The air in the underground chamber was no longer air; it was a physical weight, thick with the iron tang of blood and the oppressive heat of a collapsing star.
For seven days, the blood pool had been boiling. The crimson liquid, once thin and fluid, had thickened into a viscous, bubbling sludge that popped and hissed like living magma. In the center of this gory cauldron sat a figure that barely resembled a human being.
Jiang Dao sat cross-legged, submerged to his chest. His thick, ink-black hair floated around him like a dark halo, but it was what lay beneath the truly terrifying skin. His body was a battlefield of biological transmutation. Thick veins, gorged with power, writhed beneath his epidermis like trapped snakes. Every drop of blood in his system seemed to have ignited, turning his circulatory system into a network of liquid fire.
He was not merely meditating; he was forging himself. He was soaking in the essence of a sun, an endless cyclone of Yang energy and vitality that radiated outward with enough intensity to warp the air itself.
Outside the heavy stone doors, the Old Taoist paced, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was a man accustomed to the supernatural, yet the aura leaking from the chamber made his skin crawl. It felt as though a prehistoric beast was slumbering just inches away—a creature of such raw, predatory dominance that his instincts screamed at him to flee. He kept glancing back at the sealed door, half-expecting it to buckle.
What is he becoming? The Taoist wondered, wiping cold sweat from his brow. This isn't just cultivation. This is the birth of a monster.
Just as the pressure seemed unbearable, the crushing aura began to recede, retracting like a tide.
Xu Zifeng, the Taoist's disciple, approached from the shadowy corridor, stepping carefully. "Master," he whispered, his voice tight. "Has Gang Leader Jiang not emerged?"
"No," the Old Taoist replied, his eyes still fixed on the door. " The corpse-mark on his soul should have been incinerated days ago. I don't know what keeps him. Why are you here? Has something happened?"
Xu Zifeng's face was grim. "Two things. First, a message from Tianshi Mountain." He handed over a crumpled, opened letter.
The Old Taoist scanned the parchment, his weather-beaten face paling with every line. "The agitation of the Evil God has intensified? It's already corrupting a village?"
"The sect is demanding your immediate return," Xu Zifeng said, his voice trembling slightly. "Master, if the Evil God truly awakens... can we even stop it?"
"Damn it." The Taoist crushed the letter in his fist. "Evil Gods are bound by the laws of heaven and earth; they cannot physically step into our realm, only project their will. If we destroy the consciousness they manifest, we can banish them temporarily. But it is a stopgap measure at best. They are immortal. They always return." He looked up sharply. "And the second matter?"
"The Daye Dynasty," Xu Zifeng reported. "Zi Ling and I found traces of the Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountains in the Southern Prefecture. Several villages have been wiped out—blood sacrifices. We believe they are attempting to pry open the gates to the Yin Division."
"Open the Yin Division?" The Taoist was stunned. "That realm has been sealed for an age."
"They failed, it seems. The backlash killed hundreds at the site."
The Old Taoist shook his head, his mind racing. "Failure was inevitable. The seal is absolute. Wait..." A terrifying thought struck him. "Unless they aren't trying to open the gate, but rather use the leaking energy of the passage to summon something."
"Summon whom?"
"When the Yin Division was sealed, the souls of the unjustly dead were left to wander the periphery of the gates. They linger for two months before dissipating. If a ritual is performed in that window..." The Old Taoist's face hardened. "They could drag a soul back from the brink of oblivion. But this is a lost art. Who in this era possesses such forbidden knowledge?"
"Master, what do we do?"
The Old Taoist looked at the sealed door of the chamber, torn between duty and fear. "You and Zi Ling continue the investigation. If this is a conspiracy, we need to know the scope. I will wait here for Jiang Dao for two more days. If he does not emerge, I will have to abandon him and return to the mountain."
Xu Zifeng nodded and turned to leave.
"Hold on." The Taoist reached into his robes and pulled out a jade pendant, snapping it in half. He handed one piece to his disciple. "This is a Mother-Child Jade. Keep it close. If you are in mortal danger, my half will react instantly."
"Understood, Master."
As the disciple retreated into the shadows, the Old Taoist sighed, settling in for his vigil.
Another day passed in silence.
Inside the chamber, the metamorphosis was complete. Jiang Dao's body had distorted, swelling to a gargantuan height of five meters. He was coiled inside the blood pool like a mythic dragon, his muscles knotted and hard as granite, his skin glowing a dull, furnace red.
"Hoo..."
Jiang Dao opened his eyes. They were not human eyes; they were crucibles of golden light. He wiped a smear of blood from his lips, his breath venting from his nostrils like steam from a boiler.
"It seems I've succeeded," he rumbled, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "Though the method was... unconventional."
Eight days. He had not only purged the spirit-corpse curse but had synthesized a cultivation path that belonged solely to him. He had sought to cure his body's excess Yang energy, but instead, he had leaned into the curve. He had broken the limiter. The heat inside him was no longer a burden; it was a fuel source.
He felt a profound, intoxicating satisfaction. The burning sensation in his veins was a constant reminder of the power coiling beneath his skin.
Jiang Dao summoned his internal interface. The martial arts he had fused were unrecognizable now.
Extreme Demon Overlord Body: Indestructible. Blazing Extreme Yang. A mutation of the flesh that granted exponential surges in strength and speed.
Extreme Path Fire Dragon Fist: A field of strangulation and concussion. His internal energy—his Gang Qi—moved like a dragon.
Yin Evil Mystic Heart Art: His safety valve. It allowed him to cool his mind, preventing the Yang fire from burning his sanity to ash.
Everything he had was now dedicated to the cultivation of pure, unadulterated Yang. The energy had condensed inside him into something he called the Extreme Yang Divine Liquid. One drop of this substance absorbed into his blood turned him into a living reactor.
"Power," Jiang Dao whispered, clenching a fist the size of a sledgehammer. "As long as it grants power, the form does not matter."
He stood up.
As his new cultivation settled, the world outside reacted. Thunder rumbled in a clear sky. A cold wind swept through the underground complex, carrying a sense of deep, cosmic unease. It was as if the laws of nature were groaning under the weight of a new anomaly.
Outside, the Old Taoist cast his copper coins in a panic. The hexagrams were nonsense—chaos. "Something has shifted the trajectory of the world," he muttered. "Is it the Evil God?"
"Why are you so uneasy, Priest?"
The voice was heavy, vibrating through the floorboards.
The Taoist spun around. Jiang Dao walked out of the darkness. He had compressed his form back down to a manageable two meters, his body wrapped in strips of cloth, his muscles dense and corded like steel cables.
"Gang Leader Jiang," the Taoist breathed, relieved. "You are finally out."
Jiang Dao nodded. The heat radiating off him was dry and intense, like standing next to an open oven.
"Gang Leader, I must ask to take my leave," the Taoist said, bowing. "The situation at Tianshi Mountain is critical."
Crack.
The sound was sharp, like a pistol shot in the quiet room.
The jade pendant at the Taoist's waist shattered, the fragments clattering to the stone floor.
The Old Taoist froze, his blood running cold. "No... Little Feng. Zi Ling."
Jiang Dao's golden pupils shifted to the broken jade. "Trouble?"
"They are in danger," the Taoist whispered, horror dawning on his face.
Jiang Dao cracked his neck, the sound wet and heavy. "Did something happen on my territory while I was asleep?" A grin spread across his face, not of humor, but of anticipation. The air around him began to distort with heat. "Let's go."
The village was dead. Not quite—dead.
In the center of the desolate square, a massive pit had been dug. Inside lay a pool of blood, thick and dark, bobbing with hundreds of corpses. Their eyes were wide, frozen in masks of ultimate terror.
Floating in the center of this carnage was a gate made of obsidian darkness, inscribed with glowing red runes.
Standing at the edge was a woman of breathtaking beauty, dressed in pristine white robes that remained impossibly clean amidst the gore. She chanted in a low, rhythmic tongue, her hands weaving complex seals. Beside her stood another maiden, equally beautiful, watching with detached interest.
But they were not alone. Surrounding the pit were the Corpse Demons—towering monstrosities with skin like wet clay, covered in writhing white maggots. They stood silent and still, their dead white eyes fixed on the ritual.
"Don't worry," the second maiden said softly. "The Mystic Yin Gate is temperamental. Failure is part of the process. Our concern should be the two runaways from Tianshi Mountain."
"No one escapes the Corpse Demon Mountains," a voice rasped from the shadows. It sounded like dry leaves skittering on stone.
"Good," the maiden replied. "Capture them. Do not kill them yet. We need to know where the Heavenly Mandate Artifact is hidden."
The chanting reached a crescendo. The blood pool boiled violently.
Boom!
The obsidian gate groaned open.
A blast of freezing Yin energy exploded outward, instantly extinguishing the bonfires. The temperature plummeted, frost creeping over the ground in seconds. The village was plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the sickly glow of the blood.
From the gate, something emerged.
It was a horror of flesh—a five-meter-tall entity composed entirely of human faces. Thousands of them. Some laughing, some weeping, some screaming in silent agony. It was a mosaic of suffering given form.
As the Evil Spirit materialized, the mouths of the thousand faces opened in unison.
SCREEEEEEEEEAM!
The sound was a physical blow. Shockwaves of black sound rippled outward, shattering the nearby mud-brick houses like glass.
The white-robed maiden did not flinch. She changed her hand seal, and the cacophony abruptly ceased. The monstrosity went still, floating obediently.
"Hu Xiaoshan," the maiden said, addressing the abomination. "Who killed you? And who took the Artifact?"
On the creature's torso, near the armpit, a single face began to twitch. It was the face of a white fox. It pushed itself forward, struggling against the sea of other faces, its eyes lucid with panic.
"Sisters! Save me!" the fox face shrieked. "I don't want to fade! I don't want to be part of this! Get me out!"
"Who killed you?" the maiden repeated, her voice devoid of empathy.
The fox face trembled, hatred warring with fear. "A mortal! We were tricked! He pretended to join the Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountains, then struck when our guard was down. One hit... he destroyed my body in one hit! A filthy mortal!"
"A mortal?" The rasping voice from the shadows sounded intrigued.
"Yes! He has the Artifact! Save me!"
"Show us," the maiden commanded.
The fox face groaned, forcing the massive, patchwork arm of the Evil Spirit to rise. With a finger made of compressed flesh, it traced glowing red lines in the air.
A portrait formed. It was vivid, capturing every hard line of the jaw, every cold glint in the eye.
It was Jiang Dao.
"That's him! The mortal! Save me now!"
"A mortal... how fascinating," the Corpse Demon in the shadows mused.
The white-robed maiden studied the portrait, then looked back at the fox face. "Hu Xiaoshan. You know I cannot save you. The price of the Mystic Yin Gate is absolute. But rest easy. I will find this man. I will butcher him. And I will let you roam the earth tonight to feed."
"No! That's not me! I want to be me!" The fox face screamed, but the maiden broke the seal.
The intelligence in the fox's eyes vanished. The face went slack, sinking back into the mass of groaning flesh. The Evil Spirit roared again, a thousand voices united in hunger, and dissolved into a streak of bloody light, vanishing into the night to hunt.
"Thirteenth Master," the maiden said, turning to the darkness. "This is your domain. Find him."
"He is already dead," the darkness replied.
The rain fell in sheets, icy and relentless.
But in the forest, something was burning.
A figure tore through the dense woods, moving with the momentum of a runaway train. Jiang Dao was a blur of motion. The rain didn't touch him; the moment the water came within inches of his skin, it hissed and evaporated. He ran inside a personal cloud of steam, a comet of heat in the frozen night.
He checked the jade pendant in his hand. The green arrow swung wildly—South, then North, then West.
"Damn it," Jiang Dao snarled, pivoting on his heel and tearing up the earth as he changed direction again.
Xu Zifeng and the girl were running like headless chickens, zigzagging in a panic. They were making it impossible to intercept them cleanly.
Jiang Dao's eyes burned with a golden, predatory light. He didn't care about the rain. He didn't care about the terrain. He had a location, he had a target, and for the first time in days, he had something to kill.
He accelerated, the ground shaking with every footfall. The hunter was coming.