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Chapter 265: Chapter 253: Fellow Daoist, Why Are You Billowing Black Qi

The Valley of No Life.

Here, it was as if Heaven and Earth had been viciously wrung out by an invisible giant hand, creating an absurd and heart-palpitating deathly stillness.

The valley entrance looked as if it had been forcefully "gouged" out from the continuous mountain range by some unimaginable power.

Above the valley floor, a thin, grayish-white "mist" lingered all year round.

The sunlight that penetrated it grew wan and weak.

There was no sound of wind, no chirping of insects; not even the faintest whisper of rolling sand and dust could be heard.

Only a silence so profound it pressed against the eardrums.

According to unofficial histories passed down through ancient Jade Scrolls or by word of mouth, this was once the place where a True Monarch underwent Transformation Dao.

It seemed this True Monarch had reached the end of his path. With his golden nature exhausted and no hope of ascending again, he passed away here in despair and indignation.

However, during his Transformation Dao, his resentment soared to the heavens. He cursed the skies in fury, drawing an unspeakable tribulation upon himself.

This not only hastened his own demise but also twisted this land, eradicating all life and transforming it into a desolate domain where no spirit could survive.

The truth of these rumors had long since been lost in the river of time.

Only the Valley of No Life itself, with its eternal deathly stillness, told of some nameless misfortune.

At this moment, the area outside the valley entrance was far from peaceful.

The massive Nanyin World-Suppressing Army was arrayed in a stern formation, like a crimson iron wall, sealing off the entire entrance to the Valley of No Life so tightly that not even a drop of water could pass.

The formation’s Evil Qi surged to the sky, forming a strange standoff with the deathly gray mist permeating the valley. Yet, no one dared to take a single step across the clear boundary into the valley entrance. They only established encampments around the perimeter, remaining on high alert.

Over a dozen powerful auras belonging to Foundation Establishment Masters flickered in and out of view above the army’s formation.

Clearly, High Tier Cultivators from the army were overseeing the operation.

Meanwhile, behind a slope of jumbled rocks a few miles away from the World-Suppressing Army’s defensive line, dozens of Escape Lights with varying auras quietly descended, revealing their figures.

They were none other than the Masters from the Righteous Sects, led by Master Hu Chan, Qing Zhi Master, and Ling Feng Master.

They had ignored Li Xuanqing’s military order to "stand by on site."

Relying on their own intelligence networks and their concern over the matter of the "Imperial Soldiers."

They had all tracked the trail here, arriving one after another.

"This is the place. Looks like the main force of the World-Suppressing Army... has probably already gone inside."

Master Hu Chan squinted, gazing at the terrifyingly silent valley entrance in the distance and the army waiting in stern formation outside it. He stroked his thick, gnarled beard with a large hand, his voice hushed.

Although there were troops stationed in the camps near the valley entrance, the overwhelming presence of blood and qi and the formation’s Evil Qi—the kind that belonged to a main army and felt like a primordial beast—had diminished significantly.

It was clear they had sent a detachment into the valley.

"Li Xuanqing is certainly decisive. Shaking us off to make his own move first," Ling Feng Master snorted, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his gaze as sharp as an eagle’s.

"The Valley of No Life is infamous for its dangers. For him to be in such a hurry, there must be a major discovery inside."

"Everyone, what’s done is done. There’s no use talking about it," Qing Zhi Master said, her expression grave as she scanned the crowd.

"The dangers within the valley are unknown. Although the World-Suppressing Army went in first, it couldn’t have been easy for them.

Since we’ve come all this way, we can’t possibly leave empty-handed.

As we discussed on the way here, to prevent any accidents and to make exploration easier, we will form pairs of two and watch each other’s backs."

"Alright, let’s do that!"

Master Hu Chan boomed in agreement. His gaze swept through the crowd, an enthusiastic smile instantly spreading across his face as he strode toward Qi Yun.

"Brother Yun Zhongzi! We two can be a team, it’s perfect..."

Seeing Master Hu Chan approach, Qi Yun raised an eyebrow. With a swift and exceptionally natural movement, he reached out and placed his hand on the arm of Mo Shou Master, who was standing beside him with a stern expression, intently observing the valley entrance.

"Fellow Daoist Mo Shou," Qi Yun said, a warm and sincere smile on his face, his gaze fixed on the somewhat bewildered Mo Shou Master.

"This journey is perilous, as everyone knows.

If we two form a team and watch out for each other, nothing could be safer. What do you say, Fellow Daoist Mo Shou?"

Startled by being called upon so suddenly, Mo Shou Master froze for a moment. He instinctively glanced at the hand Qi Yun had placed on his arm, then met Qi Yun’s clear, earnest eyes, which seemed to brim with trust.

His perpetually furrowed brow twitched slightly, and the string of suspicion in his heart instinctively tightened.

But in a deathtrap like this, partnering with a Talisman Cultivator known for his powerful offensive skills was indeed a complementary choice.

Besides, from his observations over this period, Fellow Daoist "Yun Zhongzi" did seem to stand on the side of righteousness and had made significant contributions...

After a brief hesitation, he finally nodded, and his dry voice sounded:

"Then... very well.

We shall do as Fellow Daoist Yun Zhongzi says."

Master Hu Chan stopped in his tracks. He looked at Qi Yun, then at the expressionless Mo Shou Master, and opened his mouth. In the end, even his bushy beard seemed to droop a little, as if to say, ’Brother, how could you do this to me?’

But he couldn’t very well insist, so he resentfully changed direction and strode toward another Master he knew:

"Brother Chi Ji! Come, come, let’s team up!"

Seeing Master Hu Chan’s somewhat "tragic" back retreating into the distance, Qi Yun secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

’Phew, that was close. I almost got stuck with that brute again.’

His heart settled, Qi Yun turned to Mo Shou Master, who still seemed a bit dazed, and smiled once more:

"Fellow Daoist Mo Shou, from now on, I’ll be relying on your care."

Mo Shou Master looked at Qi Yun’s utterly sincere smile, but for some reason, his heart gave a little jump. He felt a strange sense of unease, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.

He could only nod and reply politely, "Of course. We’ll watch out for each other."

And so, the two of them became temporary partners.

The other Masters also quickly found their partners: Qing Zhi Master with Ling Feng Master, Master Hu Chan with Chi Ji Master, and so on...

Without further delay, everyone employed their own techniques to conceal their figures and mask their auras. Transforming into undetectable streaks of Flowing Light, they silently infiltrated the deathtrap known as the Valley of No Life from different directions along the flanks.

...

Just as the group of Righteous Dao Masters had seen before,

aside from its extreme desolation, the Valley of No Life seemed... truly unremarkable.

There were no ancient battlefield ruins as imagined, no residual fluctuations of a True Monarch’s Dao Rhyme, and not the slightest special aura or phenomenon related to the "Imperial Soldiers."

The mountains were a dead white, the ground hard-packed.

Even the air was stagnant with the smell of decay.

However, the Nanyin World-Suppressing Army’s abnormal deployment, Li Xuanqing’s resolve to the point of creating friction with his allies, and the intelligence gathered from their various channels about recent "faint disturbances of Spiritual Mechanism" in the Valley of No Life all clearly indicated that this place was anything but ordinary.

"Could it be... that the time is not yet right? Or that it requires a special method to trigger?" Qing Zhi Master had once speculated with a frown.

"It might also be hidden too deeply to be unearthed by brute force," Mo Shou Master had said, his usual caution tinged with a hint of stubbornness.

And so, everyone could only suppress their doubts and use their own methods to search this vast, deathly still valley, combing through it inch by inch.

Talisman detection, Array resonance, Sword Qi sensing, Divine Thought sweeps, even joining forces to deduce karmic ties...

They exhausted every method, yet aside from occasionally stirring up the even thicker dust of deathly silence that had settled in the valley for untold ages, they found nothing.

Time slipped by quietly, and several months passed in the blink of an eye.

The number of people in the valley gradually increased, but this did not make it any livelier. Instead, due to the mutual suspicion and the mix of different factions, an undercurrent of eerie silence only grew.

And then, a more bizarre phenomenon was gradually noticed by a few observant individuals.

The Valley of No Life... seemed to be "growing."

They had clearly estimated its size when they first entered, but as their exploration deepened and more people arrived, the valley’s boundaries seemed to be silently expanding outward.

A rock wall that they thought was the end of a path would, upon a second look a few days later, have a new, equally death-white stretch of valley extending beyond it.

An area they thought they had already explored would reveal forgotten forks in the road or new hollows when approached from a different angle.

This discovery was secretly alarming, but it also strengthened everyone’s conviction that ’this valley must hide a great secret.’

The search continued in an atmosphere that grew increasingly tense, mixed with confusion, anxiety, and a strange sense of anticipation.

Until one day.

There was no warning.

The entire Valley of No Life—the valley that had been deathly still for untold millennia, along with the wan light and stagnant air above it—suddenly trembled without any warning!

In that instant, every Cultivator in the valley, regardless of their Cultivation level or location, felt their Heart and Spirit violently shake as their Purple Mansion buzzed.

At the same time, a grand and indifferent voice echoed in their ears:

"The Yin Yang Chessboard is now open. All pieces, take your positions!"

The voice faded, its echo still reverberating through the void, carrying an ancient and cold sense of order.

Before anyone could recover from this sudden, drastic change,

the grand voice rang out again, as if declaring an inviolable Celestial Constitution:

"Righteous and Demonic are divided, Yin and Yang are opposed. Yin devours and refines Yang; Righteous and Demonic shall fight to the death!"

The twenty-word maxim, every word like a clap of thunder, exploded deep within every living being’s Divine Soul!

Immediately after, a jaw-dropping change occurred—

Every Demonic Cultivator in the valley, no matter how well they had been disguised or hidden, found black energy uncontrollably billowing from their bodies with a WHOOSH.

Meanwhile, all Cultivators practicing Righteous Dao Dharma Gates naturally emanated a pure white Spiritual Light.

Righteous and Demonic, Yin and Yang—under the Law of the inscrutable "Yin Yang Chessboard," they were forcibly distinguished and marked.

Black and white became the most striking and most antagonistic colors in the Valley of No Life.

"This... This valley... it actually contains such... such immense power?!" Mo Shou Master cried out, his perpetually stern and calm face filled with horror.

White light was also uncontrollably rising from his own body.

In his terror, he almost instinctively turned his head to look at his partner.

The very same Fellow Daoist "Yun Zhongzi" whose Talisman Skills were exquisite, whose aura was righteous, and who was deeply trusted by all.

But with that one look, the color drained from Mo Shou Master’s face—SWISH—and his pupils shrank to pinpricks!

He saw that beside him, the smiling, gentle Fellow Daoist "Yun Zhongzi" in his flowing green robes was not emitting the slightest bit of white light of the Righteous Dao. Instead...

a dense, pure black energy was surging out from within his body, endlessly, like boiling ink.

"Fe-Fellow Daoist Yun Zhongzi?!"

Mo Shou Master’s voice was filled with incredulous horror and confusion.

"You... Why are you covered in black energy?!"

...