Under one person: I, Zhang Zhiwei, the arrogant Zhang.

Chapter 1125 Zhang Zhiwei's Current Realm, Recreating Life

"You said you saw him on the mountain with your own eyes? That doesn't make sense. I just came down from the top of that mountain. It was completely empty there, with nothing there except a crooked-necked dragon-taming tree that had gained Qi!" Wugensheng frowned.

"That crooked tree was raised by Senior Brother Zhang. He sits cross-legged under that tree! I'm absolutely certain I saw it correctly when I came here! If you don't believe me, I'll take you up there to see for yourself!"

After saying that, Zhou Sheng grabbed Wugensheng's arm and leaped into the air. Zhou Sheng's lower body transformed into a thick cloud of black smoke, like a cloud, steadily supporting Wugensheng and carrying him higher and higher until they reached the same height as the top of Tianmen Peak before stopping.

"Look! Senior Brother Zhang is sitting there peacefully!" Zhou Sheng pointed to a figure facing the tree trunk with his back to them under the crooked tree on the mountaintop.

Wugensheng looked in the direction he was pointing, his pupils suddenly contracted, and his face showed an undisguised shock, because, on the mountaintop, under that huge crooked tree, there really was a tall figure sitting cross-legged with his back to them.

"This... how is this possible? But I... can't sense even the slightest trace of his presence."

"It's normal that you can't sense it!" Zhou Sheng was used to this. He pointed to himself and asked, "Can you sense my presence?"

“It’s not very noticeable,” Wugensheng said. If an ordinary person’s aura is like a lamp in his eyes, then Zhou Sheng’s aura is just a faint human figure outline in his eyes, very blurry, and you can’t feel it unless you look closely. As for Zhang Zhiwei, he can’t find him at all. He can’t feel anything except what he can see with his naked eye.

“I achieved this through magic. My transformation blended into the world. He didn’t use any illusions or try to hide it. He is…” Zhou Sheng pondered for a moment and said, “He is truly one with heaven and man. Seeing him is like seeing the world.”

"As if seeing heaven and earth..." Wugensheng repeated this sentence in his mind. Jin Feng said that he was a celestial being incarnate, but now it seems that this person is the celestial being.

"Are you going to see Senior Brother Zhang? I can take you to the summit." Zhou Sheng remembered that Wugensheng had just said he climbed the mountain but didn't see Zhang Zhiwei, so he reminded him, "But I can't guarantee whether you'll see him or not."

"No." Wugensheng shook his head and said, "Put me down. There's no need to go up. Even if you take me there, I won't see him."

"Why?" Zhou Sheng asked, puzzled.

Wugensheng said, “All things with form and appearance are essentially a combination of causes and conditions, illusory and unreal. If you see all forms as non-forms, then you have seen the Tathagata. Is Brother Zhiwei here? He is nowhere to be found, yet he is nowhere to be found. Brother Zhou Sheng, take me down.”

Zhou Sheng glanced again at the figure sitting cross-legged on the mountaintop, controlled the black smoke to slowly descend, placed Wugensheng halfway down the mountain, and clasped his hands, saying:

"Brother Bilian, I have other things to attend to, so I won't be able to invite you to dinner."

"Until we meet again." Wugensheng returned the greeting with clasped hands, then turned and drifted away.

After seeing Wugensheng off, Zhou Sheng recalled what had just happened and couldn't help but feel curious. He transformed into a falcon once more, spread his wings, and soared straight towards the mountain peak.

But a strange thing happened. When he was hovering in mid-air, he clearly saw that Senior Brother Zhang was sitting cross-legged under that crooked tree.

But when he folded his wings and landed, he was horrified to find that the area under the tree was completely empty, without a single shadow!

"What's going on, Senior Brother Zhang?"

"Senior Brother Zhang!"

"Senior Brother Zhang!"

He shouted a few times, but no one responded. He remembered what Wugensheng had just said. As a practitioner, he knew that what Wugensheng had said came from the Diamond Sutra: "All forms are illusory. If one sees all forms as non-forms, then one sees the Tathagata."

He muttered to himself, "Neither here nor there, isn't that what it means to be both here and not there?"

"As if it were here?!"

Zhou Sheng was startled and his mind raced. He transformed into a falcon once more and soared into the sky. He flew into the air and looked down.

But the tall figure remained sitting there quietly, as if he had never moved.

…………

…………

At the same time, Wugensheng left Longhu Mountain. Although he did not see Zhang Zhiwei on this trip, he did not give up.

During their previous conversation, he learned some astonishing news from Zhou Sheng.

After dealing with matters in Shanghai, Zhang Zhiwei chose to completely expel the inner demon from his body. However, he did not eradicate the inner demon; instead, he cut off his heart to feed it to the demon, in order to reshape a physical body for it. Now, it is enshrined in the Tiantong Cathedral in Shanghai.

This news was like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, stirring up ripples in Wugensheng's heart.

He can conjure a body out of thin air for his inner demons, turning a consciousness born from delusion into a real individual. Does this mean he might be able to bring back to life a person who once truly existed?

Once this thought arose, it grew wildly in Wugensheng's mind, making him unable to calm down for a long time.

Wugensheng possessed a talent from birth: as soon as he had a thought, all his distracting thoughts would quickly disappear, and he could instantly enter a state of extreme stillness.

But now, he found himself unable to calm down. A torrent of thoughts surged within him, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake them off.

He subconsciously took a few steps back, wanting to climb Tianmen Peak again.

But after taking a few steps, he stopped again. The time wasn't right; even if he went a hundred more times, he probably still wouldn't see her.

"In that case, let's go to Shanghai and see what's really going on!"

Wugensheng took out two Divine Speed ​​Talismans from his robes and affixed them to his legs. As the talismans were activated, he flashed, his figure instantly transforming into a blur, and sped off towards the Demon Capital.

With the blessing of the Divine Speed ​​Armor, he traversed thousands of mountains and rivers at an almost inhuman speed, arriving at the city shrouded in the shadow of war the next morning.

Today's Shanghai presents a strange yet vibrant sense of disharmony.

On the streets, foreigners in smart suits chatted and laughed, while the Chinese people walked briskly with their heads down. Japanese pirates in khaki uniforms swaggered around, and the whole city was filled with an atmosphere of oppression and despair.

Wugensheng paid no attention to these things and went straight to Tiantong Cathedral.

Even though Shanghai had fallen into the hands of the Japanese pirates, they had never fully extended their reach into the area around the Tiantong Cathedral, only managing to place some spies there to monitor it. As soon as Wugensheng stepped into the Tiantong Cathedral's territory, his brows furrowed sharply, and he felt a surge of Qi flowing through his meridians like a raging tide.

The primordial energy of heaven and earth from all directions, along with various complex spiritual energies, converged wildly toward the cathedral, like rivers flowing into the sea!

Ordinary people wouldn't feel anything unusual, but Wugensheng, who had spent some time in the Twenty-Four Solar Terms Heavenly Valley, could clearly sense that the flow of Qi in this place was extremely special.

Moreover, the air was filled with an extremely rich incense aroma, which was not just the smell of burning incense, but also the power of countless people's strong belief, also known as the power of incense and vows.

"This must be a treasure trove for cultivators. Xia Liuqing should really like it here," Wugensheng thought to himself as he carefully sensed the energy fluctuations around him.

Everything can be considered Qi, and the power of incense and prayers is also a kind of Qi, except that this kind of Qi contains certain information, or rather, thoughts.

All these wishes have converged here.

Wugensheng sensed it and found that the power of his will had split into two streams. One stream merged into the underground of this area, while the other surged into the interior of the cathedral.

“The energy that merges into the underground is Qi,” Wugensheng realized. He had heard about the Qi here before and had no intention of exploring it too much. He walked straight toward the tall archway of the cathedral.

The cathedral of the Tiantong Church is extremely magnificent, appearing solemn and mysterious under the sunlight. There are even more believers here than at the Tiantong Temple, with crowds surging in like a tide.

Wugensheng followed the flow of people and silently entered the interior of the cathedral.

Upon entering, Wugensheng discovered that the immense power of his vows had not dissipated at all, but was constantly brewing and churning, forming an invisible vortex of thoughts!

This vortex is constantly inhaling, exhaling, breathing, and changing, like a life form that is being conceived!

Because most other religious sites have complete lineages that have been passed down for thousands of years, the faith power generated by believers will naturally flow into the sea and be absorbed or transformed by the deities enshrined there.

But the Tiantong Church is different. It did not form that kind of lineage. In other words, the lineage of the Tiantong Church is entirely dependent on Zhang Zhiwei!

In the past, Zhang Zhiwei would periodically gather these powers of faith, use the Samadhi Fire to burn away the chaotic thoughts within them, leaving only the purest power, and then distribute it to everyone.

But now, Zhang Zhiwei has entered a deep period of seclusion to nurture his sacred embryo. He has severed his connection with the outside world, and naturally, he has stopped refining these powers of faith. The power to distribute these powers of faith has been handed over to the immortals within the temple.

Although the spirit mediums have extensive experience in managing their altars, the difference between the altars of the Northeastern spirit mediums and large churches with millions of believers is simply too great.

It's like a small rural workshop suddenly being asked to take over the business of a Fortune 500 multinational corporation—how could it possibly manage?!

Once Zhang Zhiwei went into seclusion, the true nature of the immortals was revealed. They were simply unable to handle such a massive amount of incense and prayers, resulting in much of this unrefined faith power accumulating inside the church.

Wang Ai originally wanted to organize her thoughts, but touching the power of faith with a mortal body is a major taboo. Even those who are deeply rooted in this path cannot recklessly come into contact with it; they need to use specific magical artifacts as a buffer. Moreover, even so, they are extremely susceptible to being influenced and losing themselves when using this power.

Wang Ai once tried to contact it, which made him cry and laugh and go crazy for a long time. Since then, he has stopped caring about the power of faith.

Logically speaking, as the deputy leader, the "Imperial Preceptor" should have been able to manage things. But... he was too lazy to bother.

For him, dealing with such a vast and complex force of faith was an extremely difficult task.

His body has not yet fully transformed into flesh and blood, and he does not possess the state of mind that Zhang Zhiwei has, where he sits atop his spiritual platform, untouched by any delusions.

He now needs to absorb a large amount of faith power every day as the energy source for reshaping his body. Just digesting this faith power that has been integrated into his body is already extremely mentally taxing, so how can he have time to deal with anything else?

He even wished that there would be less of this power of faith.

Thus, the power of faith piled up here into a mountain.

Wugensheng didn't pay much attention to the chaotic wishes of the masses. He walked through the crowd of praying people and went straight to the deepest part of the church.

His gaze passed over the majestic statue of the Heavenly Tong Sect Master in the very center and landed on a statue on the left side of the row of statues that looked somewhat like the Monkey King.

That is the statue of the "vice leader" of the Tiantong Church.

Wugensheng stopped in his tracks, and the divine light in his eyes shone brightly once again. After seeing the internal structure clearly, Wugensheng couldn't help but gasp.

Because he discovered that inside the stone statue, which should have been an inanimate object, there was a beating heart, and he could even faintly hear the sound of blood flowing. It... seemed to be truly coming to life.

It's like a fetus lying in the womb, and the incense and prayers around it are like the umbilical cord of this fetus.

"It's actually true... Zhang Zhiwei is... creating life?!"

Even though he had some suspicions before coming and had even mentally prepared himself, Wugensheng was still utterly shocked when he saw the scene with his own eyes.

At this moment, Ah Xing, who was the local bishop inside the church, walked towards Wu Gensheng.

Although Wugensheng's face still bore the exquisite disguise given to him by Liu the Clay Figure, his eyes were now too dazzling, staring straight at the statue of the vice leader, which Axing naturally noticed.

After most of the Tian Tong Church's forces moved away, Ah Xing became the bishop of the Tian Tong Cathedral in Shanghai, responsible for maintaining order here.

On weekdays, he would wear the robes of a clergyman, receive worshippers, and comfort refugees. At night, he would go out to hunt and assassinate a few lone Japanese pirate officers or wicked traitors.

The Japanese pirates in this area hated him to the bone and carried out countless assassinations and encirclements. However, Ah Xing himself was strong and possessed the innate "Saint Thief" ability that made him almost immortal. In addition, he was very cunning and would never linger after each fight, immediately retreating into the Tian Tong Cathedral.

Inside the cathedral, the lightning incarnation left behind by Zhang Zhiwei was stationed, and the Qi formation of the "Yanghao Well" provided protection. The Japanese pirates dared not cross the line and could only watch helplessly.

Ah Xing walked over: "Hey! You there, sir!" (End of Chapter)