I, Superman, the Supreme Commander

Chapter 106: The Origin of the Evil Spirit

Zhang Hong looked around.

This is a black space with a diameter of one hundred miles, with flowing water curtains in all directions. It seems that this is the inside of the Forgotten River.

At this time, he and Yan Chixia were standing on an invisible barrier. A thousand meters above their heads, there was a huge black ball with a diameter of about one mile, which was constantly rotating.

It was covered with red cracks, and the cold and strange red flames were constantly spewing out from the cracks in the black ball.

After leaving the black ball, the red flame quickly changed into various monsters, which were the evil spirits of karma fire.

Zhang Hong looked up at the big black ball in the sky. His eyes of perspective could not penetrate the black ball. He could only vaguely see that there seemed to be endless karmic fire hidden inside the black ball.

"What exactly is the evil spirit of fire?"

Zhang Hong couldn't help but ask Yan Chixia, or Zhong Kui.

Yan Chixia had just briefly explained the whole story, giving him a comprehensive understanding of the current situation in the Jiuzhou world.

To put it simply, about 1,500 years ago, the world of Kyushu experienced a major change - what exactly happened was not clear to a god of Zhong Kui's level.

At that time, he was arresting an evil ghost king in the human world, when he suddenly received an order from the Emperor of Fengdu and was urgently recalled to the underworld.

When he returned to the underworld, the Great Emperor, the Five Ghost Kings, the Ten Kings of Hell, and the chief officials of the underworld were all gathered in Fengdu. The big leaders had solemn expressions, as if something big was about to happen. Since Zhong Kui joined the company, he had never seen such a big scene.

Before he could ask his superiors and colleagues for the news, the underworld began to shake violently, with the sky collapsing and the earth breaking apart, just like the situation today.

[The gods return to their positions and stabilize the underworld! ]

A long, clear shout echoed in the underworld, and a goddess with a sacred and noble aura rose from the Forgotten River and stood in the underworld like a giant holding up the sky.

There was a thousand-foot-long glow on his body, three times brighter than that of the King of Hell, and its brilliance supported the entire underworld space.

"I will obey your Majesty's decree!"

The Emperor of Fengdu took the lead in saluting the figure of the goddess, and then led all the gods, each taking their own positions, and using their magic power to stabilize the space of the underworld.

Afterwards, Zhong Kui found out that the goddess was actually the legendary Hou Tu Niangniang, the real boss of the underworld and a saint with extraordinary magical powers.

The goddess Hou Tu rarely shows up and usually never interferes in the affairs of the underworld. She lives deep in the six realms of reincarnation.

He actually appeared that day and personally led the gods of the underworld to perform rituals, which shows that an unprecedented major change had taken place in the Three Realms.

really.

Not long after, Zhong Kui learned something extraordinary—the heaven was gone!

It is gone in the truest sense of the word. The thirty-three heavens of heaven above the human world (the world of the living) are gone like the peeled pomelo, completely gone.

There is only one barrier left separating the heaven and the human world, which is the sky that all living beings in Kyushu can see now.

Beyond the barrier is a void and infinitely dangerous chaos where even gods cannot set foot.

Disappeared along with the heavenly realm were all the gods in heaven, the Buddhas in the Western Paradise… In short, all the righteous gods of heaven and earth, true immortals, and true Buddhas who were listed on the list of gods were gone.

In one day, they all disappeared.

After the heaven disappeared, the world of Kyushu became abnormal.

The most obvious thing is that both merit and karma have disappeared. Originally, between heaven and earth, good deeds were rewarded with good, evil deeds were punished with evil, doing good deeds brought merit, doing bad deeds brought karma, good and evil were clearly distinguished.

However, with the disappearance of the heaven, there was no more feedback of merit and karma between heaven and earth, and chaos ensued.

In addition, the conditions for the birth of demons and monsters between heaven and earth have become simpler and simpler. In the past, demons had to practice for thousands of years before they could transform, but now any spider or fox can transform into a human form after practicing for decades or even decades.

In the past, the number of ghost kings, Yakshas, ​​could be counted on one hand, but later on, any random evil ghost could grow into a demon ghost.

On the contrary, for some unknown reason, the power of these gods has been declining. They were originally immortal and had the same lifespan as the heaven and the earth, but now they are showing signs of the five signs of decline, three disasters and five calamities like mortal cultivators.

As the heaven and earth became abnormal, the human world also became chaotic. Natural disasters continued, man-made disasters were rampant, morality and rituals gradually collapsed, and people's hearts were no longer as they used to be.

During that period, all kinds of evil demons and ghosts emerged one after another. Zhong Kui and other middle-level leaders of the underworld kept running to the world of the living to assist the cultivators in catching ghosts, subduing demons and eliminating monsters, without any fatigue.

The Ghost Emperor Yama and his men disappeared every few days, and no one knew what they were doing - Zhong Kui later found out that the leaders had gone to the Six Paths of Reincarnation to assist the Goddess Hou Tu in suppressing the evil spirits of karmic fire.

"The evil spirits of karmic fire are actually the evil thoughts of the gods and Buddhas, or the devilish thoughts, and are also the sins of the gods and Buddhas..."

Zhong Kui (Yan Chixia) finally went with the flow and revealed the truth about the evil spirit of fire.

It turns out that as long as there are intelligent creatures in the Nine Provinces, whether they are humans, demons, monsters, or even gods and Buddhas, they are all affected by merit and karma.

——Gods also have karma, and they also have good and evil.

No one is exempt except those saints who have cut off their evil thoughts.

Normally, gods and Buddhas possess divine positions and are blessed and protected by heaven. Naturally, they are not affected by cause and effect, are not stained by karma, and are free from evil and filth.

Karma and evil thoughts will not be revealed - but that does not mean they do not exist.

The gods and Buddhas suddenly disappeared, but for some reason, their karma and evil thoughts did not disappear with them, but remained instead.

Immortals and Buddhas have practiced for thousands of years, and have been blessed by heaven and cleansed all year round. In theory, their body and mind are extremely pure and clean, without any evil or leakage.

Therefore, the remaining karma and evil thoughts they have are also the purest evil in the world, with a hint of divinity.

Under the rules of heaven, karma should turn into karmic fire and burn away all evil thoughts.

However, due to the great changes in heaven and earth and the special nature of immortals and Buddhas, their karma did not eliminate the evil thoughts. Instead, the two merged to give birth to a special kind of karmic fire.

This special karmic fire can spontaneously devour the malice between heaven and earth, turning into an immortal, irrational monster that only knows how to devour spiritual intelligence, that is, the karmic fire spirit.

After the great changes in heaven and earth, the order of the human world collapsed, the malicious intent that grew only increased, and the power of the evil spirit of karma fire became stronger and stronger.

In desperation, the gods of the underworld had to suppress the evil spirits of fire in the six reincarnations. In order to suppress the growing evil spirits of fire, the gods of the underworld had to continue to invest their divine power, but at the same time, the collapse of faith in gods and Buddhas in the human world made the gods of the underworld, who relied heavily on incense and vows, unable to make ends meet and increasingly declining.

In the end, in order to preserve their true spirits and to suppress the evil spirits of karma and fire, the gods in the underworld had to reincarnate one after another.

First it was the King of Fengdu, then the Five Ghost Kings, and then the Ten Kings of Hell... Before the gods were reincarnated, they transferred most of their divine power to the Six Paths of Reincarnation so that the evil spirits of karma could be suppressed longer.

Because the heavens disappeared along with all the gods and Buddhas, the way of heaven was incomplete, and the underworld was unable to confer new gods. The gods that later entered the underworld had only the title of gods but were not recognized by the way of heaven. They were all "false gods."

However, for unknown reasons, the reincarnated gods of the underworld lost contact and were unable to rebuild their powers as planned. There has been no news for a thousand years.

Three hundred years ago, Zhong Kui’s supernatural powers were exhausted. Knowing that there was little hope, he had to reincarnate and go to the human world in person to seek a glimmer of hope.