Wang Yu knew what that thing was.
It was the life-bound magic treasure of the ancient ancestor of the Feng clan who had already passed away, a Nascent Soul grand cultivator: the Qilin Beast-Head Bell. It contained a certain kind of life-protecting blessing granted at the cost of origin essence, and the price was enormous.
When he had read about it in the records, the two words “Qilin” had left a particularly deep impression on him.
The Blood Slaughter Heart-Butchering Sword being able to trigger this final trump card already proved that this was the classic case of “a hundred-mile journey, ninety miles already done”. He was only missing the last tiny step, and he might have been able to cut down the Qingyi on the spot.
The phantom of the azure bell blocked the scarlet sword radiance, but it still left behind a horrifying fissure that ran straight through the city from south to north. Terrifying slaughter intent rose and sank within it.
If one’s mind sank into it, it was very likely their brain would be pierced through by killing intent.
The battered and disheveled Ancestor Qingyi had only just raised his head, when the Yellow Springs Great Hand Seal of the Earth Resentment Puppet arrived. This time it surged up from underground, like the hand of an earth god suddenly opening wide, seizing Qingyi and trying to crush him into meat paste.
“Ughhhhh!”
A relentless chain of savage blows drove Qingyi completely insane.
He was not being given even the slightest chance to breathe. Especially after stopping his divine ability to store power, the backlash had nearly shredded his internal organs.
His internal injuries were far too severe…
Now he had been seized by the Yellow Springs Great Hand Seal again, and he was also worried about damage to his magic treasure. If he took a fatal wound here, it would be him, not the treasure.
In the span of a thought, his life-bound magic treasure, the Sky Azure Ruler, burst out violently.
He raised it and struck it down onto his own forehead with a single smack, leaving behind a cyan talisman imprint. The ruler transformed into the shape of a cyan flood dragon, and like a hurricane, it completely blew apart the Yellow Springs Great Hand Seal.
The hurricane expanded even further, trying to destroy the ice-mirror visual deception Wang Yu had set up.
This insane behavior made it hard for Wang Yu to read his intentions. Was it a feint, or was he truly exploding with everything he had? Countless wind blades scattered and shot out in all directions.
Wang Yu’s true body suddenly erupted from beneath the ground.
Black solid ice condensed into a cubic cage, enveloping both of them inside. It further shrank the battlefield, and at the same time it could replace the function of the ice-mirror illusion.
It still ensured the distant spectators could not clearly see what methods he was using.
After being forced into this situation again and again, the Ancestor Qingyi finally caught on. The other party desperately did not want to expose his identity, and the concealment was only a simple visual obstruction. That meant his methods were highly recognizable, perhaps even famous.
“Ice Demon Child…”
His thoughts spun rapidly. Looking at the solid ice before him and the opponent’s cultivation, which had only recently reached the Nascent Soul realm, a spark of insight flashed in his mind, forming the vague outline of a shadowy figure.
But before he could truly connect the dots, a piercing dragon roar sounded behind him.
A Nether Demonic Dragon, formed from qi and blood, officially surpassed a thousand meters in length and then surged explosively to a full three thousand meters.
Every scale and claw, every draconic eye and savage horn, looked astonishingly real!
Silver-Blood Divine Power covered its surface, forming streaks of silver patterns. Under the effect of the Strength Domain, it charged at Ancestor Qingyi like a launched warhead.
Most importantly, ever since obtaining Silver-Blood Divine Power, that marvel belonging to Body-Refining cultivators, that old restrained feeling of having to hold back had completely vanished.
He unleashed violent divine strength, then used Silver-Blood’s divine effects so that every part of the Strength Domain carried the full force of his total output. Combined with the perfected realm of the Demonic Dragon Fist.
This strike was lethal as well!
The air was compressed madly, forcibly squeezed into a white mass. Before it even touched Qingyi, it detonated like a raging torrent, and the Nether Demonic Dragon slammed headfirst into the old man’s lower back.
He was like dough being kneaded into a flatbread.
On his body, the wind-aspect azure flood dragon formed from the Sky Azure Ruler coiled tightly around him. Compared to the Nether Demonic Dragon, it was far too small, yet its power was not weak at all.
It thrust its head forward, actively propping up a layer of cyan gale barrier defense.
Unfortunately, the might of a fourth-rank body cultivator stacked with divine abilities was simply too brutal. Perhaps due to material limitations, the Sky Azure Ruler itself was fine, but the Ancestor Qingyi was not.
The tremendous force blasted through his body, nearly severing everything below the waist in one blow. His lower half was smashed into a thin cake, flatter than paper.
“No!”
The old bastard roared and jolted awake.
A Nether Demonic Dragon combined with ice manipulation were two unmistakable traits. Along with the earlier problem of formations failing, if he still could not guess the truth, he would be a brainless pig.
“Wang Yu, it’s you! You traitor!!”
“What a joke.
“You old thing dared to set a trap for me. Your entire Feng clan deserves to die.”
His gaze turned vicious.
The Glazed Pagoda that drifted within the black ice wall had somehow been moved above Ancestor Qingyi’s head by Wang Yu. In an instant, it expanded and slammed down to suppress him.
A pagoda-shaped magic treasure possessed an innate power of sealing and suppression, and it produced a miraculous effect.
Wang Yu pushed the Moon Observation state of his Taiyin Nether Eye to the absolute limit, swiftly locking onto Qingyi’s Nascent Soul. With both of them trapped within the enlarged space of the tower, the Guanghan Twelve Phases could be executed at terrifying speed.
The twelve wondrous scenes appeared one after another.
Osmanthus Tree, Moon Rabbit, Ice Axe, Jade Plate, Immortal Silhouette, Celestial Palace, Cold Bridge, Frost Sword, Aurora, Feather Garment, Ruyi Scepter, Sacred Bow.
Their power stacked layer upon layer. The aurora patterns on the inner walls transformed into a bewildering dream illusion, while the Moon Pearl atop the tower cast down a straight pillar of light from above.
It was the Ice Soul Divine Light.
It descended head-on, directly enveloping Ancestor Qingyi.
Three divine abilities arrived in perfect coordination, a killing move worthy of being called a sure execution.
Starting from the Soul-Extinguishing Death Light, Wang Yu had advanced step by step with meticulous planning, all for the sake of this final trump card. After a brief moment of thought, this was the method he judged most likely to kill Qingyi.
Casting spells repeatedly had drained him far too much. With barely over a hundred drops of demonic essence, still not even two hundred, the consumption was severe. If this still failed, then it meant his methods were incomplete.
He would need a true method capable of sealing spatial movement techniques.
Inside the pagoda, ice crystals erupted wildly. Only Qingyi’s upper body remained, and he looked as if he were genuinely dead, completely unable to resist. After the twelve-phase wondrous scenes took effect, that half-human ice crystal body became like a sand dune stirred by the wind.
Layers of fine, thin, granular gray dust, like an hourglass flowing in reverse, began streaming away without end, faster and faster.
Yet Wang Yu’s expression turned extremely grim.
He reached out and grabbed a handful of Recovery Human Pills, chewing them up with loud crunching sounds before swallowing them all. The crescent-moon seal within his pupils nearly shrank into a needlepoint. His vision shifted, and Qingyi’s corpse lost all color in his eyes.
Like skinning and dismembering the body down to the bone, he stripped away everything.
At the location of the Qi sea, a Nascent Soul came into view, eyes closed and head lowered. Yet it was gray-white, not a proper Wind Demonic Nascent Soul at all.
“Cicada shedding its shell…”
He swept through every corner of the Glazed Glass Pagoda in an instant, confirming that the other party had not used any trick like hiding in plain sight. Then Wang Yu’s divine sense stretched out like countless feelers, searching the entire city.
In the end, it became a long sigh.
He estimated that the moment Qingyi performed the shell-shedding escape, he immediately activated the realm’s innate mystic ability of a Nascent Soul cultivator, the movement technique.
There was no need to elaborate on the effect of spatial escape arts. They were one of the most common life-saving methods. Qingyi’s willingness to cut off his own arm and completely abandon the flesh body, fleeing with only his Nascent Soul, was truly bold.
This meant that for a very long period of time, he could only rely on divine sense and the demonic essence remaining within his Nascent Soul to exert strength. The energy cycle formed between the Nascent Soul and the Qi sea, once severed, would remain broken unless he found a new Qi sea to take shelter in.
Otherwise, once the demonic essence stored within the Nascent Soul was consumed, there would be no way to recover it. After all, a Nascent Soul was still an immature body. It did not even possess meridians, so how could it restore demonic essence?
Unless he broke through to Spirit Transformation, using Dao Intent nourishment to transform into a Primordial Spirit.
At that point, the Nascent Soul would grow into a true human form, no different from the original body. Even if the flesh body were destroyed then, aside from possessing another body, he could also find a way to reshape a new one for himself.
It came with far fewer restrictions than possession, and was considered a legitimate method of restoring one’s flesh body.
“A movement technique at early-stage Nascent Soul can reach at most three thousand li nearby, and it is a random teleport.”
Wang Yu pondered.
Suddenly, he remembered that Qingyi still had a direct-line descendant in the City Lord’s Mansion, City Lord Feng Hua of Plum Crest City.
Tracing a bloodline to its source and tracking blood relatives was a specialty of demonic-path cultivators. There were simple versions and there were profound and complex ones. Wang Yu rarely studied them in depth, but he had a ready-made method on hand.
Moreover, it was a feng shui secret art recorded in the Earth Mother Scripture.
At this moment, heaven and earth were utterly silent.
The central district of Plum Crest City had been completely destroyed. In the east, west, south, and north districts, large numbers of cultivators had fled far from the center of the battlefield, only daring to watch from afar, with not the slightest intention of approaching.
With a thought from Wang Yu, the Ice Realm re-manifested, and the area it covered continued to expand outward.
Plum Crest City’s formation was still active, but it lacked a formation master. Under Wang Yu’s divine sense search, it did not take long before the Yellow Springs Earth Resentment Puppet returned, carrying Feng Hua unconscious.
A black vortex unfolded behind Wang Yu. Over a thousand palm-sized black paper boats poured into Feng Hua’s skull, and he instantly let out a miserable scream, his eyes rolling hard upward until only the whites showed.
The Soul-Gouging Evil Boat Curse brought back boat after boat of memories for Wang Yu to examine.
A moment later,
Wang Yu grabbed Plum Crest City Lord like a dead dog and strode straight into the treasure vault. A city required management, so the City Lord’s Mansion vault did have some decent items.
However, most of it was third-rank spiritual items. There were several million low-grade spirit stones and a bit over ten thousand high-grade spirit stones. The supreme-grade spirit stones and fourth-rank spiritual items he wanted most were nowhere to be found.
Wang Yu had already been prepared for that. Being able to obtain half a Nascent Soul remnant corpse was already a huge gain. Feeding it to the Thunder Corpse would definitely allow him to raise it to third-rank peak, and it would take at most seven or eight years. That could be considered taking a shortcut.
Overall, the profits were still quite substantial.
Only then did he set out on the path of pursuit at an unhurried pace.
…
…
Several days later.
Wang Yu held a feng shui compass in his hand. A clump of blood floated above it, transforming into a needle-like pointer that guided his direction. Feng Hua’s divine soul had been destroyed by him, leaving behind only a fleshly body with faint vitality remaining.
It had become nothing more than a pure blood-supplying machine, a truly miserable fate.
They had brought this upon themselves. Originally, Wang Yu had planned to rely on the Feng clan of Hidden Valley to blend in for a while, but laying traps like that was simply infuriating!
Since that was the case, he might as well throw caution to the wind and go all out.
After several days of pursuit, Wang Yu discovered that the Ancestor Qingyi’s teleportation direction was actually to the west. After shifting three thousand li sideways, he was already extremely close to the border between Night Jewel Prefecture and the Northern Severed Boundary Mountain Range.
He remembered that north of Black Mountain Pass, after crossing Withered Leaf Marsh and the White Sands of the Dry Sea, and then passing through a stretch of mountain range, one would reach Night Jewel Prefecture’s famous fortress pass, known as Strange Peak Pass.
This place was famous for its countless bizarre peaks, especially the vast fields of strange peaks formed from ironstone. It produced enormous quantities of precious metal and stone treasures. The ironstone forest possessed a magnetic field that could erase the manifested perception capabilities of divine sense.
As such, this place was also one of the most brutal meat grinders in the righteous-demonic war. No one knew how many heroic spirits of both factions had been buried here…
Tracing the trail all the way to this point,
Wang Yu was slightly puzzled. Why did Qingyi not flee toward Hidden Valley? Instead, he had moved farther away from Night Jewel Prefecture and entered Strange Peak Pass.
From afar, Wang Yu stared at the towering fortress gate that stretched across the ironstone forest.
He was considering how he could sneak in.
Thinking of the looks on the faces of the Taihu garrison cultivators back at Black Mountain Pass, even though Strange Peak Pass belonged to the Crimson Kite Demonic Domain, the unspoken rules here were probably not much different.
He rubbed the Sea Heart Ring. Wang Yu did not carry small items like storage pouches. Instead, he had storage rings strung together in a chain, and he casually shifted some spirit stones into it.
Just as he was about to depart, a deafening thunderclap suddenly echoed. The sky transformed into a crimson sea of lightning. This was the famous lightning-path divine ability of Thunderfire Temple, Crimson Sun Heavenly Thunder!
And the person most renowned for using this divine ability was True Lord Yang Lei.
“So he came knocking?”
Wang Yu was startled. Although Taihu and the Crimson Kite had been shouting about going to war for years, the preparation stage was always the most exhausting. Strategic planning, logistical mobilization, assembling forces at staging grounds, and so on.
It would take at least eight or nine years of preparation.
The sudden upheaval at Strange Peak Pass was very likely a surprise attack personally orchestrated by True Lord Yang Lei.
The purpose was self-evident.
While he was thinking,
Wang Yu instantly sank into the earth, carving out a lightless space underground. The Human-Seed Pouch at his waist loosened, and he released those people he had abducted from the prison in Plum Crest City.
There were only seven or eight of them. The most important among them was none other than True Lord Yang Lei’s son.
Handing them over directly like this would make it difficult to explain.
He needed to give them a warning in advance, and he had also brought along the Earth Net Ghost Mask. This was the mark of the Moluo Horde, and True Lord Yang Lei was also an ancestral figure of Thunderfire Temple.
If this man’s identity was real, then he would certainly know something.
After all, ninety percent of the mortals abducted by the Moluo Horde eventually flowed into Thunderfire Temple’s territory.
“Ahem.”
He cleared his throat, and several streaks of light flew out of the Human-Seed Pouch.
Wang Yu’s gentle, boyish voice sounded first.
“Are you all… well?”
The seven or eight people immediately collapsed to the ground, huddling together and trembling violently. The “young master” whose lips and teeth were smeared with blood looked at Wang Yu’s mask and visibly relaxed.
He tried to speak.
“Se… senior… are you someone from the Moluo Horde?”
“You could say that. I will send you back. What is your name?”
“Li Mingsheng.”
After failing to prove himself and being brutally beaten down by reality, Li Mingsheng’s pride had nearly been crushed. However, he had also gained a great deal of experience and was no longer a sheltered greenhouse flower.
You cannot teach people by words. Only events can teach them, and once is enough.
An immortal second generation acting stupid, that was how it was.
He had seen Wang Yu’s appearance back in Plum Crest City, and even with a mask on, he still did not dare trust him completely. He remained timid and withdrawn. Seeing that Wang Yu had no intention of speaking further.
He could not hold it in and asked again.
“Senior… when will we go find… Sister Lei?”
Hearing that, Wang Yu raised an eyebrow. Only then did he realize that the noble Taihu lady he had met back then actually had the surname Lei. She really was from the proper orthodox lineage.
After thinking for a moment, he said, “For now, we are still within the Crimson Kite Demonic Domain. I will have to trouble you all to remain inside the magic treasure for a little longer. These spirit stones are for you to restore your mana.”
He scattered a large handful of spirit stones. Li Mingsheng and the others immediately took them.
With their Qi sea empty, it was truly difficult for cultivators to feel any sense of security. Seeing Wang Yu’s attitude was so friendly, the other spoiled youths who had accompanied Li Mingsheng on this “adventure” quickly expressed their thanks.
“Good, good, good. Many thanks, Senior.”
“Senior has gone to such trouble. After I return, I will certainly repay you generously.”
“Senior, quickly put us back into the magic treasure. It is safer inside.”
“Of course.”
Wang Yu opened the Human-Seed Pouch, revealing a simple, farmer-like honest smile. One by one, they entered, and all of them felt much more at ease.
After the brief exchange ended, Wang Yu returned to the surface once more. He watched the battle at Strange Peak Pass for a while. Seeing how fiercely it was raging, he had no intention of approaching.
Qingyi was very likely inside the fortress pass.
How he would kill him and eliminate future trouble would depend on what happened next. He had to act quickly.
Otherwise, once the other party regained a physical body and escaped again, Wang Yu would have to return and continue the chase. As for the Ice Demon Child identity being linked with “Wang Yu”, that no longer mattered.
He did not want that title anymore.
