Chapter 24 : Chapter 24
Chapter 24: The Bloodfiend True Art
Driven beyond endurance by oppression and exploitation, the mine slaves finally erupted under the instigation of those with ulterior motives.
Several thousand mine slaves rioted all at once, attacking the mine guards in a mad frenzy, heedless of their own lives, venting the fury they had suppressed for so long.
But before the heavily armored mine guards, their resistance was nothing more than a joke.
One after another, the rebelling slaves were cut down as mercilessly as melons and cabbages.
The riot was loud and chaotic, but in the end it lacked real force. It was only a matter of time before it was suppressed.
Still, the “General” and his men had achieved their purpose.
Looking at the mine thrown into chaos, the “General,” hiding in the shadows, grew visibly excited.
He laughed loudly and said to his trusted men beside him, “Gentlemen, our chance has come!”
The others’ breathing immediately quickened.
The “General” had originally been a noble of Dongling. Under the summons of the Dongling Royal Court, he had joined the war against the Great Zhou Dynasty.
But during the battle with the cultivators of Great Zhou, he had been defeated and grievously wounded. Though he had managed to escape, he had not gone far before collapsing unconscious.
When he awoke, he had already become a prisoner of the Zhou army.
Fortunately, his clan possessed an art for concealing one’s aura, and there were no true experts in the Zhou army, so his identity as a cultivator had gone undiscovered, allowing him to keep his life by pure luck.
For Great Zhou had always shown absolute exterminating hostility toward cultivators from enemy forces.
Though he had luckily preserved his life, he had been turned into a slave and sold off to Shenglong Prefecture.
In the end, he was purchased by the Li family and became a mine slave.
That a dignified Qi-Blood Realm cultivator like him should be forced to do the lowliest labor in the world, and even be beaten now and then by a gang of ants...
At the thought of such humiliation, the “General” could no longer suppress the killing intent in his heart.
But now was not yet the time for revenge.
The urgent matter at hand was to leave this place first.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the group ran toward the road down the mountain.
There was only a single path down.
At that unavoidable route, the Li family had built a sturdy pass.
On either side of it were ten-thousand-zhang cliffs.
Even a Qi-Blood Realm cultivator, if careless enough to fall, would be smashed to pieces.
Hiding in the distant woods, the men peeked out carefully to observe the state of the pass.
Tie Xiong frowned and said in confusion, “General, why doesn’t there seem to be a single person on the pass?”
The “General” quickly looked.
Sure enough, just as Tie Xiong said, the Silver Ridge pass—normally guarded with strict vigilance—was now completely empty.
“General, this is too abnormal. Could it be a trap?”
One of the trusted men beside him looked tense.
The General shot him a glance, pride written across his face.
“An arrow already on the bow has no turning back. Even if it is a trap, so what? If no Qi-Blood Realm cultivator appears, who can stop me?”
With that, he strode out at once.
Seeing this, the others gritted their teeth and hurried after him.
They all understood that only by following the General did they stand any chance of living.
The gates of the pass stood wide open.
As long as they passed through them, they would be free again.
And yet, for some reason, the nearer they drew to the pass, the more the General felt an indescribable sense of unease.
It was as though some terrifying existence was watching him from the dark.
“I have to leave this damned place. Immediately.”
Driven by fear, the General and the others picked up their pace.
At last...
They passed through the gates of the pass.
But before they could celebrate, all of them halted at once.
Following their line of sight—
On the road ahead stood a slender figure in green robes, hands clasped behind his back, blocking their path.
“Gentlemen, Li has been waiting here for quite some time.”
A warm, refined voice echoed beneath the sky above the pass.
The green-robed figure slowly turned around, revealing a young face carrying a faint smile.
The moment the General saw that youthful face, his heart leapt straight into his throat, pounding wildly.
From this young man, he sensed an aura of extreme danger.
He was no fool. In an instant, he guessed the man’s identity.
Though he had never seen him before, his name had long resounded like thunder in the ears of all the Li family cultivators stationed at the mine.
The one they mentioned most often was their monstrously gifted Family Head.
At seventeen, he had already stepped into the Qi-Blood Realm and become Family Head of the Qingfeng Li Clan.
When the family had been in danger, he had risen to turn the tide and had even slain an old Qi-Blood Realm cultivator in one stroke, erasing the family’s century-old enemy.
The General had once thought the fame exaggerated.
But after seeing him today, he finally understood what “reputation without falsehood” meant.
This Li family Family Head was even more terrifying than the rumors suggested.
The General drew a deep breath and cupped his fists.
“Han Jie of Dongling greets fellow Daoist.”
“What you have done, sir, does not qualify you to be called a fellow Daoist.”
Li Xingge answered with a light laugh.
Han Jie’s heart sank, though he kept a smiling face.
“I acted only out of helpless necessity. I ask Family Head Li to show mercy and let me go. Once I return to Dongling, I will surely repay the favor generously.”
He knew very well that he was not Li Xingge’s match, which was why he immediately chose submission.
But Li Xingge was unmoved.
He merely said to himself, “I think this place counts as a fine patch of feng shui. What do you gentlemen think?”
Han Jie and the others turned ugly at once.
But they did not dare flare up. They could only force out embarrassed smiles.
“Fellow Daoist jests.”
The smile on Li Xingge’s face gradually faded, replaced by killing intent that could no longer be concealed.
“Li never jokes.”
The instant those words fell—
That young man, who had looked so refined and easygoing, became sharp and fierce in an instant.
The oppressive aura of the Qi-Blood Realm erupted without the slightest reservation and bore down directly upon Han Jie and the others.
At once, heaven and earth seemed to change color, while sand and stones flew wildly in the air.
Only when trapped beneath that horrifying pressure could one truly understand just how powerful Li Xingge was.
All of them felt as if they could barely breathe.
Han Jie thought to himself that even at his peak, if he had faced Li Xingge, he probably would not have stood the slightest chance.
How could there exist such a monstrous person in this world?
And why would such a monster appear in a tiny family that no one had even heard of?
The pressure intensified further and further.
Everyone felt as though their internal organs were about to burst.
Han Jie’s face flushed red as he forced out the words, “Family Head Li, I am from the... Han family of Dongling. If you kill me... the Han family of Dongling...”
His words stopped there.
Looking at Han Jie and the others, now dead with blood pouring from their seven orifices, Li Xingge’s gaze remained utterly calm, as if he had merely crushed a few ants.
“Forget this so-called Han family of Dongling. Even the royal house of Dongling would not dare stir trouble in the Central Plains.”
Li Xingge spoke with disdain.
The Dongling savages might currently be making a great commotion over in Dongzhou Prefecture, but that was only because the officials of the imperial court were too busy fighting over power to deal with them properly.
But if they dared come to the Central Plains, the august ministers of the court would show those Dongling barbarians exactly what a six-thousand-year dynasty meant.
Thus Li Xingge felt not the slightest scruple in killing these so-called members of the Han family of Dongling.
【Detected: fragment of the mid Heaven-Grade cultivation art 《Bloodfiend True Art》. Pick up?】
The System’s voice abruptly rang out in his mind.
Li Xingge paused, slightly startled. This seemed to be the first time something like this had happened.
Killing someone had actually dropped a cultivation art?
Without asking more questions, he hesitated only slightly before choosing to pick it up.
In an instant, everything concerning the Bloodfiend True Art flooded into his sea of consciousness.
So this Bloodfiend True Art had been created by a longevity titan known as the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable.
Li Xingge did not know what exact realm such a being had belonged to. But anything touched by the word “longevity” could not possibly be simple.
Even the Earthly Heavenly Human of Great Zhou, who had already lived for three thousand eight hundred years, did not dare claim he had attained true immortality.
The Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable had been born into an impoverished farming family, making his living as a cowherd from childhood.
Though life had been hard, both his parents had been alive, loved him dearly, and the household had been harmonious.
He had thought his whole life would pass in that ordinary way.
But one day, after returning home from grazing cattle, what awaited him was not his parents’ kind smiles, but two cold corpses.
The neighbors told him his parents had been beaten to death by a wastrel son of a great local family, simply because they had accidentally blocked his way.
After learning this, the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable did not rage or make a scene. He seemed, on the surface, to accept his fate.
But from that day onward, his temperament changed completely.
He began seeking instruction everywhere, using every means possible to step onto the path of cultivation and become a cultivator.
Again and again, he was told mercilessly that his aptitude was too poor.
That in this lifetime he was destined to remain nothing more than a dirt-legged peasant.
The Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable refused to accept that.
He swore he would create a cultivation art that did not require talent to cultivate.
Everyone around him thought he had gone mad, and they looked at him with pity.
The Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable paid them no mind.
Three years later, the 《Bloodfiend True Art》 was born.
Seize the creation of others for one’s own use; transform decay into wonder and ascend to longevity.
In just two short lines, the essence of the Bloodfiend True Art was laid bare.
Absorbing the qi and blood of others and turning it into one’s own cultivation—relying on this technique, the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable completed his revenge in only a single year.
That family was exterminated root and branch, every one of its members turned into dried corpses by him.
As for the wastrel with whom he had shared an irreconcilable blood feud, he met with a rather special “fortune.”
The Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable cut off his limbs, gouged out his eyes, sliced away his tongue, and kept him inside what had once been the most precious rice jar in the family home.
He refused to let the man die.
To keep him alive, while killing and cultivating, he searched everywhere for rare treasures and supreme medicines.
In less than a hundred years, he had actually piled so many miraculous medicines onto that wastrel that the man was forcibly raised all the way to the realm of the Earthly Heavenly Human.
Yet the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable’s wanton slaughter also enraged many ancient powers.
Several longevity titans stepped forth from those ancient forces.
Together, they besieged the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable.
That battle darkened heaven and earth.
Two longevity titans bled across the sky.
And since that day, the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable had vanished without a trace.
Seeing that after cultivating the Bloodfiend True Art, the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable had become one of the supreme mighty in only a few hundred years—
If one said Li Xingge was not tempted, that would be false.
His ragged breathing had already betrayed him, and madness flashed through his eyes.
But very quickly, clarity returned to his gaze.
He shook his head.
The Bloodfiend True Art was good, but it was not suited to a good person.
Of course, Li Xingge himself was not a good person either.
It was simply that he had seen the flaws in the Bloodfiend True Art.
Though this Heaven-Grade cultivation art could rapidly increase a cultivator’s strength, it carried severe aftereffects.
After all, such cultivation was, at its root, power seized by force from others. The foundation would inevitably be unstable, because in the end it was not truly one’s own.
In the later years of his life, the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable himself seemed to have been affected by those aftereffects. His mind gradually lost clarity, and he became nothing more than a killing machine driven by slaughter, which was why he had enraged those ancient powers.
If even the Bloodfiend Heavenly Venerable, the creator of the Bloodfiend True Art, could not solve those aftereffects, then there was even less hope for anyone else.
There was another issue as well.
This Bloodfiend True Art was only a fragment. It was not the complete Bloodfiend True Art at all and could only be cultivated up to the Qi-Blood Realm, so it was of limited use to Li Xingge himself.
Still...
It would be well-suited for raising death warriors.
At that thought, a peculiar glint passed through Li Xingge’s eyes.