Following the method for drawing out baleful aura described in the cultivation art, Xiao Yu condensed his magical power into needles as fine as ox hair and drove them hard into more than a dozen acupoints on his body.
An icy chill instantly swept through him. "Hiss!" Xiao Yu could not help shuddering.
Before Xiao Yu could react, streams of dark gray, mistlike substance began seeping out of the apertures all over his body.
After this "mist" emerged, however, it neither dispersed nor drifted away. Instead, it kept gathering within a foot of his body.
When Xiao Yu's head came into contact with the mist, he felt irritation rising within him, along with an urge to vent it.
"So this is the so-called baleful aura?" Xiao Yu felt the mist trying to influence his emotions and mind, his curiosity piqued.
He had heard that prolonged exposure to baleful aura would gradually affect a cultivator's emotions, making them bloodthirsty. If left unresolved, it would eat away at their sanity. At worst, they would lose their minds entirely and become walking corpses that knew only slaughter.
In truth, Xiao Yu's understanding was somewhat incomplete. What he saw now was baleful aura that had already taken tangible form. Only this kind could produce those consequences.
Over a lifetime, cultivators inevitably committed various acts of killing and went through all sorts of experiences, so they carried some amount of baleful aura. Ordinary people could not see it. Unless deliberately accumulated, this aura would slowly dissipate until it could no longer be sensed, and under normal circumstances, it would not affect the body.
Only when someone accumulated a great deal of baleful aura in a short time, as Xiao Yu had, would it exceed a certain threshold and cease to dissipate on its own. Particular