Taiyi remained in the side chamber for another half day.
During that time, he neither touched the bowl of Blood Dew nor the Bone Fragment. He only slowly refined the last remnants of energy from the fruit, combining them with the method he had gleaned from the Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint and circulating them through his meridians again and again. It still hurt, but after enduring it for so long, he had begun to grow accustomed to it—like wearing a suit of ill-fitting iron armor that chafed his skin raw. Yet iron armor was still iron armor; it could shield him from some wind and cold.
He tested the mark in his palm. Away from the Blood Sea, it was remarkably docile, like a lump of dead flesh. But whenever he deliberately stirred the murky forces within his body, it still reacted faintly, cool against his skin, as though reminding him of something.
"It's time to leave," Taiyi murmured as he opened his eyes.
Staying any longer would not speed his recovery by much. Instead, it would only make that old bat think he was easy to manipulate. He rose and walked to the blood-red curtain at the entrance of the side chamber. Rather than lifting it immediately, he first cleared his throat.
His voice was not loud, but it carried well enough through this deathly silent place. "Fellow Daoist Styx, I have imposed upon you these past few days. I still have important matters to attend to, so I shall take my leave today."
His words were neither servile nor overbearing. He gave due courtesy while making his intention clear.
After waiting several breaths, there was no movement outside. He did not wait any longer and reached out to lift the curtain. The corridor beyond was empty, with only the dim glow of blood crystals along the walls illuminating the bone-paved path.
It was still that Blood Slave formed from coagulated blood plasma. It drifted silently over and led the way. This time, they did not take the original route. After weaving through several quieter bone corridors, they stopped at an even more secluded corner than before. There were few blood crystals here, and the light was so dim that he could barely see. Embedded in the ground was a small black bone slab engraved with a cruder, more ancient teleportation formation.
The Blood Slave floated to one side and went still.
Taiyi stepped into the formation. He could feel that cold, viscous gaze from deep within the palace sweep over him again. This time, it lingered longer, especially over his dantian and the barely stabilized aura around him.
There was no sound, no farewell, not even a perfunctory wish for a safe journey.
The formation patterns lit up with a dark red glow, thicker than before and carrying an even stronger sweet, bloody stench.
When he opened his eyes again, it was already dusk.
Taiyi's legs went weak, and he nearly lost his footing. The aftereffects of the teleportation were worse than last time. His head buzzed for several moments before finally settling. He steadied himself and looked around.
He was in a desolate valley, surrounded by barren stone mountains with scarcely a tree in sight. Beneath his feet lay a field of broken rocks. The teleportation formation's light was rapidly fading, and the last trace of blood-fiendish aura was scattered by the valley wind, leaving little evidence behind.
The sun hung low over the western ridge, setting the clouds ablaze with red. The wind was somewhat cold, carrying the smell of earth and dead grass.
He flexed his limbs. His bones still hurt, but he could move; his mana had recovered to about fifteen percent, not much, enough for travel but questionable in a fight; the several forces within him remained relatively docile, forcibly penned into their respective territories by his will. Though they did not get along, at least they were not causing trouble.
He needed to leave this place quickly. The Witch Race's people surely had not withdrawn. They might be wandering nearby.
He did not fly off immediately. Instead, he walked behind a massive boulder sheltered from the wind, sat down, closed his eyes, and slowly extended his divine sense. Ten zhang, twenty zhang, fifty zhang... There was only the whistling wind through rock crevices, a few rock scorpions crawling, and clumps of dead grass trembling. No unusual aura.
Yet the taut string in his heart did not loosen.
Styx had let him go too easily. Something was wrong. After losing so much face, could Di Jiang truly let the matter rest? And then there were all those twists and turns within the Blood Sea...
He rested for roughly the time it took to burn an incense stick, waiting until his aura had fully settled before rising. He chose the north—the mountains there were more tangled, riddled with ravines, and easier to hide in.
He did not fly high, skimming almost along the ground. He conserved his mana, relying mainly on the remaining strength of his body and his subtle control over the air currents. The wind against his face was rough. The old wound in his right chest ached faintly with every breath.
He flew like that for nearly an hour, crossing several barren mountains before a broad dry riverbed appeared ahead. Gray-white pebbles carpeted the valley floor, while high earthen cliffs rose on both sides. The sun was nearly sinking behind the cliffs, stretching the shadows long.
This place was open, with nowhere to hide. Taiyi did not hesitate and planned to fly straight across.
Just as he reached the center of the riverbed, still some twenty zhang from the far bank—
A sudden change erupted!
The gray-white pebbles beneath his feet came alive without warning!
They did not roll. The entire riverbed rippled like water! Immediately afterward, seven or eight millstone-sized boulders shot up from the riverbed with dull whistling blasts, smashing down upon him from above! The stones were wrapped in earthen-yellow light, swift and vicious, sealing off every direction around him!
At nearly the same moment, a large section of seemingly solid cliff on the left exploded with a boom! It was not flying rubble. The entire cliff face transformed into countless sharp earth spikes that poured toward his left side like a torrential downpour!
To the right, dozens of nearly transparent water blades condensed from thin air, their edges gleaming with cold light as they silently sealed off his right flank and the space above his head!
Three attacks—earth, earth, and water—worked together flawlessly, striking at a vicious moment: precisely when he was suspended in midair, with his old momentum spent and new momentum not yet born!
Taiyi's heart clenched, and every hair on his body stood on end!
There was no time to think! The instant the pebbles sprang up, his remaining mana instinctively flooded into his legs, and his body suddenly dropped! Not backward, not forward, but straight down—plunging fiercely toward the pebble-strewn riverbed below!
At the same time, his mutated left arm swung out. Not to block the stones—he could not—but toward the edge of the densest cluster of earth spikes on his left, sweeping diagonally with all his strength!
That swing was utterly unstructured, even ugly. Yet along the path of his arm, the forces within him that had only recently settled—the pitiful lingering warmth of the True Sun Fire, the violent remnants of baleful blood, and the heavy murk of earth-vein fiendish aura—were forcibly twisted together by a savage will. They merged into a chaotic, violent gale that burst forth with his arm!
"Hoo—boom!"
The gale collided with the rain of earth spikes from the left. It did not scatter all of them, but it tore open a small, irregular gap at the edge! Several earth spikes were knocked off course and collided with one another, creating a patch of chaos.
In that split-second flash, Taiyi's body followed the momentum of his fall and the tiny opening created by that gap, forcibly twisting toward the lower left!
"Bang! Bang!"
Two pebbles grazed his right shoulder and back. The thin protective spiritual light around him shattered instantly, and the immense earth-element force clinging to the stones sent his blood and qi roiling. Sweetness flooded his throat. More earth spikes and water blades skimmed past his sides and over his scalp, their fierce winds slicing painfully at his skin.
But the deadly three-sided encirclement had been mostly avoided through that near-self-destructive, hairbreadth twist!
"Thud!"
He crashed heavily onto the hard, dry riverbed. Pain shot through his spine, and golden stars burst before his eyes. His right shoulder and back burned fiercely; the bones were likely cracked again. But he dared not stop. The moment he hit the ground, he rolled with the impact, tumbling behind a low mound of piled pebbles. He rose into a half-crouch with his back against the stones, gasping heavily as his eyes fixed on the front.
Three tall figures slowly emerged from the far bank of the riverbed and the earthen cliffs on either side.
On the left cliff stood a lean man with dark skin, clad in crude leather armor and holding a short earthen-yellow staff.
On the right cliff stood a pale, sinister-looking middle-aged man. His hands formed strange seals, and pale blue water vapor curled around his body.
Directly ahead, on the far bank of the riverbed, a brawny man built like a small mountain was slowly withdrawing his hands from the ground. His upper body was bare, his bronze skin covered in scars. His huge, bell-like eyes stared fixedly at Taiyi, carrying not only killing intent but also the playful amusement of a cat toying with a mouse.
Three Great Witches. Judging from how seamlessly they coordinated, they were definitely not a makeshift group.
Taiyi's heart sank.
"Eastern Emperor Taiyi," the brawny man said, his voice rumbling like thunder, "your life is truly tough. Even Pangu Hall failed to kill you."
Taiyi said nothing, swiftly scanning the surroundings. Fighting head-on meant death. Running? The earlier ambush had already thrown his blood and qi into turmoil and drained more than half his mana. These three clearly specialized in combined attacks and sealing off escape routes. His chances of fleeing were slim.
"Why waste words with this feathered beast that blasphemes the Father God?" the lean man on the left snapped. "Take him down, peel his skin and pull out his tendons, then present him to Ancestral Witch Di Jiang!"
Di Jiang! So it really was him!
Taiyi's heart tightened, but his face twisted into a cold smile mingling pain and defiance. "Di Jiang? He lacks the nerve to come himself, so he sent a few small fry to die in his place?"
"Courting death!" the middle-aged man controlling the water blades shouted coldly. His hand seals shifted, and dozens more solid water blades instantly condensed in the air, their edges gleaming with dark blue frost. "Kill him!"
Before the words had even faded, all three moved at once!
The brawny man stomped fiercely, making the entire riverbed shake! Countless pebbles stirred again. This time, they did not shoot upward, but rolled and piled like living creatures. In the blink of an eye, four enclosing stone walls rose around Taiyi and rapidly pressed inward!
The lean man drove his short staff into the ground, and the pebbles beneath Taiyi's feet suddenly turned to quicksand, creating a tremendous suction that sought to trap him in place!
Meanwhile, the middle-aged Great Witch's water blades, like sharks scenting blood, slipped precisely through the gaps in the stone walls, targeting Taiyi's vital points!
A dead end! Worse than before!
Taiyi's pupils shrank to pinpoints. Stone walls squeezing him in, quicksand trapping his feet, water blades coming for his life... They intended to trap him here alive!
He could not let himself be trapped!
Without even thinking, Taiyi made a move that left all three Great Witches stunned for an instant—he poured every last bit of power within him, including the little mana he had just recovered, into his legs, and then...
He suddenly stomped down with all his might!
"Break—!"
He was not crushing the pebbles. He was driving that chaotic force, mixed with the lingering warmth of True Sun Fire, the savagery of baleful blood, and the heaviness of earth-vein murk, through his feet and deep into the riverbed strata below—strata already highly unstable after being stirred by the Great Witches' power!
Like tossing a red-hot iron ball into a cauldron of boiling oil!
"BOOM—!!!"
Centered on him, the pebble layer across a radius of more than ten zhang violently exploded upward! Countless pebbles and sand blasted into the sky, blotting out the heavens!
The four closing stone walls and the quicksand's suction beneath his feet were instantly thrown into disorder and stalled by the sudden violent upheaval erupting from deep underground!
Using the wild recoil from below and the cover of the chaotic rain of stones, Taiyi shot like an exploded boulder toward the left—the earthen cliff where the lean man stood—charging forward without a care for anything else!
He chose the left because the lean man had used a technique that turned cliffs into spikes. His direct control over the earth beneath his feet might be weaker than the brawny man's. And the left cliff was closer, with more complicated terrain!
"Stop him!" the brawny man roared in fury, frantically waving his hands to control the flying pebbles and block him.
But Taiyi was too fast and too erratic, charging like a man gambling with his life. He smashed several incoming pebbles aside with his mutated left arm. Bone-splitting pain surged through the limb, but he ignored it. His eyes held only that earthen cliff.
The lean man clearly had not expected Taiyi to break through the encirclement with such an almost shameless method. In his haste, he raised his short staff, and earthen-yellow light condensed into a solid earthen shield before him.
Taiyi had never intended to collide with it head-on. At the instant before he struck the shield, his body twisted in an extremely awkward motion, barely grazing past its edge. At the same time, the fingers of his right hand curled like claws, carrying the remaining force of True Sun Fire as they viciously raked toward the lean man's face—forcing him to defend himself!
The lean man instinctively tilted his head back, and the technique on his short staff faltered for an instant.
That instant was enough!
Taiyi had already darted up the earthen cliff like a wildcat. Without looking back, he fled for his life toward the deeper mountains beyond the cliff, where the terrain was rougher and the woods denser—though they consisted only of low shrubs.
"After him!" the brawny man roared in rage and gave chase first. The other two immediately followed.
Taiyi heard the whistling wind and furious roars behind him, but he dared not look back or run in a straight line. He specifically plunged through areas with more rocks, denser brush, and greater changes in elevation. With his precise bodily control and instinctive sense of danger, he made a string of seemingly irregular sharp turns that narrowly avoided the earth and water attacks from behind.
His lungs felt as if they were about to explode, and every breath carried the taste of blood. The wounds on his right shoulder and back had completely torn open, blood pouring continuously from them. His left arm hurt so badly it was nearly numb, while the fierce wind from the water blades had left the right side of his body covered in tiny cuts.
But he could not stop.
The pursuers behind him were drawing ever closer. Several times, sharp earth spikes plunged into the ground almost against his heels, while icy water blades skimmed past his scalp.
At this rate, being caught was only a matter of time.
A ruthless glint flashed through Taiyi's eyes. He bit through the tip of his tongue, and a burst of bloody sweetness flooded his throat, forcibly jolting his nearly exhausted mind awake. Then, rather than simply fleeing, he began deliberately guiding his route toward places where the mountains were steeper, the rock structures looked more unstable, and the earth-vein aura was more chaotic.
At the same time, he desperately squeezed the faint imprint of the Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint within his sea of consciousness—not to "see," but to "feel" the destructive intuition toward "structures" and "nodes" contained within that imprint.
Where was the weakest point? Where would collapse at a single touch?
When he rushed onto a narrow mountain ridge, with steep slopes of loose stones on both sides, he stopped and turned to face the three Great Witches, who had chased to within thirty zhang.
His face was as pale as paper, and he was covered in blood. He could barely remain standing by bracing himself against a protruding rock, looking as though he had reached the end of his strength.
"Can't run anymore?" the brawny man sneered as he advanced. The other two closed in from either side in a fan-shaped formation.
Taiyi said nothing. He only looked at them, his eyes unnervingly calm.
Then, at the instant all three attacked at once and unleashed their final strike—
Taiyi used the last of his strength to smash his mutated left fist down upon a seemingly ordinary rock at a certain point on the ridge beneath his feet!
He was not breaking the rock. He was driving the last condensed trace of chaotic, violent force in his fist, along with the information about the ridge's weakest structural "node" that he had perceived through the instinct of the Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint, into that point at once!
"Crack... boom!"
A faint crisp sound, like ice splitting.
Then the entire narrow ridge abruptly collapsed inward around the point where his fist had struck! It was not a landslide but a structural collapse! The loose stone slopes on both sides poured down like avalanches, instantly sweeping the three Great Witches who had rushed close into the torrent!
"Bastard!"
"Watch out!"
Their curses and cries were swallowed by the rumbling roar of cascading earth and stone.
The instant Taiyi threw his punch, he used the recoil to leap toward a gap he had long spotted lower down the side of the ridge, concealed behind several massive boulders!
The falling earth and stone nearly brushed his heels as they buried the place where he had just been standing.
He tumbled into the rock crevice, battered senseless. His vision repeatedly darkened, while his ears were filled with the thunderous rumble of rolling rock and dirt and the faint, furious curses of the Witch Race in the distance.
He knew he was safe for the moment.
The collapse was not small. Even if the three Great Witches were not injured, it would take them some effort to clear the debris and pursue him immediately.
He lay sprawled in the cold crevice, without even the strength to move a finger. Blood continued seeping from the corner of his mouth, his shoulder, and his back, quickly staining the stones beneath him red. His consciousness began to blur as cold and darkness wrapped around him from all sides.
Before losing consciousness, his final thought was not relief at having escaped death, but a question that had flashed through his mind during the battle:
How had three Great Witches happened to be waiting beside that dry riverbed?
Did Di Jiang truly possess the ability to divine the future?
Or... had someone passed him the information?
Darkness completely swallowed his consciousness.
Outside the crevice, the tumbling earth and stone gradually settled. The brawny man crawled out from the rubble, covered in dust. Looking in the direction where Taiyi had vanished, his face was terrifyingly grim.
"Search! He's wounded that badly. He can't have gone far! Even if we have to turn these mountains upside down, find him!"
Night was slowly descending over this desolate mountain range.
Before you continue