Chen Haoming died without an intact corpse.
Some had imagined Chen Haoming might die, but never so horrifically-blasted into a field of severed limbs by Zhao Changfeng.
The cloyingly thick smell of blood quietly spread, whether from Chen Haoming's scattered remains or the Crimson Blood Shadow that had likewise been torn apart.
"You all saw it! Chen Haoming's jealousy turned to hatred, and he deliberately twisted the facts to maliciously slander me!"
"And he was the one who attacked first and started this trouble. I was only forced to fight back. Please, all of you must bear witness for me!"
Zhao Changfeng's booming voice rang out at just the right moment, brimming with righteous indignation.
Everyone exchanged glances, their expressions varied.
Standing with the few surviving members of his sect, Chi Jingchen gazed from afar at the shattered bones and flesh strewn across the ground. A fierce regret suddenly gripped him, and he bitterly cursed himself for stepping forward to force Zhao Changfeng into a realm breakthrough.
"I had no choice either. Don't blame me, you..."
Chi Jingchen murmured under his breath.
Shi Yue clenched both fists tightly, tears glimmering in his eyes. He felt a satisfaction beyond words.
He had spent plenty of money in his lifetime, sometimes regretting what he spent even on himself. But the three thousand spirit stones he had spent on Zhao Changfeng were, to him, the most worthwhile expenditure of his life!
"Zhang Mu is dead, and Chen Haoming is dead too. You two... should finally be able to rest in peace."
Shi Yue let out a quiet, lingering sigh.
The furrows between Shen Yanrong's and Qin Hui's brows eased, and they exchanged faint smiles.
"Senior, what do you think?"
Chen Jian asked from the tower.
An unusual gleam appeared in Cui Pinyuan's eyes. After some serious consideration, he said, "Zhao Changfeng's Blood Shadow Art has already reached full mastery. Besides spiritual power and vital blood, it contains another unusual force resembling divine sense."
The Crippled Demon Sect was responsible for security around Heavenly Shield City, and its disciples were often seen in the Sola Desert. He knew quite a bit about several of the sect's basic Demonic Cultivation Arts.
As a powerful cultivator of the Primordial Spirit Realm, he could tell at a glance that the five blood shadows Zhao Changfeng had condensed contained a force akin to divine sense.
By all normal reasoning, Zhao Changfeng, being at the yuanqi stage, should not have opened his upper dantian and had no divine sense with which to bring the Blood Shadow Art to full mastery. Yet the truth lay before his eyes.
Everyone had their secrets, whether a precious treasure hidden away or some other strange technique cultivated in secret.
Cui Pinyuan did not know what unspeakable secret Zhao Changfeng harbored, but he would not ask, nor did he have the right.
"I mean, do you think Zhao Changfeng bears any trace of contamination by demon spirits?"
Chen Jian asked again.
Cui Pinyuan immediately shook his head and declared, "No!"
Though Zhao Changfeng's Blood Shadow Art was extraordinarily powerful, it indeed carried no scent of demon spirits. There was no grounds whatsoever to claim he had any connection to them.
Chen Jian nodded lightly and said, "Good, then."
While everyone stared at the bloody battlefield, Zhao Changfeng finished defending himself and walked straight toward Chen Haoming's scattered limbs and shattered bones.
Damn it. I didn't expect Chen Haoming to be so weak. I used up all the willpower in the second cauldron at once for nothing.
He had squandered every last bit of willpower stored in the second cauldron, leaving not a trace.
Chen Haoming was, after all, at the late yuanqi stage. Fearing that something might go wrong, he had condensed all the willpower obtained from slaying twenty-seven demon spirits into five black-and-red blood shadows in one go.
Now, not only was the second cauldron's willpower exhausted, but both his middle and lower dantians were severely depleted as well.
But this also allowed him to judge that killing a late yuanqi stage cultivator like Chen Haoming actually required only three blood shadows.
One blood shadow would destroy his opponent's blood shadow, another would breach his bodily defenses, and the third could drive straight in, invading his flesh and organs to kill him.
The remaining two blood shadows had merely blasted Chen Haoming's body apart, making the scene unbearably gruesome.
What a waste. I wasted so much extra power.
Muttering inwardly, Zhao Changfeng first picked up the Blood God Saber that Chen Haoming had purchased at great expense. A smile touched his lips. "A Second-Tier Spirit Artifact."
His willingness to take on this business had also been for this Blood God Saber, the weapon best suited to him. It was worth five thousand spirit stones.
With the long saber in hand, he gathered another streak of bloodlight and infused it into the blade. He immediately sensed a wondrous formation within, constantly amplifying the bloodlight's power.
The blade abruptly brightened. Fine patterns flashed into view one after another, and the formation became clear in an instant.
"What a fine treasure!"
"With this demonic saber in hand, every blood shadow will be even more savage. Even if Senior Sister Ruan returns to peak fighting strength, I might be able to deal with her!"
Zhao Changfeng's smile grew ever brighter.
Besides the Blood God Saber, he naturally did not overlook Chen Haoming's other possessions. He obtained a cloth pouch containing five pieces of spirit jade and several dozen spirit stones, along with a small bell from Shi Yue's son's belongings and several other trinkets.
Judging by their appearance, those trinkets belonged to the fellow disciples who had died in the demon spirit attacks. They should be worth a few spirit stones too.
Only the Blood God Saber is worth much. The rest...
Zhao Changfeng inwardly shook his head.
He did not know how many sordid things Chen Haoming had done for this demonic saber. Chen Haoming had barely acquired it, not even holding it long enough to warm it, before it became Zhao Changfeng's spoils.
After briefly gathering the items and sweeping his gaze around, he carried the demonic saber over to the largest piece of Chen Haoming's remains.
"Essence-Devouring Demon Art..."
Zhao Changfeng crouched, intending to refine the piece of flesh containing Chen Haoming's heart, but his brows knitted after a brief attempt.
In his lower dantian, above the sea of spiritual qi, both small cauldrons radiated intense rejection.
The illusory small cauldrons that were the source of his growing strength fiercely resisted his attempt to refine the flesh of his own kind. If he insisted, he might lose their favor and protection.
"You're quite a picky eater, aren't you? You won't let me prey on my own kind? Fine..."
Zhao Changfeng could only abandon the idea with regret.
"Hm?"
Suddenly sensing something, he turned to look at Shi Yue nearby.
Shi Yue, who had watched his fierce battle with Chen Haoming intently, had wanted him to win more than anyone. Now, however, Shi Yue seemed to have lost the strength supporting his body and sat blankly on the still-wet ground.
Not long ago, Shi Yue had been staring fixedly at the battlefield, ready to join the fight at any moment.
-Shi Yue had no fear of death. His only fear was that Chen Haoming would not die.
Last night, while Zhao Changfeng refined the remaining spirit beasts with the Essence-Devouring Demon Art, Shi Yue's obsessive inner demon had suddenly erupted, forcibly dragging Zhao Changfeng into his life's journey for a brief time.
Zhao Changfeng had become Shi Yue, walking a long, arduous road and experiencing his pain firsthand.
He had felt Shi Yue's anxiety as the limit of his lifespan approached, and the joy he experienced after enduring countless hardships to obtain the Profound Yin Scripture.
Within that strange realm, he ventured into desolate places steeped in icy energy, gathering extreme yin cold that made people shiver uncontrollably. Relying on the Demonic Cultivation Art, he advanced step by step to the peak of the yuanjing stage.
There, his cultivation ceased to advance even an inch. Every attempt to break through ended in failure.
His body continually aged. A casual tug at his scalp would pull out handfuls of white hair, and his whole body carried the decaying odor of an old man.
Reaching the peak of the yuanjing stage could not restore his youth. Each day, he felt another step closer to death, his gait gradually growing unsteady.
He fell into utter despair, and so placed his attachment to life in having children. Heaven favored him with two.
When his first child was born, he held the swaddled infant and wept with joy.
But the end of his lifespan was drawing near. How desperately he wished to live a few more years, so he could spend time with his young children.
He wanted to watch them play and tussle, to accompany them into the mountains and streams, to live through a few more springs, summers, autumns, and winters.
He knew all too well how difficult cultivation was. He wanted to give his children more support on their cultivation paths, sparing them some of the hardships he had endured.
Heaven favored him once more.
Just as he was about to die of old age, he actually succeeded in entering the yuanqi stage and regained the youthful vitality he had lost.
He thanked Heaven, and he thanked his two children, firmly believing that the arrival of those two little lives had given him a new life.
From then on, he devoted every thought to his children. He scrimped and saved, refusing to spend even one extra spirit stone on himself, setting everything aside for their future breakthroughs.
His heart brimmed with hope that one day, he would see both children enter the yuanqi stage as he had, and spend another hundred years with them in utter contentment.
Disaster struck without warning. Chen Haoming and Zhang Mu destroyed all his dreams and hopes, killing his heart overnight and robbing everything he saw of its color.
The future he had built piece by piece shattered with a crash, and his world became eternally gray.
Every night, he wept silently in an empty, dilapidated house. Killing Chen Haoming and Zhang Mu became the sole force keeping him alive.
Now that Zhang Mu and Chen Haoming had died in succession, he had lost his reason to live.
Spirit materials, cultivation realms, and the lifespan that had not yet reached its end...
The things he had pursued all his life now meant nothing to him.
"Hah!"
Zhao Changfeng let out a long breath, as though awakening from a grand dream of fleeting glory, and found himself still beneath the blazing sun.
He had once again been affected by Shi Yue's Heart-Demon Obsession.
Within the little world of his spirit sea, the scenes in the second cauldron shattered piece by piece like castles in the air.
Zhao Changfeng knew Shi Yue's Heart-Demon Obsession had been resolved, but the pillar sustaining his spirit had collapsed with it. He no longer clung to life and now wished to die.
After pondering for a moment, he walked toward Shi Yue step by step beneath everyone's puzzled gazes.
More scenes vanished one by one, like Shi Yue's life on the verge of extinction. Heaven and earth seemed to turn into a gray wasteland of death, with no vitality anywhere in sight.
Frowning, Zhao Changfeng kept shaking off the strange feelings that even he found oppressive and unbearable, until he finally reached Shi Yue.
"Take this."
He placed a bronze bell in Shi Yue's hand. Looking at that numb, gaunt face, he said softly, "Your two sons who died would both want you to live well."
Shi Yue looked bewildered, his eyes utterly devoid of color, and simply stared blankly at him.
"Legend has it that in other ruin realms, the Extinction Sect knows the secret art of reincarnation. Perhaps one day, you might see your two sons again."
Zhao Changfeng spoke in a low voice.
"I know of the Extinction Sect, but I..."
Shi Yue looked like a dead man as he spoke, saying miserably, "I'm afraid I could spend my whole life trying and never reach the Extinction Sect. Nor do I have the means to ask their Reincarnation Cult Master to search the Nine Hells for my two departed children."
Zhao Changfeng considered for a moment, then continued, "If you keep advancing your cultivation, perhaps you could meet that Reincarnation Cult Master and learn from him whether your children have reincarnated."
Shi Yue remained stunned for a long time. Deep within those dull eyes filled with deathly stillness, a faint glimmer slowly appeared.
The light was tiny, as slight as a gnat, yet it marked the return of life.
At that moment, the scenes stored in the second cauldron within Zhao Changfeng finally vanished completely, like smoke dispersing into the air.
Shi Yue slowly lowered his head, looking at the little bronze bell in his hand as though gazing at his two dead children. He asked softly, "Is there really a chance?"
Zhao Changfeng smiled. "There is."
P.S. Tuesday's read-throughs are very important. I beg everyone to keep reading through to the latest chapter. Old Ni cups his hands and bows in thanks~