Great Demon Sun Wukong-Chapter 628 - 585: Seeking the Nine Tripod Cauldrons
From the Extreme Northern Ice Field to Flower Fruit Mountain, the distance is vast—one at the far north of Beijuluzhou and the other to the east of East Shengzhou. However, to Sun Wukong, such distance was not a problem at all. Yet, Sun Wukong did not return to Flower Fruit Mountain at his fastest speed; instead, he circled around Beijuluzhou several times before changing course toward Xiniuhezhou. Sun Wukong had his own plans. After learning the truth about the Pangu Realm from Yi Xuan, Sun Wukong instantly had many schemes in mind, and now was the best time to act.
Once he left, he didn't know when he would be able to return. How could he rest easy unless he turned the Pangu Realm into a tightly-guarded world like Ironwall? The several great wars 350 years ago had riddled the Pangu Realm with holes. Having lost the constraint of Heavenly Dao, over these 300 years, the Pangu Realm had not recovered much and could be described as a mess waiting for rejuvenation. Even if the Four Symbols Soul Locking Great Array that Sun Wukong had set up could evolve the Pangu Realm into an Intermediate World within a few hundred years, without a sufficient number of powerful beings, it would only become a target for the strong. Hence, Sun Wukong thought of an item, or rather, nine items.
In the past, Yu the Great had used the Jingu Bang as a gauge to determine the depths of rivers, lakes, and seas during his work to control the floods, leaving it at the bottom of the East Sea once he was successful. However, the Jingu Bang was not the only thing left behind by Yu the Great. There were also nine great cauldrons. Yu the Great used these Nine Tripod Cauldrons to divide the world into the Nine Provinces. It's just that over time, the cauldrons disappeared one after another, and the Nine Provinces became the current Four Continents. If the Pangu Realm were just an ordinary small world, then the Nine Tripod Cauldrons used to divide the Nine Provinces wouldn't be anything too precious. But because Sun Wukong knew that the Pangu Realm was extraordinary, he also surmised that those cauldrons were definitely not common items.
If a measuring stick that determined the depth of rivers and seas could give birth to a World Within the Artifact and now even possessed the might of a Primary Grade Supreme Divine Artifact, what about those nine cauldrons? Sun Wukong strongly suspected that the nine cauldrons were nine Supreme Divine Artifacts, and more importantly, a complete set of Supreme Divine Artifacts. Supreme Divine Artifacts are second only to Domain Instruments. A complete set of nine Supreme Divine Artifacts may very well surpass a Domain Instrument in power. More importantly, Sun Wukong needed to use the Nine Tripod Cauldrons to suppress the Guardian Puppets he had brought back from the Patrolling Celestial World.
"These puppets are really superb, each with the strength of a Nine Patterns Supreme, but without any overwhelming aura. It's truly unbelievable." A total of two hundred Nine Patterns Supreme Level Guardian Puppets, such a force was enough to seize a dozen or more Intermediate Worlds. Most importantly, puppets are not restricted by Cosmic Rules. They are not living beings but instruments. For example, a Nine Patterns Supreme cannot appear in a small world, but a Domain Instrument can. And these puppets, like Domain Instruments, are not controlled by such rules.
Visit frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓ for the b𝘦st novel reading experience.
However, not all puppets are the same. Take Sun Wukong's Twelve Ancestral Witches; they too are puppets and also Nine Patterns Supremes, but they can't appear in a small world. If forced, the Cosmic Rules would forcibly ascend them to a High-Level World. Sun Wukong did not plan to keep these two hundred puppets by his side. His future enemies would only be stronger than this. Rather than having them dismantled by someone later, it was better to leave them in the Pangu Realm as the last force guarding it.
Yet in doing so, Sun Wukong had one worry. All things have spirits, and once he left, these Guardian Puppets would remain in the Pangu Realm, which would then experience a surge in Spiritual Energy, unbalancing the Heavenly Dao. Then, if these two hundred puppets were to be steeped in Spiritual Energy day and night, it would be hard to avoid the situation where one of the puppets might suddenly develop spiritual wisdom. Plus, for various reasons, they might generate spiritual wisdom. And since these kinds of puppets wouldn't be restricted by Cosmic Rules, if just one puppet developed spiritual wisdom and nefarious thoughts, the Pangu Realm would be finished. A single Nine Patterns Supreme puppet indeed had the power to destroy an entire Intermediate World. Therefore, to prevent such a scenario, Sun Wukong needed to use the Nine Tripod Cauldrons to suppress these puppets, preventing them from developing their own spiritual wisdom. Sun Wukong also planned to take out twenty of them and give them to the people of Flower Fruit Mountain as the strongest fighting force. If there were any accidents, twenty Nine Patterns Supreme puppets would undoubtedly be an incredibly powerful force.
Finding the Nine Tripod Cauldrons was not an easy task, but for Sun Wukong who possessed Heaven and Earth Fire Eyes, it wasn't impossible. The Pangu Realm had its limits, and searching inch by inch, he would eventually find them. Moreover, after the Annihilation Nine Headed Serpent swallowed the remnant soul of the Nine-Headed Dragon, Sun Wukong gained some understanding of destiny and fate. Even without using his eyes, Sun Wukong could roughly sense some areas within the Pangu Realm where the destiny was very strong, and these places could very well be where the cauldrons were located.
The previous aimless wander around Beijuluzhou was out of curiosity, as there were no places with particularly strong destiny; however, it was still somewhat peculiar. After flying around for a while with nothing significant found, Sun Wukong then turned towards Xiniuhezhou. Among the places with the strongest sense of destiny perceived by Sun Wukong, one was the original holy land of Buddhism—Ling Mountain in Xiniuhezhou, and the other was the Heavenly Realm of the Taoist Sect.
After Sun Wukong had harnessed some power of Destiny, he found this ability to be extremely useful, far more so than his Heaven and Earth Fire Eyes. Now, with his eyes closed, under the perception of Destiny, the entire Pangu Realm would turn into darkness. Yet in that darkness, there were countless brightly shining globes of various intensities. Those globes were where the great destinies resided, places where not only was Destiny stronger but also where the Spiritual Energy was denser. Such places were often taken by cultivators to establish their own cave dwellings.
With this ability of Destiny, searching for treasures would henceforth be much more convenient. With a mere closing of his eyes, he could discern where treasures were and the quality of those treasures at a glance. With this thought in mind, Wukong had already arrived at the foot of Spiritual Mountain in West Niu Hezhou within a single Chinese hour. At this time, Spiritual Mountain had returned to normal. Although Buddhism had nearly lost all its strong figures in the great battle over three hundred years ago, there were still some Buddhas who had escaped misfortune. Later, Ksitigarbha took advantage of the chaos within Buddhism, leading three hundred thousand Netherworld Ghost Buddhas to take direct control of Spiritual Mountain, becoming the new Buddha Lord of Pangu Realm! He was called Holy Buddha Ksitigarbha.
Sun Wukong and Ksitigarbha, now known as Holy Buddha Ksitigarbha, had some fate with each other. Hence, since he had come to Spiritual Mountain, it was natural for him to pay a visit. After all, Buddhism and the Demon Clan would still have to get along in the future. First, he would establish a good relationship with Ksitigarbha, then restrain the Demon Clan a bit. The relationship between the two sides would not be as close as brothers, but at least they would not become enemies, which was sufficient.
"No, I must first see if there are any of the Nine Tripods here. Otherwise, it would be inconvenient after meeting Ksitigarbha," said Wukong before diving directly underground. Wukong could feel the powerful Destiny emanating from Spiritual Mountain, indicating that if the Nine Tripods were here, they would certainly be at the bottom of the mountain. However, when Sun Wukong dived more than three thousand meters deep into the base of Spiritual Mountain, the scene before him was quite surprising.
Before him was an underground space that was not particularly vast. Yet this subterranean space contained various sizes of Golden Buddha statues, and all the walls were covered with mysterious scriptures from Buddhism. Clearly, the existence of this underground space was known to a select few in Buddhism, who had also spent a hefty price to cast thousands of Golden Buddhas within this space. Each Buddha statue contained a significant amount of Buddha's power. The place seemed to be a very secretive existence of Buddhism.
In the center of those thousands of Golden Buddha statues stood an altar with a diameter of more than three hundred meters. Atop that altar was a gigantic Bronze Cauldron, about fifty to sixty meters high, proudly presented. However, the single Bronze Cauldron wouldn't have surprised Sun Wukong too much because he had already guessed that one of the Nine Tripods might be here.
What astounded Sun Wukong was that there was another space below this one, slightly larger and also with thousands of Golden Buddha statues. In the center of these statues was another altar, and on this altar, too, stood a large cauldron. And this was only the second layer. Below this layer, there was yet another.
That is to say, there were three great cauldrons at the bottom of Spiritual Mountain, and they were stacked layer upon layer in the form of a pagoda! (Want to know more exciting news about "Great Demon Sun Wukong"? Open WeChat now, click the "+" button in the upper-right corner, choose to add friends, search for "Qidianzhongwenwang" in the official accounts, and follow the account, so you'll never miss an update! qdbook) (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you are welcome to cast recommendation votes and monthly passes at Starting Point (qidian.com). Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please read at m.qidian.com.)
