“Bewildering Soul Scatter! Y-You… You actually poisoned me!”
The Jindan-stage team leader glared wide-eyed at Li An, trembling as he pointed a finger at him.
His face had turned an ashen gray, and his voice was filled with fury as he roared, “Do you even understand what you’re doing? This is treason against the Immortal Alliance!”
“So what if it is?”
That light, drifting reply.
Li An let out a cold laugh and stared at the team leader.
“I formed my golden core after 150 years of cultivation. I should have had a thousand years of lifespan and the chance to glimpse the Nascent Soul realm. But because of a cup—just a plain, ordinary cup—I was exiled to this place, wasting five hundred years for nothing!”
“My lifespan was already limited. Now with these five hundred years wasted, I have no hope of reaching Nascent Soul. So why not take the Spirit Essence of Ten Thousand Souls and join his sect instead? If the Immortal Alliance can’t give me what I want, then to hell with it!”
A storm of spiritual energy surged wildly around him.
His long black hair, now laced with demonic energy, danced violently in the wind, echoing the turbulence within his heart.
Spikes of bone, tainted with dark aura, erupted from his body.
As they clashed against each other, they melted and fused into a single black bone blade.
Seeing this, the team leader’s expression shifted dramatically.
He screamed in desperation, “Even if you kill me, that Spirit Essence of Ten Thousand Souls is still only a half-finished product! You’re deluding yourself!”
“A blood sacrifice will do the trick.”
“A blood sacrifice?!”
“Yes,” Li An said flatly.
“Sacrifice these hundred thousand Foundation Establishment cultivators, and the four Jindan cultivators—including you, my dear senior brother. Then that spiritual artifact will be completed in an instant.”
“This is demonic cultivation! The Immortal Alliance will never let you live!”
“Demonic cultivation?”
Li An’s lips curled into a mocking smile.
“That wretched woman Ji Yixue just wants the Spirit Essence to build the ultimate Dao foundation for the child she hasn’t even given birth to yet. She laid out a plan over five hundred years, sacrificed and slaughtered an entire city. The Ten Thousand Soul Yin City exists because of her. Do you have any idea how many cultivators died for it? Millions!”
“If you want to talk about demons, isn’t she more of a demon than I am?”
“I simply made the choice that benefits me the most.”
With that, the black blade pierced the team leader’s abdomen.
Li An smiled faintly. “Safe journey, Senior Brother.”
The next moment, the blade twisted violently.
A golden core burst out from the man’s body with a harrowing wail, then shattered into countless motes of golden light.
After finishing the deed, Li An calmly withdrew the blade and walked to the window.
He gently pushed open the wooden shutters.
Silver moonlight spilled in, casting a long shadow across the floor.
“Everything is ready. Begin.”
He spoke softly to the air.
A few faint whispers replied from the silence.
Then, several pitch-black shadows emerged from the long shadow on the floor, darting into the corners of the room and vanishing from sight.
***
Beneath the moonlight, the snow was as pure as white jade.
It blanketed the massive three-thousand-li city like a divine palace carved from ice, veiled in a layer of silken mist.
Moonlight shone upon Li An’s face, which now bore the faint marks of age.
His expression was calm, yet his lips curled ever so slightly into a smirk.
He whispered to himself, “The Eight Great Fears, the Homeland of the Nine Netherworlds.”
BOOM!
A thunderous rumble erupted.
“What was that sound?”
Su Bai and his group looked around in alarm.
Then, without warning, several massive columns of blood-red light shot into the sky, forming a terrifying web that loomed over the entire three-thousand-li city.
The air was thick with the stench of blood—it was sickening.
Suddenly, a Foundation Establishment cultivator at the rear of the group let out a blood-curdling scream.
Everyone turned to look in horror, only to see the man’s body touched by the blood light.
In the blink of an eye, he began to melt like snow under blazing fire.
Blood gushed from his dissolving form, pooling into a horrifying crimson puddle on the ground.
The cultivator’s face twisted in agony, and within just a few breaths, his life vanished without a trace.
A chill surged up from Su Bai’s feet, shooting straight to the top of his head.
He instinctively gripped the sword in his hand.
“Su-Su-Su… Su Daoist, wh-what is this…?” a nearby cultivator stammered, completely petrified by the horrific scene in front of him.
“I don’t know, but everyone—head for the city gate! Now!”
“We may not know what’s going on, but maybe the Four Resident Elders do!”
As the words left Su Bai’s mouth, he was already flying toward the edge of the city.
The others glanced at each other, then quickly followed.
Along the way, more and more cultivators broke away from the group, turning into puddles of blood without warning, sending chills down everyone’s spines.
As Su Bai rushed forward, he saw many other cultivators fleeing like refugees toward the city gate.
His pace quickened.
Soon, a massive wave of cultivators surged forward like a roaring river, all heading toward the city gate.
“Realman! Open the gate, quick!”
“Elder! There’s chaos inside the city! Blood light is merging with blood bones, and wandering souls have gone berserk! They’re killing everything in sight!”
“Uncle An! I’m your sister’s third aunt’s eldest nephew!”
“My sister is the concubine of a core disciple from Tianhe Sect!”
At the city gates, the crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder.
Cries from countless Foundation Establishment cultivators rang out, yet no response came from beyond the walls.
Su Bai was among the crowd, his expression grim, eyes fixed on the tightly shut gate.
Suddenly, his 《Plum Blossom Divination》 technique activated at full force and produced a terrifying omen—Disaster.
His face changed instantly.
Without hesitation, he turned into a streak of light and shot toward the back.
***
A moment later, the earth shook violently.
The spot where Su Bai had just been standing cracked open with a deafening roar.
A massive rift yawned open like the mouth of a savage beast.
Several cultivators were too slow to react and were swallowed alive by the abyss.
Darkness poured from the rift, spreading a chilling fear that seemed endless.
From the gaping crack crawled a swarm of skeletal demons—Whitebone Yaksha.
Their bleached-white bones gleamed with a sinister sheen under the dim light, and their hollow eye sockets blazed with ghostly fire.
They brandished razor-sharp bone claws like the scythes of death, slaughtering everything in their path.
Wherever they passed, blood flowed, and screams filled the air.
The terrified faces of the cultivators and their desperate cries echoed through the chaos, making the horror all the more unbearable.
The killing spree of the Whitebone Yaksha seemed never-ending.
In moments, the entire land had turned into a living hell.
***
Meanwhile, Su Bai was hiding inside a secluded house, downing bottle after bottle of spirit-replenishing pills like they were free.
Once his spiritual energy was about seventy percent restored, he stood up and looked into the distance.
The scene before him resembled a vision from a demon’s nightmare.
He murmured to himself, “Looks like this simulation might be ending soon. I wonder what that little pet of mine is doing right now.”
At that, he gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
“Forget it. No point thinking about that now. It’s just another simulation.”
“I’ll just raise another one in the next run.”
But even as he spoke, Su Bai’s expression changed.
He pressed his ear against the wall.
‘Wait a second—those screams in the distance sounded… oddly familiar?’
***
“Ahhhhh!!! Stop chasing me already!”
“I’m warning you, my master is a future Core Formation cultivator!”
“Ahhhhh!! Is there no senior cultivator out there who’ll save me?! My mother is destined to become a Core Formation elder—there’ll be a huge reward for saving me!”
Su Xiaohei was sprinting for his life, flinging explosive talismans behind him without a care for the cost, just to keep the black-clad demonic cultivators on his tail at bay.
He was truly out of luck this time.
Originally, he thought the random teleport would send him somewhere remote, and from there he could find a way back to his sect.
He never expected to land smack in the middle of a demonic cultivator’s nest—and worse, his spatial escape talisman had failed.
Now, he couldn’t even run properly.
One of the demonic cultivators, his eyes filled with malice, suddenly threw out a ghostfire chain.
The chain slithered like a venomous serpent, crackling with ghostly flames, making a bone-chilling “zzzz” as it sped straight toward Su Xiaohei’s vitals.
Trapped and desperate, Su Xiaohei’s eyes widened in terror as the burning chain closed in.
“Slash!”