Commander Greedy Stone Was Secretly Devoured; Red Light Reflected a Demonic Shadow in the Wild Forest

In Mud Alley's dilapidated courtyard.

The guard commander seized Zhang Elder's wrist and stomped viciously on the old man's wrist bone with his blacksteel battle boot. With a crisp crack, the old farmer's hand, which had been clutching the fragmentary stele, finally went slack.

The commander bent down and snatched up the black stone fragment, its surface smeared with mud and blood, gripping it tightly in his palm.

The instant he clenched it, the flesh on the commander's face twitched violently.

He keenly sensed that the protective true qi coating his palm had been utterly devoured by an unreasonable force the moment it touched the stone fragment's surface.

The commander recalled the terrifying sight from earlier in this wretched Mud Alley, when this broken stone had swallowed a high-grade Fireball Talisman whole.

"Go! Seal off the courtyard!" the commander roared at his subordinates.

Turning his back, he cautiously guided a thread of true essence from his dantian through his palm and into the stone fragment.

There was no rejection, no explosion. The instant the true essence entered, it vanished without a trace, like a clay ox sinking into the sea.

Good stuff... absolutely priceless stuff! the commander howled inwardly, the greed in his eyes nearly surging out in tangible form.

He knew perfectly well that those lofty elders of the immortal sects dreamed of obtaining an artifact that could block divine-sense detection. Yet this broken stone in his hand could not only keep the divine sense of Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators at bay—it was an ancient supreme treasure capable of "repelling all techniques and devouring true essence"!

If it were forged into a heart-protecting mirror, it would practically grant him an extra life in the cultivation world!

"Commander, this old thing's bones are all shattered. How should we deal with him?" A heavily armored guard came forward, carrying Zhang Elder, who had gone limp like a heap of rotten mud.

The commander swiftly tucked the stone fragment into his clothes, then turned around with a stern face.

"Didn't the inner city's formation wall collapse during the day? It happens to need materials to fill the formation eye." The commander waved a hand. "Secretly escort this old thing back into the city and throw him straight into the formation eye as a human pillar."

"And what about what happened in this courtyard..." the guard hesitated.

"Keep your damned mouths shut!" The commander lowered his voice, his tone thick with undisguised killing intent. "If anyone dares leak even a word outside about some strange magical treasure appearing here, I'll chop him up first and feed him to the demon beasts in the back mountain!"

The surrounding guards shuddered from head to toe and nodded frantically in agreement.

The commander turned away, pressing a hand against the inner armor over his chest and feeling the heated stone beneath it.

He had not noticed in the slightest that inside the fragmentary stele, soaked through with mortal blood, that faint dark-red desolate pattern was resonating in some indescribable frequency with the thirty-thousand-jin mother stele deep within Immortal-Breaking Mountain, separated by the heavy curtain of night.

Not long after he tucked the stone against his body, a violent, domineering surge of pure human vitality bored brutally from his chest into his bone marrow.

The commander only felt an unbearable heat spread throughout his body, while an eerie, excited flush surfaced uncontrollably on his cheeks.

The immortal true essence that had once flowed freely through his meridians now felt as though molten iron had been poured into it, so heavy that he could not move it at all.

"Damn it, I put too much force into that kick just now. It must have aggravated an old hidden injury from my days fighting at the border," the commander muttered, panting heavily.

He merely assumed an old injury had flared up and never considered the laws of ultimate assimilation. He led his men away at once, dragging Zhang Elder from the courtyard.

Mud Alley fell silent once more.

Inside the cellar passage concealed beneath plant ash and dry firewood.

Fourth Li was submerged in foul water, his two mud-caked hands clamped tightly over his mouth.

Through a gap in the wooden boards, he watched Zhang Elder being dragged away like a dead dog by those immortal-sect lackeys. His teeth bit deeply into his lips, and the taste of blood spread through his mouth.

The seed of hatred took root and sprouted completely in the mud of this lowest stratum.

The scene returned to the depths of Immortal-Breaking Mountain.

The night wind swept damp, cold miasma through the forest.

Standing upon his top-grade flying sword, Song Que advanced from the outskirts inward along the unusual gully that the city defense troops had discovered while scouting the perimeter not long ago.

The deeper he went, the more severely the moisture in the earth veins had been drained away.

Ahead, an exceptionally dense aura of a second-tier demon beast rushed toward him, forcibly blocking his path.

"Putting on airs and playing tricks." Song Que sneered.

He raised a hand and roughly swept aside the waist-high, withered yellow weeds before him with his sword sheath.

What he saw made this Azure Firmament Sword Sect deacon, who had always held himself above others, abruptly catch his breath.

At his feet lay an astonishing semicircular gully, fully two zhang wide.

This was not merely overturned soil. Even the hard rock layers underground had been crushed into fine powder by some unimaginable weight.

Song Que leaped from his flying sword and landed steadily at the edge of the gully.

He crouched halfway down, pinched up some powdered soil from the bottom of the gully with two fingers, and brought it before his eyes for a careful examination of the terrain.

By the faint moonlight, he could clearly see with his naked eye that this powder had been compacted harder than the pig iron used to forge weapons in immortal cities.

"These are definitely not marks left by immortal techniques bombarding the ground." Song Que rubbed the powder from his fingertips, the muscles in his face taut.

His expression grew more solemn than ever.

There were no scorched marks from true essence, no remnants of spiritual qi. This was a path forcibly plowed through the mountain forest by sheer, extreme physical force!

Changing the terrain through the flesh alone!

That power, pure to the absolute extreme, made Song Que's heart pound wildly in his chest.

He felt an intense frenzy toward this unheard-of body-tempering art. So long as he could obtain this cultivation method, his position in the sect would surely soar straight to the clouds. Yet at the same time, a deep wariness spread through the cracks of his bones.

"To drag something so heavy through the forest would consume an astronomical amount of stamina." Song Que rose and dusted off his hands.

"He can't have gone far!"

Song Que immediately adjusted the direction of his search, his sword tip pointing directly toward the end of the gully—the deep valley halfway up the mountain, where the miasma was thickest.

"Pass down the order! Everyone, converge on the mountainside!"

After instructing the few inner-sect disciples behind him, Song Que pulled a communication talisman carved with crimson patterns from his storage pouch.

True essence surged into it.

The crimson talisman shot into the sky with a piercing shriek.

It soared upward and, the instant it touched the pale-blue dome of light cast by the Heaven-Locking Array high above, exploded with a thunderous boom.

Blinding red light, like viscous blood, instantly stained half the formation dome crimson.

The great midnight hunt officially began at that moment.

The instant the dazzling red light tore through the darkness, Song Que stood at the foot of the mountain and instinctively lifted his head to look upward.

By that one-ten-thousandth instant of blood-colored lightning, he vaguely caught sight of the scene deep within the mountainside miasma.

A burly black silhouette, like an ancient demonic god, carried an enormous black stone stele on its shoulder. Illuminated by the red glow, it flashed past and vanished.

In the shadows.

Lu Chen steadily carried the thirty-thousand-jin City-Guarding Stele, his gaze deep and calm.

He extended his broad left hand and gently covered A-Nan's eyes, clouded over with white film, shielding her from the blinding red light overhead.

Without pausing for even a moment, Lu Chen abruptly turned, carrying an utterly terrifying pressure as he vanished decisively into the depths of the miasma.

The immortal-path deacon and the ultimate-path mortal body completed their first distant exchange of gazes across the thick fog, amid the flickering light and shadow above and below.

"Posturing little mongrel from the mortal world—watch how I smash your bones inch by inch." Song Que sneered at the vanished silhouette.

He was just about to continue mocking him when the words caught in his throat.

Song Que suddenly realized that his right hand, which had been resting casually behind his back, had somehow clenched tightly around the hilt at his waist.

He was gripping it too hard.

Veins bulged one after another across the back of his hand, while his palm was slick with cold sweat.

It was an instinctive terror entirely beyond the brain's control, born from the shell of an exalted cultivator when faced with an apex predator.

The corner of Song Que's eye twitched violently several times.

Humiliation and fury instantly rushed to his head. He forcibly pried apart his stiff fingers and released the sword hilt.

"This damned miasma in Immortal-Breaking Mountain actually carries hallucinogenic poison." Song Que gritted his teeth and gave himself an excuse to save face.

He yanked out his flying sword and, amid the shrill red radiance, hardened his resolve and led the charge into the thick fog.