Ch. 25 - Melodious Divine Bell Sound

“What?!”

Everyone was shocked. They trusted that Ye Fan wouldn’t say something without a basis, he must have discovered something. Even Li Changqing and the female student who had been relentlessly accusing Ye Fan beside Liu Yunzhi turned pale and anxiously scanned their surroundings.

Ye Fan had silently observed everyone’s reactions. Throughout this process, he remained calm and steady, like still water. He had come to understand who was sincere and who was pretending. Only now did he begin to clear his name, by pointing out a key clue.

“You can touch his throat yourselves. His Adam’s apple is shattered. No matter how strong a person is, they couldn’t do that.”

Someone crouched down and checked, confirming what Ye Fan had said. Others instinctively stepped back, a chill spreading through them as they stared at the corpse. If it wasn’t done by a human, then what did it? A cold dread crept down everyone’s spine.

“Ye Fan… do you know what it was? Could it… come after us too?” someone asked in a trembling voice.

The purplish bruises on the corpse’s neck looked just like claw marks left by a vengeful spirit. At that thought, many couldn’t help but glance toward the inner coffin.

“We haven’t escaped the divine crocodiles yet…”

When Ye Fan said that, everyone was terrified. They gripped their divine relics tightly, nervously scanning the darkness.

One female student, her voice breaking, asked, “Did that Crocodile Ancestor suppressed beneath the Great Thunderclap Temple follow us in?”

That peerless demon, personally suppressed by the Buddha, was something no one could forget, even after catching just a brief glimpse of it. The overwhelming, heaven-shaking force it exuded was utterly terrifying.

“Impossible. It didn’t follow us. It’s not the Crocodile Ancestor!” Li Changqing’s face was ghostly pale. He no longer held any divine relic and was sticking closely to Liu Yunzhi, clutching the vajra scepter as tightly as he could.

“I didn’t say it was the Crocodile Ancestor. I meant that a young crocodile slipped into the bronze coffin.” Ye Fan squatted down and shone his phone’s weak light on the dead man’s face. “His expression is filled with terror, eyes wide open, unable to close in death. It’s exactly the same as the other thirteen classmates who died.”

“I read a note in an ancient text about divine crocodiles. Besides descriptions of their appearance, there was this line: The divine crocodile devours not only flesh, but soul and spirit. It strikes terror, scattering one’s essence.”

Though Ye Fan’s bronze lamp had gone out, he still held it tightly, clearly remaining on guard. “This isn’t a coincidence. The way he died is identical to the previous victims, and matches the ancient description. His soul seemed to have fled in terror. There’s definitely a divine crocodile at work.”

Ye Fan wasn’t afraid to touch the corpse. He pried open its mouth, and sure enough, inside was a bloody hole, reaching up into the skull. Everyone felt a chill run through them. That small bloody tunnel was identical to the wounds found on the other dead classmates.

Only a divine crocodile could pierce a human body that easily. Crushing the Adam’s apple from the inside would be no problem.

There was a divine crocodile inside the bronze coffin! But how many were there? With their divine relics having lost their glow, could they even defend themselves? Unease spread among the group.

“So that means… the crocodile is still inside him?”

“Hard to say.” Ye Fan shook his head.

“It’s still in his body! Look, his chest is moving!” Zhang Ziling suddenly shouted, pointing at the corpse.

“Pop!”

A spray of blood burst out. A familiar, hideous creature emerged from the corpse’s chest, a ten-centimeter-long divine crocodile. It lunged toward Ye Fan’s forehead like a black shadow.

“Bang!”

Ye Fan reacted instantly, raising his bronze lamp in front of him. A few faint sparks flew, one of which struck the crocodile. It screamed shrilly, nearly pierced through, and flipped backward in midair.

“Clang!”

Pang Bo was just as quick, swinging his Grand Thunderclap Temple plaque with all his strength. A faint divine light flared as it crushed the creature into pulp.

“Liu Yunzhi, what do you have to say now?” Pang Bo held up his plaque and questioned Liu Yunzhi.

“I was too rash. But who could’ve imagined a divine crocodile got into the coffin?” Liu Yunzhi didn’t say much more, and definitely didn’t apologize. At this point, things were already tense and confrontational. Lowering his stance now was pointless.

“Smack!”

Suddenly, Pang Bo struck, slapping Liu Yunzhi hard across the face. The sound echoed crisply.

At the same time, the vajra scepter and the temple plaque both emitted faint glows as their energies collided and enveloped the two of them. But none of that stopped the slap. Liu Yunzhi’s face was hit squarely, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“My bad. I guess I was too rash this time,” Pang Bo said mockingly.

“You!”

The crowd quickly stepped between them to prevent a fight. Liu Yunzhi’s face was as dark as night. He clenched the vajra scepter and was about to rush forward, but remembering the earlier flash of divine light from Pang Bo’s plaque, he restrained himself.

“Shhh.”

Ye Fan suddenly gestured for silence, turning to stare at the inner coffin, as if listening for something. After a moment, he asked everyone, “Do you hear anything?”

Everyone was startled, because they heard nothing.

Ye Fan looked puzzled but slowly approached the four-meter-long inner bronze coffin.

At that moment, the bodhi seed he had tucked in his chest suddenly warmed up, spreading a soothing heat across his heart. And just then, he heard a voice more clearly than before.

He couldn’t help himself, he reached out to touch the inner coffin, covered in greenish bronze rust and engraved with carvings of ancient humans and gods. It radiated an aura of antiquity and timelessness.

At that moment, he felt like the bodhi seed in his chest had opened a door, allowing him to hear a strange, profound sound.

At first, the sound was faint, but it grew louder and grander. The bodhi seed became even warmer.

The bodhi tree, also called the tree of wisdom or enlightenment, was the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. Ye Fan’s bodhi seed bore a natural image of the Buddha, formed entirely by intersecting veins in the seed, a clear sign that it was extraordinary.

Now, from this ancient and mysterious bronze coffin, the sound grew ever louder, like the heavenly voice of the Dao, or some kind of divine truth.

“The Way of Heaven, takes from those with excess, and gives to those in need…”

This mysterious voice from the Dao began with a quote from Daoist scripture, but soon shifted into a profound, ancient sutra, filled with arcane truths that no one could understand.

The majestic and profound sound seemed to travel through time and space from a distant, prehistoric age, echoing in Ye Fan’s ears like a mighty bell, reverberating into his soul.

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