Confession

In Firecloud Cave beneath Skyfire Peak.

The temperature inside the cave could melt ordinary iron ingots. Heat waves surged, violently distorting the air, making it difficult to see a person more than ten feet away. A river of lava flowed slowly nearby, bubbles the size of human heads constantly bursting across its surface and spraying countless sparks. The dense, scorching stench alone could make one faint. Both the ground and the cave walls glowed red. The rocks underfoot had softened somewhat; the moment ordinary boots touched the ground, they went up in a puff of thick smoke and swiftly turned to ash.

In such an environment, only Lin Xiao and Daoist Master Yizhen found it exceedingly pleasant. The surging firepower poured into their bodies, making them increasingly comfortable without the slightest discomfort. Yi Xing, Yi Xin, Daoist Yi Yi, and the others, on the other hand, could only use magical treasures to protect themselves. Even Nascent Soul Stage cultivators found the extreme heat of Firecloud Cave hard to endure.

An anvil forged from Flowing Flame Iron floated upon the lava river. The river's heat had burned the iron anvil scarlet. Immortal Miao, more than half of whose body was missing, was tightly fastened to the anvil by seventy-two strands of Heart-Locking Bone-Piercing Silk. The red-hot anvil roasted his flesh until it sizzled. Although Immortal Miao's body had become extraordinarily resilient through more than two thousand years of bitter cultivation, with his cultivation completely crippled, he was still burned until his skin split and flesh tore. The smell of scorched meat drifted through Firecloud Cave.

Yi Xing stood on the riverbank, quietly watching Immortal Miao several yards away. He asked coolly, "Fellow Daoist Miao, you were once a great pillar of the demonic path, an extraordinary figure. Tell us what you know, and we will allow you Liberation by Violence. Origin Sect is not the sort to torment people with such methods. Speak, and you may reincarnate anew, sparing yourself much suffering."

Immortal Miao laboriously raised his head and gave Daoist Yi Xing a strange, "Heh heh," laugh. "What is this little bit of suffering? Back then, when I tempered my body with Earth Core Yin Wind, the pain I endured was more than ten times worse than this! Heh heh, if you want this Immortal to tell you what you wish to know, keep dreaming!" Immortal Miao threw back his head and laughed. "Just wait. On the day Origin Sect is destroyed, heh heh, this Immortal will see daylight again! Hmph, hmph. When that time comes, this Immortal will use Origin Sect's female disciples to slowly restore my cultivation! That will be your retribution!"

Yi Xing's expression became exceedingly ugly. As the sect master of Origin Sect, hearing someone brazenly declare before his face that Origin Sect would be destroyed naturally angered him. Yet as sect master, it was improper for him to lose his temper. Daoist Yi Xing merely turned his head and nodded toward a black-bearded old Daoist whose face was bluish. "Junior Brother Yi Zhi, begin."

Old Daoist Yi Zhi smiled faintly and slowly took a jade box, roughly a foot square, from his sleeve. A thin layer of cloud arose beneath his feet, carrying him slowly toward Immortal Miao. Reaching the anvil, he gently set the jade box upon it and opened its lid. A hazy black vapor billowed from the box. Within lay hundreds of bizarrely shaped, exceedingly fine gold needles, silver needles, jade needles, iron needles, as well as all manner of exquisitely crafted little knives and saws.

Immortal Miao violently twisted his mangled body and roared in shock and fury, "You people from Origin Sect truly dare to torture me? You... you!" Immortal Miao was so enraged that the Three Corpses leaped in fury, veins bulging high across his face.

"Fellow Daoist Miao, this is also a matter of necessity." Daoist Yi Xing looked coldly at Immortal Miao and said evenly, "Just now, we tried to obtain a confession through the Soul Shaking Technique. However, Fellow Daoist's mastery of the Bewitching Soul Technique exceeds even Martial Uncle Xuan Luo's by three parts. Your Primordial Spirit is stable and unmoved by external forces. With no other recourse, we can only resort to this base method." Immortal Miao was a notorious lecher in the cultivation world who specialized in abducting female cultivators. He excelled in Bewitching Soul techniques, and his attainment in the Primordial Spirit far surpassed that of ordinary cultivators.

Behind Daoist Yi Xing, Lin Xiao clenched his fists tightly. He stared at Immortal Miao with a dark expression and said icily, "Senior Yi Xing, why speak of morality or mercy to such a demonic scoundrel? Just use the most vicious means and force the confession out of him." When Immortal Miao had been loudly cursing just now, Lin Xiao had heard the name Blood God Ancestor from his mouth. Learning that Immortal Miao was Blood God Ancestor's accomplice, the poisonous flames in Lin Xiao's heart immediately surged up. He wished he could hack Immortal Miao into ten thousand pieces and scatter his soul to the winds before feeling satisfied. Old Daoist Yi Zhi was merely using a little torture on Immortal Miao—how could Lin Xiao possibly feel softhearted?

Daoist Yi Xing glanced at Lin Xiao, then suddenly cried, "Young friend Lin Xiao, steady your mind! You are about to suffer qi deviation again!"

Daoist Yi Xing's shout was like a morning bell and evening drum, jolting the increasingly agitated Lin Xiao awake. Lin Xiao suddenly drew a harsh breath and staggered several steps back. A sweet, bloody taste surged through his mouth—his emotions had nearly fluctuated so violently that he vomited blood. Lin Xiao swiftly calmed his mind, suppressed the true essence stirring restlessly within him, and shook his head hard, casting away the faces of Yao'er, Dan Fusheng, Danxia, and the others that had abruptly surfaced in his mind.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood-streaked saliva, Lin Xiao looked darkly at Immortal Miao, who was twisting, struggling, and howling loudly. He said in a gloomy voice, "Senior Yi Xing, this demon said that he once tempered his body with Earth Core Yin Wind, and that pain was more than ten times worse than having his body scorched by a red-hot Flowing Flame Iron anvil. It seems Senior Yi Zhi will find it difficult to make him suffer beyond endurance."

Yi Xing looked at Lin Xiao and frowned. "That is indeed a problem. Does young friend Lin Xiao have any clever solution?"

Lightly biting his lip, Lin Xiao swiftly searched through the records of the Great Luo Pill Scripture and sneered. "Please have Senior Yi Yi retrieve three taels of Machine-Chasing Vine, two taels of Butterfly-Bewitching Grass, three Heart-Rot Flowers, three Intestine-Breaking Flowers, seven stalks of Dancing God Grass, and three packets of ordinary Anesthetic Agent for external wounds from the medicine storehouse."

"This is?" Daoist Yi Yi stared at Lin Xiao in astonishment. As Origin Sect's chief steward of internal affairs, Daoist Yi Yi had dabbled in many fields and possessed some knowledge of pill-making. He knew that Anesthetic Agent was used to numb the wounded, but the other five medicinal herbs had no connection whatsoever. What did Lin Xiao want with them?

Still lightly biting his lower lip, Lin Xiao gave a sinister smile. "Anesthetic Agent can put someone to sleep so that they do not feel pain in their body. But when compounded with the other five unusual herbs, the Anesthetic Agent can be transformed into a peculiar spiritual medicine called Spirit Shocking Powder. This medicine can amplify the human body's senses by over a hundredfold. It is especially effective on cultivators with powerful Primordial Spirits and keen divine senses, magnifying their bodily senses by a thousandfold! The stronger the cultivator's cultivation, the greater the effect of Spirit Shocking Powder."

It could magnify a cultivator's bodily senses by a thousandfold? Yi Xing, Yi Xin, and Yi Yi's faces twitched at the same time, while a fanatical gleam shot from Old Daoist Yi Zhi's eyes.

If bodily senses were magnified a thousandfold, then even a gentle prick from a needle would make one who had taken Spirit Shocking Powder feel as though someone had viciously cleaved their heart with a blade. Combined with Old Daoist Yi Zhi's special methods, the resulting agony would likely be enough to make a cultivator's Primordial Spirit collapse outright.

Yet Lin Xiao continued, "Moreover, there is the medicinal power of Machine-Chasing Vine. When Machine-Chasing Vine and Dancing God Grass are refined together, their medicinal power can penetrate directly into the Primordial Spirit, allowing the pain of the flesh to strike directly at a cultivator's Primordial Spirit."

Yi Xing, Yi Xin, and Yi Yi simultaneously sucked in a cold breath. Daoist Yi Zhi muttered to himself, "Wonderful. Such a spiritual medicine is truly wonderful!"

Yi Yi swiftly instructed his disciples to bring the herbs Lin Xiao required. Lin Xiao casually mixed the several herbs together, then simmered the mixture over a furnace for roughly the time it took to drink a cup of tea. He produced a pot of pitch-black, glue-like medicinal liquid that gave off a strange fishy stench, then had Daoist Yi Zhi force it down Immortal Miao's throat.

Though Immortal Miao struggled desperately, he could only be forced to swallow the medicinal liquid. Before long, Immortal Miao, whose body had originally merely sizzled as it was roasted by the red-hot iron anvil, let out an earth-shattering scream. The burning pain had originally been nothing he could not endure, but after taking the Spirit Shocking Powder prepared by Lin Xiao, Immortal Miao's tolerance for pain immediately collapsed.

Daoist Yi Zhi's eyes shone as he let out a triumphant laugh. His hands rose and fell like the wind, and dozens of fine needles of different materials immediately pierced Immortal Miao's body. Strands of strangely natured true essence flowed through the needles into Immortal Miao's body, stimulating his internal organs, meridians, and acupoints until they convulsed and twisted violently.

Agony. Wave after wave of agony, magnified more than a thousandfold by Spirit Shocking Powder, crashed into Immortal Miao's sea of consciousness like bolts of savage thunder.

Immortal Miao's Primordial Spirit was like a small stone beneath a heavenly god's giant hammer, blasted into fragments. The double torment of mind and body made Immortal Miao open his mouth wide and release a soundless, howling roar.

At last, Immortal Miao shouted a single sentence. "I confess—I'll tell you everything!"

As expected of a great pillar of the demonic path, he did not possess the slightest spirit of sacrificing himself for others. Once Immortal Miao realized that Spirit Shocking Powder truly threatened his very survival, he immediately confessed everything he knew about Blood God Ancestor and even Jiang Zizai, revealing it all in full detail. This included confidential intelligence such as how many demonic cultivators Blood God Ancestor had gathered and where their main stronghold was now located.

Daoist Yi Xing continued questioning Immortal Miao. Once he finally confirmed that Immortal Miao had indeed revealed everything he knew, Daoist Yi Xing nodded at Daoist Yi Zhi and said gravely, "Junior Brother Yi Zhi, send Fellow Daoist Miao off to reincarnate. In your next life, Fellow Daoist Miao, I hope you will be a good man."

Before Immortal Miao could speak, Daoist Yi Zhi flicked a finger. A thin blade lightly sliced open Immortal Miao's temple, and a streak of pink light shot from the wound. Reluctantly, it circled Immortal Miao's body several times, then prepared to fly straight toward the cave ceiling.

Lin Xiao, who had remained behind Daoist Yi Xing, suddenly gave a sharp howl. He formed a thunder seal with both hands and roared, "Supreme Clarity Demon Subduing Triple Shock!"

Boom! Boom! Boom! Three successive purple thunderbolts as thick as bowls suddenly descended from the cave ceiling, striking the pink light dead-on. Immortal Miao's true spirit was struck by the triple thunderfire and shattered on the spot. His soul scattered and his spirit was destroyed; he died completely clean, without leaving behind the slightest remnant.

Yi Xing and the others looked at Lin Xiao in astonishment. Lin Xiao gave a bitter laugh. "This junior is not a member of Origin Sect, so naturally I need not uphold the sect master's promise. Immortal Miao was an accomplice of the demon who destroyed my Great Luo Pill Dao. Naturally, he could not be allowed to live!"

Daoist Yi Xing spread his hands and shook them, but said nothing.

Yi Xin sighed softly and shook her head. "Forget it. Immortal Miao, this too is retribution coming due. Hmm, but Blood God Ancestor is now a powerful force. How should we respond?"

Yi Xing lowered his head and pondered for a while, then said decisively, "Petition the elders. Ring the Mysterious Origin Green Bell."

Lin Xiao did not know what the Mysterious Origin Green Bell was, but when he saw Yi Xin, Yi Yi, and Yi Zhi's expressions instantly become incomparably solemn, he immediately knew this was no small matter.

Something that could make several elders of Origin Sect treat it with such grave importance could not help but fill Lin Xiao with anticipation.

"Blood God Ancestor, you and your band of demonic disciples are the enemies of the entire righteous cultivation world?"

Lin Xiao's body trembled faintly with excitement.

At the heart of Origin Sect's mountain gate lay a scenic little valley encircled by mountains.

For the first time, Lin Xiao saw the elders of Origin Sect's Xuan Generation. Xuan Yuan and Xuan Heng looked like handsome youths of sixteen or seventeen, their features seven or eight parts alike. They were a pair of Dao companions who cultivated together, and were Yi Xing and Yi Xin's master and mistress. Xuan Luo appeared to be a child of seven or eight, yet possessed a pair of jade-white hands nearly a foot long. His tender face was plump and rosy, but his forehead was piled full of wrinkles, his eyebrows slanted upward, and three strands of yellow beard hung from his chin. No matter how one looked at him, he was strange beyond measure. This was Xuan Luo, the one who had struck Immortal Miao from behind.

The other fifteen elders of the Xuan Generation did not possess such bizarre appearances as those three. Every one of them had the bearing of an immortal, white hair and white beards, and all looked every inch like accomplished masters of the Dao.

When one broke through from the Nascent Soul Stage into the Void Realm, as one's understanding of the laws of heaven and earth deepened, the body underwent a world-upending transformation. Each person's comprehension differed, so each bodily transformation was different. Xuan Yuan and Xuan Heng cultivated together as Dao companions, their Dao hearts connected, and so their appearances had become almost exactly identical. Xuan Luo's nature had increasingly become like that of an improper child, and thus his body had turned so strange. The mysteries of the Void Realm were still beyond what Lin Xiao could understand.

Therefore, from far away, Lin Xiao merely gazed with exceptional reverence at these three senior masters who had just stepped into the Void Realm, as well as the fifteen Xuan Generation elders who had reached the perfected realm of the Nascent Soul Stage. In the cultivation world, where Spiritual Energy was becoming ever thinner, attaining such terrifying cultivation realms was remarkable. Even though Qi Yuan Star possessed uniquely blessed natural conditions and its Spiritual Energy remained far more abundant than that of the outside world, the perseverance and effort these Xuan Generation elders had devoted to the Dao Path were still extraordinary.

"Actually, Elder Xuan Yuan and the others are not the only Void Realm experts in our Origin Sect." Daoist Yidan, who had been constantly hovering around Lin Xiao these past few days, saw Lin Xiao staring blankly at Xuan Yuan and the others and hurriedly said ingratiatingly, "Above them, Origin Sect has two elders of the Qing Generation who entered the Void Realm five hundred years ago. However, they have always been occupied with an exceedingly important matter alongside several other senior experts, so no one in the cultivation world knows that they entered the Void Realm five hundred years ago."

"They entered the Void Realm five hundred years ago?" Lin Xiao's heart jolted, and he hurriedly looked at Daoist Yidan. "Does that not mean the cultivation of those two seniors is now even more unfathomable?"

Daoist Yidan chuckled. He looked at Lin Xiao fawningly, rapidly rubbing several fingers of his right hand together as he muttered in a low voice, "I heard that Fellow Daoist Lin Xiao refined some unusual medicine yesterday, Spirit Shocking Powder? Heh heh!"

Lin Xiao looked helplessly at Daoist Yidan and nodded. "Spirit Shocking Powder is not anything particularly remarkable. But the deeds of those two seniors..."

Daoist Yidan's eyes gleamed as he stared at Lin Xiao and rapidly said, "Hand over the prescription first, then everything else can be discussed."

The corner of Lin Xiao's mouth twitched. Lowering his voice, he told Daoist Yidan the prescription for Spirit Shocking Powder. Daoist Yidan immediately turned and hurried away. Lin Xiao failed to catch hold of Daoist Yidan in time, and Daoist Yidan had already sprinted far into the distance. A faint, threadlike voice drifted into Lin Xiao's ears. "This poor Daoist does not know much about those two patriarchs either. In any case, once the Mysterious Origin Green Bell rings, they will return to Origin Sect within a few days. Fellow Daoist can investigate for yourself then."

Lin Xiao was so angry that his teeth ground with a crack! Those patriarchs of Origin Sect's Qing Generation were figures of his master's generation even to Daoist Yi Xing, the current sect master of Origin Sect—yet he was supposed to investigate their affairs? Lin Xiao watched Daoist Yidan's fleeing back and gave a dark laugh. "Just you wait. Next time, I'll give you a pill formula improved by Senior Sister Yao'er! An old Daoist who keeps no credit, hmph hmph!" The moment he mentioned Yao'er, Lin Xiao's heart suddenly clenched. He hurriedly drew a deep breath and suppressed that strand of emotion in his heart.