.
Fortunately, the clothes made for him by Ariel Skyfeather, patriarch of the Skyfeather clan, were extraordinary—crafted from their finest materials and imbued with spiritual power, able to expand or shrink along with his changing body.