"Ruin your cultivation? Ruin your merit?" Shen Mu sneered, slashing at the other chains. "You are merely a bronze-cast Buddha image—what merit could you have? Your merit lies in suppressing Sang'e here, yet when Sang'e devours people before your very eyes, you do nothing. If you ever had any merit, it would have been squandered long ago!" The great Buddha's body shook; the blood-red patterns on its bronze body burst forth in beams of light, reflected by the outer gold leaf, turning it into a glittering golden Buddha. In a hollow, muffled voice it said, "Do you know how many people it will devour, how many living beings it will destroy, once you release it?" "All I know is that behind you it has hidden countless bones and used you to commit evil. I have not seen you do anything." Shen Mu severed the second chain and sneered, "Outside is the ice flood, erupting several times every year—what have you done? That would be merit. It is not merit to sit in a temple and suppress a demon, still less to allow it to devour people. If you were to smash the ice flood and save the common folk downstream, then you would have great merit!" The Buddha statue shone with golden light, and its hands moved, as if about to come alive. Sang'e was terrified and cried out hastily, "This old bald donkey is an evil Buddha! He wants to refine me to death—hurry!" Shen Mu's feet flew as he darted out of the temple, urging the Chubao sword to slash at the chains outside. "The evil of all sentient beings must be washed away by a great flood before they can shed their wickedness. This is the fruit caused by their own causes." Boom. A violent tremor came; the bronze Buddha stood up, its head smashing through the ancient temple, its voice shaking heaven and earth: "You heretical demon, daring to destroy the Dharma! Obstinate sinful creature, beyond all deliverance!" At once the chains binding the Buddha's bronze body and Sang'e seemed to come alive, whistling through the air and whipping toward Shen Mu. "Your Buddhist doctrine saves people only to save yourselves, not for the sake of saving people—hypocrisy!" Shen Mu leapt aside to dodge a chain's coil, urged his Chubao sword to strike at the final chain, and said, "When you suppressed Sang'e back then, if you had killed it, that might count as your merit. But instead you suppressed it and let it harm people. Its devouring people is its own sin; the deeper its sin, the greater your merit in refining it? Bah! The people devoured by Sang'e should all be accounted to you!" Clang! The Chubao sword clashed against the chain; a tremendous force came through the chain and sent the precious sword flying. Shen Mu gave a muffled grunt, stepped back to dodge two chains that lashed like black pythons behind him, and sneered, "You sit in the temple while floods reach the sky outside. Not only do you refuse to save people, you stop me from saving them—and still you dream of merit? Let me tell you, the elders in my village go out every year to fight the ice flood, saving the common folk downstream and the birds and beasts, saving countless lives! If merit were enough to become a Buddha, every one of them would already be a golden-body Great Buddha, not bronze-and-clay idols!" "Absurd!" The bronze Buddha was towering and immense; it lifted its foot and set it down with a boom, stepped out of the ruined temple, pressed its palms together, and a sound of metal clashing rang out. Instantly the Buddha-light blazed and sent Shen Mu flying. Every limb and bone of Shen Mu's body shook violently. While he was still in midair, the chains came locking toward him. Shen Mu's feet repeatedly tapped on the chains as he raced along them, using his primal qi to drive the Chubao sword like a flash toward the last chain that bound Sang'e. The chains, like enormous pythons, wove and crossed in midair, striking at Shen Mu in succession, dazzling the eye. Although this bronze Buddha was forged from yellow copper, it was astonishingly agile—truly baffling. Previously, the bronze Buddha had been unable to distinguish Shen Mu from Sang'e; as long as Shen Mu uttered the demonic words, the statue would automatically respond with Buddhist mantras to refine Sang'e. But now that Shen Mu was trying to release Sang'e, the bronze Buddha was a different thing altogether—it actively attacked him. The thick chains shot back and forth; Shen Mu stepped on one chain to evade the attacks of the others. Meanwhile, the power transmitted through the chains from the bronze Buddha grew gradually stronger. The friction between chains sent tremors that made his footing unsteady, his legs numb and aching. His control of the Chubao sword became far less accurate than before. The bronze Buddha's power grew ever stronger, as if it held an inexhaustible force within, awakening bit by bit. Granny Zhu and Lame Grandpa had both mentioned this bronze Buddha before, saying it was very strange. Granny Zhu said she had once intended to eliminate Sang'e but had been stopped by the bronze Buddha and failed. Granny Zhu was naturally extremely powerful, yet she had not destroyed Sang'e—which showed that once the bronze Buddha's power fully awakened, it would surely be terrifying beyond measure! And now, the bronze Buddha's power was awakening bit by bit! Even a fraction of its awakening was more than Shen Mu could resist. At that moment, an earth-shattering roar came—the ice flood surging down from upstream had finally arrived. Towering ice mountains, driven by the torrent on the river, hundreds of feet high, appeared before the oasis, behind Shen Mu! Shen Mu was immediately cast into shadow. In haste he turned his head and saw countless blocks of ice being squeezed and tumbled, hurled to the peaks of the ice mountains, only to come crashing down and be crushed to the riverbed; then new ice blocks were thrown up again and slid down once more. The ice flood crushed everything in its path; the corpses on the ice had been ground to pulp, nowhere to be found. Only the tumbling, surging ice mountains remained, bent on crushing everything! "Bah!" The bronze Buddha seemed also to sense the impending danger. Forgetting Shen Mu, it spread its arms wide and pushed forward against the surging ice flood. Clang! At the edge of the oasis, a great golden bell formed of light unexpectedly materialized, covering the oasis within it. Countless ice blocks struck the golden bell a step ahead of the flood, clanging and shattering into fragments. Each block that hit the bell sent ripples of golden light spreading outward—from Shen Mu's angle, the sight was magnificent and resplendent. Then the ice flood surged in. The roar was like a thousand thunders bursting, rumbling endlessly in the ears, intermingled with the ringing of the golden bell. The force of heaven and earth collided with the bronze Buddha's Buddhist powers, shaking heaven and earth; even the oasis trembled violently, as if it might sink into the water at any moment. Meanwhile, the ice flood outside, blocked by the oasis in mid-river and the golden bell, piled higher and higher. The ice flood on both sides had already flowed downstream past the oasis; only where the oasis blocked it did the floating ice accumulate more and more, gradually threatening to overflow the oasis. Rattle—the chains shook and lashed toward Shen Mu. The bronze Buddha actually still had strength to spare, sending one chain after another darting like spirit serpents and pythons, pursuing him relentlessly. At the same time, the bronze Buddha's body moved, clanking with metallic sounds, its palms constantly striking the walls of the golden bell to reinforce it. The chains were wrapped around its body; as it moved, they flew about and attacked Shen Mu. Meanwhile Sang'e, in the form of the little girl Qixia'er, was dragged along stumbling, suddenly tripped and fell to the ground, pulled until its face was bruised and swollen, pitiful to behold. Shen Mu, stepping on the chains, immediately felt that t