Even if each village had only a thousand people, ten villages meant more than ten thousand. What exactly was the person who had set up this barrier trying to do?
Xia Jue sent Su Jiu a voice transmission. "I suspect this was the work of a heretical cultivator with a considerable cultivation level."
Heretical cultivators differed from demonic cultivators. Demonic cultivators cultivated demonic qi, whereas heretical cultivators still cultivated spiritual qi.
It was only because their methods of cultivation violated the harmony of heaven that ordinary cultivators would not tolerate them.
Heretical cultivators typically used all manner of methods to plunder others' cultivation and strengthen themselves, employing exceptionally cruel means. Before dying, their victims experienced all kinds of negative emotions. When enough of these emotions accumulated, they formed resentful qi that constantly clung to the perpetrators. Thus, wherever resentful qi appeared, heretical cultivators were usually present.
In a certain sense, heretical cultivators were actually more frightening than demonic cultivators.
That was why cultivators in the cultivation world treated demonic and heretical cultivators the same way: kill on sight.
Su Jiu understood Xia Jue's conjecture. After all, the resentful qi here already far exceeded the demonic qi. But if this was the work of a heretical cultivator, what role had the demonic cultivators played?
Or had the sect leader of the Azure Fall Sect done something?
Su Jiu and her two companions bid farewell to the villagers and continued onward, following the nauseating rotting aura.
The village was silent. Occasionally, villagers quietly opened their windows to peer at Su Jiu and her companions, only to slam their doors and windows shut again the moment she looked back at them.
From the villager they had just spoken to, they learned that a few people seemed to disappear here every so often. But