I quickly assessed— the Black Serpent was probably formed from some kind of evil Qi, harboring a faint trace of its master’s will to control it.
When the Black Serpent bit me, that evil Qi injected into my body and swiftly moved toward my Qi Sea.
However!
Right after the Black Serpent bit me,
the Little Qilin immediately dispersed its defensive shield.
It was as if the shield was just a trap pretending to resist.
Then, that adorable, naive little face actually revealed a hint of cunning satisfaction, like a plan had just succeeded!
The Small Octopus roughly translated—
[Mess with my boss! You’re done for!]
After the Black Qi entered my body, the Lighting Technician seemed to have all his life force drained, collapsing lifelessly.
With no external threats, I simply sat cross-legged, focusing my mind to sense the path of that Black Qi inside me.
The Black Qi had a clear target: straight for my Qi Sea.
That’s when it met its first obstacle.
The pattern that Cluru left on my lower abdomen seemed to sense the provocation, glowing with anger and transforming into countless light tendrils that reached out to confront the Black Qi!
At first, the Black Qi was disdainful.
Could there really be anything more evil than itself in this world?
So it pressed onward.
“pupupupupu—!”
“?”
When the tendrils touched the Black Qi, it was like a sponge meeting water, devouring the Black Qi so quickly it tore a large number of holes in it!
Before the Black Qi could react, its form had shrunk by a third.
“What the hell is this?!” The Black Qi glared at the pink-patterned light barrier in horror.
At a glance, it felt dizzy and disoriented, nearly having its consciousness swallowed whole!
From its perspective, the Pink Light Barrier extended countless tendrils that almost completely sealed off all its corners— no way forward, no way back.
It seemed to say— You have nowhere to run now~ Come, stay and have some fun with me~
As one of the embodiments of evil in this world, the Black Qi felt fear for the first time.
It was always the one terrifying others… but this time, it was scared half to death by something else!
Where did this Great BOSS come from? More evil than even I am?
So the Black Qi decisively fled in panic.
It used all its strength, sacrificing parts of its body as bait through splitting, barely managing to preserve its consciousness cluster and escape the tendril encirclement.
Now it had entered the second stage.
“Huff—looks like I’ve arrived.”
Facing a vast expanse of white energy, abundant with refined essence everywhere, the Black Qi guessed it had reached near the Dantian.
Everyone has a Dantian Qi Sea, and even Master of Spirit Summoning energies mostly accumulate here.
The Black Qi had never seen such a surging energy reserve before; it was ecstatic!
“If I can corrupt this guy, turn him into a dark minion… heh heh… hehehehe…”
Flying inside the Qi Sea, it felt as if it had entered paradise.
Then, it saw the pitch-black stele within the Qi Sea—the Foundation Spirit Platform.
“Stele?” The Black Qi paused.
Why was there a stele growing inside this guy’s Qi Sea?
Driven by curiosity, it approached.
First: reading.
Alright, couldn’t recognize a single character; reading stopped immediately.
Then… touching?
The Black Qi stretched out a small, black claw, tentatively reaching toward the stele.
“Buzz—”
[I died so miserably!][You living death! Are you determined to annihilate my entire family? Ah—]
[Stop it! You’ve slaughtered eighty thousand people today!]
[Wuwuwu—]
[Aaaaaahhh—]
[You deserve a horrible death!]
In an instant, countless curses, insults, screams, and wails flooded the Black Qi’s mind.
The immense volume of information, like a crushing mountain of terrifying negative emotions, nearly destroyed its consciousness in a moment, reducing it to mush!
It seemed to witness a man massacring, annihilating mountains, burning gods and boiling immortals.
The bloodstains on his hands were so heavy with karmic sin that even existing from the Primordial Era until the Immortal Spirit Awakening would barely cover a fraction of his deeds!
[I curse you to a wretched death!][Evil demon and heretic! You will forever live in the hatred of mankind!][Hahaha, I won’t let you rest even as a ghost!]
Endless poisonous curses, massive karmic spirits, all concealed within this black stele.
Now, by touching it, the Black Qi glimpsed just the tip of the iceberg.
It retracted its hand.
Its gaze grew vacant.
It sank into deep self-doubt.
As the embodiment of evil, it would cheer loudly whenever humans sinned, immersing them in the joy of wrongdoing.
It liked to see an ordinary human fall, addicted to slaughter and sinning again and again.
Like this Lighting Technician— his crimes made the Black Qi feel proud enough to boast to the Law Enforcement Officers for an entire year.
But now, facing this stele, facing everything inside,
its worldview collapsed.
Killing?
The number of people this man killed far exceeded the amount of rice the Black Qi ever ate!
Why would it even bother encouraging him to do evil?
If it angered this guy, and he decided to dismember it, the Black Qi figured it would get cut 9,999 times— if it escaped one cut, that’d mean it had been good in its past life!
Now the Black Qi had only one thought:
Escape!
Run far, far away!
Go borrow a rocket from Mr. Ma and become the world’s first Martian immigrant, to open new lands for all mankind!
Never, ever come back here again!
Escape! Must escape here… absolutely must!
“Oh, you’ve seen it all.”
I formed a conscious presence inside the Qi Sea and approached the Black Qi.
The Black Qi shrank back desperately, trembling as it hid behind the stele.
My footsteps drew near.
I stood before the stele; it cowered behind it.
“Don’t be afraid, I’m not a bad guy.” I smiled and suddenly poked my head out, locking eyes with the little Black Qi cluster behind the stele.
“Ah—!!”
The little Black Qi screamed sharply, twisting and distorting in fright.
“I don’t know whose Soul Fragment you belong to,” I studied the fleeing black orb’s back, “Can you speak? Why not tell me your story?”
Tell you… my story?!
The little Black Qi thought about the scenes it had just seen.
Inside the stele, that man often said the same words.
Back then, his smile was like a warm spring breeze, absolutely kind and gentle.
He would place a sword at the opponent’s neck, smiling while stabbing the carotid artery, softly saying:
“Tell me, who sent you? If you tell me, I won’t kill you.”
[It was the XX family][It was the XX sect]
To save their lives, they often answered like this.
And then, in the next moment, there was a headless corpse added to this world.
A few days later, rumors spread in the Jianghu—[The entire XX family died overnight][No dog or chicken left in the XX sect]
“Be good, tell me.” I smiled, drawing closer to the Black Qi, “Since you’ve entered my body, you have to pay rent, right? Tell me, and I’ll let you return to your master.”
The Black Qi shook its head in terror.
It glanced around, searching for an exit from my body.
But this body was easy to enter, impossible to leave.
The pink patterns on my lower abdomen formed an impassable tendril barrier. If it tried to pass again, it would definitely be caught and disciplined thoroughly!
But if it stayed inside…
Who knew what would happen next!
“I have ten thousand ways to make you talk. You better not try to run.”
My palm lit up.
“This move is called Soulsearch Technique. If you’ve touched the stele, you should already know its effect.”
The Black Qi twisted in despair.
Soulsearch—forcefully extracting consciousness information from a Soul Fragment.
This method brings the consciousness system unbearable agony, like being crushed by a hydraulic press, squeezing out information alive.
Unless someone is utterly heinous, I rarely use it.
But this guy fits that criterion perfectly.
In desperation, the Black Qi steeled itself.
“Bang—!”
The Black Qi suddenly exploded.
It self-destructed directly.
“No use,” I said indifferently, stretching out my hand, fingers slowly closing into a fist, “This is my Qi Sea, my territory.”
The scattered fragments of the Soul reassembled.
In an instant, it returned to its original form.
The Black Qi was utterly dumbfounded.
“Hey, looks like you’re not planning to cooperate…”
I raised my hand and pressed down.
Pinning the Black Qi against the stele.
Soulsearch!
Wow, I didn’t expect so much useful intel to be scraped from such a small consciousness.
Most of these fragments were scenes of the Lighting Technician’s evil deeds. Ignoring those, the rest was valuable information.
First, the consciousness owner was Qiongqi.
The Classic of Divine Wonders records: In the northwest, there is a beast resembling a tiger, with wings that can fly.
It preys on humans, understands human speech, devours those who fight directly, eats the noses of the loyal, and kills those who are evil or unkind, feeding their bodies to the beast. It is called Qiongqi.
Translation: It likes bad people.
It encourages people to fall. If they do evil, it rewards them harshly.
The rewards come in various forms. The Lighting Technician was deeply addicted.
That’s not the main point.
The key is that from this small Soul Fragment, I learned quite a lot about other hosts of similar fragments.
“This guy seems to be playing a big game…”
Roughly estimating, just this one Soul Fragment knew of over a hundred hosts.
And there were more unknown to it.
Among those hundred, there were plenty of ruthless people like the Lighting Technician, who committed numerous crimes but mostly roamed free, never caught.
“Not only that, many among them are gang leaders or high-ranking officials of the Immortal Spirit Association, powerful and influential. Their misdeeds are basically unstoppable…”
The only good news: quite a few of Qiongqi’s hosts are from the Mu Family.
They can be cut down rightfully.
After digesting the information, I stood up.
“Dragging things out in the consciousness space this long, people outside must be worried… time to come out.”
After ending my friendly exchange with Qiongqi’s Soul Fragment, I left the Qi Sea world satisfied.
“Little Luo Immortal! Are you alright?!”
The moment the Black Qi dissipated, no one around knew what had happened— only that I suddenly sat down and fell asleep.
Opening my eyes to respond to their concerned voices, I smiled: “I’m fine, just a little tired earlier.”
A wave of relief rippled through the crowd.
“Thanks to all of you today.”
With the case closed, Eight-Trap Professor bowed gratefully to us.
The seventeen-year-old cold case was finally solved.
The victims’ families could finally rest easy.
“So, Head Law Enforcer, not bad for us amateurs, right?” Detective Xiao Yuan proudly patted Shi Tian on the shoulder. “We even earned you a big merit— how are you going to thank us?”
Unexpectedly, Shi Tian turned and walked off: “I need to report. Over a hundred Qiongqi hosts—an immediate investigation is required.”
“Hey, you stone! Can’t you praise us a little…?” Xiao Yuan stomped angrily.
“Later.”
Shi Tian slammed the Law Enforcement car door and floored the accelerator, vanishing from our sight.
Under the neon lights of the film city, standing on the quaint, antique street, we chuckled and shrugged.
“I originally planned to visit the school today, but didn’t expect so many surprises.”
“Guess we’ll have to go tomorrow.”
We called a Didi and waved goodbye.
“Since we’re all in Tianhai City, we’ll meet again.” Teacher Xiao Yuan hugged us reluctantly. “Maybe I’ll even ride the Loli Little Fox Immortal’s popularity later.”
Blushing, I slipped into the trunk.
Amid the girls’ giggles, today’s trip… ended?
Ended, but not completely.
Back at the hotel, I blankly stared at Cluru’s tendrils.
At this moment, Cluru’s tendrils seemed stimulated, swollen and thickened.
Cluru herself looked off—her face flushed with shame, as if enduring great pain.
“Cluru… you…”
Cluru didn’t answer, but suddenly raised her head, locking eyes with me fiercely.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, slightly alarmed.
She gritted her teeth: “There’s something we must talk about.”