Bronze Statue

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

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

As time passed, his life force ebbed away rapidly.

With an innate lifespan of two hundred years, he was only just over a hundred years old.

Logically, he should have had at least seventy or eighty good years left to live.

Yet now, he sensed that his remaining lifespan was draining away at a terrifying speed.

In the short span of half an incense stick's time, he had already lost nearly a year of his life.

At this rate, he would be dead from exhaustion of his lifespan in less than a day.

He was terrified!

However, it was useless.

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

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

The only path awaiting him was death.

Having imprisoned the Yin-Yang Elder, the coldness in Lin Cheng's eyes intensified.

If he hadn't arrived in time, the consequences of waiting for the Yin-Yang Elder to emerge from seclusion would have been unimaginable.

"Scum like this, bah—things worse than beasts, they deserve to die!"

"Just letting him suffer through some torture is getting off easy; he should be made to wish for death but be unable to die for the rest of his life!"

As a model youth from the twenty-first century, Lin Cheng never lacked a sense of justice.

If Heaven would not punish such a deranged villain, he would do it himself!

After finishing up here, Lin Cheng's divine sense hurried toward the third location without a moment's rest.

The next second, even though Lin Cheng was prepared, he was still stunned by the bloody scene before him.

"Is this a slaughterhouse?"

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

In a vast basement, hundreds upon hundreds of corpses were piled up. Some of the remains were still wearing the attire of Beast Taming Mountain, clearly the original disciples of the sect.

There were even elders among the corpses.

Masses of flesh and blood were piled high, with blood flowing in gurgles.

In the end, it all converged toward a mysterious altar in the center of the basement.

"..."

Lin Cheng watched all of this in silence, his heart filled with complex emotions.

When he first arrived, he had 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's figure vanished from where he stood, and when he reappeared, he was already inside the basement where the altar was set up.

Being there in person, Lin Cheng was deeply shocked by this cruel scene.

Up close, he could clearly see the ancient, evil patterns on the altar, faintly glowing with a red light that flickered as if it were breathing.

The entire altar seemed to have come to life.

In the center of the altar sat a bronze object, resembling a statue.

It had a green face and fangs, with scarlet eyes.

It looked like a human infant, yet the infant's face wore an innocent and pure smile.

This smile, paired with the hellish environment of this place, looked deeply eerie no matter how one viewed it.

"This was set up by an alien race to absorb enough blood and vitality from living people to nourish that bronze statue."

At that moment, a voice as thin as a thread rang out.

Lin Cheng followed the sound and discovered an elderly woman on the verge of death. Her limbs had been severed, and her spine was pierced by a black chain; she was beyond saving.

This person must have been the master Liu Yanran had mentioned.

Seeing this, Lin Cheng sighed softly. In this situation, there was nothing he could do.

Although his system check-ins provided some extremely precious treasures, they were all unique; once used, they were gone.

He was no true saint.

He would not altruistically sacrifice everything he had for a stranger he had never met.

That was not realistic.

"Senior, this object is a peerless fiend; it must not remain..." Having said this, the old man breathed his last.

Although Lin Cheng appeared to be an ordinary person, the old man was no fool.

To be able to reach this place—one could figure it out with their toes—he could not possibly be ordinary.

That bronze statue had destroyed the entire Beast Taming Mountain, and even in his final moments, the old man's heart was set on destroying it.

"Sigh."

It had already been incredibly difficult for the old man to hold on until now, relying purely on a single breath to sustain himself.

Now that Lin Cheng had arrived, that breath had dissipated.

Naturally, he could no longer hold on.

According to Lin Cheng's perception, her cultivation at her peak had not exceeded the eighth rank.

Lin Cheng took a look and fell into a brief silence.

He then flicked his finger, shattering the chains that bound her. Looking at the room full of corpses and the eyes that refused to close even in death, he remained speechless for a long time.

If not for his powerful soul force now.

Had it been his past self arriving here, he likely would have been driven to madness by the trauma.

"Beast Taming Mountain, a dignified top ten sect of the Southern Region, just gone like that."

In this moment, Lin Cheng deeply realized the impermanence of the world, and for the first time, he directly grasped the cruelty of the alien race and their disregard for life.

Having experienced this.

He felt moved; by comparison.

A sense of respect welled up in Lin Cheng's heart for those fighting bloody battles on the front lines.

For no other reason than that he thought of the soldiers of the Great Xia Kingdom from his past life who feared neither death nor danger to protect their home and country.

The same devotion to the very end.

The same willingness to die for their cause.

Fighting to the death against invaders, sparing no cost to their own lives.

Everything was merely to protect the safety of their families and to safeguard the peace of the human race.

"Let's destroy this bronze statue."

Lin Cheng raised his palm and struck out gently.

The power of heaven and earth surged, instantly converging before him into a massive palm print. It shimmered with golden light and, carrying irresistible force, grabbed down toward the bronze statue!

BOOM!

The bronze statue seemed to possess its own consciousness.

The moment it was about to be destroyed, a massive surge of thick, bloody light erupted. A hideous, gargantuan face flickered in and out of existence, letting out a roar. A power capable of making ordinary Xiantian experts tremble erupted like a volcano.

It sought to block the destruction of the golden giant palm.

Unfortunately.

"If your true self were here, you might pose some threat to me, but a mere projection of your will... Hmph!"

The golden giant palm suddenly clenched!

Accompanied by a shrill, miserable scream, the bronze sculpture shattered into pieces.

The eerie aura within the basement slowly dissipated, and everything returned to normal.

"Audacious human!"

"You have ruined my grand plan; this debt, this King will surely..."

A lingering trace of the projection in the air roared loudly, filled with malice, hatred, and intense unwillingness.

"No need to wait for another day, I have found you!"

Lin Cheng suddenly reached out and grabbed, pulling that wisp of aura into his hand. He activated the Eye of Truth-Breaking, and by following that thread of aura, he instantly sensed a powerful, homologous force.

The next second, Lin Cheng suddenly soared into the air.

He flew rapidly toward a direction outside of Beast Taming Mountain.

That place was the Ten Thousand Beast Canyon.

The Ten Thousand Beast Canyon was a mere hundred miles away from the Beast Taming Mountain sect.

Towering mountain ranges stretched out one after another, their peaks shrouded in thunderclouds, crackling with lightning.

The mere aura emitted by those random bolts of lightning was enough to make Xiantian experts tremble with fear, and even those at the Foundation Establishment stage would feel their scalps go numb.

This was the raw, natural power of heaven and earth.

It was far beyond what any mortal could withstand.

The mountain ranges flanking the Ten Thousand Beast Canyon stretched endlessly, separating the two races.

To pass through, one had no choice but to traverse the ten-thousand-foot-wide canyon in the center.

This place was a natural fortress.

It was easy to defend and difficult to attack.

By leveraging the terrain, the human race could hold back an alien force dozens of times their size at the border, preventing them from advancing even an inch.

Originally, this place was under the protection of Beast Taming Mountain.

Regrettably, now that Beast Taming Mountain had fallen, this place had long since become the domain of the alien races.

The alien army pressed against the border.

They were merely waiting for the "Thunder Clearing" that occurred once every six months to arrive in ten days' time; once the lightning energy permeating the canyon dissipated, the alien army would launch a full-scale assault to completely occupy the Ten Thousand Beast Canyon.

Using this as a foothold and springboard, they would strike directly at the heart of the enemy and occupy the Human Realm!