Volume One: Carrying Wine and Singing Long Songs

Volume 1: Carrying Wine and Singing Long Songs, Chapter 15: Imperial Mausoleum

He compared the various formations stored in his mind over the past three thousand years with the one before him, then used his True Qi to try and re-inscribe the original version on the side. Bai Qiuran stomped his foot, his body sinking directly into the soil, and in the blink of an eye, he arrived inside the tomb of the sixteenth emperor. This type of formation belonged to the most notorious Blood God Sect among Demonic Cultivators; it was primarily used in conjunction with the Blood God Sect's Blood Coagulation Technique. That technique could easily coagulate the blood of any cultivator with a lower cultivation base than the user, killing them instantly—a truly vicious move. However, this technique could also be used on oneself, primarily for feigning death to escape. After scanning back and forth twice, Bai Qiuran discovered something suspicious. "As expected... the Su Blood Array of the Blood God Sect." According to the results of Bai Qiuran's Spiritual Sense scan, there were a total of eighteen corpses sleeping within this mausoleum. Several other tombs were empty, and the funerary objects placed inside had long since been eroded by time. His Spiritual Sense landed in the tomb of the sixteenth Shangxuan Emperor. "It seems that many of the heads of the Yao Mo incidents within the Shangxuan Kingdom should be counted on this fellow's account. Taking advantage of the chaos caused by Yao Mo to fish in troubled waters—what a disgraceful thing." After a rough look, Bai Qiuran did not touch the Demonic Cultivator's setup and retreated from the tomb. Now that the Demonic Cultivator was not there, destroying his setup would be useless and might instead alert the enemy, causing more sacrifices.

That night, the eve of the Heaven Worship Ceremony, Bai Qiuran traveled on foot to the Shangxuan Imperial Mausoleum, located a hundred miles from the capital of the Shangxuan Kingdom. And this Su Blood Array was precisely what those Demonic Cultivators used to revive their blood and reawaken themselves after using the Blood Coagulation Technique to feign death. "Human blood?" The Shangxuan Imperial Mausoleum was heavily guarded by the Imperial Guard, with thousands of troops protecting the mausoleum in layers. But these were clearly of no use against Bai Qiuran. He didn't even use any spells; relying solely on his Breath Holding Technique and Light Body Cultivation Method, he easily bypassed the army's surveillance and arrived inside the Shangxuan Imperial Mausoleum without anyone knowing. Bai Qiuran arrived above the mausoleum, first checking the location and feng shui of the altar and the tomb, then his Spiritual Sense probed directly into the ground, beginning to peer into the tombs of the successive monarchs of the Shangxuan Kingdom.

Bai Qiuran looked at this scene, feeling a bit angry, but in his three thousand years of life, he had learned to control his temper well. With a crisp cracking sound, the rivets and mechanisms used to seal the stone coffin were shattered by Bai Qiuran's immense strength, and the coffin lid flew off, embedding itself into the soil above the tomb. These human bloodstains were still fresh; it seemed the Demonic Cultivator must have returned to make these arrangements not long ago. Bai Qiuran activated his Spiritual Vision and could still see countless wronged souls trapped within the human blood, struggling in pain, yet suppressed and bound by the formation, unable to move on to the afterlife. He remembered that the Shangxuan Kingdom seemed to have been established in the year 1800 of the Dacang Calendar, which was when he, Bai Qiuran, was over 1800 years old. Inside this mausoleum, the sleeping positions of the Shangxuan emperors were arranged in chronological order, from deep to shallow. In the early years when the Shangxuan Kingdom was first established, amidst the chaos of war, many emperors died on the battlefield before their bodies could be recovered, so there were also cenotaphs in the mausoleum.

Bai Qiuran's expression became focused as he carefully examined these black marks. When his Spiritual Sense had swept over them earlier, because there was no energy fluctuation on these marks, he had thought they were just stains on the yellow silk. But now, looking closely, he discovered that these black marks might have originally been a formation formed by individual runes. He walked around the stone coffin twice, searching according to the habits of the Blood God Sect, and sure enough, in the layer of earth directly beneath the altar, he found the formation inscribed by the Demonic Cultivator using human blood. Bai Qiuran clapped his hands, stood up, and his eyes flickered. "But this setup is really crude; it makes me want to fix it for him. It seems he isn't a formally trained student from the Blood God Sect, perhaps just a rogue who obtained a remnant scroll."

In the tombs of the fifteenth, fourteenth, and thirteenth Shangxuan emperors before this one, the funerary objects buried with the corpses still had clearly defined outlines, yet the tomb of the sixteenth emperor, which was later than them, was completely empty inside. This was the second breakthrough point he had chosen. Since he suspected there was something fishy about the Heaven Worship Ceremony but couldn't find any clues on the organizers, he simply came directly to the location to check if there were any problems. "Or perhaps, this generation's emperor of the Shangxuan Kingdom is simply a Demonic Cultivator who practices the Blood God Sect's arts. Does he want to use young boys and girls for the Heaven Worship Ceremony to perform a blood sacrifice to increase his cultivation, or to extend his own life? Regardless, all of this should be revealed at tomorrow's Heaven Worship Ceremony." "That's not right; there should at least be some funerary objects in this tomb." "Huh? What is this?" "Let's go in and take a look."

Bai Qiuran waved his hand to clear the dust and looked into the stone coffin. Sure enough, the coffin lined with yellow silk was completely empty; there was nothing inside. "This tomb is also empty?" Over three thousand years ago, when Bai Qiuran was born, it coincided with the end of the great war between the Daoist world and the Demon Race. When the Demon Race retreated to the Savage Lands, because of the previous catastrophe, the Ten Lands of Jiuzhou abolished the old calendar and began using the current Dacang Calendar. After a simple inquiry, Bai Qiuran successfully found the location of the Imperial Mausoleum, which was known to almost everyone in the capital of the Shangxuan Kingdom, and arrived there that very night. Because the Azure Nether Sword Sect was nearby, this country had lasted for a very long time. Up until now, it had a history of 1,200 years. Each emperor of the Shangxuan Kingdom reigned for an average of about fifty years, which meant there should have been twenty-four or twenty-five emperors by now.

After looking for a moment, Bai Qiuran suddenly discovered some black marks on the yellow silk. These black marks seemed to have been some kind of liquid that had now dried into powder. He scraped some off and smelled it in front of his nose. The tomb was empty, containing only a massive stone coffin, filled with toxic gases formed after years of being buried underground. However, these had no effect on Bai Qiuran. After arriving, he walked quickly toward the stone coffin and, without a shred of mercy, reached out and pried it open. As the burial place for the successive monarchs of the Shangxuan Kingdom, the Imperial Mausoleum was naturally built with great grandeur. Inside the heavily guarded mausoleum, a wide stone road capable of accommodating four carriages side-by-side extended from the entrance toward the tomb. Two rows of Mausoleum Guardian Beasts stared at each other on both sides of the road, and at their end lay the tall Imperial Altar and the Imperial Mausoleum, where the monarchs of the Shangxuan Kingdom slept beneath.

Those wronged souls could wait a while before being saved, and since tomorrow was the Heaven Worship Ceremony, Bai Qiuran, as "one" of the two hundred young boys and girls, decided to prepare a surprise for that Demonic Cultivator, letting him properly taste the flavor of those victims. "So, it is certain that there is a Demonic Cultivator lurking in the Shangxuan Kingdom."