Bronze Statue

Inside the secret chamber, the Yin-Yang Elder had fallen into despair.

He felt an invisible, eerie force in the surrounding air, constantly devouring his vitality.

As time passed, his life force rapidly ebbed away.

A congenital cultivator could live for two hundred years. He was only a little over a hundred.

By all rights, he should have had at least seventy or eighty more years to live.

But now, he could sense his remaining lifespan draining away at a terrifying speed.

In less than half an incense stick's time,

he had already lost nearly a year of his life.

At this rate, it would take less than a day for his lifespan to run out and kill him.

He was afraid!

But it was no use.

Whether he went mad, begged for mercy, or shouted abuse and threats, nothing had the slightest effect.

It was as if he were the only one left in the entire world.

The only thing awaiting him was death.

After imprisoning the Yin-Yang Elder, Lin Cheng's eyes grew even colder.

If he hadn't arrived in time, the consequences of letting the Yin-Yang Elder emerge from seclusion would have been unthinkable.

"Scum like him—beasts! No, worse than beasts—deserve to die!"

"Just making him suffer a little is letting him off easy. He should spend the rest of his life wishing he were dead!"

As a well-behaved young man of the twenty-first century, Lin Cheng had never been short on a sense of justice.

When faced with a mad, depraved villain like this, if Heaven wouldn't punish him, Lin Cheng would!

Having dealt with the matter here,

Lin Cheng's divine sense hurried off toward the third location.

The next second, despite being prepared, Lin Cheng was still stunned by the bloody scene before him.

"Is this a slaughterhouse?"

As far as the eye could see, everything was crimson.

In a spacious underground chamber, hundreds upon hundreds of corpses lay piled up. Some were still wearing the uniforms of Beast Taming Mountain, clearly former disciples of the sect.

There were even elders among the dead.

The corpses and flesh were piled high, and blood gurgled across the ground.

It all flowed toward a mysterious altar in the center of the chamber.

"..."

Lin Cheng looked on in silence, his heart filled with complicated emotions.

When he'd first arrived, he'd wondered where all the disciples and elders of Beast Taming Mountain had gone.

He hadn't expected them to all be here.

Whoosh!

Lin Cheng vanished from where he stood, reappearing inside the underground chamber where the altar had been set up.

Seeing the scene with his own eyes, Lin Cheng was deeply shaken by its cruelty.

Up close, he could clearly make out the altar's ancient, sinister markings. They glimmered red, flickering like something breathing.

The whole altar seemed alive.

In its center lay a bronze object, shaped like a statue.

It had a blue face, fangs, and blood-red eyes.

It looked like a human infant, except for the innocent, pure smile on its face.

Against the backdrop of this hellish scene, that smile seemed all the more eerie.

"This was set up by a foreign race to gather enough blood and vitality from the living to nourish that bronze statue."

Just then, a faint voice sounded.

Lin Cheng turned toward it and saw a dying old woman. Her limbs had been severed, and a black chain pierced through her spine. She was beyond saving.

She was probably the master Liu Yanran had mentioned.

Seeing this, Lin Cheng sighed softly. There was nothing he could do for her.

The system's check-in rewards included some extremely rare treasures, but each was unique. Once used, it was gone.

He wasn't a true saint.

He couldn't give up everything he had for a stranger he'd never met.

That wasn't realistic.

"Senior, this object is an unparalleled evil thing. It must not be left behind..." With that, the old woman drew her last breath.

Lin Cheng might have looked like an ordinary person, but the old woman wasn't a fool.

Anyone who could reach this place couldn't possibly be ordinary. Even a little thought made that clear.

That bronze statue had brought ruin upon all of Beast Taming Mountain. Even on the verge of death, the old woman had been thinking of destroying it.

"Ah."

The old woman had held on this long against all odds, sustained by a single breath.

Now that Lin Cheng had arrived, that breath had left her.

Naturally, she could hold on no longer.

As far as Lin Cheng could tell, even at her peak she hadn't surpassed the Eighth Grade Realm.

Lin Cheng looked at her and fell briefly silent.

Then he flicked a finger, shattering the chain that bound her. He gazed at the corpses filling the chamber and the eyes of the dead, still wide open, and remained speechless for a long time.

If his soul had not grown so powerful,

his former self would probably have been driven mad by the sight.

"Beast Taming Mountain, one of the ten great sects of the Southern Region, was gone just like that."

At that moment, Lin Cheng truly felt how unpredictable life could be. For the first time, he directly witnessed the cruelty of the foreign races and their utter disregard for life.

After going through this,

he couldn't help but feel a surge of respect for those fighting on the front lines.

He was reminded of the soldiers of the Great Xia Kingdom in his previous life, who had braved death to defend their homeland.

They had given everything.

They had laid down their lives without hesitation.

They fought to the death against invaders, sparing no thought for their own safety.

All of it was for the simple sake of keeping their families safe and protecting the human race's peace.

"This bronze statue has to be destroyed."

Lin Cheng raised his hand and struck out lightly.

The power of heaven and earth surged, instantly gathering into a massive golden palm before him. It came down on the statue with unstoppable force!

Boom!

The statue seemed to possess a will of its own.

Just as it was about to be destroyed, a great flood of dense, crimson light suddenly erupted. A gigantic, ferocious face appeared and disappeared within it, roaring as a force capable of making ordinary congenital cultivators tremble burst forth like a volcano.

It tried to stop the golden palm from destroying it.

But it was no use.

"If your true form had come in person, you might have posed a threat to me. But this is nothing more than an imprint of your will... Hmph!"

The golden palm abruptly clenched!

With a piercing shriek, the bronze statue shattered.

The eerie atmosphere in the underground chamber gradually faded, and everything returned to normal.

"How dare you, human!"

"You've ruined my great plan. One day, I, the King, will make you pay—"

The remnant imprint in the air roared furiously, its voice filled with resentment, hatred, and overwhelming unwillingness.

"No need to wait. I've found you!"

Lin Cheng suddenly reached out and seized that wisp of energy. His Eye of Truth-Breaking activated, following it to sense a powerful force of the same origin.

The next moment, Lin Cheng rose into the air.

He sped toward a place beyond Beast Taming Mountain.

That place was Ten Thousand Beast Canyon.

Ten Thousand Beast Canyon was only a hundred miles from the Beast Taming Mountain sect.

Mountain ranges that towered to the heavens stretched on and on, their peaks shrouded in thunderclouds as lightning flashed and thunder roared.

Even a trace of the power those bolts casually gave off was enough to make congenital cultivators tremble in fear. Even those at Foundation Establishment would feel their scalps go numb.

This was the mighty force of nature.

No mortal could hope to withstand it.

The mountain ranges on either side of Ten Thousand Beast Canyon stretched beyond sight, separating the two races.

The only way through was a canyon in the middle, ten thousand zhang wide.

This place was a natural fortress.

Easy to defend and difficult to attack.

With the terrain on their side, the human race could hold back foreign forces dozens of times their size at the border, preventing them from advancing even a step.

Originally, Beast Taming Mountain had been responsible for guarding this place.

But now that the sect had been destroyed, the canyon had long since fallen into the hands of the foreign races.

The foreign army had massed at the border.

They were only waiting for the "Thunder Clearing" ten days later, when the lightning that filled the canyon would dissipate. Then the foreign army would launch a massive assault and seize Ten Thousand Beast Canyon completely.

Using it as a base and stepping stone, they would drive straight into the heart of the Human Realm and conquer it!