The medicinal fragrance in the Imperial Medical Office's side hall had been replaced by the heavy stench of blood and turbid filth. Cheng Xi lay on his back on the couch, his face as pale as gold paper, his breathing so faint it was nearly inaudible. Beneath his skin, dark red Turbid Fiendish Meridians spread from his dantian's sea of qi to his neck like rotting tree roots, every pulsation bringing a deadening sense of sinking. Hou Yi's rough fingers rested on his wrist as dark red blood qi, like probing needles, pierced into the dantian tightly sealed by Turbid Fiendish Power.
"Chaos Fiendish Qi is a trapped beast, and Turbid Fiendish Power is its cage." Hou Yi's voice was grave as iron. "The cage is being eroded by the fiendish qi, while also devouring his life force. The two evil powers are struggling within him. This boy... has become a battlefield!"
Meng Tian stood by the couch with one hand on his sword. Black blood had congealed around a hole in his arm guard, and a numb chill was creeping upward along his arm. He looked at Cheng Xi's ashen face, then toward the strange dark clouds churning over Mount Li beyond the window. His tiger-like eyes were bloodshot. "Can this Turbid Fiendish Power be removed?"
"Difficult." Hou Yi shook his head and withdrew his blood qi. "Turbid Fiendish Power originates from the earth's deep affliction and is connected to the earth veins. Unless we summon earthfire to burn the mountain, or find the source of innate Pure Fire... forcibly removing it will trigger a backlash and take his life at once! For now, we can only use my clan's secret Earth Vein Stone Milk to sustain his Heart Meridian and slow down the erosion..."
Before he could finish—
Cheng Xi on the couch suddenly convulsed! He had not awakened; his body arched as if struck by an invisible blow! Beneath his tightly shut eyelids, his eyes rolled wildly! The dark red veins across his skin instantly turned scorching Dark Gold and pulsed violently! An invisible force, cold, sticky, and filled with endless greed and malice, ignored the barriers of space, pierced through the many walls of the Imperial Medical Office, and stabbed with perfect precision into the Chaos Vortex wrapped in Turbid Fiendish Power deep within his dantian!
[Warning! Encountered high-dimensional mental contamination attack! Source: deep earth veins! Target: host's core Chaos Vortex! Intensity: annihilation-class!... System energy exhausted... passive defense module overloaded... initiating deep hibernation protocol...]
The dormant system screen burst out with one final scarlet flare! Deep within Cheng Xi's sea of consciousness, the gray glimmer representing the Chaos Origin Point swayed frantically like a candle in the wind, compressed, and finally became an infinitesimal singularity. Carrying all consciousness and deduction functions, it sank into boundless, deathly darkness—this was the system's final act of self-preservation in the face of absolute destruction!
Almost at the instant the system entered hibernation!
BOOM—!!!
The Chaos Vortex sealed by Turbid Fiendish Power erupted like a powder keg ignited by the frenzied stimulation of that pure contaminating will!
Beneath Mount Li's main peak, Yan Lingji walked barefoot across jagged rocks. Through the soles of her feet, she sensed the earth's painful pulse—warm earth qi was being twisted and defiled by a scorching, violent force of filth. The call of Pangu Hall and the sight of the contaminated earth veins burned in her soul sea. Orange-red flames danced in her eyes as a resolute will drove her weakened body onward.
She stopped before an enormous rock wall sheltered from the wind. At its base, a deep crack wide enough for only one person gave off a strong sulfurous odor and... the earthy spiritual aura unique to the depths of the earth veins. This was a natural fissure leading deep underground!
Yan Lingji sat cross-legged and laid the cracked Qingping Sword Sheath across her knees. Forming hand seals with both hands, she summoned a weak orange-red flame from her heart lamp into her palms. She closed her eyes and concentrated, letting her consciousness follow the faint connection between her bloodline and Pangu Hall, sinking slowly like a stone cast into a deep pool...
Her consciousness passed through thick layers of rock and descended into a dark underground world. Countless golden meridians representing the flow of earth qi unfolded within her "vision," warm, immense, and brimming with life—this should have been the bloodline of the earth! Yet now, countless patches of sticky, malicious Dark Gold filth spread across those golden meridians like gangrene clinging to bone! Wherever the filth passed, the golden meridians became scorching and restless, stained with violent Dark Gold patterns! The entire earth vein network gave a low, pained groan!
At the heart where the contamination was thickest and countless Dark Gold patterns converged, a huge, blurry Dark Gold vertical eye condensed from pure chaotic demonic qi floated coldly in the air! Within that vertical eye was reflected the contaminated earth veins, and also... the Chaos Vortex being detonated within Cheng Xi's dantian in Xianyang Palace's Imperial Medical Office!
"Found it!" Yan Lingji's mind shook violently! This demonic eye was the source of the contamination! She had to destroy it!
She gathered all her will, and the orange-red flame of her heart lamp suddenly surged! A thread of incomparably condensed orange-red fire, carrying the protective intent of the Inheritance of the Sacred Fire, followed the bloodline resonance like an arrow loosed from the bow and shot toward the massive demonic eye deep in the earth veins!
The orange-red thread of fire pierced through the polluted earth qi. Wherever it passed, the spreading Dark Gold filth met its nemesis, hissing as it burned and instantly melted away! A weak path of purification was forcibly opened!
"ROAR—!"
The Dark Gold vertical eye deep in the earth veins suddenly turned! Its cold, greedy gaze instantly locked onto that thread of orange-red flame that dared challenge it! Billions of fragments of resentment spun wildly within its pupil, and a Dark Gold beam a hundred times more condensed, filled with chaotic corrosive intent, crashed viciously toward the orange-red thread like a venomous dragon leaving its lair!
BOOM—!
The clash of invisible wills erupted on the level of the earth veins! Orange-red and Dark Gold collided fiercely! Yan Lingji's delicate body jolted as she sat before the rock wall, and her face instantly turned deathly pale! Blood overflowed from the corner of her mouth! That orange-red thread was bound to her heart lamp and now felt as though it had been struck by an enormous hammer! The call of Pangu Hall and Empress Pingxin's blessing flowed continuously into her during the struggle, barely sustaining her wavering will.
"Burn!" Yan Lingji bit through her tongue. Stimulated by the intense pain, the orange-red flames rose again! She had to hold firm! She had to buy that thread of fire enough time to approach the demonic eye itself!
Just as she was fully resisting the demonic eye's counterattack—
Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!
Around the crack in the rock wall, countless black roots covered in Dark Gold keratin, each as thick as a child's arm, silently burst from the earth like venomous snakes that had scented blood! They did not attack Yan Lingji's body. Instead, they frantically plunged into the rock beneath her, accurately stabbing into the invisible "passage" connecting her consciousness to the earth veins!
Buzz!
A contaminating force, violent and chaotic and carrying the intent of plants growing madly to devour all things, surged through that passage of consciousness like poison flowing backward and smashed into Yan Lingji's mind! It was the ancient locust tree rooted in demonic blood! Driven by the demonic eye's will, it had become an accomplice intercepting the power of purification!
"Ugh, ah!" Yan Lingji was struck as though by a heavy blow, and her consciousness passage shook violently! The orange-red thread of fire struggling against the Dark Gold beam immediately began flickering unsteadily! The path of purification had been completely blocked by this demonized plant!
Cheng Xi's body sprang violently from the couch before crashing back down! At his dantian, a chaotic blue-gray glow mixed with filthy dark red bloodlight burst through his body, instantly corroding the brocade quilt over him into flying ash! Beneath his skin, intertwined Dark Gold and dark red veins pulsed and bulged madly like red-hot irons! He looked as if the violent, conflicting forces inside him would tear him apart the next instant!
"This is bad! Those Underground Demonic Creatures are stirring the fiendish qi within him!" Hou Yi's expression changed drastically. With a furious roar, thick dark red blood qi instantly covered both his palms. Carrying the suppressive force of mountains, he slammed them toward Cheng Xi's dantian and chest, attempting to forcibly stabilize the seal that was on the verge of collapse!
"ROAR—!!!"
An inhuman roar, filled with violence and chaos, exploded from Cheng Xi's wide-open mouth! It was not his voice, but more like the shriek of the underground demonic eye's will using his body! With that roar, energy turbulence visible to the naked eye, mixed with blue-gray sword qi and dark red Turbid Fiendish Power, erupted around Cheng Xi like an out-of-control hurricane!
Bang! Bang!
Hou Yi, first to bear the brunt, had the dark red blood qi from his descending palms instantly scattered by the violent turbulence! His burly body was struck as if by a Giant Hammer. With a muffled groan, he flew backward and crashed hard into a hall pillar! Stone chips flew everywhere!
Meng Tian only had time to raise his sword to block! The refined steel blade was swept by the turbulence and instantly bent out of shape. The terrifying immense force hurled him, sword and all, viciously into the wall! A sweetness rose in his throat, and he spat out blood!
The tables, chairs, and medicine cabinets in the hall were sent flying and torn apart like sheets of paper. Doors and windows exploded under the shockwave! The violent, chaotic energy turbulence carried an aura of annihilation as it raged wildly!
"Cheng Xi!" Meng Tian's eyes nearly split with fury as he struggled to his feet, ignoring his own wounds as he pounced toward the couch!
On the couch, Cheng Xi's body had strangely gone still after the energy eruption. The terrifying light of the veins all over him slowly receded, but his skin had taken on a deathly gray pallor, and his aura was so weak it was nearly severed. Only deep within his brow, a wisp of Chaos-gray light so faint it was almost impossible to notice carried out its final instinctive deduction beneath the boundless deathly stillness and Turbid Fiendish Power, analyzing the Turbid Fiendish Origin that had invaded his body and searching for that nearly nonexistent... glimmer of hope!
At the northern foot of Mount Li, the wilderness forest lay deathly silent.
At the center of a hollow stood a terrifying demonic figure more than ten feet tall beneath the bleak moonlight. It largely retained the twisted outline of a human, but its entire body was covered in cold, hard Dark Gold scales, while sharp bone spurs protruded from its joints. A vicious scorpion tail covered in barbs swayed slowly behind it, whipping the air with a tearing shriek. Its head was part lizard, part human, with a protruding snout and exposed fangs. In the depths of those cold, emotionless Dark Gold vertical eyes was reflected the entirety of chaotic Xianyang City.
Lu Buwei... or rather, the shell that had been completely corroded and transformed by the Demon Lizard's Severed Skull, slowly raised a demonic hand covered in scales and armed with hooked claws. In its palm, a mass of sticky, writhing Dark Gold Demonic Qi gathered, giving off a heart-palpitating aura of devouring and chaos. From its throat rolled hoarse, sticky syllables, neither human nor beast:
"Chaos... nourishment... city... blood... food..."
It suddenly twisted its head, its vertical eyes locking onto the direction of Xianyang Palace! More precisely, they locked onto the place within the Imperial Medical Office where chaotic energy had just erupted! The out-of-control Chaos Vortex within Cheng Xi was a far more enticing tonic to it than the vital blood of ten thousand living beings!
"ROAR—!"
The demonic figure threw back its head and released a roar that tore through the night sky! Both feet stomped down hard! Its scaled claws sank deeply into the soil! Its enormous body Turned into a Dark Gold streak that ripped through the night, carrying a foul wind and the stench of sulfur as it charged toward Xianyang Palace's Imperial Medical Office faster than a galloping horse! Wherever it went, trees withered and corrosive scorch marks were left across the ground!
It had only one target—devour that out-of-control Chaos Origin and complete its final demonic transformation!
Deep within the earth veins, the struggle between orange-red and Dark Gold had reached a fever pitch.
Before the rock wall where Yan Lingji sat cross-legged, blood continuously flowed from the corner of her mouth. Her face was pale as paper, and her body was on the verge of collapse. The orange-red flame of her heart lamp, under the double pressure of the Demonic Locust Tree's root contamination and the demonic eye's Dark Gold beam, was like a small boat amid raging waves, liable to capsize at any moment!
The orange-red thread of fire directed at the demonic eye itself was still a hundred zhang from its target when countless Dark Gold roots of the Demonic Locust Tree intercepted and tightly entangled it! Sticky Dark Gold liquid secreted from the roots continuously corroded and wore away the fire's power! The fire thread's glow rapidly dimmed, unable to advance even an inch!
A trace of humanlike mockery and greed flashed through the demonic eye's cold vertical pupil. More Dark Gold filth surged in from all directions, attempting to completely smother and devour that flame representing purification!
"No..." Yan Lingji's consciousness blurred as despair surged like a tide. Pangu Hall's call became faint under the contaminating assault, and the power of Empress Pingxin's blessing was rapidly being depleted. Could she only watch helplessly as the earth veins were completely contaminated?
At that critical moment!
The Qingping Sword Sheath covered in cracks before her knees gave an extremely faint sword cry without warning, as though it came from a distant age! It was not Lord Tongtian's sword intent, but a kind of... primordial resonance that had lain dormant for countless ages, only to be stirred now by the ultimate clash between purity and filth!
Amid the sword cry, the image sent by the Will of Pangu Hall showing the contaminated earth veins flashed sharply through Yan Lingji's soul sea! One relatively small branch of the earth veins, currently being madly eroded by Dark Gold filth, had an origin point that faintly overlapped with the location of the rock wall where she now sat!
This branch... had not yet been completely contaminated! At its source, perhaps... there was still an Earth Vein Spirit Eye untouched by demonic blood!
Understanding came to her in an instant!
With her last strength, Yan Lingji no longer directed the nearly extinguished orange fire of her heart lamp toward the distant demonic eye blocked by countless obstacles. Instead... she fiercely guided it into the rock beneath her! Into the source of that small branch that had not yet been completely contaminated!
"Sacred fire... return to the source!"
The orange-red flame followed the passage linking her to the earth veins, like a weary bird returning to its nest, and instantly vanished into the depths of the rock below!
BOOM—!
The rock wall violently shook! A faint yet incomparably pure and warm pale golden pillar of light shot into the sky from the crack beneath Yan Lingji! Though thin, it contained the flourishing vitality of Earth Origin that had not been contaminated! It shone precisely upon the orange-red thread of fire entangled by the Demonic Locust Tree's roots and on the verge of going out!
Like dry tinder meeting a blazing fire!
The orange-red thread instantly surged! Under the dual scorching of the pale golden pillar and the rising orange flames, the Demonic Locust Tree roots coiled around it gave off shrill hissing sounds and instantly turned scorched black and withered! The orange-red flame broke free. Though it did not grow in size, its core condensed into a point of pure white incandescence! Carrying the purifying source power to burn away all filth in the world, it accelerated sharply like a white rainbow swimming upstream, ignoring the surging Dark Gold filth ahead as it shot viciously toward the massive demonic eye at the heart of the earth veins!
For the first time, a ripple called... fear was clearly reflected in the demonic eye's vertical pupil!
The Imperial Medical Office's side hall was filled with dust and smoke.
Hou Yi used his Bone Bow as a support to rise with difficulty. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, and several tears had been ripped through the beast hide over his chest by the chaotic energy. Meng Tian knelt on one knee before Cheng Xi's couch, his heavy sword braced against the floor, the web of his hand split open as he stared fixedly at the figure on the couch whose aura was nearly severed.
The faint Chaos-gray light between Cheng Xi's brows was carrying out a limit-breaking deduction beyond imagination beneath the boundless Turbid Fiendish Power. The composition and flow of countless strands of Turbid Fiendish Power, along with the nodes connecting them to the earth veins... were rapidly broken down and analyzed within that gray glimmer! A tiny energy fissure concealed beneath layers of filth slowly revealed its outline under the gray light's scan—it was the seal's only weakness! It was also... the weakest point in the connection between Turbid Fiendish Power and the earth veins! If they could strike it precisely...
Just as the deduction at this Brink of Life and Death was about to lock onto the fissure's coordinates!
BOOM CRACK—!!!
The enormous street-facing window of the Imperial Medical Office, along with half the wall, was smashed apart by an incomparably violent immense force! Wood chips and bricks shot out like torrential rain!
Amid the billowing dust, a huge demonic claw covered in cold Dark Gold scales, its talons hooked, tore through the smoke. Carrying a pungent sulfurous stench, it ignored the remaining energy turbulence raging through the hall and clawed viciously down toward Cheng Xi, helpless upon the couch! The Dark Gold Demonic Qi curling around its claw tips radiated the hunger and destruction of devouring everything!
Demonic Lu Buwei had arrived! Its target pointed directly at the enticing Chaos Origin within Cheng Xi's dantian!
"You beast! How dare you!!!"
Meng Tian's eyes split with fury as he let out a thunderous roar! There was no time to think. His body's instinct surpassed the pain! His heavy sword, carrying all his remaining strength and towering rage, Turned into a jet-black streak in a desperate upward slash toward the descending terrifying demonic claw! The sword edge pointed directly at the relatively weak joint in the scales around the demonic claw's wrist!
The sword edge and demonic claw collided thunderously just inches above Cheng Xi's body!
Time seemed to freeze at that moment.
The jet-black glow of Meng Tian's heavy sword, the cold glint of Hou Yi's bone arrow held ready but not yet fired, the Dark Gold trajectory of the demonic claw tearing through space, and... the faint Chaos-gray light between Cheng Xi's brows, frantically deducing amid deathly stillness and about to lock onto the Turbid Fiendish fissure!
The thunderous clash of metal and the shriek of Energy Annihilation were about to rip apart this brief stillness!
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