Chapter 1027: The Mysterious Steles

“What is this…?”
“It’s not a secret manual. What material is this made of? It’s so hard…”
“It looks a bit like stone slabs!”
“Stone carvings?”
The two men and one woman decided to open the yellow silk wrap to see what was inside…
To their great disappointment, what was hidden inside was not a martial arts manual, but four exquisite, smooth stone slabs of unknown origin that could fall out at any time even when placed in a Qi Bag. There were some incomprehensible drawings on them.
Four steles! Four sets of drawings! It seemed they required time to understand.
“No, we can’t use them right away.”
“They can’t be used immediately. The instructions say we need to find a quiet place to study them carefully to grasp the true mysteries behind the drawings. Holding them in our hands now is useless.”
“It’s over…”
The three of them looked extremely disappointed, feeling as though their last hope had also vanished.
Looking around, there were thousands of Arhat Buddha puppet statues at the early stage of the mythic realm, densely packed and blocking an area of hundreds of meters like an impregnable wall. The two men and one woman in the center felt despondent, their spirits sinking as if all their efforts over the past month had been in vain.
“We have no way out.”
“Even if we sent a message to Luo Zhiheng with a homing pigeon, he wouldn’t be able to help us leave this damned place.”
After a moment of silence, the female mechanic sighed in frustration, acknowledging a harsh reality:
“I think our mission this time isn’t to steal these four steles from all these Arhat Buddha statues in the Great Buddha Temple…”
“If it’s not stealing, then what?”
“Destroying them.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. Shi Feixuan’s mission requirements state that if we find them, we must take them away quickly, away from Shi Zhi Xuan, and escort them to Ci Hang Jing Zhai. If we can’t take them away, we must use any means necessary—even destroying them—to ensure Shi Zhi Xuan doesn’t get them! I think…” The female mechanic smiled bitterly, “with all these traps here, and given our strength, it’s impossible for us to break through. Maybe from the start, our mission was to destroy these four steles, not to take them away…”
“Destroy them?”
“We’ve come this far with so much effort…”

The two men gasped in shock, gripping the stone tablets tightly in their hands before becoming agitated. “Do you know what you’re talking about? Do you realize this tablet was left by a divine monk who had reached the realm of unity between heaven and man? You… you actually want to destroy it?” After all, they weren’t people who could stay calm in the face of such unparalleled wealth as that of the “Langhuan Blessed Land” — let alone when what they held might even be above that land.

“Do you think I’d be willing to part with it?”

The female engineer smiled bitterly. “Think it through yourselves! Even if these are from the ‘War God Catalog,’ we have no way of taking them out now.”

“…”

“If we stay here any longer, the chance of the Evil King taking them increases… Not only will we lose the tablets and fail the mission, but we might even lose our lives! It took us so much effort to build a friendly relationship with Shi Feixuan — if this mission fails, she’ll be completely disappointed in us!”

“…”

The two men exchanged a look, their expressions filled with complexity and indecision.

They understood their companion’s warnings, but the treasures and wealth at hand were enough to change their current situation — even making them top experts recognized worldwide. To give up everything they had would be like wishing they had never discovered it in the first place…

“Let’s do it.”

The female engineer was well aware of the difficulty of fighting against those two opponents, but she was the only one among the three who could still maintain a relatively clear mind.

She knew full well that with Shi Feixuan’s strength, it was impossible to hold off both the Evil King and the Dark Queen!

With such a huge disturbance from the Thousand Buddha Group, the Evil King surely must have noticed!!

“If we don’t act now, once the Evil King arrives, not only will the three of us be doomed and the mission fail, but the items will also fall into his hands…”

Gritting her teeth, the female engineer resolutely threw the two stone tablets into the air. Under the reluctant gazes of her companions, she unleashed a fierce palm strike, its force so intense it seemed capable of shattering the tablets into dust.

Yet!

The tablets, made of some unknown material, seemed impossible to destroy easily. With a “bang,” they remained intact, sent flying by the palm wind and crashing into the Arhat Buddha statues.

“Damn!!”

Seeing this, all three of them paled.

Almost instinctively, they all reached out at the same time to reclaim the tablets.

But just as they did, the Arhat Thousand Buddhas erupted with astonishing power, a violent invisible wave suddenly rushing forward from straight ahead.

Bang! Bang! Bang!!

The lower bodies of the three were swept away by an immense force, causing them to fall backward in a disheveled manner. The two stone tablets, however, were not affected by the shockwave and fell unimpeded into the array of thousand Buddha statues, landing in an open space between several arhat statues, about ten meters apart from each other.
“Damn it, this is bad.”
The three got up from the ground and saw the stone tablets inside the arhat array, all wearing bitter smiles. The female engineer regretted it deeply; she never expected these seemingly fragile stone tablets to be so durable, surviving even her full-force strike.
“We can’t get those stone tablets back!”
“What do we do?” The three were now as anxious as ants on a hot pan.
Originally, they had been torn between escaping and destroying the stone tablets to complete the task, but now… they had to face the grim reality of failing the mission. Their hearts sank rapidly!
“Don’t panic!”
“Stay calm,” one of them said, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. “We still have a chance.”
“Use hidden weapons to see if we can destroy the stone tablets!”
“Right!”
“Hurry up! Quick!!” The three took out their bows, arrows, and hidden knives… aiming at the stone tablets among the arhat statues!
Whoosh!!
One of them, the fastest, shot three arrows in quick succession at the stone tablets—using a bowmanship technique from the Liberation realm, with immense power. Just as the three hoped the stone tablets would shatter, a gust of wind blew, causing the three arrows to vanish from the air.
“…”
Without any warning, the three arrows disappeared the moment they approached one of the stone tablets!
The three were stunned for half a second. They first suspected the nearby arhat statues were at work, trying to stop them from destroying the stone tablets… But the next second… a figure whose appearance turned their faces pale appeared expressionlessly near the stone tablets. A middle-aged man with refined manners, who, upon glancing down at the stone tablets, wore a sinister smile.
“I searched everywhere in vain, only to get it effortlessly!”
The three’s faces turned pale!
The Evil King!!!
Shi Zhi Xuan had returned at this moment. Seeing one of the stone tablets easily taken by Shi Zhi Xuan, their already pale faces grew even more grim with bitterness and despair. All three received a notification that they had failed the mission… Just as they thought things had gotten worse, suddenly, the arhat array showed signs of activity! The arhat statue closest to Shi Zhi Xuan suddenly opened its eyes as if gaining focus, its strong arm swinging forward with tremendous force. It happened suddenly!

As soon as he moved, a storm of wind and thunder erupted, with not a trace of wind sound left! At the same time, several other Arhat statues nearby also struck from all directions. Their palm forces, carrying the heavy sound of tearing through the air, rushed toward Shi Zhi Xuan in an instant, creating a deadly situation.

“Great!”

Seeing Shi Zhi Xuan obtain the stone tablet and trigger the siege by the Arhat formation, the three of them’s eyes lit up, as if seeing a glimmer of hope in despair.

Meanwhile, the system informed them that if they could reclaim the stone tablet from the Evil King, they still had a chance!

“Attack!!”

The three were overjoyed!

……

Shi Zhi Xuan’s attention had been focused on another stone tablet about ten meters away. He wasn’t expecting the previously quiet Arhat statues nearby to suddenly attack, which caught him off guard in an instant.

But…

The Evil King was indeed the Evil King. Faced with the attacks from multiple Arhat statues at the mythic realm level, he remained calm. An astonishingly powerful aura burst forth from his body in an instant.

Boom!!!!!

His mighty energy surged forth violently.

The attacks from several Arhat statues immediately collided with an invisible wall of energy, halting their momentum instantly!

“Get lost!”

With a roar like thunder, a storm of punches and palm strikes erupted from Shi Zhi Xuan. The nearby Arhat statues were torn apart as if by sharp weapons, collapsing rapidly into broken forms, their auras completely vanished.

In the central area, the arrows and hidden weapons fired by the three female engineers were sent flying back by the fierce wind before they could even come close.

Watching Shi Zhi Xuan effortlessly destroy multiple Arhat statues with every move, the three’s expressions turned pale again with helplessness and despair.

“Hahaha…”

Shi Zhi Xuan approached the second stone tablet, easily countering the attacks of the Arhat statues. He destroyed any that got in his way as he took the second tablet into his hands. His eerie smile grew wider, and an unruly, tyrannical aura began to spread uncontrollably.

“The second one. Since you’ve helped me find these four stone tablets, hand over the other two, and I’ll spare your lives!” Shi Zhi Xuan’s gaze shifted, snapping to the faces of the two female engineers’ companions.

They were shocked. Faced with the Evil King’s malicious aura, they instinctively stepped back two steps and tightly grasped the stone tablets in their hands.

Bang!

Two more Arhat statues collapsed under Shi Zhi Xuan’s attacks. He then walked slowly toward the central area, advancing steadily despite the sudden attacks from the surrounding Arhat statues.

The majesty of ruling the world, combined with an unrestrained and wild defiance, formed an invincible demon-like presence that made the three female engineers’ expressions grow increasingly grave and their breathing faster and faster, almost suffocating under such overwhelming pressure.