Chapter 180: The Celestial Sect Raising Cubs
The Spirit King actually proved rather reliable. The very next day after Yun Jiao and the others returned to Qingyang, he summoned back all the wandering souls that had slipped into the Lingyou Domain. After questioning them thoroughly, he pieced together the whole story.
It turned out that the incident with the stolen life force had indeed been Sheng Heng’s doing—entirely for the sake of raising the Sky-Swallowing Beast. Though that creature was an ancient divine beast, it was still a living being, and not particularly intelligent. It couldn’t stay in the Underworld for long without being corroded by yin energy. So Sheng Heng had gathered the life force of living people, trying to neutralize the miasma’s effects and keep the beast alive down there.
At first, he’d been careful—not enough to kill anyone, just siphoning bits of vitality quietly, little by little. But as the beast grew older, its appetite expanded, and it was on the verge of adulthood. To avoid exposure, Sheng Heng began collecting life force from other ghost domains, impersonating Han Shu to give false orders.
When Yun Jiao’s group disrupted his plans, he panicked and resorted to the most desperate measure—feeding the entire population of souls from the Spirit King’s city to the beast, forcibly maturing it before retreating to the demon realm.
As for how he had come to possess such a beast in the first place, and the finer details of his scheme—those could only be learned from Sheng Heng himself. Unfortunately, his mind had completely collapsed. No one knew when, or if, his sanity would return, leaving the matter stalled for now.
Yun Jiao sighed. This whole ordeal had stirred in her a deep and unfamiliar sense of crisis. She’d once asked her ancestor just how strong Sheng Heng truly was—how a single man could make the entire Underworld dance in his palm. After some hesitation, her ancestor finally gave an answer: stronger than the Spirit Realm’s Yama himself.
When she asked her Uncle Yuan for context, he explained that a Yama’s strength approached that of a ghost immortal. In other words, aside from that chatterbox of an Underworld King, there was likely no one else in the whole Underworld who could rival a Yama. Even Uncle Yuan, an upper immortal, would find it difficult to defeat one—yet Sheng Heng had surpassed them.
So back in the demon realm, if Sheng Heng hadn’t suffered that mental break and lost the will to fight, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. It would’ve taken her ancestor’s direct intervention to end it.
The more Yun Jiao thought about it, the more she pitied the mortal realm. Of the Three Realms, the human world was the weakest—sandwiched between the demon realm and the Underworld like a hapless piece of meat. The only force that could be called battle-ready was the Celestial Sect, and among its disciples, only a handful, like Hall Master Xu from the Heavenly Master Hall, were remotely formidable. Yun Jiao knew their true level all too well—hah, not even close.