Wang Qian almost vomited as he recalled those horrific scenes: his former powerful fellow disciples, who were once fighting valiantly to form an array to resist, were now lying limp and lifeless in the thick, impenetrable spiritual mist, like snowmen under the scorching sun, until only a semi-transparent, enormous cocoon of flesh encasing a blurry human figure remained, pulsating with nauseating dark light.
The entire Heavenly Profound Continent, once a world of celestial mountains and pavilions, and mythical birds and beasts, has been transformed in a short period of time into a terrifying mother nest composed of countless pulsating cocoons of flesh!
The viscous spiritual mist, like a living network of blood vessels, flowed between these cocoons, delivering "nutrients."
"He... His form..." Wang Qian's voice was barely audible, filled with utter despair and delirious ramblings on the verge of madness, "... has no fixed form, or rather, it is omnipresent. It is the flowing spiritual energy itself... the fundamental law of the cultivation world."
He abruptly raised his head, and although all he could see was darkness, he seemed to see once again that colossal object, composed of pure spiritual energy, covering the sky. The mere memory made him feel his reason screaming and shattering.
"Most cultivators have become His followers, expressing absolute loyalty to Him in both body and soul... some have even become part of His body..." Wang Qian's voice was hollow and numb, as if he had survived a catastrophe.
"Only a very few people tore through the barriers of this world and escaped." He curled up, as if that would shield him from the omnipresent, cold darkness and the apocalyptic visions churning within him. "I am one of the survivors, I fought with everything I had..."
The darkness fell into a long, deathly silence. The thick, cold oppressive feeling remained, but the chilling will contained within seemed to be lost in some deep contemplation.
In the frozen darkness, only Wang Qian's own heavy, suppressed breathing and the muffled thud of his heart pounding wildly against his ribs could be heard.
Time lost its meaning; each second felt like an eternity. Just as Wang Qian was about to be completely overwhelmed by the silence and memories, that cold, smooth voice resounded once more from the depths of his consciousness, carrying a hint of barely perceptible yet unsettling amusement.
"The Mother of Spiritual Qi?" The voice was soft, yet like a cold judgment falling silently in the darkness. Within that inhuman tone, a clear... interest was revealed?
Tell me, how did you... cross the barriers of the world and arrive in this world?
The darkness flowed silently, thick and cold, and billions of cold eyes opened in the darkness, silently watching the prey in the cage.
"The sect elders, unwilling to become slaves to the Mother of Spiritual Qi, self-destructed, shattering the space." Wang Qian's voice, after a long silence, echoed in the deathly darkness. Every word felt like it had been branded with a hot iron, carrying a burning pain and a bloody stench.
He began to recount that desperate escape, in which several elders of his sect, whose cultivation had reached the heavens, made their final choice the instant their bodies began to melt uncontrollably and their consciousness was about to be completely submerged by the Mother of Spiritual Qi. They reversed their cultivation techniques, detonating their lifelong hard-earned power, along with the violent energy that had been corrupted by the Mother of Spiritual Qi but had not yet been fully assimilated, at the same moment.
They did this not to kill that omnipresent terror—that would be futile—but to...
"Blast a slit through space...!" Wang Qian's voice suddenly rose, carrying a piercing sharpness that seemed to tear at the throat. "Space... shattered like glass, for only a moment, the chaotic gales seemed to tear everything apart... but that was the only way out!"
He coughed violently, as if the violent spatial turbulence was sweeping through his lungs again. "We... we disciples who were closest and lucky enough not to be caught in the elder's self-destruction range... we could only close our eyes and jump in. Whether we live or die... it all depends on luck!"
He lowered his head, his body convulsing slightly from the fear of the memories. "We wandered around for who knows how long, and finally fell into this place. That's the whole truth."
He gasped for breath, his voice filled with weakness and confusion. His body went limp, as if he had exhausted his last bit of strength, awaiting the judgment of the dark sovereign.
--It's all an act. After all, he was just so arrogant, destroying a dog's city. This weak and helpless appearance now is just a show of weakness.
That cold, inhuman will did not respond immediately; the viscous darkness enveloped and suppressed Wang Qian, and time lost its meaning here.
After a long silence, the voice resonated deep within his skull once more. "Your junior brothers and sisters have also given their lives."
Wang Qian's body stiffened abruptly. He wasn't stupid; on the contrary, he was quite clever and understood instantly. A chill ran from his tailbone to the top of his head. His junior brothers and sisters were also here, but they were imprisoned by this boundless darkness. The other party had separated them and was questioning them separately.
"Their account," the cold voice stated flatly, "About the apocalypse, about escape, about the Heavenly Profound Continent —it's exactly the same as what you said."
Wang Qian's heart pounded wildly. Not only were their methods incredibly powerful, imprisoning them all invisibly, but they were also being interrogated separately, with evidence cross-checked... Every lie was as conspicuous as a firefly in the darkness. The last glimmer of hope that had risen within him from confessing the truth was utterly crushed. He had told the truth, and his junior brothers and sisters had also told the truth; this only proved the ruthlessness and efficiency of their methods, and demonstrated the utter despair they were in!
The will in the darkness seemed to know Wang Qian's fear all too well. The icy pressure, like an invisible mountain, pressed down heavily once more, carrying with it an undeniable greed.
"Now," the voice smoothly transitioned, each syllable like a cold metal blade scraping against the nerves, "Hand over your sect's cultivation methods. From Qi Induction to the Golden Core, all the way to... the highest realm you can reach. All the inheritances, all the secret techniques."
"What?!" Wang Qian exclaimed in shock, his heart almost leaping out of his throat.
The cultivation technique is a fundamental inheritance accumulated over thousands of years by the sect, considered more important than life itself. Revealing the cultivation technique is a more unforgivable crime than betraying the sect or murdering one's master in any cultivation sect! Even though his sect has become part of that writhing mother nest, this taboo imprinted in his bones still made his blood freeze instantly.
He resisted instinctively, his lips tightly pressed together, his teeth grinding together, his body tense like a bow from the instinctive resistance.
Silence.
A deathly silence.
But this silence is not tolerance.
Wang Qian felt the surrounding darkness suddenly change; it was no longer simply sticky and cold, but... it had come alive!
Darkness transformed into countless slippery, barbed tentacles, silently coiling around him, tightening around his neck, binding his limbs, and even attempting to pry open his eyelids and burrow into his mouth and nose. It wasn't physical suffocation, but a deeper crushing and erosion of his soul; his consciousness felt as if it had been plunged into ice water, on the verge of freezing completely.
"Ugh..." A painful whimper escaped his throat uncontrollably. His will to resist was as fragile as a thin layer of ice in the face of this absolute Supernatural power.
The glory of the sect? The taboos of inheritance? Faced with survival, faced with this terror that is even more direct than the Mother of Spiritual Qi, all of these become the most pointless jokes.
"... I'll say it!" Wang Qian squeezed out these two words through gritted teeth, his voice filled with tearful humiliation and utter collapse.
He gave up; the taut string snapped completely.
Wang Qian's voice trembled, as if he were performing a blasphemous ritual, and he began to recite. From the most basic techniques of guiding qi, to the complex circulation of qi throughout the body, and then to the secret methods of condensing true essence and breaking through the acupoints... He regarded his sect as the core inheritance of his life, and he revealed it all, word by word, in this eerie darkness.
He dared not conceal or falsify anything; the omnipresent, icy will in the darkness, like a leech, made him understand that any small action was tantamount to suicide.
The darkness flowed silently, recording everything. At this moment, Hu Jiu was like a highly sophisticated instrument, analyzing those extremely obscure cultivation techniques.
To be honest, he couldn't understand most of it and could only digest it slowly in the future.
Wang Qian's recitation continued for an unknown period of time. When the last difficult phrase came out from his cracked lips, he felt as if his whole being had been hollowed out, leaving only an empty shell filled with humiliation.
"Very good." Hu Jiu's cold voice rang out, still without any emotion, but with a hint of satisfaction, the satisfaction of finding a treasure.
But this sense of satisfaction brought no sign of forgiveness; on the contrary, a more sinister and chilling aura descended.
It's not the previous oppression and restraint, but a kind of... precise and direct stripping away of the soul's structure!
Wang Qian suddenly felt an indescribable pain coming from inside his head. It wasn't physical pain; it felt more like his soul was being torn apart.
Countless thin, icy rays of light pierced into the depths of his consciousness without warning, precisely cutting and stripping away the contents of the cultivation technique he had just memorized—every character, every image of the practice, every insight into the spiritual energy of heaven and earth—all were forcibly extracted.
"No... Ah--!" Wang Qian let out a shrill, inhuman scream, his body convulsing wildly within the invisible restraints.
His memory was fading rapidly! Not forgotten, but forcibly ripped out!
Regarding Qi cultivation, the circulation of Qi, the Golden Core... all the memories and insights he had gained from decades, even centuries, of arduous practice were being completely extracted! He watched helplessly as they turned into cold data, absorbed and devoured by the being in the darkness.
Hu Jiu found it difficult to understand cultivation techniques, so he directly transformed into a heretical cultivator, extracting the insights these cultivators had into their techniques and using them for his own purposes.
As for whether appropriating other people's insights might lead to extremes?
Hu Jiu could only say that his foundation was the Supernatural, and cultivation was merely a new experiment he had made.
A moment later, the terrifying feeling of being ripped out of Wang Qian's mind suddenly disappeared.
He collapsed in the darkness, panting heavily, his clothes soaked with sweat as if he had just been pulled from the water. He felt an unprecedented weakness and emptiness, his mind a chaotic blank. Those deeply ingrained martial arts techniques... had completely vanished, leaving only some vague fragments of memories about the Heavenly Profound Continent, about the apocalyptic scenes, and about the escape, scattered and floating like ruins swept by a raging storm.
"Alright." Hu Jiu's icy voice rang out again.
Amidst the despair rising from the pain of this separation, a sliver of hope absurdly arose in Wang Qian's heart. Having surrendered the cultivation technique, having paid such a heavy price, perhaps...
"But," Hu Jiu abruptly changed his tone, his voice revealing a viciousness and cruelty, "You cannot leave."
"What?!" Wang Qian's expression froze instantly, his faint hope being frozen by even deeper ice.
"You yourselves are the most precious 'samples'," Hu Jiu calmly stated the harsh reality. "The Mother of Spiritual Qi, your being corrupted and eroded by Her, yet ultimately 'luckily' escaping... are all worthy of in-depth observation."
In-depth observation of the sample
Wang Qian instantly understood. A chill colder than death engulfed him. He had handed over his cultivation technique not as a bargaining chip to redeem himself, but rather as a "specimen" of greater research value in the eyes of his opponent!
"No! You promised! I promised you everything..." Wang Qian's roar, filled with endless despair and anger, burst forth in vain.
However, his voice abruptly stopped.
"When did I ever agree to that?" Hu Jiu's tone was very mocking.
Do you expect preferential treatment just because you provided valuable information?
Hu Jiu is the kind of villain who follows the rules!
The surrounding darkness suddenly changed, collapsing inward abruptly, and an unimaginable pressure crashed down from all directions.
Wang Qian felt as if every bone and flesh in his body was groaning under the unbearable weight. His thoughts were frozen by this irresistible force, and even fear had no time to take shape.
Then vision completely disappeared, sound was completely taken away, and the sense of time was completely erased.
He and his remaining consciousness were eternally sealed within this solidified dark amber, becoming a "sample" stripped of his cultivation techniques, leaving only the terrifying memories of the apocalypse.
On the other side, the same solidification was occurring simultaneously.
In the other several separate, dark cages, Wang Qian's junior brothers and sisters didn't even have a chance to let out a final scream before they too were turned into amber.
The dark clouds in the sky dispersed, and Hu Jiu's gaze swept over the solidified "amber." Under his watchful eyes, the human-sized amber continued to compress, eventually transforming into several black gemstones, which lay quietly in Hu Jiu's palm.
"What did you just do?" Du Zhong asked curiously from the side.
"It's nothing, I just inquired about their background. After all, they don't look like ordinary people," Hu Jiu said.
Du Zhong pressed on, "What did you find out?"
"They come from the cultivation world. Their world gave birth to an extremely powerful and insane demonic cultivator who almost killed everyone. They escaped." Hu Jiu fabricated a story on the spot with great acting skills, and then handed the black gem in his hand to Du Zhong with ill intent.