Chapter 842: The Immortal-Mortal Miasma Returns
It had to be said, Ruomu truly lived up to its name as the most ancient tree in the world, the very source of the ancient Longevity Fruit.
Its premonition was astonishingly accurate.
While Li Fan and Tianyang were still slowly making their way back to the Spirit Wood Realm, a calamity destined to cause endless bloodshed quietly erupted.
Furthermore, the bizarre nature of this calamity surpassed anything the cultivators of the world could have imagined.
Qiling Prefecture.
After an investigation confirmed that the effects of the tremors had completely subsided and were unlikely to recur, the rescue and investigation team dispatched by the Immortal Alliance Headquarters offered some brief reassurances and considered their mission complete.
They left Qiling Prefecture and returned to the Immortal Alliance Headquarters.
The entire group, including the Dao Integration cultivator who led them, was utterly oblivious to the imperceptible changes taking place within their own bodies.
After returning to the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance Headquarters and delivering a detailed report, they returned to their respective prefectures.
"Cough, cough. Strange... cough, cough... I can't seem to catch my breath." A Soul Transformation cultivator from the investigation team, Li Xinhai, was in secluded cultivation within the Tianxuan Mirror.
Suddenly, a wave of unease washed over him, forcing him to halt his cultivation.
Not daring to ignore it, he immediately scanned himself with his divine sense, thoroughly inspecting his body.
Yet, he failed to detect the source of the abnormality.
"Cough, cough..."
But his unease did not fade.
He tried to suppress the cough, but the more he willed it, the less he could control it.
Feeling as if he might cough up his lungs, Li Xinhai stared at the pool of blood in his palm, his face a mask of horror.
Suddenly, a name nearly forgotten by the vast majority of cultivators flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.
Li Xinhai trembled, an indescribable fear gripping his heart.
"Immortal... Mortal... Miasma..."
He shuddered and hastily contacted the teammates who had accompanied him to Qiling Prefecture.
As he had feared, there were no exceptions.
All of them were experiencing some form of physical discomfort.
Some cases were mild, others severe.
Even their leader, Immortal Sage Greenwillow, a Dao Integration cultivator, felt his mind adrift and found it difficult to focus.
"We're doomed."
All the terrifying legends surrounding the Immortal-Mortal Miasma flooded into Li Xinhai's mind at once.
For a moment, his mind went completely blank.
Finally, once he'd collected himself, Li Xinhai told his companions his suspicions.
Since his symptoms were the most severe of the group, the other cultivators remained skeptical.
Immortal Sage Greenwillow, in particular, couldn't help but snap, "How absurd! The Immortal-Mortal Miasma was purged thousands of years ago. Aside from lingering within the bodies of mortals, it's long vanished from the world. How could we possibly have been infected out of nowhere...?"
"Cough, cough..." Immortal Sage Greenwillow's words were cut short by an unexpected cough.
A deathly silence fell over the group.
"Stay where you are. Don't move," Immortal Sage Greenwillow commanded, his doubts gone, his tone now incredibly grave. "I will go to headquarters myself. Cough, cough..."
Thousands of years had passed, and everything concerning the Immortal-Mortal Miasma had faded into distant legend.
How to detect it, the symptoms of infection, the methods for purification and elimination...
Such information had long been buried by the dust of history, inaccessible to ordinary cultivators.
Even Immortal Sage Greenwillow, despite his high rank, was completely ignorant on the matter.
But he understood the gravity of the situation. After making contact, he rushed to the Immortal Alliance Headquarters.
When the light of the teleportation array faded, dozens of black-robed cultivators, moving like automatons, were already waiting in grim formation.
After a detailed examination, Li Xinhai's suspicions were finally confirmed.
The entire party that had traveled to Qiling Prefecture had, without a doubt, been infected with the Immortal-Mortal Miasma!
Shock, confusion, horror...
In the face of this life-and-death crisis, the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance reacted with incredible speed.
An emergency task force was immediately established, its first order of business to gather and quarantine every member of the Qiling Prefecture investigation team.
Next, they dispatched puppet cultivators back to the depths beneath Qiling Prefecture to thoroughly investigate the source of the miasma.
Simultaneously, a state of wartime emergency was declared, and all inter-prefecture teleportation arrays were temporarily shut down.
The borders of every prefecture were sealed, prohibiting any cultivators from traveling between them.
...
Various measures were enacted all at once.
It had to be said that in this respect, the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance truly lived up to its status as one of the two great powers of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Unfortunately, for all the Alliance's swiftness, it was still too late.
A full seven days had passed between the investigation team's return and the first appearance of symptoms.
In the modern Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, the teleportation array network extended to every corner of its territory.
Even though a large number of cultivators tried to avoid inter-prefecture teleportation due to the effects of the Life-Devouring White Mist, given the sheer number of people, a great many still traveled frequently between the prefectures.
Seven days.
It was more than enough time for this mysterious outbreak of the Immortal-Mortal Miasma to spread to every prefecture in the Alliance.
The Alliance's sudden declaration of a wartime emergency had already sent cultivators into a panic.
They assumed a full-scale war had erupted and that the Alliance, caught completely off guard, had been forced into this drastic measure.
Panic spread, and everyone feared for their safety.
But they soon discovered that the reality was far worse than they had imagined.
It wasn't war. It was the shadow of an ancient calamity, returning after several millennia to once again blanket the Xuanhuang Realm!
The preliminary results of the investigation into the Qiling Prefecture miasma were in.
In ancient times, the Immortal-Mortal Miasma had permeated every corner of the world.
Through the relentless efforts of countless cultivators, the miasma was eventually purged completely.
Or so the cultivators had believed.
In truth, deep within a cavern beneath Qiling Prefecture, the Immortal-Mortal Miasma had survived for millennia without dissipating.
Furthermore, over the long passage of time, it seemed to have undergone some form of mutation.
It had become more insidious, more potent.
While the various countermeasures recorded in history had not become entirely useless, their effectiveness was now greatly diminished.
Entirely new methods of treatment would have to be developed.
But before that could happen, the mutated Immortal-Mortal Miasma had already bared its terrifying fangs.
In the modern cultivation world, the vast majority of cultivators were concentrated in the floating celestial cities within each prefecture.
The population density was even higher than it had been in the great cultivation sects of the past!
This made the spread of the Immortal-Mortal Miasma astonishingly efficient!
By the time the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance released its public announcement, a chorus of coughing could already be heard rising and falling in every region.
Initially, reassured by the Alliance's announcements, the cultivators remained somewhat optimistic.
But when cultivators began to perish from the Immortal-Mortal Miasma, panic became inevitable.
The Immortal-Mortal Miasma was indiscriminate.
Once infected, even Nascent Soul and Soul Transformation cultivators suffered symptoms no less severe—and faced a chance of death no lower—than those at the Foundation Establishment or Golden Core stages!
Plunged into despair, the afflicted cultivators tried every method they could think of to postpone their inevitable demise.
But nothing worked.
They could only read one Alliance announcement after another as they withered away and died in agony.
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