Netherworld Blood Curse, Nine Yang Burning Evil

Inside the karst cave, the dead silence was shattered by heavy panting and the faint sound of blood dripping. The air seemed frozen, thick with the stench of blood, the smell of scorched flesh, and that lingering, bone-chilling Killing Intent.

Li Yifan bent one knee, barely keeping himself upright, his face as pale as paper. Black blood kept seeping from the wound where the Netherworld Soul Piercing Strike had pierced his left arm, dripping onto the ground with soft tap... tap... sounds. A sharp, freezing force with penetrating and corrosive properties rampaged through the meridians of his left arm like a maggot burrowing into bone, trying to spread toward his heart meridian. Waves of excruciating pain assaulted him, and his left arm had almost gone numb. Gritting his teeth against the agony that bored into his heart, he drove the Nine Yang Burning Heaven Technique at unprecedented speed. His supreme-yang true qi surged like roaring tides, wave after wave striking, enveloping, and refining the Netherworld Piercing Force. Crimson-golden light flickered across his body, violently clashing with the icy energy that had invaded him and giving off faint sizzle, sizzle sounds. Fine beads of cold sweat seeped from his forehead. The consumption of both his true qi and his mental strength had reached its limit.

On the other side, "Shadow Fiend" Li Heng was in an even more miserable state. He staggered back more than ten steps before his back slammed heavily into a thick stalactite, barely bringing him to a stop. The old wound on his left shoulder, struck by the full force of Li Yifan's Scorching Sun Finger, was now a complete mess. The wound was deep enough to expose bone, its edges charred and rolled back, while viscous black blood mixed with scraps of flesh continued to gush out. Strands of crimson supreme-yang true qi could even be seen burning deep within the wound like tiny flames, continuously annihilating the lingering Baleful Intent and bringing waves of soul-tearing pain. His entire left arm hung limp, utterly ruined. His originally pale and sinister face was now twisted by agony and blood loss, hideous and terrifying. His aura flickered violently like a guttering candle in the wind, reduced to the very brink of collapse.

Yet what burned in Li Heng's sunken eye sockets was not despair, but sky-shaking resentment and an almost insane resolve! He glared at Li Yifan, who was likewise badly wounded and gasping for breath nearby. His teeth grated audibly, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

"Y-you little bastard... v-very... very good!" Li Heng's voice was hoarse and broken, like a torn bellows, filled with hatred carved into his bones. "You actually... forced this old man... to such a state... The Xuntian Guard... truly has produced a remarkable figure..."

Every word he spoke tugged at his wounds, bringing on violent coughing and spasms. Yet his remaining right hand was remarkably steady as it slowly reached into his robes and fumbled around. He pulled out the cold black jade box engraved with bizarre runes—the Soul-attracting Jade Box. Under the dim light, ghostly radiance seemed to flow across the runes on its surface.

Li Yifan's pupils suddenly contracted! He forcefully gathered a breath of true qi, suppressing his roiling blood and the agony in his left arm, and shouted, "Li Heng! You still want to use that evil object?!"

"Heh heh... heh heh heh..." Li Heng let out a low, chilling laugh. His eyes were wild and feverish. "I've roamed the world all my life... how could I... how could I fall into the hands of a junior like you! If you want this old man's life... then trade your soul... and the essence blood in your body for it!"

Before his voice had even faded, he bit through the thumb of his right hand. Bright red blood gushed out instantly. Without another moment's hesitation, he used blood as ink and his finger as a brush, swiftly drawing a complex and sinister blood-colored rune on the surface of the Soul-attracting Jade Box! As the rune was completed, the entire jade box suddenly trembled, emitting a deep hum! The lid automatically opened a narrow crack, and an aura far purer, colder, and more resentful than the cave's Baleful Intent spread out as though it were tangible. Faintly, it seemed that the wails and shrieks of countless wronged souls came from inside the box!

Immediately afterward, Li Heng did something that made Li Yifan's scalp prickle! He violently pressed his blood-soaked thumb into the depths of his mangled left shoulder wound!

"With my blood... I summon the Netherworld's aura! With my soul... I offer sacrifice to the spirits of the Nine Hells! Netherworld Blood Curse... open!"

Li Heng let out a shrill roar that sounded nothing like a human voice! Following his incantation and movements, the pure, sinister energy spreading from the Soul-attracting Jade Box seemed to have found an outlet. It surged madly through the connection between his thumb and wound, pouring into his body! At the same time, his originally feeble aura flared up like a blazing fire doused in boiling oil, swelling at an abnormal speed! Under the infusion of vast amounts of Baleful Intent, the horrifying wound on his left shoulder temporarily stopped bleeding. Yet the flesh around it rapidly turned glossy black, more bizarre blood-colored patterns emerging across it. The dead silence and evil aura radiating from his entire body increased severalfold!

Li Heng's appearance also underwent a terrifying change! His complexion shifted from pale to a deathly gray. His eyes were completely swallowed by blackness, and black worms seemed to writhe beneath his skin. He looked more like an evil ghost that had crawled out of a grave! This was the Netherworld Blood Curse, an extremely vicious forbidden secret art. By drawing on the Netherworld's aura and consuming one's own essence blood and soul as the price, it forcibly stimulated one's potential for a short time and granted power far beyond one's cultivation realm! But the price was immense: at best, one's cultivation would fall permanently; at worst, one's soul would be annihilated, never to be reborn!

"Not good! He's sacrificing himself and casting a forbidden art!" Alarm bells rang wildly in Li Yifan's heart as an unprecedented sense of deadly danger enveloped his entire body! The aura Li Heng now emitted was already infinitely close to the Blood Refining Realm, and it was filled with chaos, evil, and destruction!

I absolutely can't let him complete the blood curse! A look of determination flashed through Li Yifan's eyes. He endured the agony in his left arm, which felt ready to burst, along with his body's weakness, and slammed his foot into the ground. Spirit Fox Steps erupted at full force, his body transforming into a streak of lightning as he shot toward Li Heng, who was still casting the spell! He pressed his right index and middle fingers together, condensing every last trace of Nine Yang True Qi in his body into his fingertips without reservation. The light of the Scorching Sun Finger blazed more fiercely than ever, as though a miniature sun had been born at his fingertips! This was his final strike—and his strongest!

"Scorching Sun Pierces the Sky!"

However, after casting the Netherworld Blood Curse, Li Heng's reaction speed and strength had risen to a terrifying level! He suddenly raised his head, his pitch-black pupils locking onto Li Yifan as the corners of his mouth curled into a cruel arc. He did not even move. He merely raised his intact right hand, now wreathed in dense black qi, and pointed two fingers like a halberd. A Netherworld Strike several times sharper than before shot out casually!

Hiss!

A dark finger force, condensed like black crystal and fast to the extreme, reached its target first despite being launched later, colliding head-on with the force of Li Yifan's Scorching Sun Pierces the Sky!

"BOOM!!!"

This collision was worlds apart from the one before! It was the ultimate clash between the blazing sun at noon and a frigid midnight tide! Crimson and black energies collided, annihilated one another, and erupted with a deafening boom! A powerful shock wave spread wildly in every direction from the point of impact! The ground split apart, shattered stones flew in all directions, and several nearby stalactites were snapped in half!

"Pfft—!"

Li Yifan seemed to have been struck by a heavy hammer. Blood sprayed from his mouth as his body flew backward like a kite with its string cut, crashing heavily onto the ground more than ten zhang away and rolling several times before stopping. The crimson sunfire at his fingertips went out completely, his right arm hung limp, and his internal organs throbbed with pain as though they had been displaced. His vision went black in waves. His true qi was almost entirely depleted, and the circulation of his Nine Yang True Qi had become unbearably sluggish. The wound on his left arm split open again, blood gushing out. He had lost! Before Li Heng, who had unleashed a forbidden art, his all-out strike had been crushed so completely!

Li Heng merely swayed slightly before steadying himself. Black qi coiled around his body, his aura violent and chaotic, as he walked step by step toward Li Yifan, each heavy footfall like a drumbeat summoning death. His pitch-black eyes held no trace of human emotion, only a pure desire to kill and devour.

"A supreme-yang soul... essence blood... all of it is a great tonic... Once I devour you... perhaps this old man can truly enter the Blood Refining Realm! Hahahaha!" Li Heng burst into mad laughter, his voice warped and twisted.

Li Yifan struggled to crawl up, but agony racked his entire body, and his strength seemed to have been drained away. Looking at Li Heng drawing closer, as terrifying as a demon god, despair welled up in his heart. Could he really be buried here today?

No! I absolutely can't give up!

At this critical juncture between life and death, something deep within Li Yifan's spirit platform seemed to be stirred by the extreme pressure and despair! All this time, although his cultivation of the Nine Yang Burning Heaven Technique had progressed at astonishing speed and his foundation was solid, he had always felt that he lacked a true "divine essence"—a will that could burn the Eight Wastelands to ash, supreme in yang and unyielding in force! Now, faced with the extreme sinister darkness and threat of death brought by the Netherworld Blood Curse, the supreme-yang origin born from his cultivation art seemed to be completely awakened!

"When the heart is a blazing sun, burn all evil! How could the might of the Nine Yangs allow the Netherworld to profane it!"

A profound formula rang out in his heart like a great bell and resounding drum! It was not an external voice, but a trace of true meaning hidden within the inheritance of the Nine Yang Burning Heaven Technique, comprehended by him at this moment of life and death!

In an instant, Li Yifan felt his consciousness connect with the faint yet tenacious origin of the Nine Yang True Qi within his body! A hot, unyielding will that could burn away all evil burst forth from the depths of his soul! His originally sluggish and exhausted true qi, driven by this will, suddenly rekindled like a prairie fire. It became even purer and even hotter!

The light in his eyes, originally dim from exhaustion, was suddenly replaced by two clusters of golden flames! An aura of supreme yang that was not vast but incomparably pure and condensed, carrying an invincible will to destroy evil, rose slowly from within him like a dormant volcano awakening!

Li Heng, who had been preparing to deliver the final blow, abruptly stopped! For the first time, disbelief and a trace of... fear appeared in his pitch-black pupils! He sensed that this boy, who should have been at the end of his strength, had given birth to an aura within his body that made even the power of the Netherworld Blood Curse tremble instinctively! It was suppression at the level of essence—the innate restraint of supreme yang over extreme yin!

"No... impossible! Just a dying struggle!" Li Heng roared, suppressing his unease as he gathered even denser Netherworld Killing Intent. His right hand's five fingers spread and curved into a massive ghost claw. Carrying black qi that surged to the heavens, it viciously clawed down toward Li Yifan's crown. He would completely snuff out this variable!

Yet at this critical instant!

Li Yifan suddenly raised his head, the golden flames in his eyes blazing fiercely! He no longer tried to stand. Instead, he sat cross-legged on the spot and struggled to form an ancient hand seal. The newborn supreme-yang true qi within him, infused with an unyielding will, began to circulate with a thunderous roar along the path of a secret art from the Nine Yang Burning Heaven Technique that he had never been able to truly comprehend!

"Nine Yang... Burning Evil!"

He spoke in a low voice. It was not loud, yet it carried an unquestionable majesty! In an instant, centered on him, a phantom halo composed purely of golden flames suddenly expanded! The halo was not searingly oppressive, but it carried an incomparable will that purified all evil and burned away every shadow!

The golden halo swept over the descending Netherworld ghost claw!

"Sizzle—Aaaah!!!"

It was like scorching-hot iron pressed against snow and ice! Li Heng's ghost claw, condensed from terrifying Netherworld Killing Intent, began to melt and disintegrate like snow beneath the spring sun the instant it touched the golden halo! The black qi evaporated with a shrill screech! Li Heng let out an agonized scream, his entire right arm seeming to ignite as billowing black smoke poured from it. The power of the Netherworld Blood Curse was violently rebounding upon him!

"No! This is... Nine Yang True Fire?! How could you possibly..." Li Heng retreated in terror, as though he had seen his most terrifying natural enemy. The power of the blood curse around his body became wildly unstable, his left shoulder wound split open again, and black blood sprayed out!

After casting Nine Yang Burning Evil, Li Yifan's face grew even paler, and his body swayed as though it might collapse. Clearly, the technique placed an enormous burden on him. Yet his eyes were exceptionally bright as he fixed them on Li Heng, who had suffered severe injuries and was now enduring the backlash of the blood curse.

An opening! His only opening!

He used the last trace of his strength to slap the ground with his left hand and propel himself up. With the fingers of his right hand pressed together, he poured all the thin strand of true qi that had just recovered—and that contained a trace of the will of the Nine Yang True Fire—into his fingertips! A seemingly feeble Scorching Sun Finger, carrying an ultimate will to destroy evil, struck toward the Shanzhong Acupoint on Li Heng's chest, where the backlash had caused his aura to fluctuate violently and his defenses were at their weakest!

This finger was already the last flicker of a spent force, yet it contained the ultimate will to overcome evil!

Li Heng was caught in the pain and terror of the blood curse's backlash and had no time to react!

"Pfft!"

The finger force lightly struck his Shanzhong Acupoint.

Time seemed to freeze for an instant.

In the next moment, Li Heng's body suddenly stiffened. His eyes bulged wide, filled with the utmost terror and disbelief. The Netherworld Blood Curse's power around his body seemed to lose control, clashing and exploding madly inside him!

"No—!!!"

A despairing roar rang through the karst cave! Li Heng's body swelled like an inflated balloon, black qi surging wildly beneath his skin. Finally, with a muffled explosion, his entire body burst apart! Flesh and blood flew in all directions, black qi scattered, and he ultimately turned into a cloud of ashes. Only the fallen Soul-attracting Jade Box, its radiance dim, and a black ring of antique design remained on the ground.

"Shadow Fiend" Li Heng, the demonic master who had dominated the world for years, had ultimately died from the backlash of the Netherworld Blood Curse he himself had summoned. His soul was annihilated!

Seeing Li Heng's body explode, Li Yifan's mind relaxed. The will sustaining him vanished in an instant. His vision went black, and he lost consciousness completely, collapsing heavily onto the ground.

The karst cave once again fell silent, leaving only the wreckage strewn across the floor and the thick stench of blood, recounting the heart-stopping battle between life and death that had just taken place.