55: Chapter 55 I am the fish on the chopping block

Daoist Danxia froze.

"Why did those six demonic Cultivators dare to slaughter the city? Who stands behind them? Why has the Heavenly Demon Hall at the Great Qian border remained inactive for thirty years? That old Devil Head was already at the Nascent Soul Great Perfection three hundred years ago; what has he been waiting for these past three hundred years?"

True Lord Luoxia asked each question one by one, neither hurried nor slow, yet they rolled through the hall like heavenly thunder, shocking the five Immortal Masters into silence.

"What he is waiting for is for me to take action."

A sudden, deathly silence filled the hall.

"If I act to suppress Wan Province, he will know I have fallen into his trap. When he acts then, no one in Great Qian will be able to stop him. If I die, the Sunset Glow Sect will be exterminated, the Qingxuan Sect and Danding Sect will be unable to look after themselves, and there will be no one left to stop him from refining the common people of Great Qian."

True Lord Luoxia slowly rose. That green robe had been worn for a hundred years and was washed until it turned pale; at this moment, it rippled like water with his movements.

"Therefore, I cannot act."

He looked at the deepening twilight outside the hall, his voice as calm as a windless pond.

"At least, not now."

The five Immortal Masters prostrated themselves on the ground; no one spoke again.

They finally understood.

It wasn't that the True Lord was unwilling to act.

He didn't dare to.

It was the Disciples of the Sunset Glow Sect and the hundreds of millions of commoners in Great Qian, who were still unaware of the impending disaster, that made him not dare to.

"Go."

True Lord Luoxia turned his back to the five, his voice as light as a falling leaf.

"I will guard Luoxia."

The five kowtowed and withdrew silently.

The hall doors slowly closed, shutting out both the twilight and the rosy clouds.

The moment the doors shut, the green-robed figure in the hall was no longer in his original place.

A thin crack opened in the Void Realm, devoid of wind or light, like the eye of heaven opening.

True Lord Luoxia stepped inside, and in the next instant, he stood high above Wan Province.

The metallic, sweet scent of blood from the earth rushed at him, as thick as a physical substance.

He lowered his gaze.

The land was scorched for thousands of miles, filled with the cries of the suffering. Those wails drifted out from countless broken husks, gathering into a yin wind that circled around his feet and wouldn't leave.

He had come to Wan Province City because he wanted to seek revenge for his poor Disciple.

The six demonic Cultivators from the Heavenly Demon Hall immediately felt that terrifying pressure.

He did nothing.

He merely lowered his gaze and glanced at them.

With just one glance, the six demonic Cultivators in the Late Golden Core Stage felt their Divine Souls shake violently, and the Golden Cores in their Dantians felt as if they had been struck by a hammer, with cracks spreading like spiderwebs.

"Escape!"

Someone roared out, and the six figures erupted simultaneously, shooting off in all directions.

Some rode blood clouds, some escaped through the earth's veins, some tore open Void Realm Talismans, and some even bit off half their tongues on the spot to activate forbidden techniques with essence blood, their forms turning into six afterimages fleeing in different directions.

However, the green-robed figure simply raised his hand.

His movement was very slow, like casually brushing fallen flowers off a stone table in the twilight.

His palm faced upward.

A wisp of rosy light was born from his palm.

That was no ordinary evening glow.

This wisp of light was fainter than Daoist Danxia's Heaven-Burning Karmic Fire and softer than Daoist Fuxia's Talisman formation light; it was as light as the lingering twilight or the fine dust kicked up when an old monk's duster sweeps across an incense table.

It simply fell.

Neither hurried nor slow, it was composed to the point of being almost merciful.

Then, this wisp of light split into six parts.

Six equally faint, equally soft, and equally unhurried rays of light flew off in six directions.

The first demonic Cultivator had already fled thirty miles. He looked back and saw that the light was still floating behind him at a leisurely pace, the distance even closer than before. He burned his essence blood like a madman, his speed increasing by thirty percent as his escape light tore through the sky—

The light caught up to him.

The moment it touched him, there was no burning, no tearing, and not even any pain.

He simply felt very light all of a sudden.

Looking down, he saw his fingertips were dissipating. It wasn't being burned or shattered; it was like a handful of old ink left for years being slowly blurred by clear water, its outline fading until it eventually returned to nothingness.

"Mercy! True Lord, have mercy! I am willing to—"

The second demonic Cultivator knelt in mid-air, tears and snot flowing as he shrieked for mercy. The blood cloud beneath his knees had long since dissipated, and he was curled into a ball like a moth caught by a mischievous child's wings.

Before he could finish his words, the light arrived.

He kept his mouth open, but the last word in his throat turned into a silent current of air, dispersing into the wind.

The third demonic Cultivator, the fourth, the fifth...

None escaped.

None survived.

Those demonic Cultivators who had rampaged through Wan Province, slaughtered commoners, and ground the Late Golden Core Stage Daoist Jian Xia to death were as fragile as paper before this wisp of light that was so faint it was almost transparent.

Not even ashes were left behind.

Physical Body, Divine Soul, Golden Core, Lifebound Treasure... everything that once belonged to 'them' completely turned into nothingness.

It was as if these six people had never existed between heaven and earth.

True Lord Luoxia withdrew his hand.

His palm was empty; that wisp of light had already completely dispersed.

He lowered his gaze to the longsword broken into three pieces in the center of the scorched earth, and to the corpse beside the sword that refused to fall even in death, wearing the standard green robe of the Sunset Glow Sect.

Jian Xia.

He remembered hundreds of years ago, a young boy kneeling outside the mountain gate, clothes in tatters and face showing hunger, yet his eyes were as bright as the Morning Star atop Luoxia Peak.

"Master, I want to learn the sword."

At that time, the boy was twelve years old, so thin a gust of wind could knock him over, unable to even hold the lightest introductory wooden sword steadily.

True Lord Luoxia closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the faint trace of sorrow in his eyes had been completely suppressed.

He had to leave.

The matter here was settled; he needed to return to the sect to preside over it, wait for Fuxia and Danxia to bring reinforcements, and plan how to act before that old devil from the Heavenly Demon Hall moved...

He suddenly paused.

The wind stopped.

It wasn't a normal cessation of wind.

It was the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi within a hundred miles falling into a strange stagnation at this instant.

True Lord Luoxia abruptly looked down.

Where the six demonic Cultivators had disappeared—that space which should have been empty—six extremely faint black lines were slowly emerging. Those black lines were as thin as hair; if one didn't look closely, they almost blended into the night.

It wasn't the residual escape light of the demonic Cultivators.

It wasn't a forbidden technique for a deathbed counterattack.

It was a curse incantation.

At the moment their Physical Bodies and Divine Souls were destroyed, from the deepest part of their Dantians, from every grain of dust splattered when their Golden Cores shattered, and from some hidden brand they hadn't even known about until death—

It broke out of their bodies.

Six curse incantations flew into the air.

They rose very slowly, like the last string of bubbles exhaled by a drowning person, or like ashes swept up by the wind, circling and entangling, connecting in the void into a formation so massive it was hard to imagine.

That formation used the six curse incantations as its pivot, the essence blood and Divine Souls of the six Late Golden Core demonic Cultivators as a sacrifice, and every living being devoured and refined since they began their cultivation as a catalyst—

It unfolded with a boom.

True Lord Luoxia's pupils shrank suddenly.

His Divine Thought poured out like a tide, sweeping across a thousand miles, ten thousand miles, a hundred thousand miles in an instant. He 'saw' the blood-colored formation lines stretching for a hundred miles at the Wan Province border suddenly light up; he saw desolate mountains shatter simultaneously, the ancient runes carved inside the mountain bellies burning brightly; he saw ghostly light shooting into the sky from the depths of the hundred thousand rivers; he saw on every inch of land in the nine provinces of Great Qian—

That formation was everywhere.

It used the six curse incantations as the origin and those practitioners of the Wanling Guixu Scroll scattered across the world as nodes, enveloping the entirety of Great Qian within it.

True Lord Luoxia stood in mid-air, his green robe fluttering wildly.

He heard it.

It was an extremely low, deep hum, like a giant beast swallowing.

It didn't press down from the sky, nor did it surge up from the ground; it came from within the body of every demonic Cultivator who had practiced the Wanling Guixu Scroll.

Those demonic Cultivators were scattered throughout Great Qian; some were at the Golden Core stage, some at Foundation Establishment, and some were even just at Qi Refining. Some were Devil Heads who slaughtered entire regions, while others were just poor souls who had just entered the path and hadn't yet had time to do evil.

At this moment, they all froze simultaneously.

Then, they began to melt away.

They weren't being killed by external forces, nor were they being hunted by Righteous Path Cultivators; it was the Demonic Techniques they had cultivated for many years backfiring on them at this instant—or rather, it wasn't a backfire at all.

It was a harvest.