Are There Only Demonesses Left in the Cultivation Realm?

In the sky, the Fourth Realm Cultivator no longer looked human.

He just savagely poured all his strength into tearing to shreds everything in front of him.

Most of the Cultivators who had entered the Netherworld were below the Fifth Realm, so not many could stand in his way. Coupled with his bizarre state, he was even more terrifying.

Mangled, fleshy appendages grew from his back, bursting through his skin. Dripping with fresh blood, they stretched out at a frenzied, visible pace, finally transforming into bronze-colored wings.

He was no longer human.

"A monster!?"

Someone shouted, but in the chaos, no one paid any mind to what was wrong with the Fourth Realm Cultivator.

He flapped his wings, which blotted out the sky, and shot in front of a man. He ripped the man’s heart right out of his chest, then began murmuring incomprehensible gibberish.

When all the lanterns turned white, the Fourth Realm Cultivator beat his wings again and flew off into the distance.

The thick fog rolled in again, obscuring all vision.

He stopped flying and landed, then began to walk forward, step by heavy, numb step.

A rhythm like the grinding of teeth suddenly echoed all around, but he paid it no mind. He plunged into the fog, becoming another unseen behemoth within.

He walked on, one step at a time.

The thick fog began to gnaw at his flesh. In moments, a pale, complete skeleton replaced his former, grotesque body. The sloughed-off flesh fell to the ground, quickly generating one black Spirit after another.

Screeching, the Spirits also vanished into the thick fog.

Flames ignited silently within the skeleton’s eye sockets, yet he continued to walk. His flesh was gone; now it was time for his bones to perish. The once-solid ground beneath his feet had seemingly turned into a swamp that devoured bone.

With every step forward, his foot bones sank silently an inch into the ground. Then his leg bones, his torso... he was slowly, inexorably shortening.

CLANG.

With a sharp clatter, all that remained was a solitary skull. It lost its support and fell to the ground, but it kept rolling.

CLATTER CLATTER.

The skull rolled deeper into the fog.

When it finally stopped, the flames in its eye sockets dissipated completely. To be more precise, the flames floated up and out of its eyes, finally disappearing deep into the mist.

With a POOF, the skull abruptly turned to ash and dissipated into the fog.

After a long moment.

A long, satisfied sigh drifted from the depths of the fog.

~~~~~~~~~

"So? What’s your plan, Young Master Lu? Are you going to look for those people from the Hehuan Sect?"

Su Youwan asked curiously, holding the birdcage.

The two had returned to Lu Changyuan’s small house. Everything was as it had been, except for two Spirits peering in at the doorway, wanting to get back inside.

The Silver-haired Maiden set down the birdcage as a matter of course and sat on the bed, her small, delicate feet in their white cloth shoes dangling in the air.

She didn’t wait for Lu Changyuan to reply. "That old man is holding Xiao Qingfeng’s memorial tablet," she said. "If Xiao Qingfeng isn’t actually dead, he must be plotting something big. There might be something unusual about the tablet itself."

Lu Changyuan nodded, his expression as calm as ever, as if he didn’t take his own impending death to heart. "That’s why I need to find this Xiao Hai, and while I’m at it, see what’s really going on with that tablet."

When he’d seen the memorial tablet moving erratically at the Yingfeng Inn, Lu Changyuan hadn’t paid it much mind. He also hadn’t examined it closely by hand, so he couldn’t have known what secrets it held.

’Who would have thought I’d actually run into the person named on the tablet here in the Netherworld?’

The Silver-haired Maiden lowered her blindfold. Her red eyes stared at Lu Changyuan, not with ferocity, but with just a hint of aggression.

It was as if this Bodhisattva of Supreme Emotionlessness had gained an aggressive edge from those red eyes.

"You know far too much about the Netherworld, Young Master Lu."

"Just distant memories. You learn all sorts of things when you get old enough." Lu Changyuan waved a dismissive hand. "I have to go check on this Xiao Hai now. It would be best if you stayed here in the house, Third Prince."

Seeing that Lu Changyuan was about to open the door and venture out into the Netherworld night, the Silver-haired Maiden couldn’t help but say, "It’s already nighttime. It would be better to go tomorrow."

White lanterns already lit the streets, and a thick fog was rising. Any living person caught outside would be devoured by it.

"It’s fine. It can’t hurt me."

Lu Changyuan yanked open the door, hefted Broken Thought, and vanished into the fog.

’He was very concerned about the words that had appeared in his vision.’

’I’m going to die?’

’How could I die in a place like this?’

Outside the door, a gray fog swirled, obscuring his vision.

’The Netherworld is certainly hostile to outsiders.’

’Ultimately, the Netherworld manifested in this realm to lure the Nether Monarch back. It naturally wouldn’t have a good attitude toward those who came for its Nether River and Three-Life Fruit.’

’The nighttime fog is one of the Netherworld’s ways of driving out foreigners.’

’That’s why outsiders can’t go out at night.’

’Mm.’

’Outsiders.’

’What does that have to do with me, Lu Changyuan?’

Lu Changyuan waved a hand at the fog. "Don’t bother me, and don’t go planting flowers on me."

The phantom of a behemoth in the fog walked past Lu Changyuan. It paused for a moment, as if in acknowledgment, but quickly and slowly moved on.

Lu Changyuan was the only one who could clearly see the behemoths walking.

Such enormous, bipedal creatures did not exist in the current Cultivation Realm. As far as Lu Changyuan knew, the largest beast was the great turtle from the Beast Taming Palace, and even that walked on four legs.

There were no records of bipedal giants, not even in the annals of the Daoist Sects. All that was ever found were bones, occasionally dug up from the earth.

’They must be creatures from tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of years ago.’

Lu Changyuan pulled his thoughts back to the present and walked along the road from East City. Between East City and West City stood a massive stone stele, on which a large symbol was carved.

Any intelligent creature that came here and saw the symbol would instinctively know its meaning.

Nether.

The Monarch who stands amidst Chaos, in the land where Spirits rest.

Lu Changyuan didn’t let his gaze linger on the stele for long. Instead, he randomly grabbed a Spirit that was wandering the street.

He asked in a low, eerie voice, "Wandering the streets instead of going home to sleep at this hour?"

The simple-minded Spirit jumped in fright. When it turned and saw it was Lu Changyuan, it first swelled up in terror, then shrank again and took several steps back.

Lu Changyuan narrowed his eyes slightly. "I’ve been meaning to ask. You Spirits are a whole new batch, yet you still recognize me?"

The Spirit let out a hoarse screech.

Lu Changyuan gave it a genial smile. ’Does the name Yu follow me even unto death?’ "Never mind," he said aloud. "Do you know of a human clad in black robes? She’s another new face from the outside. Where does she live?"

The Spirit let out a shriek and quickly fled, as if terrified of Lu Changyuan—or perhaps of something else in the fog.

In the dense fog, the houses of the Netherworld looked faint and illusory from the outside.