Apotheosis

Zen's ranking fell dramatically the moment the Illusion Points left his body.

The rankings in the pyramid were volatile given the heavy competition among trillions of warriors in gathering Illusion Points. The positions rose and fell constantly, even a tiny gap in points was enough to make a big difference.

Those in the mid and bottom tiers did not normally merit much attention.

But those at the top did. The top-tier warriors usually just changed spots amongst each other depending on the amount of points they had accumulated. However, the entire system would know if one of them ever lost and died.

This was the case with Nathan who had previously been ranked as number one. It was quite a shock for everyone when he suddenly fell from the top spot all the way to the 40, 000th place.

The only explanation they could come up for this was that he had been killed and had lost half of his accumulated Illusion Points.

There were two points to be noted about this: the first one was that someone had managed to kill the number one warrior, and the second was that despite having lost half of his Illusion Points, Nathan was still at the 40, 000th place.

It was quite a bit of speculation as to who exactly managed to kill him.

Who had the skill to slay a Godly Genius of the Thoughtless Minds such as Nathan?

They didn't know at all.

Back to Zen: his ranking still wasn't that high but he was starting to make a name for himself.

A number of warriors currently watched out for him, recognizing the potential the young man had in the rankings. So it was only natural that those who had paid attention to him were also curious why his name suddenly disappeared.

Yolande, meanwhile, was astonished at this sudden turn of events.

It was highly possible that Zen had been killed considering how much he had fallen down the ranks.

If he lost half of his accumulated points, then she could more or less guess what ranking he was now at.

But to her surprise, she did not find his name there. Yolande continued searching all the way down to the 12 millionth place but still couldn't find Zen's name.

'How could this be?' she wondered.

Even if he died once, it would be impossible for him to fall out of the top 10 million just like that. Or could it be… Did Zen die twice in just a short period of time?!

That shouldn't be possible. Considering the amount of time it would take to bring someone back to life was quite long, dying twice in succession was extremely unlikely. "He didn't. Did he?" she couldn't help but mutter to herself in disbelief.

She wasn't worried, just shocked. Back in the Passing the Torch, Zen's ranking had also started low but had been improved swiftly over the course of time. That young man had no problem bouncing back to the top right after having been kicked to the absolute bottom. The only reason she was still bothered was the fact that his ra

ty though he didn't really think it was likely. He had just paid 300, 000 Illusion Points after all, so this trip had better be worth it.

Knowing all this, Zen then made his decision to pass by the Maitreya Buddha and proceed into the temple's adytum.

Unbeknownst to Zen, the statue he had carelessly passed by had now dropped its smile.

The Maitreya Buddha's eyes and mouth had turned upside down, indicating the malice present in its expression.

Truth be told, it was the stuff of nightmares.

Bang!

Zen jumped from the loud noise of the two doors slamming shut behind him. He had just entered the adytum but it seemed he was now trapped inside.

The doors were wooden and were mostly in a state of disrepair. He could easily shatter them from the looks of them but Zen decided against it.

Looks could be extremely deceiving. If an ancient temple had the capacity to trap someone like him, then he didn't think he'd really be able to shatter these decrepit doors so easily.

Realizing he had nowhere to go, Zen quickly glanced around and took in his surroundings.

Four other Buddha statues joined him in this quiet space. These statues wore monastic robes and held long sticks that were pointed towards the center of the adytum where Zen was currently at.

"Are they arhats?" Zen muttered in confusion.

Just as he sized these statues up, his ears suddenly perked up at the sound of something crackling.

He quickly whipped his head and immediately realized the cause of the noise.

The four Buddha statues had cracked but not from damage. They cracked because they were quickly beginning to mobilize.

Within a short period of time, these four, formerly non-living, statues were fully mobile. They jumped off their lotus-shaped bases and immediately charged towards Zen.

You'd think being made of stone would slow them down, but they ran like average, flesh-and-blood humans which didn't help Zen one bit.