The monster was still roaring, raging in a fit of madness.
It had been created for a specific purpose.
Legend had it that the Box of Ultimate Bliss could grant anyone’s wish. It was a relic that the Sage of Six Paths had left behind after creating the world.
Once a person reached a certain level, their desires naturally changed.
Even the Sage of Six Paths, the ruler of this world, was no exception.
After all, he was still human.
He still possessed human emotions.
The Sage of Six Paths had already become a legend, so he thought that there ought to be some kind of allegorical tale left behind for future generations—a lesson that might enlighten them.
And so, he created the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
He sealed an indestructible Evil God inside it, using the emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness as the seal.
Whoever opened the seal would have their wish granted by the Evil God.
But the Box of Ultimate Bliss was a double-edged sword.
Although it could grant a person’s wish, once that wish was fulfilled, an Evil God would emerge to greet them.
No one knew this.
Granting wishes was the agreement between the Sage of Six Paths and the Evil God.
But what the Evil God would do afterward was another matter entirely.
In other words, no one truly knew whether the box was a blessing or a curse.
Moreover, the greater one’s expectations of the Evil God, the stronger the Evil God would become.
The stronger the emotions, the more complicated the Evil God’s thoughts would become, making the consequences increasingly unpredictable.
Perhaps the Sage of Six Paths had created the box precisely to teach those who sought shortcuts through wish-making that anything obtained through a wish rather than through one’s own efforts would eventually be lost.
It might even send them plunging into an abyss from which there was no return.
That was the purpose for which Wu, sealed inside the box, had been created.
It would fulfill Bu Ru Lunhui’s request and destroy the Uchiha who had invaded his country.
At the same time, it would destroy the country that Bu Ru Lunhui had sworn to protect.
But the Sage of Six Paths could never have imagined that someone would have no grudge against the Evil God at all.
They simply wanted to test just how powerful the Evil God could become at its absolute limit.
And, by extension, determine just how powerful Six Paths-level power truly was.
Now, the Evil God’s strength was continuously rising.
More and more emotions were pouring forth.
The Uchiha began assembling.
Everyone had their own plans.
Faced with the same situation, different people naturally had different thoughts.
Looking at the monster before her, Granny Gen was filled with disdain for the Sage of Six Paths.
"The ruler of a world should not be bound by the seven emotions and six desires. What one should seek is the supreme Dao."
"All phenomena are ultimately empty."
"But look at what this Sage of Six Paths did!"
"He couldn’t let go because of a little family drama!"
"Even the things he created have done nothing for the common people of this world."
"Is such a person truly worthy of being its ruler?"
As she spoke, Granny Gen continued advancing.
The more she concentrated her emotions toward the Evil God, the stronger the monster became.
She wanted to see where this monster’s limits lay.
She wanted to find out whether the laws of this world themselves had a limit.
With every step she took, a lotus flower bloomed beneath her feet.
Step by step, she actually began walking through the air.
As Granny Gen advanced, an entire pond of lotus flowers blossomed across the ground.
One lotus after another opened.
From within the lotus pond, a gigantic Buddha slowly manifested.
First came the head.
Then the neck.
Then the upper body.
Then the lower body.
A gigantic Buddha hundreds of meters tall stood between heaven and earth.
It gradually transformed from an illusory image into a golden Buddha body.
The Buddha’s robes were partially open, revealing a plump body.
Its brows were slightly furrowed, its belly enormous, and a golden sun hung behind its head like a halo.
As it appeared, countless solemn and majestic Buddhist chants filled heaven and earth.
And when the maddened monster heard those chants, it gradually stopped raging.
The Iga shinobi surrounded the Buddha without joy or sorrow, chanting sutras in unison.
"When the lifespan of humanity has reached eighty thousand years, there shall appear a Buddha named Maitreya Tathāgata—the One Without Attachments, Perfectly Enlightened, Perfect in Knowledge and Conduct, Well-Gone, Knower of the Worlds, Unsurpassed One, Master of Gods and Men..."
The countless Buddhist chants merged together.
For a moment, scriptures seemed to fill every corner of heaven and earth.
"Maitreya, the Future World-Honored One!"
Manifest!
This was the shared faith of the entire Iga Group.
Although the Iga now enjoyed the favor of various yokai and demon gods, every Iga shinobi shared one common faith.
That was Maitreya, the Future World-Honored One.
Although Maitreya was not the supreme Buddha in their belief system, other Buddhas—such as Amitābha Buddha, Medicine Buddha, Dīpa?kara Buddha, and Kōga Group’s temple Buddha—stood alongside him rather than above him.
Together, they were known as the Five World-Honored Ones.
The Iga shinobi had originally been "outlaws."
Historically, the term "outlaws" referred to local armed forces and scattered armed peasants who were suppressed by the rulers from the late Kamakura shogunate through the Nanboku-chō period.
Put simply, they were people who had lost everything.
A group of people who had lost their present could only place their hopes in the future.
The future was their faith.
And now, they had welcomed their own future.
Therefore, they were also willing to save those who had lost their present.
In the Land of Grass, the Kōga shinobi Uchiha Jōsuke had been rampaging without restraint.
At this moment, the lecherous bastard was carrying a beautiful red-haired woman over his shoulder.
Today, the pervert could finally consider his wish fulfilled.
As Jōsuke carried Rakujitsu out of the little house, he looked up and saw the towering Buddha of Maitreya, the Future World-Honored One.
He was initially dumbfounded.
"Iga can actually summon Maitreya, the Future World-Honored One?"
"They were hiding something like this all along?"
As their old rivals, the Kōga also believed in Buddhism, so they had thoroughly studied the Iga’s Buddhist traditions.
Maitreya was not merely one of the Five World-Honored Ones.
He was also the Buddha of the Future, one of the Buddhas of the Three Times.
He was among the most supreme and exalted Buddhas, and the future culmination of all Buddhist Dharma.
According to legend, in the future Star-Kalpa, when the thousand Buddhas appeared, Maitreya would lead them all.
And now, such a Buddha had been summoned into the present with ease.
Just how capable was Granny Gen of the Iga?
Although Kōga and Iga were currently on the same side, Jōsuke simply found the benevolent-looking Maitreya before him irritating.
He curled his lip in disdain.
"What’s so impressive about that?"
"Our Kōga Group’s temple Buddha is one of the Three Buddhas of the Three Times as well!"
"He is the Dharmakāya Buddha, one of the Three Bodies of the Tathāgata—the supreme and most exalted Buddha, the foundation of all Buddhist Dharma!"
The fat man was practically drowning in sour grapes.
Unfortunately, Granny Gen couldn’t hear him.
Otherwise, she would certainly have enjoyed pointing out that someone who had witnessed the Buddha of the Future apparently had no future himself.
But Granny Gen had not created such an enormous spectacle merely because she wanted to fight a great battle.
She had many other considerations.
The Uchiha of the Southern District had mastered the power of Fear.
But Fear was the power of yokai.
Yokai could be revered as gods.
But gods were not yokai.
Great yokai such as the Great Tengu, Nurarihyon, Tamamo-no-Mae, and Yamata no Orochi possessed power comparable to that of gods.
But they were still not true gods.
They were fundamentally different from true Amatsukami and Kunitsukami—gods who possessed divine positions and divine offices.
The power of Fear could only increase the strength of those Uchiha protected by yokai.
The Red-Eyes had even begun worshipping yokai in order to obtain power, turning the entire Southern District into a chaotic mess.
True gods needed to absorb faith and emotions.
They did not simply rely on making people afraid.
Whether sorrow or joy, anger or grief—all of these were emotions that humans held toward things and toward the world.
And gods were the world itself.
Yet the Uchiha seemed not to have mastered the proper methods.
Lord Kei could absorb faith.
He could absorb fear.
These too were emotions provided by human beings.
But he could not absorb the seven emotions and six desires.
That made Granny Gen believe there had to be a reason.
The divine sword called Tenchō Rikkoku, which rested at Lord Kei’s side, was the pure land of the yokai and therefore naturally favored them.
There were no yokai in this world.
Therefore, Lord Kei could absorb the power of Fear that the yokai required.
If Lord Kei could not absorb other emotions, then there had to be something that originally existed in this world whose priority was higher than his own.
That was why Lord Kei’s domain had become a nest of yokai.
This was not the orthodox path.
If one wished to establish divine authority on behalf of Heaven, there naturally had to be an orthodox system behind it.
And the thing used to seal this Evil God before her had given Granny Gen hope.
Granny Gen had discovered that the box representing joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness seemed to be absorbing these four emotions from the world itself.
Perhaps obtaining it would allow them to break through the world’s existing restrictions.
Perhaps it could give the Uchiha a method of gaining power that did not rely solely on fear.
It would give them more choices.
If this succeeded, then in the future, any Uchiha anywhere in the universe would be able to provide power to the Uchiha simply through fluctuations in their emotions.
When that day came, perhaps only Buddhas and gods who had transcended sorrow and joy—who possessed neither attachment nor emotion—would be able to stand against the Uchiha.
Thinking of this, Granny Gen became excited.
This was unquestionably a tremendous achievement!
Now she needed even more emotional energy to test her hypothesis.
She wanted to see the true capacity of this world.
The lotus beneath the Future Buddha began moving, producing the gentle sound of flowing water.
"Though a trickling stream flows toward the sea, sincere effort is repeatedly exhausted; though grains of dust gather into mountains, each one’s contribution is small."
Everything about the Buddha radiated compassion.
The emotional energy continued to be amplified and poured toward the monster.
But the monster had already reached its limit.
No matter how much joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness was poured into it, the monster could no longer grow.
At this moment, the monster had become a colossal existence that seemed to touch the heavens.
Even a Tailed Beast, known as a natural disaster, could now be picked up by it with one hand like a chick.
Looking at the enormous beast that had expanded until it seemed to reach the sky, Granny Gen nodded.
"So this is the limit of a Six Paths creation."
With that, Granny Gen raised her fist.
The Future Buddha raised its fist as well.
"A Vajra glares in wrath to subdue the Four Māras; a bodhisattva lowers its brows in compassion for the Six Realms. The balance of the Dao leaves no room for opposition."
The monster continued standing there in a daze.
The Future Buddha, however, showed no mercy.
It slammed its fist down.
The instant it threw its punch, golden radiance spread across its body.
In the blink of an eye, that golden light appeared over the monster.
The enormous fist smashed violently into its body.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted instantly.
Massive cracks spread across the ground in every direction, while the resulting dust cloud obscured everyone’s vision.
"AAAH—!"
A terrifyingly shrill sound suddenly came from within the dust.
All that could be seen through the haze were the monster’s gleaming eyes.
The monster already had only a single eye.
Now, within that black pupil, a trace of madness emerged.
Its bizarre cry suddenly rang through the air.
It was a sound-wave attack.
After taking a heavy blow, the monster had counterattacked.
The Uchiha who heard the sound were all injured.
Wisps of black smoke rose from their bodies as the emotions of pain within their hearts were amplified.
The cry seemed to affect everyone.
It attacked them directly from within.
As long as one possessed emotions in one’s heart, one would become trapped by those emotions and find it difficult to escape.
"Get beneath the Buddha!"
Granny Gen spoke sternly.
The suffering Uchiha immediately abandoned their positions and rushed toward Maitreya.
They sat cross-legged beneath the Buddha.
Their pain immediately began to subside.
Then all the Uchiha silently began chanting sutras.
The Red-Eyes also began sincerely praying to the Future Buddha.
As the Buddhist scriptures empowered the Buddha and the strength of their faith increased, the Future Buddha’s entire body flashed with light.
Then arms began emerging from behind it.
In the blink of an eye, countless arms formed a dense, incomplete circular halo behind the gigantic Buddha.
"The Buddha manifests according to the thoughts of sentient beings and penetrates the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination!"
"Great Wisdom World-Honored One, crown of supreme transformation!"
As the Uchiha shouted in unison, Maitreya’s expression became benevolent.
With one hand forming a Buddhist mudra, the countless arms behind the Buddha suddenly swung forward.
The earth shook with a tremendous BOOM!
One fist after another slammed downward.
The ground began trembling as though it were experiencing a continuous series of earthquakes.
The already cratered earth first cracked like a spiderweb.
Then rocks flew in every direction.
A gigantic pit was forcibly hammered into existence by the Buddha’s fists—and it continued growing deeper.
With the strength of all the Uchiha empowering it, the Future Buddha’s power rose once again.
Every punch was stronger than the one before it.
With so many arms throwing punch after punch, countless blows were delivered in an incredibly short period.
The resulting destructive force was already hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of times greater than before.
The destructive power was so overwhelming that even Hashirama Senju would have had to hand over a cigarette.
The Land of Grass had suffered a natural disaster.
Fortunately, Uchiha Jōsuke of the Kōga had actually done something useful for once and evacuated the Uzumaki Clan ahead of time.
Carrying the beautiful woman far away, Jōsuke watched the scene before him and became excited as well.
"ORA ORA ORA!!!!!"
"Even that useless Iga, whose the Iga Group’s central hall specializes in compassion rather than combat, is this powerful!"
"Then wouldn’t our Kōga Group’s temple Buddha possess the power to destroy the world?"
Jōsuke suddenly began looking forward to Kōga’s own collective operation.
"If our Kōga Group’s temple Buddha’s World-Destroying Curse were used, that monster would have been knocked flat ages ago!"
As the Future Buddha continued its assault, the earth trembled with repeated BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The pit below grew wider.
Deeper.
During one of the impacts, a torrent of clear water suddenly erupted from the ground.
The Future the Iga Group’s central hall had actually punched all the way down to the underground water table.
"AAAH—!"
Another terrifying shriek rang out.
This time, it was a scream of pain.
The Evil God had finally become furious.
It intended to return all the damage it had suffered.
Countless sound waves, lightning bolts, and poisonous fumes began spreading outward.
Seeing this, Granny Gen waved her hand.
After all, this was her first time summoning Maitreya.
She had wanted to see what the Buddha could accomplish.
But the Iga Group’s central hall’s greatest strength was not its fists.
It was amplification.
"May I, in the future age, be reborn together with all sentient beings alongside Maitreya, following the Compassionate One as he descends."
"Through life after life and kalpa after kalpa, may I remain together with the Compassionate One; forever departing the cycle of birth and death, and ultimately attaining the Supreme Way."
The Thousand-Armed Buddha formed a Blessing Seal.
Buddha-light illuminated all things.
Uchiha Gen clasped her hands before her chest.
Her thumbs were joined and raised upright.
The roots of her index and middle fingers touched in the prescribed mudra.
Her face showed nothing but joy as she opened her mouth and chanted the the Iga Group’s central hall Merit Heart Mantra:
"Whoever hears even a single word of this mantra shall not fall into the Three Evil Paths, nor enter a mother’s womb, but shall instead be born within a lotus."
In an instant, the Buddha-light behind the Future Buddha blazed brilliantly.
An immense radiance spread outward, as though the entire world had suddenly been illuminated.
"Om, Maitreya, Svāhā!"
All beings are equal.
At that moment, the Dharma bodies of the yokai worshipped by the Uchiha began condensing once again.
Ame Onna, Hotarugusa, Hair-Cutting Woman, Jorōgumo, Half-Body Wraith, Katamimi Boar, Hannya...
One yokai after another appeared beside the gigantic Buddha.
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