Chapter 128: The Next Day
At the moment, dozens of cultivators were still busying themselves on the battlefield. They were carrying the Shamans’ bodies to a clearing so that they could be searched and stripped of all clothes, armor, and other possessions. Once done, the possessions were then moved into piles based on their categories, and the corpses were carried to a different clearing. Directly above the corpses, bluish green smoke could be seen floating in the air and transforming into a rain of spirit qi and life.
Wei Yuan had instructed the cultivators to leave the corpses like this for three days straight. When the poison and mystic energy had dissipated completely, Qingming would convert them into spirit rain. Three days later, the corpses would be carried and buried in a designated area. At the moment, Wei Yuan had chosen a spot at the foot of the mountain next to a dense forest. Three days later, Qingming’s domain would expand to that location.
Having witnessed the world rewarding him for slaying the Avatars, and Qingming converting the Shamans’ mystic energy and poison into nourishment for the realm, Wei Yuan felt a chill all of a sudden. The reality of this world might be far more brutal than he had imagined.
As dusk fell, the surrounding grew dimmer and dimmer. However, the sky above the domain was ablaze with a fiery sunset. Suddenly, the red hues of the sunset grew thick and viscous. The sky turned dark all of a sudden, and the atmosphere became oppressively heavy. Breathing grew difficult like a huge rock was sitting on everyone’s chest.
Wei Yuan looked up at the sky. He could see that the sunset hues were rapidly turning into swathes of bloody clouds.
The Shamans’ blood curse had arrived!
For obvious reasons, the Shamans weren’t just going to call it quits after suffering a crushing defeat in the humans’ hands. This time, they were remotely casting a blood sacrifice curse that targeted everything within this corner of the world.
When the bloody clouds took form, blood red droplets began falling from the sky. Wei Yuan immediately raced toward Qingming while commanding the four idle Dao Foundation stage cultivators to enter the array nodes as quickly as possible.
The blood rain was about halfway toward the ground when it came into contact with the array. A faint glow was covering everything within a thousand zhang. The droplets started diminishing as soon as it entered its sphere of influence and vanished completely when it was still dozens of zhang away from the ground.
However, the blood rain was only growing bigger and bigger, straining the array immensely and slowing down its ability to dissolve the blood droplets. Slowly but surely, the blood rain was falling closer and closer to the earth. It wouldn’t be long before the Purify Spirit Array reached its absolute limit.
Suddenly, a wind started blowing. It wasn’t strong, but it blew a not insignificant amount of rain away from Qingming’s domain. Wherever the blood rain fell, the plants withered immediately, the soil turned green, and even the stones were eroded into pincushions.
The wind had come out of seemingly nowhere, but there was no denying that it was diminishing the blood curse just enough for the Pure Spirit Array to keep functioning. In fact, the wind had come from the fengshui array. Without it, the Pure Spirit Array could not have withstood the blood curse for long.
Standing beside Qingming, Wei Yuan delivered a wisp of fortune into the translucent jade hill and dyed it in shadows. The domain grew even darker and gloomier as if shrouded by leaden clouds, but the falling droplets began dissipating faster of a sudden. This bought the already overburdened array some more respite.
However, the blood rain was only growing stronger as time passed. One unlucky blood-tempering stage cultivator accidentally caught a few blood droplets that managed to pass through the array and collapsed to the ground, screaming. They burned giant holes in his body and caused him to leak sticky, ashen black fluid. His screams rapidly weakened over time until they faded completely. The blood would continue to consume his entire being and leave behind a patch of ashen earth about several zhang in radius. At the center, a humanoid shape could vaguely be seen.
At this point, blood droplets were hitting the ground from time to time. After losing another six men in a row, Wei Yuan commanded everyone to gather by the main chamber before injecting more power into Qingming, doing his utmost to shield the area. A wisp of fortune was used up in just a matter of moments!
Wei Yuan did not hesitate. He immediately injected another wisp of fortune into Qingming and fought back against the blood curse with all his might.
The sound of the blood rain striking against the array sounded like a downpour falling on a rain shed. It was such a terrible noise that every cultivator looked as pale as a sheet. They did not fear fighting an enemy to the death, but this blood rain was practically a natural disaster, one where they could do nothing except pray that they would survive. It was a completely different kind of terror.
Eventually, clumps of blood the size of a human fist started falling from the sky. Suffice to say, the array was incapable of dissolving them. From time to time, they would crash against the ground—and seemingly the cultivators’ hearts—and inflict massive amounts of damage. Finally, one cultivator could not endure the terror any longer and let out a scream. He summoned a mystic artifact saber and sent it flying toward a clump of blood!
The clump of blood shattered, spilling countless droplets of blood onto the cultivator’s face and body. The saber was also covered in blood and falling straight to the earth. By the time it hit the ground, the blade was full of holes, and its spirituality was completely gone.
Suddenly, the cultivator let out a bloodcurdling scream. It was because the parts where the blood had touched him were festering rapidly. What was a rice-sized wound had grown to the size of a bowl in the blink of an eye. Not even powerful acid worked this quickly.
The man took off running but collapsed to the ground after just a few steps. He then dissolved into a blackened skeleton in no time.
Everyone who witnessed his fate felt chilled to the core. Since then, they avoided the falling blood clumps as much as possible. If evasion truly was impossible, then they used their mystic artifacts to catch a clump of blood without breaking them before sending them far, far away. Obviously, doing so would cost them the mystic artifact, but it was better than losing their life.
One painful hour later, the blood clouds in the sky finally spent all of their strength and started dissipating. It was just as well as the Dao Foundation stage cultivators standing in the array nodes were close to bottoming out their energy reserves. Outside Qingming domain, the environment was utterly devastated by vast swathes of charred, foul-smelling debris like a dark green cloth that had been smeared with large patches of filth. Even inside the domain, there were numerous scorch marks ranging a zhang or so in radius. They were all caused by the clumps of blood.
Not only that, Wei Yuan had expended four whole wisps of fortune to resist the blood rain. He only had one left in his sea of consciousness now.
Having narrowly survived the Shamans’ ruthless retaliation, everyone felt like they had gained a new lease of life. The blood curse was so terrifying that the Shamans had to have sacrificed at least a thousand humans to cast it. A Great Warlock had to be behind the casting as well.
Despite this, they had survived. The cost was undeniably huge, but everyone also felt true hope and anticipation toward the future.
Before they knew it, dusk had fallen. Wei Yuan sent Xu Wan’er and Yun Feifei away to catch some rest while he roamed the borders of the domain alone.
Qingming’s domain was an extremely high level of existence, and this was the Shattered Realm. It was exceedingly difficult to investigate anything via divination. After unleashing a curse of such magnitude, the Shamans were bound to send someone to investigate the results. Unfortunately for them, Wei Yuan stood in their way.
Qingming couldn’t just detect everything within its domain, it could detect things beyond its boundary to an extent as well. Thus, the Shamans’ scout cavalry had nowhere to hide. With only his horse as his company, Wei Yuan moved like a ghost and mowed down squad after squad of Shaman fighters throughout the night. The Shamans had dispatched seven squads numbering 210 men in total, but every single one of them had fallen victim to his spear. Not one lived to see another day.
At the moment, Wei Yuan only had one wisp of fortune left. Forget another blood curse at the same level, there was no way they could withstand even one at half the level. Should such a time come, it was completely up to fate if someone lived to see another. Even the likes of Yun Feifei and Xu Wan’er would definitely perish if they caught a single drop. The domain would be utterly destroyed, and it would take years instead of days for Qingming to repair the cursed world.
That was why Wei Yuan had to kill every scout cavalry the Shamans had dispatched into the domain and prevent them from finding out the truth. Ideally, they would think that Qingming’s domain possessed an ability that specialized in warding off blood curses and switch to other methods instead. Doing so would inevitably cost the time, and right now all Wei Yuan wanted was to stall for as long as he could.
Eventually, the sky gradually turned white once more. It was a grueling experience, but Qingming had finally survived its first day.
Wei Yuan remained energetic and spirited after returning to the domain. So long as Qingming’s domain still existed, it was like he was cultivating non-stop. Although it was nowhere as effective as when he was meditating in the Palace of Absolute Beginning, it was long and enduring. To make a comparison, if the spirit qi in an ordinary part of the western regions was rated as a 1, then the spirit qi in Qingming’s domain was currently a 10, and that of the Green Cliffs That Hang Over An Empty Valley was a 200!
It was only after he set foot outside that Wei Yuan realized just how barren the world beyond the mountain was.
The sky gradually brightened, and a new dawn approached. He had no idea what kind of offensive the Shamans would launch today, nor if they would attempt another thousand-man blood curse. However, Wei Yuan had slain a Great Warlock. At least for the time being, no Great Warlock should pay Qingming a visit without good reason.
