After the Soul Lamp Shattered, the Immortal Sect Sealed Off All Life

High in the sky, an incomparably violent sonic boom exploded.

Thick black clouds were brutally torn in half by a terrifying impact. A conical spirit vessel a hundred zhang long, its entire body engraved with azure sword patterns, forcibly squeezed out from the void's gale layer.

The massive spirit vessel showed no intention of slowing down. With an ear-piercing roar, it plunged all the way downward before coming to an exceedingly brutal stop directly above the City Lord's Manor in Black Mud City's inner city.

The spirit-gathering formation beneath the vessel was spewing great twisting waves of white air from overloading. A large swath of white jade tiles atop the City Lord's Manor was blown away by the violent airflow, crashing onto the bluestone pavement and shattering with a clatter.

At the very front of the deck.

Song Que stood in an immaculate silver-threaded Daoist robe, his hands clasped behind his back.

This assignment had come far too suddenly. He had originally been sitting comfortably in a cloud carriage, leisurely inspecting East Mystic Province's largest low-grade spirit mine. Then the emergency message from the inner sect's Soul Lamp Pavilion struck, scaring him into a cold sweat.

Chen Yuanshan's Foundation Establishment soul jade had shattered into powder.

Song Que had not dared delay in the slightest. On the spot, he spent ten whole mid-grade spirit stones and forcibly stuffed them into the spirit vessel's formation hub. The formation overloaded, doubling its speed, and only then had he raced through the night to this backwater Black Mud City.

An utterly immense divine sense poured down from the deck without the slightest concealment, brutally sweeping across the entire City Lord's Manor.

The doors of the City Lord's Manor's main hall were flung open from within as someone stumbled and crawled through them.

The Black Mud City Lord staggered out of the gates. The moonlight overhead was completely blocked by the enormous vessel, shrouding his entire body in heavy shadow.

The lofty City Lord's knees gave out, and he obediently sprawled across the icy stone steps. The fat all over his body trembled uncontrollably.

Standing above him, Song Que let out a heavy snort.

The weight of his divine sense abruptly intensified.

The white jade steps beneath the City Lord instantly began cracking with terrifying density. Spiderweb-like fissures raced outward with a series of snaps. The City Lord was pressed into the rubble by that invisible weight, his chest stifling, every gap between his bones aching from the crushing pressure, yet he did not dare let even a single scream escape his throat.

Several pitch-black figures were kicked down from the spirit vessel's deck in midair.

"Bang! Bang bang!"

Dull impacts rang out one after another across the white jade plaza.

They were several mangled corpses. Along with pieces of Black-Iron heavy armor crushed into pulp, they landed solidly before the City Lord. A thick stench of blood mixed with the rot of internal organs drilled into his nostrils.

The City Lord trembled as he edged half an inch closer.

They were outer sect disciples of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect, as well as the Black-Iron Heavy Cavalry he had personally dispatched. Not a single corpse remained intact; their deaths had been utterly gruesome.

The City Lord's mind buzzed. He hurriedly began kowtowing.

"Steward Song, please see clearly! There must be remnants of the Blood Demon Sect at the Core Formation Realm lurking within Immortal-Breaking Mountain! Those demonic cultivators are ruthless and vicious—"

"Shut your filthy mouth." Song Que cut him off directly.

Song Que leaped down from midair, the soles of his shoes landing steadily upon the shattered white jade plaza. He took two steps forward and kicked over a mutilated corpse clad in Black-Iron heavy armor.

"Open your eyes and look carefully at these wounds."

Suppressing the urge to vomit, the City Lord leaned forward and pulled at the corpse.

White bone fragments jutted from the wounds, while the flesh had been entirely torn outward. The whole chest cavity had collapsed beyond recognition.

"Did you find anything?" Song Que asked.

The City Lord swallowed, his voice wavering.

"There are no traces of spellfire scorching... nor are there clean cuts from flying swords... I... I can't find any remaining demonic qi or true essence."

"Your brain has not completely rotted away yet." Song Que sneered coldly.

He raised his foot and crushed a warped Black-Iron heart-protecting mirror.

"This flesh was all torn apart and smashed to pieces by pure brute force. No immortal or demonic techniques were used. You cannot find even the faintest shadow of spiritual qi within it."

Song Que flipped his hand over. A smooth recording crystal appeared in his palm.

Thick Foundation Establishment true essence poured into the crystal. At once, a blurry yet exceptionally bloody image was projected into the air.

The City Lord raised his head and stared fixedly at the image.

The image showed a muddy wilderness forest. Half a ruined body lay on the ground. Its lower half had already turned entirely into a mist of blood. More than a dozen dim jade talisman fragments lay scattered in the mud nearby. They were fragments of Chen Yuanshan's top-grade Dharma robe, along with the remnants of the Azureedge Sword Jade, said to possess unbeatable defenses.

Chen Yuanshan had died in the mud, no better off than a wild dog.

Song Que abruptly clenched his five fingers.

"Crack."

The recording crystal shattered on the spot, stone dust spilling through his fingers.

"The one who killed Chen Yuanshan was not some Core Formation old devil at all."

Song Que casually brushed away the remaining stone powder in his hand and tossed out words enough to utterly crush the City Lord's entire understanding of the world.

"It was a mortal shell that had not even opened its dantian."

The City Lord slumped directly into the pile of rubble, both hands grasping aimlessly through the air.

"Impossible!"

The City Lord bellowed incoherently, the flesh on his face quivering wildly.

"How could a mortal possibly tear apart a Foundation Establishment sword formation! The Azureedge Sword Jade in Adviser Chen's hands—"

"Forget mortals—even a peak second-order great demon could never shatter that layer of protective sword radiance with its body alone!"

"Old Devil! That old devil must have used some supreme secret treasure that concealed his aura, disguising himself as a mortal without cultivation!"

Song Que did not bother responding to such impotent rage.

He turned around, his gaze passing over the towering inner-city walls to stare straight at the pitch-black Immortal-Breaking Mountain range in the distance.

He had not opened his dantian, possessed no fluctuations of true essence, and yet could tear apart an elite Foundation Establishment Middle Stage cultivator with his flesh alone.

An incomparably intense greed surged madly through Song Que's meridians.

What kind of heaven-defying body-tempering method was that! If he could get his hands on it, why would he need to remain an errand-running steward in the outer sect? This body-tempering art was worth a thousand, ten thousand times more than that low-grade spirit mine!

With profit before him, who cared that one adviser had died?

Song Que abruptly turned back around and strode up the steps.

"Pass on my order."

"All guards in Black Mud City, even the menial servants guarding the gates, are to be sent out!"

"Act immediately tonight. Forcefully cut off and divert every route leading from Immortal-Breaking Mountain's outskirts to mortal villages, as well as Mud Alley's water source!"

"Bring the formation disks and seal the entire mountain shut for me!"

Song Que grabbed eighteen formation flags from his storage pouch in one sweep. The surface of every flag was densely inscribed with second-order trapping formation runes in demon blood.

With a violent flick of his wrist, he hurled the eighteen formation flags, accompanied by piercing shrieks through the air, directly toward the group of elite disciples waiting beneath the spirit vessel.

"Drive those formation flags into every earth-vein acupoint along Immortal-Breaking Mountain's edge."

"I want this territory turned into a deadland where birds cannot escape and not a blade of grass can grow!"

The elite disciples drew their flying swords in unison, caught the formation flags, and without any hesitation rode their sword lights in all directions into the black night sky.

Dozens of streaks of light carved dazzling tracks across the heavens, racing toward Immortal-Breaking Mountain's perimeter.

The night wind blew ever fiercer.

The eighteen disciples found each spiritual qi node with perfect precision. Without the slightest hesitation, they raised their formation flags and viciously drove them into the soil beneath their feet.

The instant the formation flags entered the earth.

All eighteen earth-vein acupoints erupted with blinding light at once. An exceptionally muffled rumble rose from deep underground, and the entire land shuddered violently.

A vast pale-blue curtain of light rose from the ground and rapidly spread toward the sky, finally sealing perfectly shut at an immense height.

Like a colossal bowl overturned, it tightly covered Immortal-Breaking Mountain and a vast region surrounding it.

Deep within the underground passage.

Fourth Li pressed his whole body against the damp earthen wall. Both hands tightly covered his mouth, and he did not even dare breathe too loudly.

Through the hair-thin crack in the wooden boards overhead, he clearly saw the night sky completely sealed beneath that pale-blue curtain of light.

Then, a horrifying transformation occurred.

Fourth Li's ears caught faint movements from outside.

The living water and mud at the bottom of the old well at the mouth of the alley—the well that had sustained all of Mud Alley for decades—were forcibly sucked away by an utterly unreasonable force, producing repeated chilling slurping sounds.

The sound of the well running dry had barely faded.

It was immediately followed by a dense rustling.

The hardy weeds in the courtyard had their green leaves turn completely yellow, wither, and crumble into debris within only a few breaths.

That invisible pulling force swept madly along the earth veins.

Within the forest at the edge of the area sealed beneath the light curtain, several little plant demons that had only just gained a sliver of intelligence and were trembling within tree hollows did not even have time to scream before their true bodies withered, turning into wisps of ash scattered by the wind.

Great thieves of Heaven and Earth, leaving not a blade of grass behind.

The last scrap of hope for countless living beings to survive was stripped away completely by those few formation flags.

The immortal sect would use the most absolute, most ruthless means to trap to death the mortal hiding in the mountain, along with every ant upon this land, draining them of their final drop of blood.