Ye Yu’s calm voice struck Yang Keqiang like a bolt of lightning.
How was that possible? When had he seen through his thoughts?
Yang Keqiang tried to struggle to his feet, but no matter how hard he tried, his body could only kneel facing the ground.
No, most would be fully prostrate, but Yang Keqiang was not merely that.
With four extra arms, it was more like nine limbs touching the ground—and not counting the pair of demon wings behind him, it could have been even more.
That strength he once boasted of was, in front of Ye Yu, nothing more than a colossal joke.
The threat of death enveloped him completely, filling Yang Keqiang with panic.
At that moment, Xiao Bai succeeded in breaking through the immortal formation’s barrier and hurried to Ye Yu’s side, exclaiming excitedly, “Big brother, I thought you were gone just now!”
“Don’t worry—if you were gone, I wouldn’t still be here! You really have a carefree heart, calling out ‘Keqiang’ every day and not noticing even the slightest clue?” Ye Yu replied irritably, shooting Xiao Bai a glare.
Xiao Bai merely curled his lip in response, offering no rebuttal.
At this point, nothing he said would matter; the fact that Yang Keqiang had rebelled was as certain as iron.
Yet there was one thing Xiao Bai truly could not understand.
He settled on Yang Keqiang’s back and said coldly, “You shameless rascal. Big brother has helped you so much, and you repay him with betrayal. What were you thinking? You’d throw away such immense gratitude just for one magical art?”
Tears streamed down Yang Keqiang’s face as he wailed, claiming he had been blinded by hatred and lost his mind, begging Lord Ye to show mercy and spare him this once.
“I will reform myself completely and never make such a mistake again...”
Before Yang Keqiang could finish, Ye Yu stomped down with force, burying his head completely in the nether earth.
“At this point, does it even make sense for you to act? Since you won’t speak properly, shall I speak for you?”
Yang Keqiang’s heart suddenly sank at those words.
Ye Yu then raised his hand slightly, lifting Yang Keqiang into the air.
At the same time, a gaunt figure emerged from the shadows.
Yang Keqiang couldn’t help widening his eyes when he saw him.
This person was far too familiar.
The starving ghost Jiao Shu.
He strode directly before Ye Yu and knelt on one knee, his demeanor supremely reverent.
Yang Keqiang was staggered beyond words, his mouth opening and closing without a sound.
Ye Yu then began to recount their earlier encounter.
The first time he met Yang Keqiang was in a ruined ghost city.
That place was called Jiulipan.
But the one who destroyed it was not the corpse-hunting stranger—it was Yang Keqiang.
Yang Keqiang was not the deputy city lord of Jiulipan; he was an outsider who coveted the high-grade ghost artifacts hidden in the Ghost-Burying Coffin.
He had come to seize them, slaughtering every ghost in the city.
However, Yang Keqiang was not invincible, and he suffered grievous wounds in the massacre.
So he stayed behind in Jiulipan to heal and began attempting to refine the Ghost-Burying Coffin.
When Ye Yu and Xiao Bai arrived, Yang Keqiang’s injuries had healed, but the coffin remained unrefined.
Sensing Ye Yu’s powerful immortal qi fluctuations, he initially had no intention of revealing himself.
Unfortunately, Ye Yu detected him.
With no choice, Yang Keqiang emerged.
Upon seeing Xiao Bai, his first reaction was shock.
Years earlier, he had heard tales of strange happenings in the Celestial Realm.
There were rumors of wondrous assembled immortal beasts, super pills forged from layered elixirs, and fan-shaped flying swords composed of eighty immortal blades.
Such things had never existed—until suddenly they all appeared in the past two years.
Some speculated that an immortal had mastered a unique art, capable of assembling all things to forge entirely new creations.
Yang Keqiang, stalled at the threshold of the Ghost Emperor Stage for nearly a million years, hungered for power.
Whether from talent or distance from the Dao, he needed an external push to break through to Ghost Emperor, or even to shatter the void into the Divine Realm like a Celestial.
So when he saw Xiao Bai, he knew his chance had come.
This immortal might be the one who had mastered that wondrous art.
He immediately masked his ambition with fear, weaving a tale of suffering to ingratiate himself with Ye Yu and Xiao Bai.
Gaining entry to their group was only the first step.
The real challenge was winning Ye Yu’s trust in such a short time.
One simply could not trust a stranger so quickly at their level of cultivation.
And Yang Keqiang could not afford to wait—he had heard the corpse-hunting stranger had vanished in the Underworld, his whereabouts unknown.
If Ye Yu learned of that, he would surely leave the Underworld.
Yang Keqiang had to resolve matters quickly.
He devised a self-inflicted gambit.
He summoned three sworn brothers to ambush him, maiming himself severely enough to drop a realm.
The plan went off flawlessly.
His brothers struck just hard enough to force his regression without killing him.
In that condition, a few sobs from him stirred Xiao Bai’s sympathy.
At Xiao Bai’s suggestion, Ye Yu began to help Yang Keqiang refine by merging their Dao.
Unable to forge his own path, he would fuse another’s Dao to step into the Emperor Stage, then ascend step by step.
Everything proceeded smoothly—so smoothly that Yang Keqiang believed he could ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ easily eliminate Ye Yu and Xiao Bai.
The fusion art was too powerful; he would grow envious if someone else mastered it.
He planned to kill Ye Yu and use the Soul Search Technique to learn the fusion art for himself, cutting off Ye Yu’s route to mass-produce powerful cultivators.
From then on, only he would ascend to greatness.
