Boom.
The explosion tore through the silence of Fire Demon Mountain. It wasn't just a sound; it was a physical upheaval.
Rolling waves of Yang energy—the essence of pure, scorching life—surged across the peak like a tsunami of invisible lava. Ancient structures, built to house the dead, detonated under the pressure. Stone shattered. Wood disintegrated.
In the center of this cataclysm stood Jiang Dao. He had transcended the limits of flesh and blood, transforming into a human-shaped divine furnace. The ground beneath his feet, a mixture of crushed bone and volcanic rock, hissed and popped as his extreme heat reduced it to dust. It was a scene of absolute, brutal devastation.
Bang! Bang!
The aftershocks of his assault were deafening. Two distinct shapes were launched backward, flailing helplessly against the air. These were the Corpse Demon Ancestors, ancient horrors that had ruled this peak for centuries. Now, they were ragdolls. They smashed into the distant cliffs, their arms exploding into mist upon impact. Black, viscous blood sprayed across the grey stone, sizzling instantly as the Yang fire clinging to their bodies burned them alive. Their faces, usually frozen in rigor mortis, twisted into expressions of genuine agony.
Jiang Dao did not stop. The Yang energy coiling around him grew brighter, hotter, more unstable. It was a feedback loop of power and pain. The stinging sensation on his skin merged with a fiery irritability in his mind, a primal urge to destroy that threatened to consume his rationality.
He threw his head back and let out a roar that shook the heavens.
"ROAR!"
It was the sound of a dragon awakening, a sonic blast that shattered the lingering darkness and dispersed the evil miasma clinging to the peak. The mountain itself seemed to tremble in fear. The corpse qi—the energy of death—ignited, causing pockets of air to explode.
The two Corpse Demon Ancestors screamed silently as the sonic wave hit them. Their brains rattled inside their skulls; blood wept from their eyes, ears, and noses. Their Yin energy, the source of their power, leaked from their ruptured bodies like steam from a broken pipe.
Squelch.
Jiang Dao moved with terrifying speed, his control slipping. His fingers, now hard as iron and hot as branding irons, clamped onto the ancestors' arms. These creatures stood over four meters tall, hulking monstrosities of muscle and rot, yet Jiang Dao handled them as a child handles a toy.
He swung them.
Again. And again. And again.
He smashed them against the obsidian cliffs. The sound was rhythmic, sickening—smack, smack, smack. Black blood painted the rocks. Flames roared, feasting on the undead flesh. It was a display of violence so profound it bordered on the industrial.
Finally, the motion stopped.
Jiang Dao stood amidst the ruin, swaying. His colossal frame smoked. The heat radiating from him was so intense it distorted the air, creating mirages around his silhouette. Scarlet blood began to seep from his pores, forced out by the internal pressure.
He grunted, bending double, and vomited a mouthful of blood. The fluid hit the ground and hissed, corroding the stone instantly. It was burning.
Panic flared in his chest. Too much.
He immediately shifted his internal breathing, triggering the Yin Baleful Mystic Heart Mantra. It was the polar opposite of his fire. A stream of glacial, biting cold began to circulate through his meridians. It was like swallowing liquid nitrogen. The relief was instant but jarring. The raging fire on his skin flickered and died; the steam evaporated. His muscles, swollen with heat, compressed back to their natural, albeit massive, state.
Minutes later, Jiang Dao was himself again. He stood amidst the carnage, staggering slightly, his body a map of scorch marks and dried blood.
"The Extreme Yang Divine Fire Body," he rasped, looking at his hands. "Its power is godlike, but the cost..."
He examined the deep burns on his forearms. The technique was a double-edged sword. The longer he maintained that state, the more damage he did to his own biology. Worse was the psychological toll—the fire made him want to burn the world down. It was intoxicating.
"If I face a truly resilient enemy," he thought, "I might burn to ash before I can kill them."
It was a sobering realization. This form was a trump card, not a standard tactic. It required a blitzkrieg strategy: engage, destroy, extinguish.
He coughed again, spitting out another clot of scalding blood. He inhaled sharply, dragging the freezing mountain air into his scorched lungs. It tasted sweet. The Yin Baleful Mystic Heart Mantra continued its work, weaving cool threads of energy through his battered tissues, stitching him back together.
His gaze fell to his left palm. Beneath the skin, fused into his very flesh, lay the Heavenly Mandate Artifact.
It was a cursed, bizarre object. During his last experiment with Fire Poison Gang Qi, the artifact had been squeezed until it secreted a single drop of red blood. That blood had remade him. He had an instinctual feeling that the red liquid was superior to any martial body-tempering technique in existence. If he could harness it, perhaps his body could evolve to withstand the Yang fire indefinitely.
"The only variable," he muttered, "is the source. If some ancient demon soul is hiding in that blood, waiting to hijack my body..."
He shook the thought away and stepped toward the ruins.
The two Corpse Demon Ancestors were gone. In their place were piles of indistinguishable meat, charred to a crisp. The mountain was silent. Jiang Dao prowled the perimeter, tearing down remaining walls and kicking through rubble. He found no one.
"Rumor had it three Ancestors were sleeping here," he mused. "Did the third one die in its sleep? Or is it hiding?"
If it died in its sleep, that was a stroke of luck.
He began to loot. He changed into fresh robes taken from a storage cache and gathered armfuls of jade slips—ancient data storage devices. He scanned them. They were grotesque manuals on how to cultivate corpse demons, detailing torture and bloodletting.
Disgusted, he crushed the jade slips into dust.
Finally, he stood at the edge of a massive pit he had noticed earlier. Deep inside, black flames danced. They didn't emit heat; they radiated a bone-deep chill.
Jiang Dao leaned over, inhaling the fumes.
The energy rushed into him, reacting violently with his Yin Baleful Mystic Heart Mantra. It was euphoric. His overheated body felt as though it had been plunged into an ice bath.
"Useful," he admitted, "but vile."
The jade slips had named this Corpse Demon Fire. It was distilled from the resentment and necrosis of the dead. Absorbing it was a shortcut to power, but the cost was one's humanity. Eventually, the user would rot from the inside out, becoming a corpse demon themselves. It was drinking poison to quench thirst.
Jiang Dao made a decision. He lifted his foot and stomped.
BOOM.
The edge of the pit collapsed. He grabbed boulders the size of carriages and hurled them into the abyss, burying the black fire until the chill was suffocated.
Job done.
He descended the mountain, finding a secluded cave halfway down to rest. He wasn't arrogant enough to assume he was safe. If the third Ancestor was real, it could strike at any moment.
But the strike never came.
One day passed. Then two. By the third day, the silence remained unbroken.
Inside the cave, Jiang Dao opened his eyes. The Yin Baleful Mystic Heart Mantra had done its work. The burns were gone, replaced by fresh, pink skin. His Yin energy reserves had deepened, balancing the volatile Yang within him.
He smiled, a rare expression on his stoic face. "This cobbled-together cultivation method is surprisingly effective."
He stood, dusted off his robes, and walked out into the light.
Or rather, the grey.
Half an hour later, Jiang Dao looked up at the sky. The air was thick with ash and snowflakes. The wind howled like a dying beast.
"Damn thief Heaven," he cursed softly. "Always bullying the honest ones."
The summit had been clear, but the world below was a frozen hellscape. The snow was relentless.
"Is there truly a ruler up there?" He narrowed his eyes, his gaze piercing the clouds. "Some cosmic dictator?"
He snorted, wrapping his black cloak tighter, and stepped into the storm.
The snow was meters deep. The landscape was a graveyard of civilization. Ten houses, nine empty. The isolation was crushing. It felt as though the heavens had abandoned this realm entirely, leaving it to freeze in the dark. Even Jiang Dao, with his heart of iron, felt a flicker of despair.
Hoo.
He exhaled a breath of pure heat, melting a path through the drift before him.
He walked for miles until the texture of the world changed.
Jiang Dao stopped. The snow was falling, yes, but it was... weaker. The flakes hit the ground and dissolved rather than stacking up. The biting wind had lost its teeth. It was as if an invisible dome had been erected over this specific region, holding back the worst of the apocalypse.
In the distance, thin ribbons of smoke curled from chimneys.
"Did Heaven finally blink?" Jiang Dao wondered.
He approached the village. It was a tiny settlement, barely a hundred families, huddled together against the encroaching frost. The people he saw were shivering, their faces gaunt, but they were alive.
As he passed, whispers drifted from the doorways.
"A strange man... bizarre..."
"Did you hear? When that gong rang, the snow parted. If he hadn't come, we'd be statues by morning."
"Look at this one. Dressed oddly. Is he the Old Immortal returned?"
"Don't be stupid. Look at him. Too much meat. The Old Immortal was a skeleton. Skin and bones."
"Shh! Do not blaspheme!"
Jiang Dao stopped.
Old Immortal?
He knocked on a weathered door. An old man answered, fear in his eyes, clutching a small boy to his leg.
"This Old Immortal," Jiang Dao asked, his voice low. "Tell me about him."
The old man trembled but recognized authority when he saw it. "My Lord, we don't know who he was. A ghost, maybe. Or a saint. He wore a black felt hat and robes so old they looked like rot. Blood... he was covered in blood. Left hand, a copper gong. Right hand, a hammer. He left bloody footprints in the snow. I asked him to rest, but he refused. He just kept walking, hitting that gong. Clang, clang. And everywhere the sound went, the winter retreated."
"Is that so?" Jiang Dao's mind raced.
Weather manipulation. That was the domain of gods or high-tier Evil Spirits. But Evil Spirits didn't save villages. They consumed them.
"Which way?"
"North," the old man pointed with a shaking finger. "Toward the mountains."
"Was he alone?"
"Alone. And dying, by the looks of it. His hands... they were black. Burnt. Like charcoal."
Jiang Dao nodded. "Thank you."
He turned to leave, but his gaze snagged on the boy. The child, no older than eight, stared back with eyes that had seen too much death. There was a hardness there. A steel spine in a malnourished body.
"Boy," Jiang Dao beckoned. "Come here."
"Xiao Fan," the boy whispered, stepping forward despite his grandfather's grip.
"Parents?"
"Froze."
Jiang Dao looked at the kid. In this world, the weak were meat. This kid had the eyes of a survivor.
"I have no trinkets for you," Jiang Dao said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "But I will give you a chance. A heat that will never fade."
He reached out and tapped the boy's forehead.
Boom.
He injected a sliver of pure Yang energy. It wasn't enough to kill, but it was enough to ignite the boy's dormant potential. Xiao Fan gasped as his blood began to boil. The cold vanished from his bones, replaced by a roaring furnace of vitality. His posture straightened. Power flooded his tiny limbs.
"Live," Jiang Dao said.
He vanished before the grandfather could speak, a blur of motion disappearing into the white.
Jiang Dao moved North with the speed of a predator.
Along the way, the pattern held. Every village he passed reported the same phenomenon. The snow was receding. The "Old Immortal" had passed through here three days prior.
Three days.
Jiang Dao arrived at Qianyuan City. The snow here was also light. He summoned his lieutenants.
"Any strange figures?"
"None, boss," Xiang An reported. "But the weather... it broke three days ago."
Jiang Dao didn't stay. He left the city, his curiosity burning brighter than his Yang fire. Who was this? A rogue cultivator? A repentant demon?
He ran. He didn't rest. He became a golden streak across the wasteland, covering hundreds of miles in a single day.
On the second day, at noon, he found him.
In the middle of a vast, frozen steppe, the snow was piled meters high, an impenetrable wall of white. But cutting through it was a single, defiant path.
Jiang Dao slowed to a walk.
Ahead, a figure trudged through the drifts. He was a scarecrow of a man, wearing rags that fluttered in the gale. A black felt hat obscured his face.
Clang.
The figure struck a battered copper gong.
The sound wave rippled outward, visible in the air. As it passed, the violent blizzard calmed. The wind died. The snow turned to gentle rain.
But it was the ground that caught Jiang Dao's eye.
The man was leaving a trail of blood. It dripped from his sleeves, his hem, his very pores. As the crimson drops hit the frozen earth, they didn't freeze. They hissed and twisted, forming complex, glowing red talismans.
The runes pulsed once, sinking into the earth, anchoring the warmth to the soil.
Jiang Dao watched, stunned.
This wasn't a technique. This was a sacrifice. The man was draining his own life force, converting his essence into a barrier against the heavenly frost.
Jiang Dao kept his distance, following silently. He sensed no malice, no Yin energy. Just a profound, heavy sadness.
Suddenly, the air ahead warped.
BOOM.
A column of pure Yin energy erupted from the ground miles ahead, shooting into the clouds. It was a geyser of darkness. A sound accompanied it—a murmuring, like a million people whispering a lullaby at once. It was hypnotic. It smelled of incense and old graves.
Jiang Dao's vision swam. He bit his tongue, the sharp pain snapping him back to reality. Mental attack.
The scarecrow figure stopped.
Clang.
He struck the gong again. The sound was different this time—sharper, aggressive. It cut through the murmuring lullaby like a sword, shattering the illusion.
The figure raised his head. Blood streamed from under his hat, staining the snow red. He looked toward the pillar of darkness.
"My blood is born of sentient beings," the figure rasped. His voice was like grinding stones. "And it returns to sentient beings."
He began to walk faster, toward the darkness.
"You may wish to drain me dry," the figure shouted to the void, "but I will water this earth with my veins before I let you take them. Three years... my blood can only buy them three years."
He stumbled, caught himself, and kept walking.
"I have done my best... I have truly done my best..."
Jiang Dao stood in the snow, watching the martyr march toward his death.
"Born of sentient beings, returning to sentient beings?"
The words hung in the freezing air, heavier than the mountain Jiang Dao had destroyed.