The Undying Qin Emperor

Ying Zheng had no idea that a strange black shadow had appeared behind him.

Nor did he see that the black shadow had shot out from a golden cauldron at the far end of the hall!

That golden cauldron had stood there since the hall was built, and this hall itself had been constructed at the very outset of the Blood Qin Empire's founding. Countless protective formations blanketed its interior and exterior alike. It was the secret place where generations of Blood Qin emperors went into secluded cultivation.

Outsiders all believed that the emperors of the Blood Qin Empire cultivated in the Red Dragon Hall, drawing upon the energies of heaven and earth gathered by the imperial city's formations. Only the Blood Qin emperors themselves, along with a very few others, knew that the true place of cultivation for Blood Qin's emperors was here—the Blood Qin Founding Hall!

The coiled-dragon pillars within this great hall could transform the energies of heaven and earth absorbed by the imperial city's defensive grand formation, changing ordinary natural elemental energy into the iron-blooded aura of slaughter and conquest required by the Iron-Blood Emperor Art. Cultivating the Iron-Blood Emperor Art here was faster, and the specialized defensive formations made it safer as well.

Thus, whenever successive Blood Qin emperors cultivated, they invariably came to this Blood Qin Founding Hall. Over countless years, this had become a tradition, a habit—but through every dynasty and every generation, no Blood Qin emperor had ever known that within the several-zhang-tall pure gold cauldron at the end of the Blood Qin Founding Hall, such a secretive black shadow was hidden.

It possessed no human form at all, merely a hazy shadow like smoke. Yet it radiated the iron-blooded aura unique to the Iron-Blood Emperor Art, blending flawlessly with the iron-blooded