The outer void was dark and cold.
An enormous mass of gray-black clouds drifted silently, with countless hideous, unknown creatures lurking deep within it, seemingly riding the clouds toward some destination.
An enormous azure cauldron suddenly descended from above, smashing like a cannonball into the deepest part of the clouds. The mysterious, intricate patterns on its walls began to writhe.
Calamity descended.
The nameless, bizarre creatures roared madly, struggling with all their might to escape the clouds, only to be caught by an irresistible suction. One after another, they merged into the cauldron's walls and vanished.
Within the cauldron's miniature world, a naked human body lay motionless as strands of flowing light seeped into it.
A moment later, a stream of azure supernatural energy crossed the boundless void and reached the sea of spiritual qi in Zhao Changfeng's lower dantian.
The spirit sea immediately churned, its boundaries beginning to expand outward.
Half an hour later, the changes in the spirit sea gradually subsided. The azure supernatural energy from beyond the heavens then transformed, silently condensing into an illusory Small Cauldron made of azure energy.
The second cauldron appeared.
Zhao Changfeng woke with a start.
"Hah! Hah!"
He gasped violently, struggling to contain his surging emotions, his sharply defined face filled with astonishment.
The cauldron had moved in the void beyond the heavens!
The enormous cauldron had remained motionless when it first appeared, and he had assumed that was simply how it was. Now, after witnessing its entire journey, he suddenly felt a strange intuition.
The enormous cauldron had always been capable of moving. It had only remained still because it had been in an extremely weakened state, without any power to drive it.
It seemed that bringing his body into this world had exhausted all its stored power, leaving it unable to move and forcing it to remain stationary.
Last time, the enormous cauldron had lured out numerous creatures from beyond the heavens, drawing them in and devouring them in an ambush. After digesting those otherworldly creatures, it had gained a little power.
Thus, now that the Heavenly Cauldron from Beyond the Heavens could move, it had chosen to strike first.
It seemed to be hunting for food...
Still extremely weak, it drifted through the depths of the outer void, recovering its power by hunting those otherworldly creatures.
"Since it can move, lure prey into ambushes, and hunt them down, it... probably has a consciousness."
Zhao Changfeng murmured.
Then he recalled what his senior sister Ruan Meizhen had told him about the artifacts of this world.
The spirit artifacts wielded by cultivators were divided into ranks as well, with the first rank being the lowest and the ninth the highest.
Rumor had it that ninth-rank spirit artifacts already possessed intelligence and unfathomably terrifying power. They were the supreme sect-guarding treasures of the various Demon Dao Great Sects, passed down from generation to generation.
There were also spirit artifacts beyond the ranks, created not by human hands but naturally nurtured by heaven and earth.
Such artifacts were called divine artifacts. They even possessed unknown, mighty powers capable of overturning the laws of heaven and earth, their wonders surpassing all imagination and driving countless Demonic Dao Supremes into a scramble for them.
Ten thousand years ago, Wan Qingtian, who had completely overturned the order of the world through the Heaven-Turning War, had wielded just such a heaven-shaking divine artifact: the Annihilation Demon Blade.
"Could it be a divine artifact?"
Zhao Changfeng was shaken to his core.
He still vividly remembered Ruan Meizhen's expression when she spoke of divine artifacts beyond the ranks. It had been one of boundless yearning that she hardly dared entertain.
"Was it what brought me into this world? What exactly went wrong along the way? Why were my body and soul separated?"
"There's no light from the sun or moon where it is. It must still be extremely far from the Three Great Ruins."
"Could it... also be heading toward the Three Great Ruins?"
"Perhaps, once I reach a higher realm someday and my primordial spirit gains great supernatural powers, I'll be able to communicate with it across the void."
Zhao Changfeng frowned in contemplation.
He vaguely sensed that the Bronze Cauldron, which had begun drifting through the void beyond the heavens, had exhausted its power and suffered some great upheaval. Now, like him, it was struggling to accumulate strength.
The otherworldly creatures that were so terrifying to him might be nothing more than the weakest prey in the Bronze Cauldron's eyes.
"So the boundless, infinite depths of the void beyond the Three Great Ruins aren't truly eternally dead and silent."
With an inescapable pressure weighing on him, Zhao Changfeng immediately stopped pondering the cauldron's mysteries and examined the changes its gift had brought.
The inspection left him slightly disappointed.
The cauldron's gift had expanded his sea of spiritual qi considerably.
His spirit sea had also expanded after he broke through to the Yuanqi Stage, growing to roughly three times its original size. This time, it had merely doubled.
The supernatural energy bestowed upon him had not filled his sea of spiritual qi. It had only slightly improved his innate aptitude, while his qi-blood sea remained unchanged.
"These changes alone probably won't be enough to see me through this calamity."
Zhao Changfeng let out a long, rueful sigh.
"Huh!"
He had noticed the second Small Cauldron long ago, but now he suddenly realized that the patterns on the surface of the first Small Cauldron looked different, as though they had undergone a new transformation.
He could not help examining them closely.
After taking in Ruan Meizhen's Heart-Demon Obsession and producing a considerable amount of "willpower," the first Small Cauldron seemed about to become solid. The intricate, mysterious patterns on it had also grown much clearer.
Suddenly, he discovered that the mysterious markings on the first Small Cauldron seemed to have become written information he could understand.
"Heavenly. Heart. Demon. Seeding."
These four characters shone forth first.
As the patterns shifted, more words he could understand imprinted themselves in Zhao Changfeng's mind, one by one, revealing a cultivation art to him.
"Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding!"
"The heavenly heart is also called one's innate, true heart.
"Plant another person's Heart-Demon Obsession in my innate, true heart? Use my own heart to nurture someone else's Heart-Demon Obsession?"
"For now, there's actually only the first half."
"This half only describes 'nurturing,' while the next half concerns 'refining.'"
Zhao Changfeng sorted through the information, studying the nurturing method of Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding.
He soon learned that, so long as he combined it with a Demonic Cultivation Art such as the Essence-Devouring Demon Art, physical contact would allow him to imprint the Heart-Demon Obsession buried deepest within his target.
According to the instructions, only someone possessing a primordial spirit should have been able to study the art and manifest a chosen target's Heart-Demon Obsession within themselves.
He could perform it now only because the gift from the Bronze Cauldron beyond the heavens had condensed two illusory Small Cauldrons within his sea of spiritual qi.
"I have two Small Cauldrons now, so I can nurture one more person's Heart-Demon Obsession."
"Once the second Small Cauldron has also nurtured a Heart-Demon Obsession and generated powerful willpower, the second half of Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding will appear."
Understanding suddenly dawned on Zhao Changfeng.
He also abruptly realized that he was originally supposed to actively select and collect Heart-Demon Obsessions. By treating him as a scapegoat for her calamity and passing her bodily toxins into him, Ruan Meizhen had effectively injected her own Heart-Demon Obsession into the cauldron.
In other words, Ruan Meizhen had delivered herself right to his doorstep.
"For the second one, I'll have to choose a target myself and use Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding to imprint their obsession inside the cauldron."
As he reached this thought, another strange phenomenon appeared.
That miraculous perception spread throughout his body again, just as it had the first time. In an instant, Zhao Changfeng gained a godlike ability to perceive the slightest details.
"Whoosh!"
His consciousness seemed to be carried high into the sky, granting him an aerial view from which he could observe every abnormality around him.
In the distance!
Clusters of bizarre creatures gathered: apes clad in black scales, winged centipedes with a hundred legs, and murderous monsters with three heads and six arms.
They were all unknown aberrations.
Their forms were largely similar to the creatures Zhao Changfeng had seen in the dark starry void beyond the heavens through the enormous azure cauldron. They likely belonged to the same kinds of species.
The difference was that those otherworldly creatures had real bodies of flesh and blood, while what he saw now existed only as souls.
"Demon Spirits!"
"Those Demon Spirits that poured through the world membrane from the Biluo Realm!"
Zhao Changfeng's mind trembled.
He immediately confirmed that the strange souls gathering dozens of miles outside Tamu Town, yet in no hurry to invade it, were precisely the Demon Spirits Ruan Meizhen had spoken of!
Before he could think further, he suddenly noticed two figures whose bodies contained a presence similar to that of the Demon Spirits!
Song Zejun and Zhou Jin.
They were his nominal master and his master's wife!
Had they already been corrupted and possessed by Demon Spirits?
Or... had they been involved with the Demon Spirits all along?
Possession by Demon Spirits was not even the most frightening possibility. If the couple had secretly been colluding with them all along, these two possessed cultivation at the Three Calamities Realm!
"No, they shouldn't have been possessed by Demon Spirits!"
"The Lingxiao Sect is far, far away from here. How could the Demon Spirits have found their bodies in a state of feigned death from so far away?"
The more Zhao Changfeng thought about it, the more his hair stood on end.
"Whoosh!"
In the next instant, that strange sensation of surveying everything from high above vanished completely, just as it had before.
Returning to reality, Zhao Changfeng found his forehead covered in cold sweat, his heart pounding like a drum. He immediately knew he had been thrown into utter disarray.
The Demon Spirits had already finished gathering, yet they were in no hurry to descend on Tamu Town. They seemed to be waiting for something.
Waiting for what?
With Song Zejun and Zhou Jin carrying the presence of Demon Spirits within Tamu Town, they were naturally the creatures' inside agents!
They were waiting for Song Zejun and his wife to do something!
Once the moment was ripe, they would immediately swarm in and turn everyone in Tamu Town into food for their souls.
"If those two haven't been corrupted and possessed by Demon Spirits, they still have minds of their own, which means they know what I did."
"As long as they remain in Tamu Town, I'm certain to die at their hands. There's no chance they'll spare me."
"I have to do something!"
Badly frightened, Zhao Changfeng began racking his brains for a way out, no longer having any attention to spare for the mysteries of Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding.
An unknown amount of time passed like this. It might have been only an instant, or it might have been half an hour.
The wooden door suddenly opened.
Carrying some in her hands and others over her shoulder, Ruan Meizhen returned with four First-Rank Spirit Beasts of varying sizes and dumped them heavily onto the clear space inside the room.
"What you asked for."
After setting down the Spirit Beast corpses, Ruan Meizhen sat cross-legged on the bed. Her alluringly beautiful face was clouded with worry as she continued thinking about how to face the coming Demon Spirits.
She had just discussed plans to resist the Demon Spirits with Cui Pinyuan and the people from Heavenly Shield City, only to discover that none of them had any good ideas.
"Senior Sister Ruan, you asked earlier who I'd seen that made me panic so badly. I'll tell you now."
"I saw my master and his wife, who should have been dead."
"Senior Sister, those two are in Tamu Town right now. We should gather our strength and kill them immediately!"
Zhao Changfeng's expression was utterly grave.
Ruan Meizhen's expression changed sharply at first. After lowering her head and pondering for a moment, she finally said, "Taking in a disciple like you really was eight lifetimes' worth of rotten luck for those two."