A streak of crimson light tore through the sky, a jagged wound against the canvas of the heavens.
Inside this bloody comet was a figure that barely resembled a man. Master Qingyang, once a feared cultivator, was now a torso of mutilated flesh, missing both arms and legs. His face was a mask of haggard desperation, framed by wild, snow-white hair that whipped violently in the wind of his retreat.
"Unbearable! This is absolute torture!" Master Qingyang roared, his voice cracking against the gale. "I knew! I knew that woman was Bai Susu! I recognized the terrifying pressure of the Heavenly Crystal Ant bloodline the moment our energies clashed!"
Regret tasted like bile in his throat. "Why didn't I run? Why did I let my ego drive me into a death match with a Primordial Beast?"
His eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, flashed with a mixture of madness and terror. "It's this damned Blood Demon Art. It clouds the mind. It demands violence when prudence is required."
Master Qingyang ground his teeth until they ached. The Blood Demon Art was a double-edged sword of the cruelest variety. It offered explosive power, but the cost was one's sanity. The longer one cultivated it, the more the bloodlust took the wheel, steering the practitioner toward inevitable self-destruction. It was the curse of all demonic paths—power borrowed against the mortgage of the soul.
"I've lost everything," he lamented, the wind tearing the words from his mouth. "I spent years devouring the elites of the Silver Flood Dragon clan. I drained their Crystal Palace dry of resources just to reach the Fourth Level of the Emperor Realm. And now? One fight with Bai Susu and I'm beaten back to square one."
He looked down at his ruined body. "I'm weaker now than when I first crawled out of the corpse cave. The price to activate the Blood Skull Curse Seal was too high. Without a century of recuperation, I'm finished."
But then, a flicker of calculating malice sparked in his eyes.
"However... if I can find King-level beasts... if I can slaughter them and consume their Demon Infants..." He licked his dry, cracked lips. "My recovery would be exponential."
His mind raced, weighing the risks. "My current power is barely holding at the peak of the Demon King realm. I am a shadow of my former self—less than one percent of my true strength remains. But against standard King-level beasts? I am still a god of death."
"That's the plan," he hissed, his resolve hardening. "Hunt the stragglers. Devour their souls. Rebuild, brick by bloody brick."
With a renewed sense of purpose, Master Qingyang expanded his spiritual consciousness, scanning the horizon for prey, and vanished into the distance.
Meanwhile, on the sun-drenched beach, the atmosphere was far more serene.
Luo Zhen sat on the sand, processing the information his internal System had just relayed. The concept was simple but gruesome: harvest the essence of powerful beasts to create a miracle drug. He turned to Bai Susu, the woman who had so thoroughly dismantled Master Qingyang.
"I need to refine the Profound Infant Pill," Luo Zhen explained. "It requires raw materials."
Bai Susu raised an eyebrow, her expression one of mild surprise. "You know alchemy?"
"I wouldn't call it formal alchemy," Luo Zhen replied, waving his hand dismissively. "Think of it as extraction and refinement. If I can acquire the Demon Infants—the spiritual cores—from King-level beasts, I can stabilize their energy into a pill."
"Impressive," Bai Susu noted. She looked down at her hands. "I would assist you, but my demonic energy is currently entirely dedicated to suppressing the Blood Skull seal Qingyang placed on me. I'm effectively grounded."
"Don't worry about the combat," Luo Zhen assured her. "I'm telling you this so you know the plan. You just need to find a safe place to heal. I'll handle the hunting and the refining. Once the pill is ready, I'll bring it to you."
"Finding a safe place is easy." Bai Susu mustered a small surge of energy, tapping into her spatial artifact.
With a shimmer of light, a massive, nondescript boulder appeared on the sand. It was a pocket dimension disguised as a common rock—a perfect sanctuary.
Before she entered, she paused, considering something. She reached into her spatial ring and produced a small, pink gemstone about the size of a grape. She tossed it to Luo Zhen.
The moment the stone hit the air, a scent exploded outward. It wasn't just a smell; it was a physical sensation. It was a rich, intoxicating aroma that bypassed the nose and went straight to the primitive brain. Luo Zhen's mouth watered instantly. Every cell in his body screamed at him to swallow the stone whole.
He clenched his jaw, forcing down the urge. "What on earth is this? The temptation is... aggressive."
"This is Heavenly Crystal Fragrant Jade," Bai Susu explained, a hint of pride in her voice. "It is a unique secretion of my species. It contains incredibly potent energy. Any beast that consumes it has a high chance of breaking through their bloodline shackles and evolving. To a monster, that stone represents the ultimate shortcut to power."
"No wonder I wanted to eat it," Luo Zhen muttered, turning the gem over in his hand.
"It's small, but that piece represents a hundred years of accumulation," she said. "Head three thousand miles northwest. There's a chain of reefs and small islands there. It's a playground for King-level sea beasts. Place this jade on an island, and they will come to you."
Luo Zhen's eyes lit up. "It's bait."
"Exactly. But be careful," she warned, her tone serious. "This doesn't just attract prey; it drives them into a frenzy. Don't lure more than you can kill."
"Understood." Luo Zhen stored the jade away, cutting off the intoxicating scent.
"One last thing," Bai Susu added as she stepped toward the boulder. "Before you leave, check the seabed. The Silver Flood Dragons ruled this area for millennia. Their Crystal Palace is in ruins, but a dynasty that old doesn't vanish without leaving treasure behind."
"I'll take a look."
Bai Susu nodded and phased into the stone, vanishing from sight. Luo Zhen turned to the ocean, his body dissolving into a streak of azure light as he plunged beneath the waves.
The descent was silent.
Five hundred meters. Eight hundred.
At just over a thousand meters, Luo Zhen touched the sea floor. Being part of the continental shelf, the waters here weren't abyssal, allowing enough light to filter down to reveal the devastation ahead.
The Crystal Palace lay in ruins.
Once, it must have been a sprawling metropolis of coral and glass, a testament to the might of the Silver Flood Dragons. Now, it was a graveyard of shattered masonry.
Luo Zhen drifted through the debris, scanning for anything of value. For thirty minutes, he found nothing but disappointment.
It wasn't that the palace was empty; it was that it had been consumed. He found mountains of dust that used to be high-grade spirit stones, drained of every ounce of Qi. He found fields of withered medicinal herbs, their essence sucked dry. The floor was littered with thousands of empty pill bottles.
The story told by the debris was clear: in their final stand against Master Qingyang, the dragons had consumed their entire treasury in a desperate bid for power. They had burned their heritage to fuel a war they still lost.
"System," Luo Zhen mentally commanded, frustration creeping into his voice. "Do a deep scan. I refuse to believe a multi-millennial empire left nothing behind. There has to be a vault, a secret stash—something."
Scanning... The robotic voice echoed in his mind.
A moment later: Scan complete. Five hundred meters to the east. I have detected a subterranean anomaly. A cellar is protected by high-level concealment arrays. I cannot penetrate the shielding to identify the contents, but the complexity of the lock suggests high value.
"Finally."
Luo Zhen swam east. To the naked eye, the destination was a patch of barren sand. He reached out with his spiritual sense, but it slid off the area like water off oil.
"It's a visual and sensory cloak," the System explained. "Use your Strange Fire. Burn the illusion away."
Luo Zhen extended his hand. The Huiyuan Silver Fire—a rare, mystical flame that burned underwater—surged from his sleeve. The pale silver fire didn't just heat the water; it attacked the fabric of the magic itself. The space in front of him began to warp and twist like melting plastic.
Within thirty seconds, the illusion collapsed, revealing a heavy, square iron trapdoor embedded in the ocean floor.
"Got you." Luo Zhen heaved the door open.
Stairs led down into a dry, pressurized space. A barrier kept the ocean out, allowing Luo Zhen to walk down into the cellar. It was a vast, hollow chamber, largely empty except for a central altar.
Rows of wooden tablets stood on the altar. Names were carved into them—the ancestors of the Silver Flood Dragon clan.
"A shrine," Luo Zhen scoffed, looking around the empty room. "They hid their ancestors, not their gold."
With a flick of his finger, he sent a wisp of silver fire to incinerate the wooden tablets. The clan was dead; they did not need memorials.
As the wood turned to ash, a small chest was revealed beneath the display. Unlike the rest of the room, this chest resisted the silver fire.
Luo Zhen knelt, focusing the intensity of his flame onto the lock. The metal glowed white-hot, then liquefied. The chest clicked open.
Inside lay two triangular tokens made of green jade. They were exquisite, glowing with a soft inner light. Three gold characters were embossed on the surface:
Ascension Token.
Luo Zhen activated his analysis gaze.
[Item: Ascension Token]
[Origin: Qingzhou Prefecture, Barbaric Wilderness Continent]
[Function: Grants the bearer entry into any sect within the Qingzhou Prefecture.]
"A ticket to the big leagues," Luo Zhen mused. The Silver Flood Dragons must have been saving these for their most promising prodigies, a way to send them to the human lands to learn advanced arts. Now, they were his spoils of war.
"I'll take them."
He swept the tokens into his inventory and left the tomb. It was time for the real harvest.
Thirty minutes later, Luo Zhen hovered over a desolate archipelago three thousand miles away.
The weather here was atrocious. Grey skies churned above, mirroring the violent, choppy waves below. The wind howled like a dying beast. But beneath the chaotic elements, the ambient spiritual energy was dense—a perfect breeding ground for monsters.
Small, jagged islands dotted the seascape, most no larger than a single room. Luo Zhen landed on a slab of wet rock and retrieved the Heavenly Crystal Fragrant Jade.
He placed the pink stone on the highest point of the reef.
The effect was instantaneous. The scent caught the gale and spread across the ocean surface.
Ten seconds. That was all it took.
Splash!
Three humanoid shapes erupted from the water. They were King-level sea beasts who had cultivated enough to assume a semi-human form, though their scales and fins betrayed them. Their eyes were glazed over, fixed on the pink stone with ravenous hunger.
Luo Zhen didn't panic. He calmly stored the jade back into his ring.
"He hid the scent!" one of the beasts shrieked, snapping out of its trance. "It's on the human! Kill him and take it!"
They charged, weapons manifesting from condensed water.
Luo Zhen didn't even stand up. He sat cross-legged on the wet rock, his expression bored. He flicked his sleeve.
Roar!
Three spectral dragons, woven from lightning and mana, burst from his cuffs. The air crackled with the smell of ozone as the Thunder Dragon Breaker technique activated.
There was no contest. The lightning dragons slammed into the sea beasts with the force of a freight train.
BOOM!
The beasts didn't just die; they disintegrated. Their physical bodies were vaporized by the voltage, leaving behind three glowing, apple-sized orbs of light.
Demon Infants. The crystallized souls of King-level entities.
Luo Zhen extended a hand, and the orbs floated into his grasp. He tossed them into his storage and brought the jade out again.
The scent wafted out. The water churned.
Two more beasts leaped from the depths.
Luo Zhen stowed the jade. Flicked his sleeve. Boom. Two more souls collected.
It became a rhythmic, deadly cycle. Lure. Store. Kill. Collect.
He was careful to modulate the exposure of the jade, never drawing more than three or five beasts at a time. He was farming them. It was a mechanized slaughter, efficient and cold. Even when a beast at the Late King stage appeared—an entity that would terrorize a coastal city—it fell instantly to the Thunder Dragon or, on one occasion, a casual slash of Luo Zhen's Green Blaze Saber.
Within an hour, he held thirty glowing orbs.
"Host, stop," the System interrupted. "The Profound Infant Pill has a saturation point. Thirty Demon Infants is the maximum limit. Any more will destabilize the alchemy."
Luo Zhen nodded, putting the jade away for good. The sea churned with frustrated monsters below, but he ignored them.
"Synthesize it," he commanded.
The thirty souls in his inventory vanished, consumed by the System's automated alchemy. A moment later, a single pill appeared in his palm.
It was round, perfect, and swirled with five distinct colors of light. It pulsed with a heartbeat of its own.
"The Profound Infant Pill," the System announced. "Refinement complete."