174: Chapter 173 Sacrifice

Qin Wan had been awake for several days.

Yun Ming had settled her in a small wooden house within the map of mountains and rivers, taking time every day to visit her.

She was awake, sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall with hollow eyes.

She did not eat, nor did she speak much; she simply sat there, gazing at the stationary sky outside the window.

The sky within the map of mountains and rivers had no sun, no moon, only a chaotic gray-white.

She gazed at that gray-white, staring for a long, long time.

Yun Ming went in to see her, bringing her some food, asking her to eat something.

She took it, ate a few bites, then set it down.

He asked how she was, and she smiled, saying she was fine.

The smile was very faint, as pale as water, faint enough to make one's heart ache.

Yun Ming knew she was not fine.

Those villagers, those neighbors she had lived with day and night for over a decade, those children who called her "Auntie Qin" and "Grandma Qin," were all gone.

She had watched them be torn apart and devoured by the Yao Beasts, watched the small island where she had lived for over a decade turn into scorched earth.

How could she be fine? But since she did not say it, he did not ask.

He simply went in to sit with her for a while every day, said a few words, then came out to continue the work he had to do.

The map of mountains and rivers was very safe.

Although the Law within that small world was incomplete, it was more than enough as a shelter.

Qin Wan would not be in danger inside.

But her heart was outside, on that beach stained red with blood, under that fallen banyan tree, on that small island that no longer existed.

Yun Ming did not know how to comfort her.

He could only do what he had to do.

That night, he prepared to continue looting the next treasury.

Just as he flew out of his hiding place, he suddenly saw dense, dark shadows moving above his head.

He stopped and looked up.

A massive number of Yao Beasts had gathered above the city.

Not dozens, not hundreds, but tens of thousands.

They surged in from all directions, merging into a giant vortex above the city, then flew out from the other side of the vortex, swimming toward the surface of the water.

The procession was so long that the end could not be seen.

Some Yao Beasts rode giant sea monsters, some marched in neat formations, and some swam alone.

Their bodies radiated killing intent, thick enough to almost condense into substance.

Yun Ming frowned.

He knew what this was.

An invasion.

The Great Demon Lord was beginning to attack the Human Race with full force.

So many Yao Beasts, tens of thousands, were just the first wave.

There would be more to come.

Their mission was not to harass, not to infiltrate, but to launch a frontal assault.

They were going to conquer islands, slaughter Mortals, and plunder every resource they could.

And that Great Demon Lord needed these resources to make a Breakthrough.

Either it was about to make a Breakthrough, or it had already done so.

Neither case was good news.

Yun Ming hovered in the dark seawater, watching the dense black shadows swim overhead, calculating in his heart.

Killing more shrimp soldiers and crab generals here would not stop this war.

No matter how many treasuries he looted, he could not shake the Foundation of the Great Demon Lord.

He needed to do something bigger, something that would truly hurt the Great Demon Lord.

He turned and swam deeper into the city.

There was the Central Divine Temple, the Great Demon Lord, and the lifeline of this city.

He was going to pull off something big, then go back to notify Ji Qingchuan.

The life and death of this sea area was not something he could carry alone.

The place where the Great Demon Lord was in seclusion was in the deepest part of the Central Divine Temple.

There was no light, no sound, only boundless darkness and dead silence.

It coiled in the darkness, its massive body occupying the entire hall, scales shimmering with a cold light in the dark, and every breath caused the entire temple to tremble slightly.

It had been sitting here for a long time.

Not days, not months, but years.

It needed quiet, it needed focus, it needed to condense all its power into that one moment.

Soul Transformation.

It had been touching that threshold for hundreds of years, always falling just a little short.

Sometimes it was insufficient Qi and blood, sometimes it was an unstable Divine Soul, and sometimes the Laws of Heaven and Earth did not allow it.

It had tried countless methods—devouring its own kind, refining Spiritual Veins, plundering the Golden Cores and Nascent Souls of Human Race Cultivators, and even attempting to burn its own Lifespan to exchange for a momentary Breakthrough.

All had failed.

Every failure left a mark on it.

Its scales had dimmed, its Physical Body had aged, and its Divine Soul was no longer as sharp as it was when it was young.

Its Lifespan was running out, with at most a few decades left.

A few decades, for a Mortal, was a lifetime, but for a Nascent Soul Stage Yao Beast, it was merely the time of one seclusion.

It had no more time to fail.

It was not born bloodthirsty.

But its innate Origin was incomplete; it had not inherited the illusion abilities that a true Mirage should have. It knew none of those powerful Divine Abilities that could confuse hearts and invert reality.

It only knew some crude tricks to mask its aura and isolate life force.

It was unwilling to accept this. A Mirage without illusion abilities—what kind of Mirage was that? It began to Cultivate hard, harder than anyone else.

It believed that as long as it worked hard enough, the defects in its Bloodline could be compensated.

It had Cultivated for hundreds of years, from Qi Condensation to Foundation Establishment, from Foundation Establishment to Golden Core, from Golden Core to Nascent Soul.

Every step was several times harder than for other Yao Beasts, but it had walked through them all.

But after reaching Nascent Soul, it could no longer move forward.

That threshold was too high, so high that even with all its strength, it could not cross it.

It began to try all kinds of methods; some were gentle, some were cruel.

It did not want to be cruel, but it had no other choice.

Chaoju City was built by its own hands.

At that time, this seabed was still barren, filled with the slaughter of the weak being preyed upon by the strong.

It killed the most ferocious overlords, subdued the rest, and then spent hundreds of years building this barren seabed into an orderly city.

It had rules, rewards and punishments, and a division of labor.

As long as the weak Yao Beasts followed the rules, they did not have to worry about being eaten.

This was something that had never happened on the seabed.

It thought this could accumulate Karma, and that the Laws of Heaven and Earth might be more lenient toward it.

But it was useless.

The Laws of Heaven and Earth did not care about Karma, did not care about order, and did not care about how many cities it had built or how many lives it had saved.

The Laws of Heaven and Earth only cared about whether it was strong enough.

Now, it had finally waited for this opportunity.

Invade the Human Race, plunder blood and flesh, and use the Qi and blood of the Human Race to fill the void in its body.

The front line had already started fighting, and a large amount of blood and flesh was transported down every day, continuously pouring into its body.

Its Qi and blood were recovering, its Divine Soul was strengthening, and that threshold that had plagued it for hundreds of years began to loosen.

But it knew that this alone was not enough.

It needed more, much more.

It looked at the Formation Plate in front of it.

That was the layout of the entire Chaoju City; every building, every street, and the location of every Yao Beast was clearly marked on it.

The Formation Plate was covered with complex formation patterns, which it had spent decades carving by hand.

The Sacrificial Formation. Using the entire Chaoju City as a sacrifice, using the flesh, blood, and Divine Soul of the billions of Yao Beasts in the city as fuel, to ignite the last spark for its Breakthrough.

It had planned this hundreds of years ago, but it had never been able to bring itself to do it.

Chaoju City was its life's work, and those Yao Beasts were its subjects.

It did not want to kill them.

But it did not want to die even more.

It had failed too many times; this was its only chance in this life.

It had no time to wait for another thousand years.

Breakthrough to Soul Transformation, and it would have a Lifespan of eight thousand years.

It would have eight thousand years to make up for today's sins.

If it could not break through, it would have nothing.

Chaoju City would disperse, those Yao Beasts would die, and it would die too.