Chapter 57: Decrypting the Buddhist Realm: The Boss Was Actually Myself (Subscription Requested)

Next, the team leader began to decode the internal story of this bubble world.

At first, this was merely a tiny bubble world controlled by the Buddhist system. The overall atmosphere was harmonious and peaceful, with abundant natural resources. The world's total area was small, and its social structure was backward, remaining at the ancient city-state stage. No one knew how long it had existed.

Until several months ago, the bubble world suffered an invasion and infiltration by the [Yellow Springs]. Dead qi spread among mortals, and a massive number of walking corpses revived, attacking civilians who had no prior experience in dealing with such threats, leading to the rapid spread of the ghoul plague.

At the very beginning of its birth, this bubble world had inherited an incomplete "Buddhist system."

On the Duling Star, true mainstream Buddhist sects possessed rich experience in dealing with the [Yellow Springs]. They even actively invaded the netherworld, carving out a "dedicated hell" to showcase the boundless power of the Dharma and enhance the comprehensive influence of Buddhism.

The Naye Buddhist Kingdom lacked the relevant knowledge system. Being suppressed by the [Yellow Springs dead qi], it retreated step by step.

In the end, the [Vajra Temple] warrior monks, who had long been stationed on the front lines to suppress unruly mobs, fell first. Conversely, the [Tianyin Temple], which was adept at brainwashing and edification and had always stayed in the second line, managed to escape unscathed.

After the hordes of ghouls carved out a [Yellow Springs] spring within the [Vajra Temple], the monks of the Naye Kingdom finally realized the gravity of the situation. The previous Abbot Longyin stepped forward in an attempt to suppress the Abbot of the Vajra Temple, who had already degenerated into a "Buddha ghoul."

During this battle, Elder Duowen, who had suffered from unrealized ambitions and harbored grievances for many years, finally seized the opportunity to let Abbot Longyin and the Buddha ghoul fall into a trap together. He intended for them to consume one another, resulting in mutual destruction and a simultaneous demise.

His wild ambition was to monopolize the Buddhist Kingdom and become the new generation's leader.

Then, the "accident" happened, predictably enough. After Abbot Longyin and the Buddha ghoul went dormant for dozens of days, both absorbed the [Yellow Springs dead qi] and returned as ghost kings.

The Naye Buddhist Kingdom and the bubble world were plunged into an apocalyptic crisis! The populace fled in all directions, and Duowen was thrust into the role of the final abbot during a time of crisis, on the verge of total ruin.

Up to this point, the story had simply followed the traditional [Bubble World] trope. The [Furry King] performed paid calculations to deduce a mission world suitable for its household, sending out a sales team to save the world and promote children's clothing.

Either the [Yellow Springs crisis] would be suppressed and resolved by the Furry King's team, achieving a successful salvation, winning the favor of the Buddhist Kingdom faction, and turning this place into a "cheap raw material cultivation and collection base."

Or the [Yellow Springs crisis] would further escalate, successfully polluting and transforming this bubble world, which originally belonged to the "Buddhism" faction, into a brand-new "Yellow Springs netherworld bubble micro-world."

At that time, the "bubble netherworld" would hold no attraction for the [Furry King], and it would most likely turn around and sell this intelligence to other demon gods of the "Yellow Springs system" for profit exchange.

...

However, the accident occurred half a month before the descent of the "Furry King's team." A batch of uninvited guests from the astral layer, the [Plant Universe Refugees], had arrived in the bubble world ahead of time.

That's right, those "tomato heads" were not some sort of pollution or mutated monsters; that was simply what they naturally looked like!

The Plant Clan was the indigenous people and intelligent life forms of the [Plant Universe], one of the eight external universes connected to the Duling Star. The living beings of that universe all revered plants, evolving biological forms similar to humans.

Tomato people were simply a subspecies of the plant-race aliens.

...

Today, a portion of the [Plant Universe] alien immigrants have long resided in the "astral layer (akin to outer space)" on the exterior of the Duling Star, where they founded the renowned [Astral Intercontinental Bank].

Of course, Yuan Zhu knew nothing about any of this intelligence. He had only heard of the fame of the [Astral Bank], but Runing City didn't have a branch, though he heard the neighboring Taixi did. But he truly had no idea it was run by aliens, let alone a bunch of vegetable people.

Today he had truly broadened his horizons!

These refugees were originally explorers from a certain astral fleet of the Tomato Clan, responsible for prospecting and excavating valuable minerals within the astral layer.

As a result, during their exploration, they were unexpectedly ambushed by "filthy bone monsters." A large number of companions were contaminated by filthy blood, plunging into madness and becoming unrecognizable "mad tomatoes" that frantically attacked and devoured their peers (an "Alien + Zombie" script).

In the end, following a bloody civil war and massacre, the surviving tomatoes slaughtered and destroyed all the mad tomatoes.

However, a new problem followed. As close contacts of the filthy bone mad tomatoes, the risk of "filthy blood contamination" undoubtedly lurked within their own bodies.

Although the Plant Clan possessed a naturally strong resistance and shared the "starlight pollution affinity constitution" unique to the Duling World, they still could not guarantee that they could perfectly suppress the filthy blood and prevent a mad blood outbreak that would reduce them to mad tomatoes.

According to family rules, this batch of survivors was supposed to be destroyed. Unwilling to sit and wait for death, the surviving tomato people conferred together and unanimously decided to escape the astral layer and flee the clan's control.

In the end, the tomato captain led a small group of crew members to search for a [Nightmare Bubble Layer Entrance] with obvious spatial fluctuations, recklessly charging into it. Surviving by a hair's breadth, they successfully descended upon the Naye Buddhist Kingdom.

A group of tomato-clan filthy blood carriers had arrived in the Naye Buddhist Kingdom, which was currently undergoing a Yellow Springs crisis. As many as four sources of pollution converged here: the Dharma, the Yellow Springs, filthy bones, and astral tomatoes.

...

Due to the anomalous phenomenon of stars descending from the heavens, the tomato clan's team was detected by the "final abbot, Duowen," in the very first instance, and monks were dispatched to retrieve them.

After communication and exchange between the two sides, Duowen regarded the tomato clan as otherworldly beings capable of reversing the crisis, while the tomato clan viewed Buddhism as a life-saving straw that could suppress the hidden dangers of filthy blood within their bodies.

Thus, the two sides hit it off instantly. The tomato clan provided methods to manipulate and absorb starlight, helping the declining Buddhist faction suppress the Yellow Springs disaster; in return, Abbot Duowen promised to help the tomato people suppress the filthy blood within their bodies, and even eradicate it completely.

In reality, during this exchange, both sides had hidden their own little agendas.

Buddhist miraculous techniques, especially the "soul system" practiced by Abbot Duowen and Abbot Longyin, possessed powerful mental brainwashing (pollution) effects. They could establish mental connections (Dharma nets), forcefully converting believers and draining believers' souls to strengthen oneself, mutually merging and assimilating, step by step expanding the essence of the soul, and ultimately achieving the miraculous ability to transform into a Buddha.

Abbot Duowen intended to step-by-step implant "Buddha cocoons" into the "tomato people," twist and pollute their souls, modify and correct their thoughts, and finally hold a grand grand ceremony to transform them all for his own use, achieving the goal of occupying the starlight.

Although the tomato people did not understand the Dharma, they feared the onset of the filthy blood. At the same time, their ability to manipulate starlight was a bloodline innate racial divine power. If Buddhism wanted to use starlight to drive away and suppress the Yellow Springs, it had to spare their lives, deal with the filthy blood, and ensure their safety.

就这样, after more than half a month of integration, the tomatoes were brainwashed en masse.

At the same time, Abbot Duowen was also frantically conducting taboo research, seeking a method to combine the "Dharma" with the tomato clan's bloodline, while occasionally helping the tomato people purge a bit of filthy blood to delay the outbreak of their madness.

...

Thus, they cobbled together "tomato-headed monster monks" based on humans grafted with tomato blood, cultivating freaks that were neither Buddhist nor tomato. Within human bodies, the bloodline of alien plant people coexisted, and the tomato blood in turn twisted and transformed the Buddha cocoons, injecting starlight.

Meanwhile, the gradually paranoid and demonized Abbot Duowen injected the "filthy blood" from within the tomato clan into beasts, attempting to create cheap biological weapons controlled by the Dharma to combat the ghoul disaster.

As a result, they created dangerous "green-version filthy-bone monsters." While deranged, they also possessed plant traits and even a touch of Buddhist filthy roots, yet they were completely uncontrollable by the Dharma. Thus, alongside the "Yellow Springs ghost disaster," the "filthy bone disaster" was developed.

In the end, the deeply contemplative Abbot Duowen chose to release the "green monsters." Although he could not control them, they could further demonize the world and force the fleeing, hiding civilians to return to the Naye Kingdom to accept shelter.

...

And then, the story arrived at tonight.

The [Furry King Sales Team] made a forceful descent, but having arrived a step late, they could only watch from the sidelines and get caught up in this chaotic mess.

Having gathered enough believers, Abbot Duowen decided to hold a Buddhist ritual to channel starlight, blowing up the heads of numerous tomato-headed monks and stripping out the original "starlight Buddha cocoons," linking all of them to his own floral-disk skull.

Leveraging the traits of plants, he grafted fruits and forcefully completed a "grand soul fusion" with numerous monks, skipping the arduous steps of cultivation to directly attain Buddhahood!

Abbot Duowen not only intended to bear the souls of countless monks with his bare strength (using Buddha cocoons as the hard drive and souls as data).

He also planned to connect all surviving tomato people in flesh and blood... evolving them into a completely new individual (Buddha-Tomato) that inherited their racial talent for manipulating starlight.

And then, well, the differences between the plant-race aliens and the humans of the bubble world were simply too vast. During soul assimilation, Duowen exerted too much force, exceeding his own brainwashing and fusion limits, ultimately causing his ego to collapse and dissipate.

Those numerous Buddha cocoons harboring the souls of monks, alongside dozens of tomatoes who had converted to Buddhism, plus Abbot Duowen's "soul-consciousness collective," ultimately used the [Dharma] itself as an intersection anchor to reshape [Buddha-Tomato] as a brand-new lifeform.

Or rather, it was the [Bubble World] itself that guided and catalyzed the birth of the [Astral Buddha-Tomato] as a savior Buddha to rescue the bubble world itself.

Consequently, Abbot Duowen was thoroughly dead.

The newly born [Duowen Astral Buddha-Tomato] was a "prototype of a native demon god" that gathered the forces of multiple parties, or rather, the "Buddha" nurtured by this bubble world and the spokesperson for the bubble world's will.

The team leader concluded at last: "Duowen might have been a bad person, but the final version of the [Duowen Buddha-Tomato] you saw has actually washed its hands of its past sins and can be considered a 'benevolent god' of the order faction. Its final actions truly utilized starlight vines to mend the tears in the sky, blocking subsequent tomato people or filthy bone pollution from descending upon the bubble world. At the same time, it also sacrificed the spirituality of three tomato people to plug the infiltration of the Yellow Springs. As long as it continues to sweep away the 'green-version filthy bone monsters' of the bubble world, this world will form a new order and give birth to a brand-new species that is neither human nor tomato."

Yuan Zhu remained silent upon hearing this. If the [Buddha-Tomato] washed away its sins and became a benevolent god of the bubble world, then could the "netherworld Yellow Springs dimension + shadow prefabricated minions" he had meticulously planned out be considered a "villainous foreshadowing plot" prepared for a sequel?

The Boss turned out to be none other than myself!