Arc 98Chapters 2426–2450
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No recap yet.
Xu Taiping read the Blood Ancestor’s Dragon Script message, learning that the Blood Ancestor planned to awaken soon and join forces with Ao Yan against the Shangqing Realm. He realized Ao Yan had arranged for Yuanlingzi to impersonate Teacher Red Carp, but was left wondering how that could happen before Teacher Red Carp was born.
Xu Taiping realized Silver Dragon Ao Yan had engineered Gu Yu’s meeting with Yuanlingzi to destroy Gu Yu’s Dao Heart, then uncovered a Dragon Script letter that convinced Dongfang Yuejian the Great Elm Tree opportunity was worth pursuing. The chapter ended with a bounty revealing Yuanlingzi’s suspected presence in Elm Tree Village, and Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian concluded he was luring Dragon-Slaying Persons to feed the Blood Ancestor.
Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian discussed the bounty that confirmed the danger of the Demon Dragon Ao Yan and the Blood Ancestor’s trap, then searched Yuanlingzi’s cave abode for his second treasury. Xu Taiping used his Lotus Root Broken, Yet Its Fibers Remain true intent to follow connections from the spirit marrow stones and Beast Hide parchment to a cavern, leaving them poised to investigate it.
Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian found a cavern containing a Spirit Bone Stele, which might help them advance their cultivation techniques. They gathered the cavern’s other treasures and discovered a chest full of talisman-making supplies.
Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian discovered Golden Millet Paper in a chest and divided it between them. Xu Taiping then shared a runic pattern he had seen while divining the Blood Ancestor, and Dongfang Yuejian confirmed it was the Blood Ancestor’s Demon Seal, which could help them hunt him down.
Xu Taiping and his companions secured the karst cave by sealing its underground passage and activating Dongfang Yuejian’s defensive formations. As they watched the Spirit Bone Stele awaken, the group prepared for what it might reveal.
Xu Taiping and the others explained the Spirit Bone Stele’s limited power of deduction to Gu Yu and advised him to wait until he learned a stronger martial art. Gu Yu insisted on using it to improve the Seven-Kill Blade, and Xu Taiping and his companions allowed him to try.
Gu Yu received the Jade Shatter Art from the Spirit Bone Stele, which his Divine-Human Variant Bone let him use without its usual lethal cost. While Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian discussed their own hopes for the stele, it also upgraded Gu Yu’s Seven-Kill Blade into the supreme-grade Thousand Kills.
Gu Yu gained new cultivation techniques from the Spirit Bone Stele, and Dongfang Yuejian used its power of deduction to complete her inheritance of One Stroke Opens Heaven. With her cultivation bottleneck broken and their chances against the Blood Ancestor improved, she invited Xu Taiping and Xuanzhi to take their turns.
Xuanzhi used the Spirit Bone Stele to complete his fragment of the Six Paths of Reincarnation Spell, a Buddhist origin law, and Xu Taiping then went to seek an improvement to his Ancestral Sage Fist. Xuanzhi suggested the stele might grant Xu Taiping a request, leaving Dongfang Yuejian astonished as she watched him approach it.
Xu Taiping touched the Spirit Bone Stele and entered a conversation with Seventh Master, who granted his request to elevate the Ancestral Sage Fist to the Martial Dao Source Stream level. As soul-weeping pain overwhelmed him, Xu Taiping endured it in hopes of improving his other techniques, while Xuanzhi and Dongfang Yuejian watched outside.
The Spirit Bone Stele elevated Xu Taiping’s techniques, granting him the Demon Ancestor Heaven-Shaking Fist and several powerful divine abilities. As he considered how to use them against the Blood Ancestor, Dongfang Yuejian reported that Yuanlingzi had captured three teams of dragon-slaying people in Elm Tree Village, prompting a rescue mission.
Xu Taiping and Dongfang Yuejian learned that Yuanlingzi had imprisoned several Dragon-Slaying Persons and considered the increased bounty, but Xu Taiping decided they needed more time to prepare before confronting him. A month later, spectators at the Profound Elixir Palace saw someone accept a bounty and wondered whether Xu Taiping's group had finally acted.
Spectators hoped Xu Taiping and his two companions would accept the bounties to hunt Yuanlingzi, but their team did not appear on the Dragon-Slaying Ranking. The chapter ended as the eighteen assembled teams prepared to hunt Yuanlingzi at Blood Mist Village, with only the team nearest him set to have its sound broadcast.
The Jiang Clan’s three members and their Dragon Catcher, Chi Feng, entered the blood-mist village while Du He used his Qi-gazing skill to guide them through the formation. They encountered a seemingly impossible task from a blind old woman, leaving the group’s fate uncertain as Chu Xiaoxiao gloated.
Jiang Jiuxuan appeared to thread the Old Woman’s needle, but he damaged it and triggered the Blood Mist Formation’s attack. He and his companions escaped with a teleportation talisman, while the projection shifted to a gathering of Chenglong Heaven’s great clans considering a joint attempt to enter Blood Mist Village.
The Jiang Household blamed Xu Taiping’s team for their failure in the Blood Mist Formation, turning many cultivators against them despite the spectators knowing the Jiang team had plotted against Xu earlier. The Fu and Chu Households then proposed that seventeen teams unite to storm Blood Mist Village, leaving Xu Taiping’s team outside the alliance.
The seventeen teams of Dragon-Slaying Persons formed a Soul Contract alliance and charged into Blood Mist Village to hunt Yuanlingzi. They swept through the first three checkpoints, but at the fourth, blood-colored thunder struck and afflicted many of them with ghost power, leaving the alliance’s fate dependent on the three great households’ promised countermeasure.
Fu De and the other cultivators broke through the blood mist formation’s checkpoints and reached the hillside Land God Temple, where Yuanlingzi’s ghost power trapped and weighed them down. Chu Yu and Jiang Jiuxuan cleared a path, and the Five Great Aristocratic Clans joined forces to restrain Yuanlingzi as the Beiguo Household prepared its Five-Thunder Ghost-Burning Art.
The Dragon-Slaying Persons appeared to destroy Yuanlingzi, but his blood body survived and he unleashed divine intent-level ghost wax. The revelation that the Blood Ancestor or its origin blood might be in the Immortal Burial Ruins left the pavilion stunned as Yuanlingzi’s elm tree sprouted blood-colored leaves.
The spectators realized Yuanlingzi had lured the Dragon-Slaying Persons to feed the Blood Ancestor and watched as the Blood Ancestor awakened. Yuanlingzi trapped and killed the cultivators in Blood Mist Village, while the Dragon-Slaying Ranking revealed that Dongfang Yuejian, Xu Taiping, and Xuanzhi had accepted the bounty.
After Xu Taiping accepted the bounty and headed for Blood Mist Village, Nine Abysses offered to help the trapped cultivators escape the Blood Rain Ghost Domain. Li Yezhu demonstrated that he could survive its curse through a strange reincarnation power, leaving Xiahou Qingyuan to identify it as his fourth-tier Origin Demon Seed Power.
Xiahou Qingyuan revealed that Li Yezhu’s Life-Borrowing Reincarnation power could make him a Sky Demon Thousand Faces, prompting the observers to see him as a major threat. In Blood Mist Village, the Nine Abysses exploited the Dragon-Slaying Ranking’s rules and offered to rescue the trapped cultivators if they swore to withdraw, while the ghost candles burned their divine souls.
Xu Taiping arrived at the Dragon-Slaying Assembly and struck the Qing He Demon Emperor with a punch that sent him crashing into a distant hill. With True Fire Talismans placed on the Heartless Demon Emperor, Li Yezhu, and Pang Zhong, Xu Taiping faced Li Yezhu’s threat of summoning the Demon Mother’s Edict.
Xu Taiping subdued the Nine Abysses demons with his overwhelming aura and ordered them to remain on a hillside while he prepared to rescue the cultivators trapped in the Ghost Domain Blood Rain. He kept the demons nearby as a safeguard and instructed Master Xuanzhi to prepare the ghost horde, leaving the rescue about to begin.