Chapter 26 Requirement Met
Chapter 26 Requirement Met
The air smelled foul
Ye Chen stepped across the boundary into Blood Crag Valley. Red dust choked the sky overhead. Jagged canyon walls rose thousands of feet and blocked the sun.
The Demonic Qi was thick and volatile. It felt like walking through a freezing swamp.
He channeled golden Qi into his legs. Phantom Shadow Step blurred his form. He scaled the sheer red cliff in seconds and found a deep cave halfway up the rock face.
It provided a clear vantage point over the ruined city below.
He sat on the stone floor to regulate his breathing. The toxic air rushed into his lungs. His Chaos Body Tempering Art ignited.
The internal furnace devoured the red fog. It refined the corruption into heavy golden Chaos Qi.
A strange anomaly occurred inside his Dantian. The uninitiated Nine Hells Devouring Art reacted to the dense environment. It siphoned a fraction of the raw Demonic Qi away from his internal furnace.
A small pool of freezing dark energy formed next to his golden Qi. Two distinct power sources now shared his vessel.
He noted the dark anomaly but he dismissed it.
Ye Chen descended from the cliff cave into the city streets. The lawless haven was a silent graveyard.
Corpses littered the dirt roads in twisted unnatural shapes. Arms bent backward. Spines snapped in half.
He heard a wet coughing sound coming from a ruined tavern. He stepped through the shattered wooden doorway.
A rogue cultivator lay slumped against the broken bar. The man clutched a massive wound on his stomach.
"Who is there?," the rogue gasped. Blood bubbled past his pale lips.
"A scavenger," Ye Chen replied. He stood over the dying man. "What killed this city."
"The red fog brought them," the rogue wheezed. "Ghosts born from the dust."
"Ghosts do not leave physical wounds," Ye Chen stated. He pointed at the rogue's torn stomach. "A beast did that."
"Our swords passed right through their bones," the man cried. "Steel cannot cut them."
"How do they hunt," Ye Chen pressed him. "Do they use formations?"
"They do not think or plan," the rogue coughed a wad of dark blood onto the floor. "They just swarm. They reach inside your chest and squeeze your soul."
"Did Azure Cloud Enforcers release the fog?" Ye Chen asked.
"I saw no righteous robes," the dying man spat. "Only shadows and teeth."
"How many survived the initial wave," Ye Chen asked.
"None," the rogue smiled a sickening ghoul smile. "I am one of them now."
The man stopped breathing. His flesh liquefied into black sludge. It sloughed off his bones and pooled on the tavern floor.
The skeleton remained intact. The dead man's face clung wetly to the bare skull. The spirit rose from the floor.
It shrieked and lunged at Ye Chen.
Ye Chen stepped forward. He drove a Mountain Crushing Palm into the skeleton's chest.
His dense iron fist passed harmlessly through the white ribs. The spirit struck his shoulder. A freezing cold pain bypassed his Iron Skin Mantra and chilled his marrow.
Physical attacks were useless against spirit.
Ye Chen pivoted his hips. He channeled his golden Chaos Qi directly into his fist. He executed the Chaos Bone Shattering Fist.
He punched the empty air inches from the skull. The shockwave erupted. The heavy Yang energy collided with the Demonic Yin spirit.
The skeleton shattered into fine white dust. The skin face dissolved into black smoke.
\[Target defeated. Reward: 50 System Points.\]
The blue interface chimed in his vision. He lacked the one thousand points required to upgrade his demonic manual. He needed to hunt nineteen more spirits.
The risk was massive. The spirits ignored physical defense. But the environmental Qi was too rich to ignore.
"Su Rou wanted a ritual," Ye Chen said to the empty tavern. "She created an apocalypse."
He returned to his cliff cave. He sat down near the edge and closed his eyes.
He cultivated for three days. His passive multiplier activated. The hundred times cultivation bonus absorbed the valley's toxic air like a massive sponge.
The dense Demonic Qi fed his second power base. The dark pool in his Dantian expanded. It mirrored his golden Chaos Qi in size and density.
His forged iron bones endured the freezing internal pressure. The dual core cultivation pushed his physical limits.
Dawn broke on the fourth day. A deafening screech shattered the silence of the canyon.
Ye Chen opened his eyes. He looked down at the main road leading out of the valley.
A massive horde of skeletal spirits marched through the red dust. Hundreds of dead rogue cultivators moved in unison toward the northern exit.
They were leaving the canyon.
One figure walked at the front of the horde. It was not a bare skeleton. It possessed a full human body covered in pale skin.
The creature stopped. It looked up at the cliff.
Ye Chen met the creature's gaze. The demon possessed solid white eyes void of all humanity. It radiated a suffocating aura of hatred and resentment.
"You are their king," Ye Chen whispered from the high cave.
The white eyed demon did not attack. It turned its head and led the horde out of the bloodlands.
Ye Chen watched them march toward the mortal territories. The realization chilled his blood.
Elder Wang and Su Rou had bred a weapon they could no longer control. The demons were migrating to harvest the human cities on their own.
The plague would terrorize mortals and cultivators alike. True fear gripped his chest for the first time since the forest.
A sudden mechanical chime rang in his skull.
\[Requirement met.\]
\[Nine Hells Devouring Art Outer Force evolves into Nine Hells Devouring Art Inner Force Uninitiated.\]
\[Evolution Started.\]
Ye Chen gasped as the dark pool in his Dantian flared with terrifying heat. The system hijacked his secondary Qi base. The demonic manual rewrote its own fundamental laws inside his soul.
He grabbed his broken sword hilt. He braced himself for the coming agony.