Divine Dao Law Enforcer

With a flash of light, Hu Mang and the fire cat were drawn into the unfolding Later Heaven Eight Trigrams.

Then Hu Mang felt dampness beneath his feet. As far as he could see, everything was shrouded in mist, and undercurrents spread through the mud in every direction.

First came the damp, then the chill, as though a bone-deep cold were spreading up through the soles of his feet.

"Yin Qi?" Hu Mang murmured to himself.

"So this is the Kan Trigram."

Kan stood for water, danger, and entrapment, and governed "yin killing."

Soon, as the chill spread through his limbs and bones, Hu Mang felt his Qi and Blood grow sluggish and his soul disturbed. Even his vision began to blur.

A thin layer of ice visibly formed on Hu Mang's eyebrows and the corners of his eyes.

A shadow crawled out of the watery reflection beneath Hu Mang's feet and lunged at him from behind and to the side.

The next instant, Hu Mang did not even turn his head, but thunder exploded by his ear. Before the "water ghost" could rise, it burst apart.

Then more "water ghosts" emerged from streams, puddles, and even the mist. Some had already taken shape, while others were entirely formless, or even just a wisp of Yin Qi whistling past.

The surrounding mist grew thicker, until all Hu Mang could see was a sea of white. He could no longer make out the directions, much less the water ghosts that appeared and vanished like spirits.

Ghosts obscuring the eyes.

A sudden heat flared deep in Hu Mang's eyes, and the Yin-Suppressing Mark lit up.

The next moment, the thick fog before him was forcibly torn apart from the center, as if by an invisible giant hand, and rapidly retreated to either side.

His vision instantly cleared, becoming even sharper than before. He could clearly see even the faint trails of Yin Qi left in the mist as the water ghosts fled.

Deep in the fog, watery shadows swayed and ghostly figures loomed, and he could see them clearly.

Hu Mang moved.

He no longer walked; he crushed everything in his path.

Wherever he passed, dull, continuous "thunder" rolled through the air.

It was not sound, but a more fundamental kind of shock wave: the natural repulsion and crushing force of the masculine vigor of Qi and Blood against yin and filth.

The explosive crack of the spear shaft tearing through the air merged with the thunder produced by the Innate Thunder Pattern and the footwork derived from the Dragon-Suppressing Stake.

With every step he took, the ground trembled slightly, and within several feet of him, streams, puddles, and even the damp air violently "burst"!

The water ghosts hiding within them, formed or not, were forcibly shaken into view by this overwhelming, irresistible "yang thunder." Like snow splashed with boiling water, their bodies of condensed Yin Qi twisted violently and flickered, emitting soundless shrieks.

Then came a glint of dark light, following close on the "thunderclap."

Throughout it all, Hu Mang's gaze remained calm and his movements precise as a machine's. Only his brow twitched slightly, while an invisible thread of Divine Sense had long since been set in motion.

Within his crimson palace, the crescent Mysterious Yin Devil Moon silently emerged, like a reflection in a well, illuminating the world outside his body.

Wherever the moon's shadow reached, ripples in the streams, the flow of mist, and even the dissipating path of every wisp of Yin Qi were reflected with perfect clarity in the "well of his heart."

And with every water ghost he killed, an exceedingly fine, faint "thread" quietly appeared in the reflected "well."

As more and more fine threads traced their way across it, a vast network of spiritual power gradually took shape.

Ten steps, twenty steps, fifty steps... Wherever he passed, thunder rolled, spear shadows crisscrossed, Yin Qi melted away like ice and snow, and the network in his mind gradually formed.

At a hundred steps, Hu Mang abruptly halted.

His eyes wide, he gripped his spear with both hands. The webbing between his thumbs and forefingers tightened sharply as he twisted and turned it, his movement smooth yet marked by a certain decisiveness.

His front hand lifted while his rear hand pressed down. The spear shaft, straight as a dragon a moment before, became a supple yet fierce "whip shadow," lashing upward at an angle toward an invisible point in the air before him!

"Open!!"

There was no cold flash, no deafening boom, only an exceptionally faint sound that seemed capable of cleaving the soul-

"Rip."

It struck the very "heart of the web."

After that, the mist visibly dispersed.

Having broken the formation in a hundred steps, Hu Mang felt no fatigue. His Qi and Blood surged even more vigorously through his body, as though his Blood-Piercing Essence-Reversal Art might break through to the third layer at any moment.

Hu Mang turned his head and saw that the fire cat on his shoulder had wrapped its tail around the back of his neck. Waves of warmth passed from its fluffy red fur into him.

When he looked over, the fire cat silently stared back at him with its pitch-black eyes. After a while, Hu Mang smiled, flicked his spear tip, and stepped straight through the Kan Palace.

Elsewhere, old Chen Sheng had finished more than half of his Ghost Makeup. On the "heavenly soldier's corpse," which had been reduced almost to bare bones, lifelike features had appeared on the facial bones.

It was a woman's face, with clean lines and clearly defined bone structure, possessing a blade-like sharpness and coldness. Her skin was a bloodless porcelain white, as though covered in frost that never melted, with a naturally cold, hard texture.

Her eyebrows were slender and swept diagonally toward her temples, their ends raised like sword points, without the slightest softness. Beneath them, a pair of eyes had already been drawn.

As Zhou Tong watched, those ghostly eyes suddenly turned and stared straight at her.

Zhou Tong cried out, her heart jolting in alarm, and took a step back.

"Don't panic, little Zhou. This is a dead ghost, not a living one. She can't pounce on anyone."

Old Chen spoke without looking up.

"Grandpa Zhou, this is...!?"

"There are two kinds of Ghost Makeup: a person painting a ghost, and a ghost painting a person. A person painting a ghost is what that ugly woman was doing before, painting herself into an eighteen-year-old girl. Even I felt sick looking at her!"

"But the truly formidable Ghost Makeup is a ghost painting a person. Only a painter proficient in yin portraiture can grasp this level of Ghost Makeup."

"You're proficient in that too, old sir?"

"Mm. When I traveled the jianghu, I spent some time working as a 'portrait master.' Anyone who wanted a portrait of the deceased before the seventh day after death would generally come to me."

With Chen Sheng's final stroke, "dotting the ghost's eyes to open them," a lifelike human face had been drawn on the white bones.

The old man then began chanting an incantation, even singing and dancing as he did, clapping his hands from time to time, just like a spirit medium performing a ritual dance.

A gust of yin wind rolled in from all sides-

"...Bones form the frame... flesh has wasted away... O soul... I summon your outer form..."

"...Your skin peeled away... your likeness takes shape... these bones as the foundation... this makeup as the surface..."

"...Dead one... why must you rest... why fear your soul's extinction... with my brush... I summon your visage... with your old form... receive my new command..."

As the yin wind slipped into the gaps between the bones, the "female heavenly general" abruptly sat up.

Just as Zhou Tong widened her eyes, thinking she was about to come back to life, the "corpse" went still again.

Chen Sheng seemed to have known this would happen. With a casual swipe, he peeled off a sheet of "Ghost Makeup human skin" and laid it on the ground.

Then old Chen also put the corpse on the ground and began repeating the process.

As the sheet of "imitation makeup human skin" lay on the ground, the female general's deep, indifferent eyes slowly moved, staring at Zhou Tong from time to time before looking at old Chen again.

"..." Zhou Tong.

The young female cultivator had previously been imprisoned as a lump of meat and had just undergone another round of tempering. She had thought her will was already firm, but the sight still made her heart tremble.

"Grandpa Zhou, this-"

"Didn't I tell you before? A third-rate painter has a person paint a ghost, while a first-rate painter has a ghost paint a person. As long as this Ghost Makeup is placed over a person's face, it can temporarily let a ghost possess them, granting them some of the deceased's abilities."

"These are troubled times. It's good to have one more means of staying alive."

Zhou Tong suddenly noticed that his hair, which had been half black and half white, had turned a little whiter. At once, she could not bring herself to say another word.

But there was something Chen Sheng had not said: a third-rate painter had a person paint a ghost, and a first-rate painter had a ghost paint a person, but a top-tier painter could have a ghost paint a ghost, directly painting this "female general" from yin into yin and "bringing her back to life."

But if he really did that, his remaining lifespan would probably be burned away entirely.

Besides, his skill at painting portraits of the dead was not good enough.

Hu Mang naturally had no idea that the old man had actually learned Min Yao's Ghost Makeup from before.

After passing through the Kan Trigram's Drowning Pool, he successively broke through the Kun Trigram's Flesh Zhi Grave, the Zhen Trigram's Mad Wood Cage, and the Xun Trigram's Windless Domain.

In the Flesh Zhi Grave, half of one foot had been corroded to the bone by a "flesh zhi garden."

In the Mad Wood Cage, those "bloodsucking trees" had drained a fifth of his blood.

In the Windless Domain, more than a dozen bloody gashes deep enough to expose bone had appeared on his body.

Yet Hu Mang's eyes were indeed growing brighter, and a wholly different presence was spreading and rising, slow and steady as an invisible tide.

It had nothing to do with the cool, profound Mysterious Yin Devil Moon. This was another vast presence, more ancient and majestic, as though it had descended from the nine heavens above, bearing the ringing of metal and stone and the lingering echoes of thunder.

The presence had neither form nor substance, yet weighed a thousand tons. The surrounding air, once damp and cloying, grew solemn beneath it, then seemed to melt away in an instant, as though molten iron had been poured into it.

This was not something he had gained through his own cultivation, but a "gift" from an existence of a higher order.

Now, as his Divine Sense reached the utmost clarity and perception under the Mysterious Yin Devil Moon's enhancement, this dormant power was also awakened and began to resonate.

Divine office-Devil-Subduing Heavenly Soldier!

Anyone who often changed maps knew that once the map changed, a big shot became a security guard.

The reverse was equally true: once a security guard descended to the lower realm, he became a big shot.

Although heavenly soldiers were the lowest tier of combat strength in the upper realm, and the "Devil-Subduing Heavenly Soldiers" artificially created by the divine dynasty might have been another level lower,

and considering how abundant the Spiritual Qi in the Azure Mysterious Realm was, even an upper-realm heavenly soldier who descended to the lower realm could not become a "big shot,"

it was still an upper-realm combat unit, an existence that exterminated Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devils.

At this moment, image after image of the divine office, of "conquering those who refused to submit" and "purging the taint of demons," overlapped with Hu Mang's physical body.

Where his spear pointed, wind and thunder faintly followed, and law and order arose of their own accord.

Hu Mang's essence, Qi, and spirit soared, seeming ready to surpass even his previous peak state, Foundation Establishment Great Perfection.

A Devil-Subduing Heavenly Soldier—or, to put it another way, a Divine Dao Law Enforcer!