Blood God Cult, Crimson Kunpeng

A purple thunder blade light streaked across the sky, splitting the earth and cleaving the blood-red world in two.

The livestream screen shifted from its original gloomy, oppressive, dim bloodiness to a sudden brightness.

Twilight sunset, crescent moon rising.

Beneath this beautiful scene, the imposing figure standing in the sky seized nearly everyone's attention.

She wore a black garment with purple patterns, black boots—a classical style well-suited to the new era.

With a nine-head-body proportion, her legs appeared long and straight as spears, exceptionally tall.

Her dark purple high ponytail swayed in the fierce wind, while those sharp purple eyes locked onto the massive form of the Thousand-Headed Blood Leech Queen.

"Hum—!"

The moment she felt herself locked on, the Thousand-Headed Blood Leech Queen raised her mouthparts and unleashed a mental-polluting sonic wave attack.

At the same time, the thunder blade hummed on its own, rumbling thunder rolling forth to scatter the piercing, corrupting sound waves.

Purple lightning flashed in her eyes, shooting into the void like tangible beams, causing the countless tentacles and human faces the Thousand-Headed Blood Leech Queen had raised to instantly burst into blood mist.

"Slash!"

A cold, dignified word was spoken. Purple lightning filled the sky, heavenly thunder exploded, and strange phenomena manifested.

The long blade descended through the air, yet the entire world seemed frozen still.

Though clearly visible, this strike was unimaginably fast, manifesting as a Heavenly Punishment Divine Thunder, falling from above, transforming into a Sky-Splitting Purple Light, dazzling beyond measure, the heavens and earth shifting color.

It split the Thousand-Headed Blood Leech Queen's entire massive body—from the thousand-faced mouthparts above to the Blood Leech Blood Sea below—cleanly in two.

Infinite lightning and purple electricity flickered and pulsed, continuously annihilating the Overlord-Level mythical creature's life force from the wound.

Sensing death, the Thousand-Headed Blood Leech Queen let out a piercing shriek, as if maddened in her final moments, and self-destructed to drag her foe down with her.

"Boom!"

The explosion, leaving a massive crater, resounded across the entire city.

At the same time, countless Servant-Level, Ferocious Soldier-Level, and War General-Level mythical creatures scattered like heavenly flowers, crashing into the station, the wilderness, and even parts of the eastern city outskirts.

But with the Overlord-Level mythical creature—far surpassing Outer Scenery Martial Artists—dead, the rest were inconsequential.

Soon, the Prevention Bureau and stationed military forces entered, beginning an orderly extermination.

Meanwhile, corpse collection and cleanup departments and cooperating companies arrived in time for the aftermath.

It seemed a Level 2 Alert crisis had been resolved.

Li Xijun's intuition, honed by years of losing money, still felt something was off, but he couldn't pinpoint the problem.

Zhang Haifeng, standing nearby, couldn't help but remark:

"Xijun, if that Outer Scenery Martial Artist just now came to our school as a guiding teacher, you must seize the opportunity!"

"Hm?" Li Xijun looked puzzled.

"To have such combat power at the Outer Scenery realm, and with lightning blade techniques, she's likely from the Clear Spring Dawn Palace, founded by the Wind Sage of the 'Imperial Capital Two Heavens,' and graduated near the top of her year."

"I remember you practiced blade basics before; you should use a blade as your weapon in the future. If you can get even a few pointers from her, it would benefit you immensely for the College Entrance Exam and even for comprehending Outer Scenery Killing Moves later."

Speaking thus, the usually stern Zhang Haifeng's face showed rare envy, admiration, and other complex emotions as he said:

"You're still a high school student and can't appreciate what a good Martial Arts University can do for you, or how dazzling the geniuses there are."

As the two spoke, Zhang Haifeng was about to recount the university prodigies he'd seen back in the day.

But exclamations from the livestream screen made them both turn to look.

Bocheng High-Speed Rail East Station

As the post-battle hero Su Nianying and other arriving Outer Scenery teachers exchanged words with local leaders and high school principals, accepting warm greetings and pleasantries.

In a corner across from the station, a man in a white work uniform, wearing a gas mask that covered his face, couldn't stop swallowing saliva as he stared at part of a Tombstone Meat Mountain corpse.

Like someone who hadn't eaten in days, faced with such blood-energy-rich flesh, he couldn't resist breaking the church's rules. He quietly pulled off his right glove, revealing a palm with a mouth full of sharp teeth, which bit fiercely into the flesh, devouring its blood energy and life.

The rapid surge of qi and blood and power within him stirred his emotions with excitement.

Until the next moment, he suddenly found himself floating in the air. The spiritual energy of heaven and earth formed an invisible giant hand, gripping him tightly and dragging him directly before the middle school principal, the Prevention Bureau director, and others.

When he hit the ground, his upper clothes shattered, revealing on his stomach skin an abstract pattern that, upon closer inspection, resembled a blood-colored giant kunpeng.

"Of course. It's no coincidence that the moment I arrive, an alert incident happens."

Su Nianying, holding the long blade at her waist, spoke coldly.

"It should be the Blood God Cult, trying to use the Mythic Rift's upheaval and our Outer Scenery Martial Artists' arrival to provoke a battle."

"No matter what casualties both sides suffer, these hyenas devouring corpses' blood energy and life always get the easy pickings."

"Bocheng should conduct a thorough investigation and crack down on the cult."

Su Nianying's blunt words made the official Outer Scenery Martial Artists present look grim.

Because behind a cult like the Blood God Cult lurked an extremely dangerous mythical creature.

As the Crimson Kunpeng that would inevitably appear in every middle school history textbook covering the New Calendar era, this Emperor-level existence was a major crisis for the Human Federation.

When creatures from the Mythical World reached the pinnacle of cultivation, they too possessed human-level intelligence.

And this Emperor-level creature's wisdom was especially astonishing.

It dwelled in a special Mythical World where devouring one another was the path to power.

Back when it first crossed through the Mythic Rift to Blue Star, its original plan was to corral humanity as an endless supply of blood-and-qi food to devour and grow stronger.

But in the end, it was severely wounded by two Martial Saints working together and fled back to its own world.

To take revenge on the Human Federation, it combined the martial arts it had learned from killing humans with the devouring nature of its home world, creating an evil cultivation method that allowed rapid advancement in Martial Cultivation by devouring the flesh and blood of living beings.

This once sparked civil wars and the collapse of several nations in the Central Asia Region, and even Great Yan was affected—at one point, the Blood God Cult, an evil organization that treated humans as blood food to be devoured, rose to prominence.

It was a cult that Great Yan had ruthlessly suppressed.

No one expected it to show up in Bocheng this time, pulling some cheap trick to pick up scraps.

Immediately after, the livestream was cut short.

Bocheng News switched back to the studio, where the female anchor began delivering official statements.

Staring at the severed scene on the screen, Zhang Haifeng turned off the monitor and frowned:

"With something like this happening today, to be safe, you should just stay here in my office for now. I'll go home."

"Then I'll be troubling you, Teacher."

Li Xijun readily agreed.

What had just happened proved that this incident was indeed the work of some cult.

Coupled with the earlier explosion, even though he had the trump card of escaping to another world, for the sake of caution, resting here at Zhang Haifeng's place was the best option.