Chapter 271 |
The Purgatory invasion was not a simple incursion of stray creatures—it was a full-scale, systemic assault by a massive army. In a terrifyingly short span of time, they amassed an overwhelming force and breached the sealing gate of Tuyue's Inner City in a single strike.
After slaughtering the Black Army at the fortress, they capitalized on Tuyue's absence to paralyze the defensive arrays and blind the Moon Tower's entire surveillance network. That sudden blackout left every expert scattered across the urban districts isolated and leaderless.
In the end, only a fraction managed to escape by exploiting their own special abilities; the vast majority were systematically encircled and devoured. By the time Tuyue returned, it was already too late. Even fighting alongside Xie Jun, stripped of array amplification, they could do nothing but stall—battered repeatedly by the Purgatory Duke and the Extreme Cold Queen before finally fleeing in rout toward Xingdao. Now the ruins of Tuyue were divided between two powers: one territory held by Purgatory, the other by Extreme Cold Heaven.
The rulers of these domains were a man and a woman. The man had a towering, iron-built physique, dark red skin clad in heavy armor etched with black and silver patterns, a square-hewn face, and both hands gripping a massive, blood-red battleaxe. The woman wore skimpy gold-trimmed leather armor the color of dark red embers, leaving broad stretches of pale skin exposed across her chest and abdomen. Her eyes burned with crimson flames, and her long hair was a writhing mass of densely packed, fire-breathing snakes.
"That individual is of vital importance," the man said, his voice deep and resonant. "To this day, we still don't know exactly how he bypassed the seal and drew out the power of the Holy Prison. If we can replicate that phenomenon, this entire airspace will fall into our hands without a fight. Your Highness Lanxi—do not alert them. We must trail this group to find our target."
"That is your mission. What does it have to do with me?" Lanxi replied lazily, a playful smile on her lips. "Father never told me to restrain myself. I've grown tired of constantly devouring Blood Ancestors. Switching to ordinary fodder might just improve my mood."
"Your Highness—" The man reached for persuasion, but his vision blurred and she vanished without a trace. Alarmed, he hurried toward Yun Xiazi's group. Fortunately, Lanxi hadn't struck directly; she seemed to have concealed herself somewhere on the periphery, nursing her own agenda. He allowed himself a quiet exhale of relief.
…
Among the fleeing group below, several people had already fallen behind the main contingent. Most of these stragglers had merely attached themselves to Yun Xiazi for protection. They were a mixed lot—men and women, many of them former Truebloods from the Moon Tower. But because they were ordinary Truebloods rather than Trueblood Nobles, they had never awakened Evil Energy and had never belonged to the Moon Tower's upper echelons. Ironically, their low status had kept them alive in the greatest numbers—they hadn't been primary targets in the initial assault.
This ragtag bunch was currently clustered around two young girls at their center, pushing along the shattered road. With their bloodlines failing and Purgatory monsters at their backs, the panic crested into open desperation.
"This isn't working! If we keep dragging these two along, we're all going to die!" someone finally shouted.
"Scatter and run! Staying bunched together will get us all killed!" another voice joined in.
"It's not us—we have nothing they want. It's those two Nobles drawing the Purgatory monsters straight to us! We only survive if we leave them behind!"
The moment those words landed, both Trueblood Noble girls in the center went ashen.
"You were the ones begging us to take you along!" The girl with shoulder-length black hair, An Ling, shouted in fury. "We protected you every step of the way, and this is how you repay us?!"
"Stop talking, An Ling," Sha Ye said quietly beside her. "They're saying this aloud on purpose. By not using a sound transmission secret art—by simply speaking out for everyone to hear—they're building a consensus without throwing the first punch. They want to justify abandoning us while keeping their consciences clean."
The harrowing ordeal of the invasion had forced Sha Ye to mature at a frightening pace. She could see through these Truebloods in an instant. None of them were naive. They had all lived for decades. Some treacherous intentions never needed to be spelled out plainly.
"Despicable wretches!" An Ling gritted her teeth, then fell silent. In the past, she—like Sha Ye—had despised the Nobles who casually consumed humans, even though both of them were Nobles themselves. The mere thought of eating something that looked exactly like her gave her unrelenting nightmares. Anomalies like her and Sha Ye surfaced occasionally among the Trueblood Nobles.
At first, their revulsion had been rooted purely in terror—especially after watching their parents use Evil Energy to devour captives alive. From that day on, they had been haunted by the fear of becoming those captives, of one careless misstep leading a cold-blooded parent to seize them and eat them alive, piece by piece. So even though both she and Sha Ye possessed Evil Energy, they refused to use it—choosing instead to protect people wherever they could. The group they had protected most consistently were these very non-Noble Truebloods now walking beside them. All that compassion had earned them nothing but ostracism from the Noble inner circle. And now the people they had shielded all this time were trying to throw them to the wolves.
"These people are worse than the man-eating Nobles," An Ling spat.
"At least the Nobles—brutal as they were—died with some dignity. When the invasion came, most of them showed no fear. They fought to the bitter end."
"Enough," Sha Ye cut her off, casting a quick glance over her shoulder. Thankfully, the two Purgatory creatures that had been stalking them were nowhere to be seen.
She had no idea why the monsters had broken off their pursuit—but for the moment, they were safe.
What she didn't realize was that just a few meters above her head, concealed within a specialized domain, a dark red figure was watching the two girls with deep, measured interest.
…
Whoosh.
On the shore of the Jade Sea, a semi-transparent phantom pierced through the dense mist and touched down swiftly outside the Boundary Wall.
It accelerated continuously, moving fast enough to seem like teleportation. In under half a minute, it crossed a vast stretch of ground—phasing through Miyin Village, sweeping across broad tracts of desolate wasteland—before finally coming to a halt directly outside the maze ruins.
Hiss.
The phantom landed and condensed into Lin Hui's solid form. He studied the gray stone ruins before him.
Dilapidated stonework and crumbling walls littered the rolling gray-black hills, while shattered palace structures floated eerily in the mid-distance.
No Mist here. The environment was largely unchanged from his first visit.
Thud.
Lin Hui tapped a foot lightly against the earth.
A deep rumble sounded from below, and a fissure over a meter wide split open in the ground directly before him.
A pair of enormous eyes blazing with sinister purple light rose from the crack.
"It's you. You've worked hard these past few days." Lin Hui recognized the creature at once—the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon he had stationed underground as a hidden guard. The Purgatory monster that had once been a Purple Crystal Purgatory Tyrannosaurus was now bound to him as a loyal Blood Seal creature.
The glowing purple eyes blinked in acknowledgment. The ground sealed back over it without a sound. Lin Hui stepped forward and entered the perimeter to inspect the area.
The moment he crossed into the Clear Wind Herb Garden, however, his expression shifted. The space was completely empty and dead silent.
The entire layout had changed.
It had once held the main herb patch, a pool, a cluster of residential wooden cabins, and two vegetable gardens.
Now, a small, verdant bamboo grove had taken root between the herbs and the pool, lending the area an unexpected serenity.
A large number of wooden crates and stone chests were stacked haphazardly behind the cabins. But beyond the cargo, something else caught his eye.
Beside the pool, a small cemetery had been newly built.
He crossed over to it, arriving just as the Water Man stirred awake in the pool, drawing its liquid body upward into form. The Water Man had grown to over five meters tall, its entire mass now a murky gray-black, with a V-shaped crystal pulsing with purple light embedded in the center of its chest.
Lin Hui gave the Water Man a brief nod, then stepped into the cemetery and scanned the neat rows of headstones. Most were unmarked or bore names he didn't recognize.
One monument brought him to a stop.
Tomb of the Nine-Tailed Scorpion, Ah Hei.
He had wondered where his other guardian had gone. The headstone gave him his answer.
He had set the Nine-Tailed Scorpion, the Water Man, and the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon together to guard the maze ruins' herb garden. Now the Nine-Tailed Scorpion was dead, the Water Man had drastically mutated, and the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon seemed unable to make a sound at all.
He remembered the dragon used to communicate through basic vocalizations. Had it been beaten mute during an attack?
Lin Hui exhaled quietly. He made a full circuit of the herb garden and found the Purple Cloud Reishi thriving—arranged in neat, even rows, gleaming with a healthy purple-black luster.
Their efficacy is already diminishing for my current cultivation level, though...
Even so, the garden retained immense value as a secure, concealed base. He had no intention of abandoning it.
My original plans for this place can't keep pace with how quickly everything has changed. But repurposing the land for higher-tier medicines or food won't be difficult.
After familiarizing himself with the new layout, he departed the maze ruins and flew at full speed toward the former site of Tuyue.
It was time to visit what had once been home. Tuyue had died by his own hand, which left him with a strange, hollow feeling—as though he had personally erased his own homeland.
To avoid drawing wandering Purgatory and Extreme Cold Heaven monsters—and to watch for survivors—he dropped his altitude and slowed his pace, scanning the devastated terrain below as he went.
A few minutes into the flight, he spotted an abandoned underground ruin entrance bearing faint traces of human activity. Traps and warning arrays had been carefully set around the perimeter, using Purgatory-polluted flora to camouflage the opening.
The crude illusions offered no resistance to Lin Hui's perception. He landed without a sound, approached the rocky cave, and rather than entering, extended his mind-spirit inward.
Mind-spirit perception was a wondrous, near-omniscient sense. It was like having an omnidirectional sensor installed directly in one's mind—within a certain radius, any conscious entity possessing a mind-spirit would bypass every physical barrier and project itself clearly into his awareness. A handful of rare materials could block such probing, but they were prohibitively expensive. None existed in this barren cave.
The moment Lin Hui extended his mind-spirit inward, the situation inside the ruins became immediately, unmistakably clear.
Over a dozen Called Ones and martial artists were gathered in a group, taking turns brutally assaulting five individuals who still carried faint Trueblood auras.
The five victims—two men and three women—were completely at their captors' mercy. The men were pinned down by a group of powerfully built female martial artists; the women were encircled and degraded by the men. The Trueblood auras clinging to all five were nearly extinguished. Lin Hui estimated their genetic regression was close to its end.
Given another ten days, they would have reverted fully into ordinary humans.
They wouldn't last ten days. Even standing outside the cave, Lin Hui could hear the furious, hatred-soaked roaring of their tormentors.
"When you ate my father, did he beg for mercy?!"
"Kill him! What are you waiting for? Do it before something goes wrong!"
"So you finally get a taste of your own medicine! Tuyue is finished—and let me tell you, Tuyue has been dead for a long time!"
"He's beaten like this and still breathing? Damn these resilient freaks."
"My sister died in his bed! These animals—they didn't even spare her corpse!"