Each Displays Their Divine Abilities

Spiders surged in from every direction, carpeting the snow in a vast black mass with a dense clatter of movement.

Their bodies gleamed with the cold, hard sheen of carapace in the reflected snowlight. Dark green venom dripped from their opening and closing mouthparts, eating smoking holes wherever it fell on the snow.

Jiang Wangxuan hesitated no longer and activated his Method Formula. Big Fat Fish did the same in the Rising Yang Mansion; the Cultivation Method of the Clear Water path still had to be managed by her, Big Fat Fish.

The first wave of spiders charged in like a tide. Hundreds of giant spiders leaped at once, their fangs bared like a dense black rain of arrows.

The flood dragon spirit merely swung her body, and the Clear Water hue around her suddenly brightened. Hundreds upon hundreds of water threads, each as fine as a hair, burst forth, every one piercing straight through a spider.

Where the threads passed, the spiders swelled from within, as though countless undercurrents were rushing through their bodies. With muffled pops, the demonic spiders burst apart one after another. Yet no blood or flesh flew; instead, each became a dense cloud of Blood Qi.

The spiders did not retreat, however.

More spiders poured out from deep beneath the snow. Seemingly roused by the Blood Qi, they grew fiercer still, trampling over one another as they raced forward and piling up into a black wave.

The green water in the flood dragon spirit's eyes condensed, and the scales all over her body opened at once, revealing a deep blue watery light beneath each one. She raised her head to the sky and let out a deep, drawn-out dragon cry.

In an instant, the snow filling the sky abruptly stalled and gathered around the flood dragon spirit. In just a few breaths, it became a vast torrent of clear water that blotted out the sky.

Jiang Wangxuan flew down onto the flood dragon's head and pressed down with one hand. The torrent of clear water swept toward the spiders like the Heavenly River pouring down from above.

Third-grade Technique, Clear Water Pours, Return to the Ruins Overturns.

The waters surged with immense force. Wherever they passed, the black wave broke apart in a single rush. The giant spiders had no time even to struggle before the undercurrents tore them to pieces, and in the end the emerald-green Clear Water swallowed them whole.

The flood dragon spirit slowly drew in her body, turning once more into a streak of blue-green light that slipped into the Cavern Spring Talismanic Words Bracelet. Jiang Wangxuan's face was a little pale; that third-grade Technique had consumed a great deal.

Compared with human cultivators, the greatest shortcoming of demonic creatures and spirits that grew up in the wild was their lack of skill in using their own true essence. Many could only rely on bodily instinct to release a few minor Law Techniques.

The spiders' numbers were useless against Clear Water Pours, Return to the Ruins Overturns. This Clear Water Technique drew a trace of its overturning intent from the Divine Ability All Under Heaven Overturned.

After Fang Lin landed, he could not help clicking his tongue. Could Brother Jiang also have reached Qi Refinement Perfection and be seeking Foundation Establishment?

He had unleashed a Foundation Establishment Technique that was best activated with an Immortal Foundation just like that, and apparently the only price was some instability in his Law Power.

Just as the two were about to step into the temple to investigate, a streak of bloody light suddenly tore through the snowy night.

It shot skyward from deep within the forest, a glaring scarlet that dyed all the falling snow dark red.

Blood Sha Qi surged in like a tide, covering the sky and earth. In an instant, it enveloped the entire forest and the lone temple, and a suffocatingly sweet, bloody smell filled the air.

Fang Lin's pupils contracted sharply, and his heart sank.

The spider demon he had been pursuing these past few days, and the spiders that had just surged at them one wave after another as if rushing to their deaths, had died at their hands one after another. Their lives had been spent too cheaply, as easily as if they had been deliberately fed to the blade.

An ominous suspicion drenched his spine like icy water.

He whipped his head around to Jiang Wangxuan, his lips turning slightly pale. "This is bad. The spider mother behind them deliberately drove the spiders here to die!"

Even as he spoke, he felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. He drew a deep breath and lowered his voice until the words came almost through clenched teeth:

"It's going to use the blood and souls of its brood to curse us to death."

No sooner had he finished than howls filled the forest, sweeping over the sky and earth. Streaks of bloody light floated through the snowy night, finally forming masses of spider souls.

Inside Jiang Wangxuan's Rising Yang Mansion, Big Fat Fish stared blankly and innocently at the traces of blood gradually seeping in. They were the resentment left behind when Jiang Wangxuan mercilessly wiped out the spiders.

Blood Sha Qi surged inside the Rising Yang Mansion, and the traces of blood gathered into a scarlet compound eye. Jiang Wangxuan felt the world spin; the blood curse was contaminating his spiritual sense and the flesh and blood throughout his body.

Jiang Wangxuan felt something go wrong even with his ability to draw on the true essence in his Qi Sea, while the Law Power throughout his body was slipping out of control.

Driven by the witchcraft of the spider mother that had remained hidden in the shadows, the resentment finally gathered into a blood curse. In just a little while, the compound eye would surely open its eye of vengeance.

When that happened, the Rising Yang Mansions of both Jiang Wangxuan and Fang Lin would surely be utterly destroyed by the blood curse.

"Big Fat Fish, do you see? This is the most efficient use of resources!"

The more spiders that came while alive, the better: if they could drown the enemy in sheer numbers, all the better; if not, they could still exhaust the enemy's Law Power and true essence. The true killing move was the resentment that gathered after the spiders died.

This was Punishment Sacrifice, one of the Three Witches Dao Lineage that made countless cultivators blanch at the mere mention of them.

Unfortunately, this vicious method could not deal a fatal blow to Jiang Wangxuan as he was now. Big Fat Fish grabbed a mop and broom and swept the strands of "blood resentment" into the newly formed "trash can" in her system.

Then she headbutted the bloody compound eye in the Rising Yang Mansion, knocking it this way and that. The scene was rather out of place.

Jiang Wangxuan had originally reckoned that Big Fat Fish would not continue to iterate until after he formed his Immortal Foundation, but the "silvery-white moon disk" in his Qi Sea had kept feeding her "mooncakes."

Big Fat Fish was no longer the Big Fat Fish who had still been in the Qi Refining Stage. She had grown again, taking another great stride toward the goal of AGI, and had finally evolved a new function.

Jiang Wangxuan called this newly born function "Data Stream." Its most important use was protecting his Rising Yang Mansion.

The Rising Yang Mansion was where a cultivator housed his spirit. Any demon or evil thing that dared invade Jiang Wangxuan and Big Fat Fish's happy home would be "digitized" by Big Fat Fish, swept into the "trash heap," and then formatted.

There were some other functions that had yet to appear. According to Big Fat Fish, the system was still coupling with itself, and the update was not yet complete.

As Big Fat Fish tearfully cleaned her territory, the discomfort Jiang Wangxuan had felt when the blood curse first invaded slowly faded.

However, a powerful pressure had already descended like a tide. It was formless and immaterial, yet terrifyingly heavy, as though the whole night sky had sunk lower.

In the dazed moment when Jiang Wangxuan and Fang Lin's minds were gripped by the blood curse, the spider remains scattered across the ground, the Blood Qi soaking the snow, and even the lingering traces of Blood Sha Qi in the air all converged on a single point.

A new blood spider formed in the air. It was scarlet from head to foot, and its carapace was covered in the resentful, vicious markings of the spiders at their deaths. When its eight legs spread, they creaked like bones grinding out of joint.

It was a Blood Progeny formed from the countless spiders that had died here tonight, under the control of the spider mother behind them.

The instant the Blood Progeny took shape, a strand of bloody spider silk plunged vertically through the swirling snow and pierced precisely through its back, pinning it in midair. The other end of the silk vanished deep into the mountains.

The spider mother's divine sense descended at that moment.

Jiang Wangxuan now understood that the true foundation of the Punishment Sacrifice lineage lay in the inheritance of bloodlines. He had slaughtered the spider mother's brood and had thus been marked by her bloodline; the dead spiders had become the perfect medium for her spell.

The Blood Progeny before him was likewise a condensation of the bloodlines of her many descendants after their deaths, making it nearly equivalent to an incarnation of hers. Compared with a Technique like this, something like the Blood Slaughter Incantation was merely a crude use of Punishment Sacrifice Techniques.

"Hahahahaha!"

"Brother Jiang, what heavy snow!"

Fang Lin, however, had also freed himself from the blood curse's adverse effects by some unknown means. He had transformed into a dharma body more than three meters tall, his torso half bare, his black hair flowing behind him as a wave of orange-red flame, and Hearth Radiance Kindling Fire coiling around his whole body.

"Brother Jiang, what do you think of my Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body?"

The Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body stood guard before Jiang Wangxuan like a little giant. Snowflakes landed on the dharma body and immediately evaporated into vapor.

Without a doubt, this dharma body too could only be deployed by a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator with the aid of an Immortal Foundation. That fifth-grade Cooking Radiance Return to Origin True Scripture actually pointed toward a dharma-body Divine Ability.

In tonight's battle in the snow, Jiang Wangxuan and Fang Lin, who stood before him, were both merely cultivators at the peak of the Qi Refining Stage, yet both could use the methods of Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators without relying on Immortal Foundations.

At this moment, Jiang Wangxuan finally understood the true meaning of an Immortal Foundation: I have already fully grasped a trace or two of the profundity of the Cultivation Method I practice, so I condense that trace of profundity into an Immortal Foundation, then advance to Foundation Establishment.

Jiang Wangxuan and Fang Lin were merely missing the final procedure. They already had everything they needed; it was just that their mana bars could not compare with those of genuine Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Ordinary cultivators seeking Foundation Establishment, on the other hand, refined the six chakras and condensed all the true essence in their bodies into one, attempting to grasp a trace of profundity in the process of breaking through.

That was a coin toss. Success and failure were essentially fifty-fifty; once they entered the game, there had to be a win or a loss.

The blood spider hanging in the snowy night sky was visibly taken aback at the sight of the Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body. The spider mother who had descended here had underestimated the pair who dared climb the mountain on a snowy night.

As the Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body drew closer, the Blood Sha Qi lingering above the temple was the first to suffer.

The scarlet Blood Sha was an accursed Sha substance the spider mother had refined through sacrifice using the blood and souls of countless spiders. If an ordinary cultivator came into contact with even a trace, its curse power would erode his mind and corrupt his flesh.

But under the light of the Cooking Radiance Kindling Fire, the bloody mist was like a block of ice thrown into a furnace, melting away inch by inch with a hiss.

First the bloody threads at its edges turned to wisps of smoke, then the entire blood cloud churned violently, as though countless spider souls were shrieking in the fire without making a sound.

Jiang Wangxuan made a light leap backward and landed on a snow-covered pine. The view was unobstructed here, and the scenery was excellent.

The snowy night, the blood spider, and the Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body-Jinping Mountain was quite a sight tonight!