The gates of the Yue Kingdom's capital stood grand and imposing, their blue-stone walls rising a hundred feet high, banners fluttering atop the gate towers. Han Li stood outside the gates, gazing at the bustling crowds within, yet he felt not a shred of joy at returning to his homeland. Instead, waves of cold dread surged through him-he could sense an evil presence concealed within this city.
After entering the Yue Kingdom's capital, Han Li settled in under the guise of an itinerant cultivator. Over the following days, he secretly monitored the city's movements and discovered something that shook him to his core-there were signs of Blood Fiend Cult activity in the city!
Three days earlier, while dining at the Drunken Immortal Tower, Han Li had happened to overhear two cultivators at the neighboring table:
"Have you heard? The Blood Fiend Cult recently established a new outpost in Black Wind Valley. They say it's a branch that relocated from elsewhere."
"The Blood Fiend Cult? Didn't the righteous sects wipe them out decades ago?"
"Heh, even a camel starved to death is bigger than a horse. I hear the cult leader who came this time is extremely powerful-already at the Nascent Soul stage!"
The Blood Fiend Cult!
Those words exploded like a thunderbolt in Han Li's sea of consciousness. His face instantly turned pale, and his clenched knuckles whitened from the force of his grip. But this time, what rose in his heart was not the agonizing memory of his village's slaughter, but another, even more humiliating chapter of his past-
In his early years at the Seven Mysteries Sect, when carrying out missions beyond the mountain, the young Han Li had still been a cultivator with a dark spiritual root. His unique aptitude allowed him to absorb the baleful energy