The Despairing Grandmasters

Li Zhengjun withdrew his gaze without betraying his thoughts and walked a few more steps. The Void-Observing Mirror overhead came into view.

He glanced at it and saw at once that the mirror was meant to detect cultivators, but he was not the least bit worried.

Its spiritual light is muddled and scattered. At best, it can only see through the crudest illusions and the most inferior Qi-concealing methods. How could it possibly see through my Li Household's breath-concealing Law Artifacts?

The other Li Household members had all noticed the problem, but not one of them was worried.

To ensure nothing went wrong, Li Dongping took the lead and walked beneath the Void-Observing Mirror with his head held high.

The ancient mirror that Daoist Lu treasured so dearly did not react in the slightest.

Li Zhengjun followed the others inside, his expression calm.

Once the last grandmaster had entered, Guo Xun, who was standing guard nearby, curled his lip and thought:

Just as I expected. There's nobody there, and everything's normal. Master is still too cautious.

He casually picked out two of his junior brothers guarding the entrance and gave them a lazy instruction:

"You two stay here. If the Law Artifact shows any unusual movement, detonate the voice-transmission talisman immediately."

The two disciples bowed and assented, watching their senior brother stride away. Neither noticed that just over ten zhang behind them, on a street corner, Li Yuankai and the others were already in position, quietly setting up a formation to trap their enemies.

After entering the palace gates and passing through several halls, the Li Household members kept their eyes straight ahead, yet their peripheral vision had already taken in the palace's true state.

There was hardly a single ordinary guard to be seen in the entire palace. Those patrolling back and forth were all Devil Cultivators clad in Daoist robes, some twenty or thirty in number. Most were around Early Qi Refining.

Li Zhengjun did not even need to look directly at them to sense the inferior cultivators' presence they gave off.

Weak.

Far too weak.

Their Law Power is as unstable as a guttering candle in the wind, their foundations as shallow as a tower built on sand. Though their realms are comparable to Early Embryonic Breathing, if they were at Subduing Tiger Pass, any newly inducted family member picked at random could fight three of them alone.

The group reached the main hall, whose doors already stood wide open.

It was the height of summer, and rain was pouring down. Outside the hall, the rain beat like drums. The imperial throne hall should have been cooler once they entered.

Yet the moment they stepped inside, they felt a restless current of heat.

The air seemed to have something mixed into it. The grandmasters, whose Qi and Blood were already vigorous, now felt their blood rushing to their heads, as though all the strength in their bodies had been roused.

At a loss, the grandmasters stood in the hall, silently watching the throne.

Suddenly, a gust of fierce wind swept through, and a man abruptly appeared on the dragon throne.

It was Daoist Lu.

He wore a five-colored Daoist robe, his white hair bound beneath a crown and his complexion ruddy. From a distance, he truly had something of an immortal's air and bearing.

Daoist Lu's gaze swept over the faces below the steps, each flushed red by surging Qi and Blood. Then he glanced inconspicuously at Guo Xun, who stood guard at the hall entrance.

Guo Xun shook his head slightly, signaling that nothing was amiss.

Knowing nothing had happened, Daoist Lu breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

Could it be that I was overthinking things?

Seeing the immortal finally appear, the grandmasters could no longer contain themselves. They fell to their knees, their cries ringing through the hall:

"Greetings, immortal!"

Voices rose and fell throughout the hall. Daoist Lu looked over them one by one, smiling and nodding repeatedly.

"Good, very good! Everyone, rise!"

The grandmasters straightened their backs and did their utmost to present themselves well, hoping to earn the immortal's favor.

But the immortal did not look at them. Instead, he looked toward Guo Xun outside the hall.

"Is everyone here? Has anything unusual happened?"

Guo Xun had already checked the count and answered in a clear voice:

"Reporting to you, Master, all forty-seven grandmasters are present! The disciples outside the palace have sent word that there has been no unusual activity anywhere in the capital. Everything is normal."

Daoist Lu nodded, then waved his hand.

Bang!

The hall doors slammed shut, and more than ten balls of flame erupted from beneath the floor at once, blazing along all four walls.

The flames were no ordinary fire. Dark green in color, they did not burn clothing on contact, yet they scorched flesh and bone with pain.

The flames curled inward, surrounding the dozens of grandmasters.

The sudden turn of events startled the grandmasters. These flames were clearly far too extraordinary to be used for lighting.

Before they could recover, a bronze Pill Furnace slowly rose from beneath the floor.

Dark red patterns covered the furnace, and though it had yet to be fired, a faint, sickly-sweet scent was already seeping from it.

"The sooner I refine the pills, the less chance of trouble arising from delay."

Daoist Lu had been longing for this Blood Pill for so long that he was unwilling to waste another word.

Some of the grandmasters had grown wary and already sensed that something was wrong.

If he was taking disciples, why did he need a Pill Furnace and ghostly flames?

But more of them were still lost in their dream of knocking on the immortal's gate, convinced that this was a test the immortal had set for them.

Wasn't that how it always went in storybooks? To seek the immortal path, one had to climb mountains of blades and descend into seas of fire. The scene before them was rather like what the books described.

Daoist Lu looked at the naive martial artists, a smile rising at the corners of his lips.

"You are all excellent materials."

Hearing this, the grandmasters forced smiles, still taking it as praise from the immortal.

The next moment, their illusion was shattered.

Daoist Lu began chanting, and the flames in the hall flared up, bringing a suffocating heat with them.

This suffocation did not come from an outside force, but from the grandmasters' Dantians!

They were in unbearable pain, and some even fell to the floor, unable to rise.

Daoist Lu, seated above them, seemed to enjoy watching. He said with a smile:

"You have received the methods I taught, taken my pills, and enjoyed years of freedom and pleasure in the jianghu. Today is the time to repay that kindness. Enter this Pill Furnace, let your flesh and blood aid my cultivation and your souls enter my Ten Thousand Souls Banner, and you shall enjoy blessings for eternity. What a great fortune that is!"

With that, he seized the person at the very front from a distance and drew him into his hand. Without even looking, he tossed him into the furnace to test the heat.

In an instant, a heart-rending scream rang out from the Pill Furnace. Daoist Lu sniffed the fresh Blood Qi in the air and nodded slightly.

"Mm, not bad."

Watching from the side, Guo Xun thought to himself:

Every time, Master uses one person to test the furnace first. The more miserably that person screams, the more frightened everyone in the hall becomes. The more frightened they are, the more fiercely their resentment burns. Combined with the pills they have taken for years and the green flames in the hall that stimulate their Qi and Blood, their Essence Blood is driven to its peak by their extreme emotions. Only when they are thrown into the Pill Furnace at that moment will the Blood Pills refined from them be of the highest quality.

Having observed it over the years, he had essentially mastered the method of refining Blood Pills.

As if to confirm his thoughts, the emotions of the grandmasters in the hall were stirred, and their Qi and Blood began to burn.

Fear, anger, despair-all manner of emotions surged into their hearts at once, pushing their already restless Qi and Blood to the brink of going berserk.

Veins bulged on every forehead, their faces turned scarlet, and a faint bloody mist rose from the tops of their heads. The Qi and Blood throughout their bodies rampaged through their meridians.

But they all stood rooted to the spot without moving, as though caught in an illusion.

They wanted to move, but trapped in a mental snare, they could only watch as the martial artist who was a grandmaster like them struggled and screamed in the furnace.

Only now did they finally see the truth.

The man before them was no immortal!

He and his people were plainly a band of man-eating devils!

A terrifying thought surfaced in their minds. Could it be that the goal they had pursued all their lives, cultivating bitterly day and night, was nothing more than a trap set by these Devil Cultivators?

Was everything in the Ning Kingdom an elaborate deception!?

The grandmasters were bitterly unwilling to accept it, but they had experienced firsthand the gulf between immortals and mortals. Amid all their emotions, only despair remained in the end.

"It's over... Everything is over..."