Return

No one had expected a fated showdown between the "Devil-Slaying Bladesman" and the "Devil-Subduing Heavenly Soldier" to produce such unpredictable consequences.

The "old monster of an unorthodox path," the "Yang Spirit," and the "Thunder God" who had appeared one after another had, in a sense, all exceeded the upper limit of Demon-Subduing City's martial might.

Fortunately, the old monster had blown himself up and died, while the "Yang Spirit" and the "Thunder God" had vanished one after the other. Otherwise, one really had to wonder whether Demon-Subduing City's restriction on strength still worked at all.

The "survivors of the Divine Dynasty" who had watched coldly from the sidelines, along with the other "interested parties," had all been cowed by the outlandish commotion and had lain low for the time being.

At least for the short term, they dared not make any further moves.

Thus, in the whole of the Hundred-Well Abyss, the battlefield ruins where several great battles had taken place, only Hu Mang's corpse seemed to remain, lying there all alone.

Half his body was buried in the earth.

Time passed bit by bit, and night fell once more. Faint moonlight pierced the thick layers of thunderclouds, shining on Hu Mang's "corpse."

At last, the corpse stirred.

The soil began to turn outward, and the first thing to emerge was not a hand or a foot, but a thick, pure-white "fox tail."

The "fox tail" wagged several times, seemingly trying to pull "Hu Mang" out, but to no effect.

That single bolt of "Yang Lightning" from his opponent seemed to have blasted every trace of life out of Hu Mang.

With his soul scattered to this extent, its life-preserving effect could not activate either.

But the "fox tail" soon came up with an idea. Hundreds upon thousands of white hairs shot from it, each stabbing into the blood patterns on Hu Mang's skin like a steel needle. Even his face was not spared.

Soon, under the influence of the "fox hairs," Hu Mang's facial muscles began to twitch eerily, and his mouth began opening and closing. The sounds were indistinct, as though he were chanting an incantation, but they gradually became clearer.

"Mysterious Yin returns to the abyss, the true spirit undimmed; cast off this shell of flesh, roam the great void and return. Three souls gather into one strand, seven spirits turn to mysterious ash-borrow Yin, bear Sha, and cling to the body to live again..."

As the incantation continued, more and more blood patterns appeared on Hu Mang's body.

Besides those, the Grand Yin Qi he had previously accumulated and the Profound Yin Black Sha summoned by the incantation gathered on the surface of the corpse one after another. For a time, ghostly shapes filled the air, and wisps of ghost fire circled his body.

It seemed to have reached a critical point.

With a rip, the human skin was torn clean off the corpse. At the same instant, a figure sprang up and landed on the ground outside the pit.

"Holy shit! If you were summoning my soul, then summon my soul! Why did you have to pull out my hair?!"

The revived Hu Mang looked at his "human skin." More precisely, it was not human skin at all, but a human-shaped figure made from the "life-preserving cat tail" and "Crimson Moon Fox hairs."

As the "life-preserving cat tail's" effect came to an end, the "fox hairs" and "cat hairs" withered at the same time, either freezing into icy needles or burning away into wisps of blue smoke.

Hu Mang held out a hand and examined the skin on his arm. It was smooth and bare, white as jade, like a freshly peeled egg.

As for the "blood patterns" he had been so proud of—or rather, the Crimson Moon Fox hairs—not a single one could be seen.

"It took me nearly thirty years to grow that coat of fur, and just like that, it's all been stripped off. How many years will it take to grow back?"

"Don't you know you're hurting a Heavenly Gate-protected yao?"

Hu Mang muttered to himself.

As for the Thunder-Warding Robe, which had already been half-ruined, that spear strike had finished it off long ago.

So now he was stark naked, like an animal that had just been shaved.

But he did not mind. After all, if he worked in civil engineering, why would he be afraid of exposing himself? And if he was afraid of exposing himself, why work in civil engineering?

He walked straight over to the "corpse" and pulled out the Shattering Thunder Long Spear, which now bore an additional crack. Then he searched the area and found the Storage Bag in which he had placed his enormous fortune.

With those two things intact, nothing else mattered.

"Yang Spirit, Yang Spirit-"

Hu Mang muttered to himself, his eyes exceptionally bright in the darkness.

He had never seen a Spirit Transformation cultivator from the Heavenly Gate, but this time, he had witnessed a Yang Spirit of the Azure Mysterious Realm.

All he could say was: terrifying to such an extent!

A casual bolt of lightning had nearly blasted him to bits.

Hu Mang let out a long breath. Whether because he had shed all the hair on his body or because his soul had been struck by "Yang Lightning," he felt warm all over.

That counted as a reward for returning from the dead: his soul had been tempered.

A thought stirred in Hu Mang's mind. He immediately swept his lower Dantian with his Divine Sense, and both astonishment and delight appeared on his face.

The Mysterious Yin Rebirth Technique, together with that bolt of Yang Lightning, had actually cleared most of his blocked acupoints. The few still clogged with Turbid Qi would have little effect on him, at least until he cultivated back to the Golden Core stage.

"When the old man on the frontier lost his horse, who could have known it wasn't a blessing?"

"Besides, I don't think I lost anything."

Hu Mang muttered to himself.

His only loss was probably the Ghost Makeup mask.

But that thing seemed like it could be mass-produced, right?

He would have Old Man Chen paint a few more when he got back.

Hu Mang swept his gaze across the wretched battlefield. The surrounding Demon-Subduing Wells had been blasted into a sorry state; quite a few had vanished altogether, leaving only enormous, bottomless pits.

"Huh?"

A thought struck Hu Mang, and he walked to the edge of the main Demon-Subduing Well.

There, on the rim, which was charred black as coal and covered in Grand Yin lightning marks, lay a Storage Bag as black as ink.

The bag was no larger than his palm. Its material was neither silk nor leather, but looked more like the stomach pouch of some ancient exotic beast. Its surface was covered in strange, naturally formed patterns that vaguely formed the character "玄," giving off an indescribable chill.

Hu Mang picked it up. It felt icy cold and heavy in his hand, far beyond anything an ordinary storage item could compare with.

He tried injecting a thread of spiritual power-

Crack.

The restriction on the mouth of the bag flashed faintly, then sent the force rebounding into him, making the web between his thumb and forefinger go numb.

"It won't open?"

Hu Mang looked at the character, one of the few "Azure Mysterious Realm characters" he recognized.

So this was the Mysterious Yin Old Daoist's Storage Bag?

Did high-level Storage Bags have seals on them?

A thought occurred to Hu Mang, and he immediately searched the surrounding area. Relying on his ability to see at night, he soon found a white bone like jade not far away.

"Is this a... rib?"

Hu Mang ran his hand over the surface of the bone and soon sensed something unusual. Looking closely, he found it densely covered in tiny characters.

"I'll study it when I get back."

It was worth mentioning that a Storage Bag could not be put inside another Storage Bag, so Hu Mang's idea of stacking Storage Bags infinitely had failed before he could even begin.

Hu Mang looked around. Finding nothing else, he headed straight for the area where "Madman Jiang" had been.

"You've got to be kidding. He died that cleanly?"

Hu Mang searched for a long time, but apart from the severed arm, he could not find any remains.

Had they been blown away?

Not even a scrap left?

Hu Mang instinctively felt that something was wrong.

"That Yang Spirit seemed a little surprised earlier. Could it be that I wasn't what surprised him?"

He picked up the severed arm. Its strange, grotesque hand still gripped half a blade, its surface pitted and scarred, all his own handiwork.

The blade itself, however, should have been an Immortal Weapon on the same level as the Shattering Thunder Long Spear.

He just did not know whether it was an "Immortal Weapon of the Upper Realm" or an "Immortal Weapon of the Divine Dynasty."

But when Hu Mang touched the broken blade, it actually turned into a ray of divine light and shot straight into the "Heavenly Soldier Divine Office" in his Niwan Palace.

The "Divine Office," somewhere between a "plaque" and a "talisman," immediately emitted a faint glow and began enveloping the "broken blade."

At the same time, a great stream of information was conveyed into Hu Mang's consciousness through this process of digestion.

Divine Office annexation?

Divine Offices could annex one another?

And what the hell was one-half of the "Devil-Slaying Bladesman"?

Where was the remaining half?

He wasn't dead?!

Hu Mang had just been about to continue searching the information when his expression suddenly changed. He turned his palm over and saw that the fragment, neither gold nor jade, was emitting a familiar white light.

To make sure it did not fall during the battle, he had kept it wedged in his palm the whole time.

During the battle, the thing had also been converting and absorbing lightning power like mad, and that absorption seemed to have reached a limit when it encountered the bolt of "Yang Lightning."

Then, in the next instant, white light swallowed Hu Mang once more.

Hu Mang had only one thought in his mind: if this thing transported him back again, it would still be to this same place, right?

Then the white light flashed, and just like Madman Jiang before him, he vanished without a trace—no one saw him alive, and no one found his corpse.

Meanwhile, in a dark corner of Demon-Subduing City,

Madman Jiang lay on the ground with one arm severed, his corpse several degrees more mangled than Hu Mang's had been.

His internal organs had all been churned into minced flesh, and every inch of his bones had been shattered, not to mention the arm someone had carried away.

Yet even in this condition, his body seemed to be recovering rapidly.

The cause of that recovery was the shadows sweeping in from every direction, one after another.

A gust of sinister wind swirled, and one of the shadows stood up. As the darkness deepened, it gradually became the soul of a "Madman Jiang."

This "Madman Jiang" wore an expression of shock and disbelief.

"The memories I sacrificed have actually returned!"

"I'm the Devil-Slaying Bladesman? No, I'm Jiang Kaiming, Jiang Kaiming of the Azure Maple Sect!!"

With a flash of white light, Hu Mang appeared in the room once more.

The room was pitch-black. Whether the Liang Dynasty antiques on the bedside table, the somewhat rumpled bedsheets, or the travel bag by the door, little had changed since he had left.

After tossing the Storage Bag and the fragment onto the bedside table, Hu Mang immediately opened the wardrobe and got dressed.

"At least I had a coat when I left, but I came back stark naked with nothing on me. Anyone who didn't know better would think I'd gone off to be a male escort."

Hu Mang complained silently.

After pulling on a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, he hurried to charge Spirit Pivot No. 1. Only after confirming that it was not broken did he breathe a sigh of relief.

He wondered how many missed calls there would be tomorrow.

Rubbing his head, Hu Mang suddenly remembered something else. He hurried out and went to his mother's room, where he saw "Dad" sitting by the window.

"Hello, you're back. Long time no see," "Dad" said with a smile.

Hu Mang looked him up and down. After holding it in for a long time, he finally said, "Um, do you need charging?"