A dim room reeking of a nauseating stench lay mostly covered in black beast hides, piled high with all manner of strange dried herbs. On the blackened eastern wall hung grotesquely shaped animal bones and carcasses. Below them, a wooden table held knives of every shape and size. Each seemed to have been forged from silver, their edges thin as cicada wings yet incomparably sharp, gleaming with a chill, murderous radiance. Beneath the southern wall stood more than a dozen earthen jars, most of whose contents were unknown. Yet in one unsealed jar nearest the door, a huge scarlet toad was steeped in an eerie emerald-green medicinal liquid. At the center of the room, a small blackened pot sat over a brazier, simmering a substance like black ointment. Amid the roiling liquid, the corpses of snakes, scorpions, and other poisonous creatures could vaguely be seen. In one corner stood a black shrine containing a three-foot-tall statue. The entire shrine was draped in black wax-print cloth, making it seem profoundly mysterious and sinister.
Before the shrine sat a three-legged incense burner. It was clearly no mere ornament; the master of this room evidently worshipped the statue as a god.
With a bang, the room's door was suddenly shoved open. A tall Miao man stood in the doorway, his dark skin covered with strange totem tattoos. Beyond the open door lay vast, desolate mountains and more than a dozen crude stilted houses.
This room, too, was located in one such stilted house.
This was a Miao Yi mountain village hidden in the barren mountain ranges. Only the native Miao people, accustomed to treacherous lands devoid of human habitation and teeming with venomous snakes and insects, could survive here generation after generation. "Gazha Abu!" This burly Miao man, his face covered in totem tattoos, his skin dark, wolf-blood-dyed feathers tucked into his hair, was Dewacai, the village chief. The ugly old Miao man whom he called Gazha Abu, who raised his head from before the blackened pot, was the High Priest revered by all the Miao barbarian mountain villages within a hundred miles. Draped in a mottled beast hide, he was little more than skin stretched over bones. His fingernails were over a foot long, and his face was covered in black, toad-like lumps.
Miao priests excelled at divination and medicine. The ugly black lumps on the old Miao man's face had come from testing medicines.
"Do not panic." The old Miao man, curled within his mottled beast hide, casually used his nail to pick a pinch of medicinal powder from a small bottle beside him and flicked it into the air. "What happened?"
The powder's scent was fiercely pungent, rushing straight into the nose. Yet upon smelling it, Dewacai, whose heart had been filled with terror and unease, gradually calmed down.
It turned out that three people had vanished from this already sparsely populated village within two days. All three were young men from the village who had gone hunting and never returned. Dewacai had initially believed that they had encountered some ferocious beast, but just moments ago, one of the missing youths had returned.
But when he returned, he could no longer even be considered a person!
His entire body was drenched in blood. Half his facial skin had been sliced away, exposing the white bone beneath. Most horrifying of all, something unknown had torn open his abdomen, and even many of his organs appeared to be missing.
The youth dragged a winding trail of blood across the ground. When he crawled to the village entrance, he only managed to struggle out one sentence: "Everyone, run! There's a terrifying monster..." Then he breathed his last.
"A monster?" The old man's hand trembled slightly. Rather than immediately going out to inspect the young villager's corpse, he took out several tortoise shells polished to a jade-like sheen, muttered ancient native words, and tossed them into the air.
Every young man in the village was a warrior. Even if he had been attacked by a ferocious beast and mortally wounded, he could not possibly have claimed to have seen a monster.
The tortoise shells fell to the ground with soft thuds. After only one glance, it was as if something utterly terrifying had burst from the shells and lunged at him. The old man staggered backward and collapsed.
Bloodlight reaching the heavens! Supreme misfortune!
Curled within his beast hide, the old High Priest saw that while he could heal the illnesses and suffering of the nearby Miao Yi, he could not stop this omen of utter calamity. Even he himself was caught within this disaster of bloodlight that filled the sky!
Groping his way back to his feet, the old High Priest knelt once more before the shrine. Three blue-black Tibetan incense sticks had appeared in his hand. After lighting them, he reverently lifted the black cloth from the shrine, placed the three sticks in the three-legged incense burner, and kowtowed again and again with Dewacai.
The statue behind the black cloth was unexpectedly that of a handsome young man with loose hair and bare feet, clear eyes, and exquisitely refined features!
Night fell.
A dense mass of black mist slowly followed the bloodstains on the ground toward the Miao village nestled in the mountain hollow.
A rustling sound came from within the black mist, as though a lump of rotting flesh were dragging itself along the ground, step by step approaching this lonely Miao village.
Was it truly mist, or demonic qi?
Then, a soft hissing sound suddenly emerged from the black mist.
It sounded like someone sucking up a delicacy from the mortal world.
All at once, the black mist stopped moving.
Because beneath a tree two zhang before it stood a man—a handsome young man so striking he was almost demonic, with loose hair and bare feet, dressed in a moon-white hemp robe.
The black mist parted slightly, revealing a man in bloodstained clothing. In his hand, he held a tiger's head whose skullcap had been pried open, blood still dripping from it. The sound from before had been him sucking the brains straight from the tiger's head.
When the man lifted his head, any passerby who saw him would surely cry out in horror. No wonder that tragically slain Miao Yi youth had called him a monster.
For he truly possessed an incomparably ferocious ghostly face. His features seemed to have been forcibly stitched together, beyond all description in their strangeness. Even more horrifyingly, the features on his face seemed to shift without end. One moment his left eye was large and his right eye small; the next, his right eye was large and his left eye small. Looking at his face was like looking at countless different faces kneaded into one.
Yet upon seeing the immaculate young man with loose hair and bare feet, the person within the black mist was instead seized by terror.
"Who are you?" The man in the black mist swallowed a mouthful of saliva and asked.
"Twelve Capital Heavenly Fiend Formation?" The young man with loose hair and bare feet did not answer his question. He merely said coldly, "A person like you, who cannot even hold fast to his own heart—if you continue cultivating, you will only become a bloodthirsty walking corpse..."
"Is that so?" Before the young man could finish speaking, a streak of emerald-green radiance shot from the black-mist man's mouth and blasted toward him.
Though the man in the black mist did not know who this young man with loose hair and bare feet was, he could sense the killing intent emanating from him, along with an aura that seemed to demand his reverence.
So he could only strike first to gain the upper hand.
Silver light flashed in the young man's eyes, and a trace of surprise crossed his face.
His surprise was not due to the black-mist man's cultivation, but because that green radiance, which lit up dozens of zhang around them, not only contained pressure capable of destroying heaven and earth, but also surged with incomparably pure Earth Core Li Fire Qi. Moreover, not a single thread of Li Fire Qi leaked from the green radiance. It was condensed into a single point, blasting toward the young man like a sharp awl, yet it did not damage even a blade of grass or a shrub nearby.
Utterly true, utterly condensed, gathered into one point—this was unexpectedly a rare Earth Immortal grade magical treasure.
At the same time, countless dim souls emerged from beneath the ground for dozens of zhang around them. They let out shrieks so piercing they seemed capable of splitting one's skull and wound themselves around the young man.
A powerful magical treasure, an eerie cultivation art, and the initiative seized completely—yet even so, this blood-robed man who resembled a demon could not rival the young man dressed in moon-white robes!
A crescent-shaped jade disc suddenly spun before the young man. The faint radiance it emitted draped around him like tassels. The green radiance condensed with pure Li Fire Qi and the dim souls struck the light barrier, yet seemed to encounter something incomparably slick and slippery, gliding helplessly aside without finding any purchase.
In the flash between lightning and flint, a speck of golden starlight shot from the young man's hand.
It was tiny, like a grain of golden sand drifting from between his fingers.
But at the sight of it, the blood-robed man in the black mist's expression abruptly changed. He had already seen that the power contained within that speck of golden starlight was enough to slay gods and extinguish immortals!
He frantically drove all his mana to its limit. Surging mana instantly condensed into a black savage blade in his hand. But with a puff, the golden starlight merely touched the black blade. After a terrifying explosive crack, not only was his black blade blown apart, but his entire arm was blasted into a bloody mass of bone and flesh, too dreadful to behold!
"Reincarnation Moon Radiance Dharma Wheel! You are the Luofu Sect Master..." Sweat poured from the blood-robed man like rain, whether from pain or terror none could say. Yet he stood frozen in place, not daring to move at all. Since he had recognized who this man was, he knew that if this man wished to kill him, he would find it utterly impossible to escape even at any cost.
"End yourself. If I must act, your body and soul will both be destroyed." Enveloped in faint radiance, Yuan Tianyi's expression could not be seen.
The blood-robed man could not help retreating step by step. The returning green radiance also flickered uncertainly. "You and I bear no grudge. Can you not spare my life?"
Yuan Tianyi spoke in a voice as cold as ice and snow. "Had I not been here, you would already have slaughtered this village to cultivate your demonic art. And what you cultivate is the beastly path, far removed from the true way. You still ask me to spare you?"
The blood-robed man pleaded bitterly, "They are merely ignorant mountain folk. If you spare my life, I will certainly repay your kindness... I also know where there is a Cloud Bloom Fine Gold mineral vein. If you spare my life, I will tell you where it is..."
Cloud Bloom Fine Gold! It was a rare heavenly treasure in the eyes of cultivators. Besides being as exceptionally tough as vajra fine gold, Cloud Bloom Fine Gold rejected almost none of the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy, making it superb material for refining the primordial embryo of a magical treasure.
This blood-robed man was actually claiming to know of a mineral vein!
The Cloud Bloom Fine Gold contained in a single vein would be enough for the primary materials of at least a dozen magical treasure embryos.
But Yuan Tianyi merely shook his head.
For he had never bargained with anyone—especially not with a cultivator lured by his base nature and already fallen onto the path of beasts!
A speck of golden starlight gleamed at his fingertip. "You madman! Are the lives of a heap of barbarian ants truly more important than a Cloud Bloom Fine Gold mineral vein?!" The blood-robed man let out an incredulous, shrill scream. The green radiance suspended before him flared brilliantly, but it did not strike Yuan Tianyi. Instead, it struck himself. Amid his shrill cry, his entire body was shredded to ashes by that green radiance!
For the blood-robed man knew that Yuan Tianyi always kept his word.
And Yuan Tianyi's cultivation left him no room whatsoever to resist.
Thus, this blood-robed man, demon-like in appearance, could only kill himself before Yuan Tianyi did!
"If others respect me by an inch, I return it by a foot. If others wrong me by a foot, I return it by a yard. These are the rules of Luofu. If others revere me as a god, how could I regard them as ants?" Yuan Tianyi said faintly, as though speaking to the blood-robed man, and yet also as though speaking to himself.
With a chime, the emerald magical treasure condensed with utterly true, utterly condensed Li Fire Qi dimmed and fell to the ground.
Crossing several zhang through the air, Yuan Tianyi picked up the green crystal-like ruler, no more than two feet long. When he turned around again, everyone in the Miao Yi mountain village was already kneeling upon the ground in incomparable devotion.