Chapter 158: Covered in mouths, calumny melts gold

Shang Lu exerted all his strength, thrusting his saber forward in an attempt to skewer the Master's head in one clean strike.

However, when the tip of the blade met the center of the Master's brows, it could not advance even a fraction of an inch.

Countless grotesque, fleshy buds sprouted from the Master's head, face, and body, writhing in a swarm toward his forehead to entangle and block Shang Lu's blade.

Every single fleshy bud, regardless of its size, bore a mouth.

A cacophony of diverse voices issued from these bizarre mouths, crying out in overlapping chaos:

"The Master is a saint of the mortal world, here to deliver all beings!"

"The Master possesses boundless divine powers and limitless magic!"

"No one can harm the Master!"

In an instant, Shang Lu understood that these voices and these fleshy buds all belonged to the people who had been bewitched by the Master!

The more implicitly these people believed in the Master, the more their life force was drained away by him.

This was the cultivation method of the sophists of the School of Names: to distort one's worldview and steal away vitality.

Even after these people died, their souls would be enslaved by the sophist to become clinging ghosts, helping them to continue deceiving others!

At this moment, the mouth-bearing fleshy buds growing frantically upon the Master were the vital energy and souls of his "believers."

These fleshy buds not only blocked Shang Lu's assault on the Master's behalf, but also attempted to beguile Shang Lu himself, making him believe that the Master was a worldly saint who had come to save all souls.

The bewitching power of these fleshy buds was formidable, and the noisy, chaotic atmosphere generated by their overlapping chatter could easily agitate a person's mind.

Once the mind was disturbed, one became all the more susceptible to hypnotic bewitchment.

In the past, this technique of the Master's had never failed, causing many to drop their hostility toward him and even prostrate themselves at his feet.

Yet against Shang Lu, it foundered once again.

Within the Temple of the Five Organs, upon the image of the heart and mind, blazing flames roared.

These flames caused no harm to the Temple of the Five Organs, nor did they injure Shang Lu.

Instead, they burned away all stray thoughts and chaotic noises in his mind.

The beguiling words of the mouth-bearing buds, the moment they entered Shang Lu's ears, were incinerated by the raging fires of his heart, failing entirely to bewitch him.

Yet the mouths upon the fleshy buds could do more than utter seductive remarks; their teeth were exceptionally sharp. They bit down upon the blade of the saber, producing a harsh, grating crunch.

The ox-tail saber, forged from refined iron, was notched with countless gaps in the blink of an eye!

Moreover, these mouth-bearing fleshy buds writhed like venomous snakes, lashing out toward Shang Lu.

They attempted to wrap around him and devour him flesh and bone!

Since they could not beguile him, they would simply consume him.

Seeing this, Shang Lu cast the saber aside without hesitation.

Before letting go, however, he channeled a surging, tyrannical surge of blood Qi and a wisp of divine power into the fractured blade.

"Boom—"

The broken ox-tail saber was detonated by Shang Lu's blood Qi and divine power!

The destructive force of the explosion, laden with flying shards of steel, instantly blasted apart a massive swathe of the mouth-bearing fleshy buds that had coiled around the weapon!

Flesh and blood flew in all directions, turning the once sacred and solemn great hall into a veritable slaughterhouse.

In tandem with the carnage, the clamor and noise within the hall were abruptly quieted by a large margin.

"A prime opportunity!"

With a snap, Shang Lu drew the beast-hide whip that had coiled back around his waist, unleashing the Spirit Serpent Whip technique to lash out at the Master with all his might, seizing the moment when most of the fleshy buds had been blown to oblivion to launch a fatal assault!

Urged on by his blood Qi, the beast-hide whip flashed like lightning, bursting forth with the momentum of a thunderbolt.

Just as he was about to succeed, a massive serpent tail suddenly swept out from behind the Master.

"Boom—"

Shang Lu's beast-hide whip collided heavily with the serpent tail, unleashing a powerful shockwave.

A few of the Master's believers who had just pursued their way into the great hall were instantly blown flying, not even given time to hurl curses or reprimands.

The massive serpent tail had several of its scales shattered and shook loose a shower of debris.

Yet there was no blood; only a cloud of pulverized stone and dust swirled into the air.

For this serpent tail did not belong to the Master, but rather to the statue of the deity with a human head and a serpent body standing behind him.

Clearly nothing more than a clay-and-straw idol, it was not only able to move at this moment, but also erupted with astonishing strength!

It leaped from the altar, pressing down upon Shang Lu with the crushing momentum of Mount Tai.

Shang Lu truly had not expected that this Master could not only use silver-tongued sophistry to wrap a crowd of foolish men and women around his finger, but could even talk a clay idol into motion for his own use!

Such a skill was nothing short of miraculous and divine!

Although the statue was fashioned from straw and clay, having received incense offerings for years within the shaman temple, it had acquired a measure of spiritual essence.

Driven by the Master's sorcery and infused with a vast amount of stolen life force, it actually managed to fight Shang Lu to a standstill.

Though every single blow from Shang Lu shattered fragments from the statue,

the clay idol felt no pain, feared no death, and unleashed a force comparable to the perfection stage of Marrow Cleansing, matching Shang Lu's own might stroke for stroke!

For a time, Shang Lu found himself entangled by this statue, unable to press forward and slay the Master.

However, the Master did not join the fray.

He simply stared wide-eyed, fixing his gaze upon Shang Lu as he demanded, "Why do you refuse to believe my words?"

The Master's voice no longer possessed its previous steady composure, tinged instead with a trace of panic and fury.

At that moment, Shang Lu noticed that the Master was aging at a rapid pace.

Just moments before, the Master had still appeared to be a youth of ten or twenty, possessed of a flawless, jade-carved appearance.

Yet now, he had aged by at least ten years in the span of a breath!

Combining this with the unique cultivation methods of a sophist, Shang Lu deduced that because he had refused to be deceived or bewitched, he had broken the Master's technique, causing the man to suffer a backlash and lose both cultivation and vitality.

While launching a fierce assault on the statue in an effort to make short work of it and destroy it, Shang Lu let out a cold snort. "My Dao heart is steadfast. Your crooked and heretical theories can fool others, but they can never fool me!"

The Master, however, refused to believe it.

"You are merely at the Marrow Cleansing realm; what right do you have to speak of a Dao heart?

I understand now—you must be carrying some treasure hidden upon your person capable of calming the mind and steadying the spirit!

Once I kill you, seize this treasure, and refine it, not only will I make up for the loss of my vitality, but I will also elevate my cultivation and further enhance my Art of Discernment!"

"Discernment, my ass! You're just full of sophistry! Want to kill me? Come and get me!" Shang Lu taunted.

Unprovoked by the taunt, the Master sneered, "It lowers my status to fight you myself; there are those who hate you enough to come and take your life!"

Rapidly chanting an incantation, the aura around him surged violently as countless splits opened up across his body.

These splits transformed into mouths, instantly covering the Master from head to toe and turning him into a bizarre, deeply unsettling monster.

These mouths opened in unison to speak, but their target was not Shang Lu; instead, they sought to bewitch Tu Pi, Feng Nan, and the other county soldiers outside.

The Master intended to make them turn their coats and join forces to encircle and slaughter Shang Lu.

"We are not enemies; the ones you ought to kill are not us...

Think carefully now, haven't your lives been bitter and exhausting? You do back-breaking work yet earn meager coins; those who sweat and toil are yourselves, yet the credit always goes to your superiors..."

Speaking as one, these mouths elevated their mind-bending, bewitching capabilities to a whole new level.

This was the "Gold-Eroding Words of the Multitude" technique of the sophists!

Had a shaman official been present to help ward it off, the county soldiers might have resisted the bewitchment.

Yet with only their own meager cultivation and fragile states of mind, they were utterly incapable of withstanding the Gold-Eroding Words.

As long as there lingered the slightest trace of resentment or unwillingness in their hearts, that resentment would be seized upon by the technique, magnifying it until it completely overrode every other thought in their minds.

Instantly, a large number of county soldiers outside the hall fell under the spell.

They asked in a dazed, vacant manner, "Then what should we do?"

"Either cease your resistance and let those around you kill you, escaping the prison of the flesh to be free from suffering and torment.

Or enter the great hall and slay your superiors!

Once you kill them, your prison shall dissolve of its own accord, and your sufferings will vanish..."

Countless deeply seductive voices echoed in the ears of the county soldiers:

"Kill him! Kill him!"

"As long as you kill him, you can escape this bitter sea!"

"None of these officials are any good! Kill him, and not only will you escape the sea of bitterness, but you will also rid the people of a pest!"

These deeply seductive, instigative voices confounded right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

Not only were the county soldiers driven to splitting headaches by the noise, but they were also influenced and bewitched, giving rise to murderous intent in their hearts.

"That's right... Not a single official is a good man!"

"Kill him! Rid the people of a pest! And help yourself escape the sea of bitterness as well!"

Sure enough, several county soldiers began to mutter to themselves, abandoning their conflict with the people of Yunxi Town and instead rushing together toward the shaman temple to join the encirclement and slaughter of Shang Lu!