Are There Only Demonesses Left in the Cultivation Realm?

As a Kai Yang Realm Cultivator who practiced the Transformation Dao—one of the paths symbolizing the authority of "Life"—Xiao Qingfeng could easily perform feats like regenerating from a single drop of blood or bringing withered trees back to life.

Yet, Xiao Qingfeng had chosen to sever his own life.

He had given up everything to curse Lu Changyuan, and the consequences were terrifying.

Lu Changyuan didn’t even have time to mount an effective defense.

His Realm was not yet at the Fifth Realm, he had not yet comprehended his own Dao, and he was certainly not a Body Cultivator with a formidable physique.

The instant Xiao Qingfeng exploded, a black line, as fine as a strand of hair yet as deep as ink, was abruptly branded onto Lu Changyuan’s skin.

The next moment, the black line seemed to come alive, spreading at a horrifying speed until it covered his entire body in the blink of an eye.

’If only I still had the Supreme Pure Spirit Forget Immortal Technique,’ the thought flashed through Lu Changyuan’s mind.

He felt as if every inch of his skin was bound by invisible ropes that tightened relentlessly, threatening to tear him apart. His throat felt like it was filled with lead, trapping a breath in his chest. A suffocating sensation, accompanied by the excruciating pain of his organs being crushed, washed over him in waves.

"Are you alright?" Mei Zhaozhao’s voice was laced with obvious worry as she flew over from a distance.

Lu Changyuan struggled to raise a hand, his fingers splayed, signaling for her to stop.

"Cough!"

He doubled over violently, and a mouthful of thick blood tainted with an ominous black qi spewed from his throat, splattering onto the dark ground.

"Don’t come any closer."

Mei Zhaozhao froze, hovering in mid-air, at a loss for what to do.

RIIIP!

The sound of flesh being forcibly torn apart emanated from within Lu Changyuan’s body, followed by a muffled THUD, as if something tightly connected had been violently ripped away.

Lu Changyuan let out a stifled groan and fell to one knee, sword in hand. He looked down at his chest in disbelief.

A bowl-sized cavity had appeared there at some point. Inside, it was completely empty.

"Physician Lu!" Mei Zhaozhao’s cry suddenly grew shrill, trembling with a hint of terror.

"Quiet. I won’t die."

The Dao of the Nether Monarch was death. Since Lu Changyuan was temporarily wielding the Nether Monarch’s authority, he couldn’t die in the Netherworld. It was precisely because Xiao Qingfeng had realized this that he had self-destructed in despair.

’But why would he self-destruct just to gravely injure me?’

Lu Changyuan slowly stood up. A breeze blew through the hole in his chest, feeling quite cool.

’Just a fatal wound.’

It wasn’t actually *that* fatal. A Cultivator could live without a heart, not to mention the Nether Qi was already beginning to slowly regenerate Lu Changyuan’s flesh and blood.

[You are about to die]

The cold prompt appeared in his mind again.

’Xiao Qingfeng is gone. How could I still die?’

"SCREEE!"

A sharp, ear-piercing cry that seemed to penetrate one’s very Divine Soul rang out without warning!

Lu Changyuan whipped his head around. The sound was coming from the birdcage that had fallen to the ground during his fight with Xiao Qingfeng earlier.

At some unknown time, the cage had been overturned. The black cloth that covered it was cast aside, and the cage itself was now empty.

Wind!

Without warning, the mournful, ghostly wind suddenly turned violent, sweeping up the deathly stillness of the Netherworld and converging in the sky.

Lu Changyuan and Mei Zhaozhao looked up at the same time. There, against the gray canopy of the Netherworld’s sky, was a red bird with feathers that looked as if they were stained with blood.

CRUNCH.

CRUNCH.

A hair-raising chewing sound reached their ears with chilling clarity.

It was clearly a bird eating, yet it bizarrely stirred the most primal sense of hunger deep within both Lu Changyuan and Mei Zhaozhao.

Lu Changyuan suppressed this strange feeling and narrowed his eyes. He could finally see what the red bird was eating. It was a bright red, still-beating heart.

’My heart?’

"What is that?"

Mei Zhaozhao’s voice was strained. The aura emanating from the red bird filled her with instinctual fear and revulsion.

Lu Changyuan’s expression was grim to the extreme. He spoke each word with weight, "The Desire Demon."

The strange sensation he had felt in the room earlier hadn’t been an illusion.

The materialized emotions that Su Youwan had sealed in the birdcage were the most susceptible to the Desire Demon’s influence.

A Cultivator of the Supreme should have killed the bird in the cage. But Su Youwan had chosen not to, and now, as expected, a problem had arisen.

Lu Changyuan snapped back to his senses and demanded in a low voice, "Did you control Xiao Qingfeng and make him self-destruct?"

In his final moments, Xiao Qingfeng had been like a madman, his eyes crimson—not the state of a normal person at all.

He had cultivated the Transformation Dao because he wanted to live, so why would he ever give up his life and self-destruct?

The only explanation was that he had Fallen into Demon, controlled by the Desire Demon.

’That’s it. After falling from the Yao Guang Realm, four hundred years of torment from his obsession had already cracked his Dao Heart. When Xiao Qingfeng was at the Half-Step Yao Guang Realm, the Desire Demon couldn’t touch him. But now that he had fallen to the Kai Yang Realm, he was indeed extremely vulnerable to a lurking Desire Demon.’

The red bird slowly and deliberately finished eating Lu Changyuan’s entire crimson heart, then let out a cry of immense satisfaction.

The wind rose.

Its enormous body suddenly shrank. Amidst a crimson glow, it transformed into a red shadow no bigger than a fist and shot straight toward Lu Changyuan.

Lu Changyuan was about to raise his sword to meet it.

BOOM!

But an unprecedentedly violent sound exploded next to his ear.

Not only that, but with a POP, Lu Changyuan’s left eye burst open, and crimson blood streamed down his cheek.

Lu Changyuan found that half of his body was paralyzed.

[You have been tainted by the Desire Demon]

In an instant, the bird arrived.

But the bird didn’t harm Lu Changyuan. Instead, it leaped into his body, firmly occupying the space in his chest where his heart should have been.

"Physician Lu!"

Lu Changyuan collapsed to the ground, clawing desperately at the edges of the hole in his chest. His knuckles turned white from the force as he tried to drag out the red bird that had taken his heart’s place.

It didn’t budge an inch.

The bird felt as if it *was* his heart, a perfect, yet horrifying, fit.

The next moment, Lu Changyuan’s remaining right eye was also completely consumed by crimson. A torrential wave of Demonic Qi erupted from his body!

The gray of the sky was replaced by a deep, inky black, as if the Demonic Qi radiating from Lu Changyuan was forcibly reshaping the entire Netherworld into a Demon Country.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

「Celestial Mountain.」

The sky, as clear as washed jade, suddenly turned dark.

A bone-chilling wind swept everything up.

The Daoist Sect Master’s voice immediately echoed throughout Celestial Mountain. "All disciples, seal your residences! Those at the Fifth Realm and above, come to the Celestial Mountain Peak!"

It was met with a chorus of, "As you command!"

The Daoist Disciples all transformed into streaks of light and shot toward the peak.

Jiang Jiayi narrowed her eyes and turned back to Xia Lianxue. "I have to go, too."

Xia Lianxue was also looking up at the sky. "What’s happening?"

"I’m not sure. It’s probably related to the Desire Demon."

The Little Fairy in a White Skirt nodded and watched as Jiang Jiayi turned into a red streak of light and rushed to the peak.

Qiu Yuehan walked over. "Junior Sister? Aren’t you going to help?"

Xia Lianxue shook her head. "My injuries haven’t healed yet. Besides, with Jiang Jiayi and the Daoist Sect Master here, one more or one less of me won’t make much of a difference."

Despite her words, Xia Lianxue was ready to help at a moment’s notice. She wasn’t going now simply because she felt there was no need to interfere in the Daoist Sect’s affairs.

Qiu Yuehan lowered the sword in her hand, a flicker of worry crossing her cool, beautiful face.

She had just felt a strange palpitation in her heart, so she touched her Demon Pattern.

’The Old Monster isn’t in trouble, is he?’

’He’ll definitely be fine. He’s so strong, and his mind is far too cunning.’

Xia Lianxue also suddenly clutched her chest, feeling a sharp pain.

She looked confused and whispered softly, "Young Master?"

Qiu Yuehan’s expression didn’t change. "He’ll be fine."

"Mm."

Xia Lianxue had always believed that Lu Changyuan’s power was godlike, that he could tread through the most dangerous places as if they were flat ground.

It was an irrational belief, but she believed it all the same.

The Little Fairy in a White Skirt spoke softly, changing the subject. "Senior Sister, since you have ties to the Spirit Race, you should go back for a visit sometime."

Qiu Yuehan agreed absentmindedly, but her mind was on the Old Monster, so she hadn’t really heard what Xia Lianxue said at all.

~~~~~~~~

Jiang Jiayi arrived at the peak in an instant.

On the snow-covered white peak, several Elders were already waiting. Without further orders from the Daoist Sect Master, they could only wait outside the main hall.

"Vice Sect Leader?"

Jiang Jiayi waved her hand. She, too, was a bit confused. The scale of this response seemed a little too grand.

"I’ll go in and ask her."

In the span of a few breaths, the Innate Sword Body transformed into red light and entered the rear hall in a flash.

Unlike usual, the slender figure was not reclining but standing ramrod straight, presenting only her back.

Not only that, but her 3-foot-6-inch sword was already unsheathed and gripped tightly in the Daoist Sect Master’s hand.

Seeing this, Jiang Jiayi’s brows furrowed.

’Something big has happened.’

"What happened?"

The Daoist Sect Master had already put on her gilded mask. She said lightly, "The Desire Demon wants to descend. I anticipated this. It seems the incident at Miao Yu Palace was its probing attempt."

Jiang Jiayi’s voice suddenly turned ice-cold. "Is its main body trying to descend?"

"I just exchanged a blow with it. I only saw half of its body."

"This is trouble."

If it were a clone of the Desire Demon descending, that would be a small matter. The Daoist Sect Master could kill it with a single strike.

If the entire Desire Demon descended, the problem wouldn’t be too big either. From her position, the Daoist Sect Master could naturally strike it back.

But it was precisely *half* a body that was descending.

’Where is the other half?’

The Daoist Sect Master’s voice was frigid. "I watch over the world day and night. There shouldn’t be any Cultivator capable of hosting the other half of the Desire Demon’s body."

If the Desire Demon wanted to bypass Celestial Mountain to descend, its only option was to find a Cultivator in the Mortal World, cause them to Fall into Demon, then devour their will and use the opportunity to smuggle itself into the mortal plane.

But the Desire Demon’s status is too high and its power too great. Even a Yao Guang Cultivator shouldn’t be able to bear half of its body.

’Think about it.’

’When Su Wuxiang Fell into Demon, at most only one-hundredth of the Desire Demon’s power descended, let alone for anyone else.’

Most of the time, Cultivators who Fall into Demon are simply devoured by it, not used as a vessel for it to descend into the world.

"If it really manages to descend, the problem will be immense." Jiang Jiayi’s expression was also grave. "So you hastily gathered the disciples to purge demons from the world?"

The Daoist Sect Master didn’t speak, merely staring fixedly at the sky.

"If it truly has smuggled half of its body down, we must find it, even if we have to turn this world upside down."

Jiang Jiayi looked up at the sky along with the Daoist Sect Master. "But if it has truly found someone who can bear half of its body, it must have been plotting for many years and exhausted every means. It won’t be easy to find."

The Daoist Sect Master said softly, "But this is also an opportunity."

Jiang Jiayi whipped her head around. "What are you going to do?!"

A token was tossed to Jiang Jiayi.

The Daoist Sect Master raised her sword and ascended into the sky. "It only has half its body in the Beyond the Heavens. This is the perfect opportunity to cripple it. I’m giving you the Sect Leader’s Token. If things go wrong, begin the demon purge at any time."

"You’re insane!"

The Daoist Sect Master didn’t look back.

The 3-foot-6-inch longsword erupted with Sword Qi that shrieked through everything, slicing the entire cloud layer to pieces.

A Mysterious Skill layered itself upon the sword like overlapping mountain ranges.

A single, icy word left the Daoist Sect Master’s lips.

"Taiyi!"

The heavens split into yin and yang, and the Taiyi reappeared.

Alone with her sword, the Daoist Sect Master charged into the Beyond the Heavens.