The party successfully reached the village.
The village was not small, but all its houses were extremely old, even exuding a damp, near-death air.
—Low courtyard walls, walls covered in white moss, and dim lamps; amid this snowy night, everything was steeped in the decayed stench of ruin.
To a cultivator with Spiritual Sense as keen as Li Ye's, this place was no different from a demon's lair—he had never experienced such a feeling even in his most destitute days.
The pervasive mingled auras of countless cultivators and demonic energy were trying to corrode his pure Dharma body, nurtured by the essence of sun and moon and pristine spiritual charm.
By rights, he should have used some spells now, or simply held the fragment of the Earth Book. That would have isolated the filthy demonic energy here.
But he did not do so.
With no power to sustain his ever-changing spells, all he could do was use this body of his to sense the changes in everything around him.
Only by stepping into this mire himself
could he truly experience the profound suffering of this land that had nearly fallen into demonhood.
He was an immortal cultivator.
Exterminate demons and uphold the Dao was the ancestral precept of his sect.
This land had provided the Four Seasons Sect with an untold amount of winter seasonal power. He had a responsibility to save it.
At the very least,
he could not allow it to truly fall onto the demonic path.
He jumped down from the bear's shoulder and lightly stepped onto the ground, frozen hard by the endless winter. The instant he stood upon the earth, earth energy surged toward him.
Icy energy carrying a stabbing pain poured into the soles of his feet, alive as though it wanted to burrow