Blood Domain

On the second day after Luo Tianshen left the city, Xiao Yan went to the Luo Pill Pavilion. He had not found the time to visit since coming out of the Luo River Abyss. Now that assimilation had reached eighty percent, the Spiritual Energy in his body had become much more stable. He decided to bring the Abyss Scale Flood Dragon core and discuss with Elder Qin whether they could refine a batch of pills for the severely injured Luo God Clan youths from the Luo River Abyss.

Luo Lan naturally followed him. Ever since breaking through to the Divine Soul Realm, the boy had become Xiao Yan's shadow, following him wherever he went. In his own words, "Brother Xiao needs someone around to run errands." But Xiao Yan could see clearly that this errand boy always ended up making a detour past Luo Su's infirmary-and Luo Zhi was helping out there.

The Luo Pill Pavilion was still the same five-story building of green jade, its sign gleaming softly in the sunlight. Steward Liu, who had once looked down on Xiao Yan's pills for having "no Pill Patterns," spotted him from afar and hurried out to greet him, the smile on his face so eager it was almost overflowing. "Guest Elder Xiao! You've finally come! Elder Qin has been talking about you for days!"

Xiao Yan smiled and nodded, then followed him up to the fifth floor. Elder Qin was sitting by the window, squinting at a furnace of pills being gently nurtured. When he saw Xiao Yan enter, his wrinkled old face immediately blossomed into a smile. He grabbed Xiao Yan's hand and looked him up and down. "You rascal! I've heard all about what happened in the Luo River Abyss!"

Seeing the faint red scars across Xiao Yan's palm, Elder Qin frowned. "Tsk, what happened to your hand?"

"Hehe, I refined a batch of pills," Xiao Yan said with a smile. "The furnace was too small and the fire was too strong. It exploded."

Elder Qin glared at him, clearly unconvinced, but did not press him. He merely pulled him down to sit and poured him a cup of spirit tea. Xiao Yan took the Abyss Scale Flood Dragon core from his robes and placed it on the table. The fist-sized core was a deep blue throughout, and the moment it touched the table, the temperature in the entire room plummeted. A thin layer of ice formed over the cup of spirit tea in the blink of an eye. Elder Qin's eyes went wide. "This... this is..."

"The Abyss Scale Flood Dragon's core," Xiao Yan said. "I want to use it as the main ingredient in a batch of pills to dispel cold and mend meridians, for those children whose meridians were injured in the Luo River Abyss. But its cold nature is too strong. If it's used directly, it'll hurt people. I'd like you to take a look, Elder Qin, and see what we can use to suppress it."

Elder Qin stared at the core for a long while, undisguised fervor burning in his aged eyes. At last, he let out a long breath, reached out a finger, and tapped the surface of the core. "Scarlet Yang Vine won't do," he murmured. "It's too fierce. It'll explode. We need something warm, something..."

The two began discussing the core, each taking turns to speak. Luo Lan sat to the side and listened for a while, but soon his eyes glazed over and he grew drowsy. He simply got up and leaned by the window, looking down at the street below. Before long, his gaze drifted toward the infirmary again.

Just then, his body suddenly stiffened, and his voice trembled. "Brother... Brother Xiao... why... why has the sky turned red?"

Xiao Yan looked up. Outside the window, the once-clear sky had, at some unknown point, turned a strange dark red. The dark red spread rapidly from both ends of the street and over the rooftops in every direction. In the blink of an eye, it covered the entire street, including the Luo Pill Pavilion, beneath a dark red curtain of light.

The curtain was like a gigantic overturned bowl, countless viscous blood-red patterns flowing slowly across its walls. A stench of blood so thick it was nauseating seeped through the curtain and filled the air. The pedestrians coming and going along the street froze one after another, looking up at the blood-red sky in terror.

Elder Qin's face turned deathly pale in an instant, and his voice shook. "Blood Domain... it's a Blood Domain! Only an Earthly Sovereign can raise a Blood Domain like this!"

Xiao Yan's pupils contracted sharply. He remembered the decayed, chilling presence, like rotten wood, that he had sensed on the deserted hill west of the city yesterday morning. They're here.

"Heh heh heh..."

A dry laugh slowly drifted up from below the Luo Pill Pavilion. It sounded like dead branches rubbing together, making the hairs all over one's body stand on end. Xiao Yan walked to the window and looked down. Two figures stood on the street in front of the pavilion. Xiao Yan recognized the one on the left: red hair and beard, a withered face, and crimson eyes fixed on the fifth floor of the Luo Pill Pavilion. The malice in his gaze was almost tangible. It was Xue Li.

The figure on the right was an old man so hunched he was almost folded in half. He wore a loose blood-red robe that hung empty around him, as though it contained nothing but a skeleton. His face was as shriveled as old bark stretched over a skull, without a trace of color. Only his deep-set eyes were dark red as blood, glimmering faintly beneath the blood-red sky.

He stood there as casually as could be, yet Xiao Yan felt as though the old man bore a mountain of bones upon him.

A Lower Earthly Sovereign!

"Master, that's the brat." Xue Li's voice was hoarse and venomous. "He's the one who crippled Tu'er's dantian. He's the one who ruined our plans in the Luo River Abyss."

The hunched old man did not speak. He merely raised his head slowly, his dark red eyes crossing dozens of zhang to settle on the slender figure by the window. In that instant, Xiao Yan felt as though an icy hand had clenched around his soul.

"Little child from a Lower Plane." The old man spoke, his voice as dry as dead wood rubbing together. "I am Xue Ku. I spent sixty years in seclusion and had no wish to come out again. But that child Xue Li knelt outside my seclusion chamber for seven days and seven nights. I had no choice but to come out."

Hearing this, Elder Qin gripped the window frame and leaned shakily out, forcing himself to shout, "Xue Ku! This is the Luo Pill Pavilion! Fighting is forbidden in pill shops. That's been the rule on the Western Heaven Continent for ten thousand years! You-"

"Rules?" Xue Ku slowly turned his head and glanced at Elder Qin. With that single glance, Elder Qin's body seemed to be struck hard by an invisible sledgehammer. He flew backward, knocking over the pill furnace behind him. The pills being nurtured inside rolled across the floor. He lay on the ground and spat out a mouthful of blood, struggling several times but failing to get up.

"Elder Qin!" Xiao Yan caught hold of him and sent a wisp of Spiritual Energy into his body. His expression darkened slightly. With a single glance, Xue Ku had injured the internal organs of a Peak Divine Soul Realm alchemist.

"I've lived all these years and seen more rules than you've eaten salt," Xue Ku said leisurely. "Rules are made for those who can't win a fight."

He raised his head and gazed at the blood-red sky. "That old thing Luo Tianshen is sitting in the great hall of Blood God City right now, drinking tea with the clan leader. They'll be drinking that tea for a long time. Three days, five days, seven days... By the time he finishes and comes back, there won't be anything left in Luo Shen City."

Xiao Yan's grip on Elder Qin's hand tightened slightly. They had indeed lured the tiger away from the mountain.

"Come down, little child." Xue Ku's voice remained unhurried. "I'll give you a quick death. If you don't come down, I'll turn the Luo Pill Pavilion and everyone on this street into blood."

Of the pedestrians frozen on the street, some had already collapsed to the ground, some were clutching their children and trembling, and others were desperately throwing themselves against the blood-red curtain of light, trying to break out. But the curtain did not budge. Xiao Yan slowly stood up, only for Luo Lan to grab his sleeve, his face deathly pale. "Brother Xiao! You can't go down there! That's an Earthly Sovereign! Granduncle... Granduncle isn't here..."

Xiao Yan looked down at him, at the hands that were still gripping his sleeve tightly despite his terror, and said softly, "Luo Lan."

"Y-yes."

"No matter how large a Blood Domain is, it's still sustained by Spiritual Energy, and Spiritual Energy has a direction of flow," Xiao Yan said. "Do you remember what I said in the Mist Abyss?"

Luo Lan was slightly taken aback. "Go... go against the flow?"

"This Blood Domain is closing in from both ends of the street toward the middle." Xiao Yan pointed to the blood patterns flowing across the curtain outside. "It's thickest at its source, beneath that old thing's feet. Go in the opposite direction, to the end of the street. The blood patterns are sparsest there. Use Eight Extremes Collapse and strike one point. Strike it ten times, a hundred times, until you break through. Then go find Elder Luo Yan."

Luo Lan's lips trembled. "What about you?" Xiao Yan smiled but did not answer. Then he turned and stepped out of the window.

He landed on the street in front of the Luo Pill Pavilion, ten zhang away from Xue Ku and Xue Li. In his green robes, with the Black Ruler, he looked so frail and small beneath the blood-red sky, like a moth flying into a sea of fire. Xue Ku studied him, a flicker of interest passing through his deep-set dark red eyes. "Assimilation, eighty percent? That's even faster than Xue Li said. What a pity."

He raised a hand as thin as firewood. There was no blood-red light on his palm, no Spiritual Energy, nothing at all. He simply pressed it gently toward Xiao Yan, and in that instant, Xiao Yan's pupils shrank to pinpoints.

Boom!

He did not even see how the palm strike reached him. His vision went black, and his chest felt as though it had been struck head-on by a mountain. He flew backward, smashing through the walls of three shops along the street before crashing heavily into a pile of rubble. A great mouthful of blood sprayed from his mouth.

He struggled to prop himself up and looked down. The green robes over his chest had been torn to strips, and beneath them, a dark red palm print stood out clearly on his chest. The flesh around the print was gradually turning black.

Just one palm strike, a casual palm strike-and for the first time since coming to the Great Thousand World, he truly felt the gulf between their realms.

Leaning on the Heavy Xuan Ruler, Xiao Yan slowly rose from the rubble and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. He looked at the hunched old man walking leisurely toward him beneath the blood-red sky.

The palm strike had thrown the Spiritual Energy in his body into complete disarray. At eighty percent assimilation, even by the most generous reckoning, he had barely touched the threshold of the Earthly Sovereign realm. The old man, on the other hand, was a genuine Lower Earthly Sovereign who had immersed himself in this world for most of his life. Xiao Yan could not defeat him. No matter how he reckoned it, he could not win.

Xiao Yan sent his consciousness into his body, down to the deepest part of his sea of Dou Qi. There, twenty percent of his Dou Qi remained unassimilated. It was the last thing he had brought from the Dou Qi Continent. He fell silent for a moment, then smiled, his smile carrying a trace of helplessness and an indescribable madness.

"It seems," he said quietly, "I can only stake everything on one fight."