185: First visit to Qingzhou

The night was the best curtain.

Li Dong left the underground palace without alerting anyone, like a stone thrown into a lake, not even causing a single ripple.

The city walls of the capital grew further and further behind him, and the familiar, gentle warmth wrapped in the breath of the Dragon pulse dissipated along with it.

Replacing it was the cold air of the wilderness, carrying the scent of blood and dust.

For a moment, he actually felt a bit unaccustomed to it.

It was laughable; he, a guy who had just snacked on a Late Stage Nascent Soul, would actually miss that sense of security.

However, this thought lasted for less than a breath.

As he completely left the coverage area of the capital's magical formation, a completely different feeling surged from the depths of every cell in his body.

Excitement.

Unprecedented excitement.

The Perfect Dao Body was like a beast released from a cage, greedily breathing in the outside air.

Those drifting, thin, and mixed powers in the air—whether it was the residual incense Power Of Will, the dissipated resentment Death Qi, or even the aura left by some unknown evil spirits—things that would have been filtered out by the purification formation in the capital, were now the nourishment it craved.

Not delicacies, but coarse grains.

But a person who has been hungry for too long will not be picky about food.

"So this is what it feels like... outside." Li Dong muttered to himself, stretching his muscles and bones, a comfortable crackling sound coming from his limbs and skeleton.

At the same time, the God Lord mark between his eyebrows, which he had suppressed for a long time, also began to throb restlessly.

It was no longer a simple curse; instead, it was like a pointer, heating up slightly and vaguely pointing towards a distant direction.

This direction perfectly overlapped with the closest blood-colored light spot on the "hunting ground map" in his Sea of Consciousness.

"Qingzhou..."

The instructions given by the black crystal stone and the ancient stone slab in his Sea of Consciousness were simple and brutal—Void Realm Fusion.

Go, devour, grow stronger.

This had almost become an instinct of his Dao Body.

"Then... let's start with you." Li Dong identified the direction, his figure flickered, and he turned into a faint phantom, skimming along the ground towards the east.

His speed was much faster than when he was in the capital.

Without the suppression of the Dragon pulse formation, he felt like a fish back in the water.

Heading east, the further he got from the capital, the more shocking the scenes became.

The villages and towns that were once peaceful were now mostly deserted, with "living corpses" with dull eyes and stiff movements wandering among the ruins.

They were not the kind of demons that the Demon Suppression Division had to deal with, but fanatical believers whose essence, Qi, and spirit had been completely drained by the God Lord's faith, leaving only empty shells.

Occasionally, he could see Cultivators from local forces organizing resistance, but their Spells had little effect when hitting those fanatical believers.

Instead, once injured, gray Death Qi would rapidly grow at the wound, and they would soon be assimilated.

What was worse, some local evil gods and mountain spirits and wild monsters that had been hiding for many years also took advantage of the chaotic times to emerge.

The God Lord's believers were expanding, and they were also grabbing territory, with both sides fighting fiercely; Mortals were caught in the middle, becoming the cheapest consumables.

The Spiritual Qi on this land was severely depleted.

"The people in the capital are really living in a dream." Li Dong stopped on a ridge, watching two groups of people fighting under the mountain.

One group was fanatical believers wearing uniform gray robes, and the other was a group of... monsters with green scales and bone forks? They looked like believers of some evil god from a marsh.

Both sides' fighting styles were extremely barbaric, without any order, purely a collision of power and madness.

This land had rotted to the core.

He did not intervene and continued on his way.

The closer he got to the Qingzhou border, the thicker the nauseating spiritual pressure in the air became.

He could clearly perceive that there was a huge, active "spiritual anchor" ahead, like an evil sun, continuously emitting twisted Power Of Faith, converting all living beings in this area into fanatical believers.

Its scale and intensity were far from what those small altars on the outskirts of the capital could compare to.

"Hmm?"

When he concealed his figure and bypassed a patrol of fanatical believers, he discovered something wrong.

These fanatical believers in Qingzhou were different from the ones he had seen near the capital.

Their bodies had undergone some kind of strange mutation.

Some fanatical believers' skin had an ominous blue-black color, like corpses soaked in venom; some had grown several bone spurs resembling insect limbs on their backs, twitching unconsciously in the air; and another one had completely lost his eyes, replaced by two constantly squirming flesh vortexes.

The God Lord's aura on them seemed to have merged with some older and more bizarre power on this land.

This made their abilities extremely bizarre, and... harder to deal with.

"The God Lord's power even has local characteristics?" Li Dong found it somewhat absurd.

Did this God Lord do as the Romans do, or was it a stitched-together monster itself, displaying different "plug-ins" in different places?

With this doubt, he silently sneaked into Qingzhou City.

The scene before him made his brows furrow slightly.

The once prosperous state capital had now completely turned into a nest of fanatical believers.

The streets were empty, with only squads of mutated fanatical believers patrolling numbly.

The place in the center of the city that should have been the City Lord's Mansion had now been transformed into a huge altar piled up with flesh and bones.

At the top of the altar, a huge, dimly glowing black crystal stone was pulsating, like an evil heart.

That was the core of the "spiritual anchor".

Squads of Mortals were escorted like livestock towards the altar.

Their faces were filled with unspeakable fear and despair.

Around the altar, several clergy members with obviously higher status were presiding over the so-called "God's Grace Ceremony".

"Bathe in God's Grace, and you shall gain eternal life!"

"Abandon your useless flesh and offer your Soul to our Lord!"

Amidst the fanatical shouts, the Mortals pushed onto the altar let out shrill screams; their flesh shriveled at a speed visible to the naked eye, and their life essence was crazily extracted by the altar and that black crystal stone.

Just at this moment, the divinity core that Li Dong had placed in his storage Magical Artifact, which was the trophy seized from the Nascent Soul divine envoy, suddenly emitted a faint, continuous vibration.

It seemed to have some kind of resonance with the pulsating black crystal stone on the altar.

Same source, but different.

"So that's how it is..." Li Dong had a plan in mind.

He did not rush to act.

Breaking in by force was not his style.

He closed his eyes, and the Spiritual Domain silently spread out with him as the center.

The entire Qingzhou City turned into a network composed of countless Spiritual threads in his eyes.

On the fanatical believers were gray, chaotic threads.

On the ordinary Mortals were dim, fearful threads.

And the City Lord's Mansion altar was the core of this network, with countless threads converging here from all directions, being devoured and converted by that black crystal stone, and then releasing more, more corrosive gray threads.

He saw the flow of power, the weak points of the defense, and the positions of several clergy members whose auras were obviously stronger than others.

"Three Late Foundation Establishment Stage, one Early Stage Golden Core... it looks like they are the managers here."

"And some hiding in the dark, they don't seem to be the God Lord's believers; are they here to pick up cheap gains?"

Li Dong took in the power distribution of the entire city and began to look for the most suitable entry point.

Destroy the altar directly? Too much commotion.

Might as well... find a "local" first and ask about the situation.

His gaze fell on a secluded courtyard in the west of the city.

There, a clergy member was forcing a trembling teenager to undergo some kind of cruel "purification" ceremony.

"Let's start with you."

Li Dong's figure quietly disappeared from the spot.

Hunting requires a bit of foreplay.