387: Chapter 387 Something's Going Wrong

"Whoever dares to say no, this old one will tear him apart alive!"

His vow echoed at the edge of the empty ruins, revealing a desperate madness.

Chen Mu rested one hand on his blade, looking down from above at this pile of mush.

The cyan-black Death Qi slowly receded around his body, finally submerging completely beneath his skin.

The formidable Spiritual Pressure was perfectly controlled by him within a three-foot radius.

There were no unnecessary movements.

Chen Mu just looked coldly at Hou Chen.

A full ten breaths passed.

Cold sweat began to seep from Hou Chen's forehead as it slammed against the ground, and his fat back was soaked with sweat.

This silent pressure was more tormenting than simply slashing him with a blade.

Hou Chen frantically calculated in his heart, was his posture for showing loyalty wrong?

Or did this Envoy want to use him to establish authority first?

His instinct, honed from five hundred years of lying low, told him that he must not offer any unnecessary explanations at this moment.

"Put away this act of yours."

Chen Mu finally spat out a few words, and his long blade clicked back into its scabbard.

"The Old Ancestor does not need useless trash."

Hou Chen's kowtowing motion suddenly paused.

His fat body froze in mid-air, not even daring to breathe.

He stared intently at a piece of charcoal on the ground, his brain frantically trying to decipher the deeper meaning of these words.

"Return to the Chengtian Pavilion."

Chen Mu turned around, casting his gaze toward the distant volcanic ruins.

"Clean out the foundation of your Sect thoroughly."

"Keep a close watch on the movements of all the major Schools in the Central Plains."

"The Old Ancestor wants intelligence from the Central Plains; your Chengtian Pavilion will be the Old Ancestor's pair of eyes."

Chen Mu tilted his head slightly, his peripheral vision sweeping over the back of Hou Chen's head.

"If they go blind, there is no need to keep them."

Every word pierced his heart.

Hou Chen shuddered violently.

This requirement was undeniably harsh; one slight mistake would lead to eternal damnation.

If those old monsters in the Central Plains discovered that the Chengtian Pavilion had become someone else's mole, they would definitely extract their souls and refine their spirits.

But to Hou Chen, this was simply the most wonderful immortal music in the world!

What did this represent?

It represented that the Chengtian Pavilion was officially affiliated under the name of True Monarch Yanqing!

With this identity, even if the Central Plains were turned upside down, his Chengtian Pavilion would have a golden immunity medal!

Having lain low for five hundred years, he had finally made it!

"This old one accepts the order!"

Hou Chen bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"Rest assured, my Lord! From top to bottom in the Chengtian Pavilion, even if a fly flies across the Central Plains, this old one will record it in the ledger for you!"

He couldn't care about the twisted and withered Meridians at his ankles and scrambled to his feet.

Large patches of blistered skin ruptured from the pulling, and pus flowed everywhere.

Hou Chen didn't even let out a single groan.

He quickly formed seals with his hands, his remaining Ji Earth True Essence barely condensing into a thin layer of light.

"This old one will go and handle it now!"

Before the words had even faded, Hou Chen transformed into a lump of yellow mud.

He escaped frantically along the shallow surface of the ground.

He had to rush back to the Sect immediately and pull out the tongues of those Elders who were usually loose-lipped.

If anyone dared to leak even half a word of this heaven-reaching secret, he would send them to meet the King of Hell.

Chen Mu ignored the fleeing Hou Chen.

He drew his long blade and walked straight toward the collapsed ruins of the ancient legacy mansion.

The crimson sunset was completely obscured by the dense volcanic ash.

The air was filled with a pungent smell of sulfur and a thick scent of blood.

Under the dim light, the broken crystal ruins looked exactly like the carcass of a giant beast that had been disemboweled.

The Earth Vein Fire Essence had been drained, and the main hall's Formation was paralyzed.

But this Dao field, which had existed for tens of thousands of years, still had countless resources scattered on its periphery that would make anyone envious.

Chen Mu needed these things.

He wanted to take root in the Luoyan Mountain Range and guard this foundation for the Old Ancestor, so he could not lack bargaining chips in his hands.

Several sneaky shadows moved rapidly along the edge of the ruins.

These were Bandit Cultivators who had been mixing in the Central Plains for years.

They specialized in this kind of business: looting during a fire and stripping clothes off dead bodies.

A thin Foundation Establishment Bandit Cultivator had just torn a Storage Pouch off the corpse of a Chili Sect Disciple.

He hadn't yet had time to erase the Restriction.

A cyan-black blade light cleaved through the thick smoke without warning.

The thin Bandit Cultivator didn't even have room to react.

His right arm, which was holding the pouch, was severed at the shoulder.

Before the blood could spray out, it was instantly drained by the Death Qi attached to the blade light.

The cross-section appeared as gray-white as withered wood.

"Ah!"

The Bandit Cultivator screamed and retreated, rolling on the ground, attempting to use the volcanic ash to extinguish the residual Death Qi on his wound.

But that cyan-black power ignored physical rules completely, moving along the Meridians straight toward his heart.

Chen Mu took a step forward, his military boots stepping on the scorched earth.

He reached out with his left hand and clamped directly onto the opponent's throat.

He lifted this Foundation Establishment Cultivator into mid-air as if he were a chick.

His Divine Ability was activated with a boom.

The cyan-black Death Qi violently drilled into the Bandit Cultivator's body through his fingertips.

In just half a breath.

This Middle Foundation Establishment Stage Bandit Cultivator's flesh and blood withered rapidly.

His eyeballs shriveled, and his skin stuck tightly to his skull.

The whole person shriveled into a withered skeleton draped in human skin.

Chen Mu casually threw the dried corpse onto the ground.

The moment the withered skeleton touched the ground, it shattered directly into a pile of gray-white powder.

With a flick of his toe, Chen Mu grabbed the blood-stained Storage Pouch in his hand.

His Divine Sense violently smashed through the Restriction.

Several hundred Mid-Grade Spirit Stones, two bottles of healing Medicinal Pills.

Poor and stingy.

Chen Mu shook the ashes off his blade and continued to push deeper into the ruins.

The three Bandit Cultivators he encountered along the way were all drained of their vitality by his Death Qi.

With his Middle Stage Purple Mansion cultivation and the sub-dao seed bestowed by the Old Ancestor.

In these ruins that had lost the suppression of high-level combat power, he was the absolute Dominator.

While killing, he kicked the scattered top-grade fire star stones and broken Magical Artifact fragments into his own Storage Ring.

As he went deeper, the surrounding scene became increasingly tragic.

Large numbers of Chili Sect Disciple corpses were scattered haphazardly along the edge of the rift valley.

Some were shredded by the Formation, some were burned into charcoal by the ground fire.

Occasionally, he could see a few Purple Mansion Cultivators who had luckily survived.

But at this moment, they didn't even have the courage to fight back, each like a stray dog, frantically activating their escape techniques to flee.

Chen Mu hid behind a huge crystal remnant.

Two lone Loose Cultivators from the Central Plains were hiding in a pit not far away, gasping for breath.

"It's crazy... it's all crazy..."

One of them was covered in blood, his teeth chattering.

"Did you see that blood light in the sky?"

The other clutched his severed left arm tightly, his face full of terror.

"The Dharma Idol of Old Ancestor Chili... was slashed!"

"Half of his body is gone! I saw it with my own eyes!"

"That is a Golden Core Late Stage old monster!"

One of them grabbed his companion's shoulder tightly, his fingernails digging into the flesh.

"How arrogant the lackeys of the Chili Sect usually are! They even demand a thirty percent cut from a single Low-Grade Spirit Stone!"

"Now the retribution has come! More than half of the people in the main hall are dead, even that arrogant beast Chi Liuyun was burned to ashes!"

"The sky of this Central Plains is about to change!"

The two's conversation was filled with bone-chilling despair, yet mixed with a hint of morbid pleasure at having their great revenge avenged.

The perception of the Central Plains Cultivation World completely collapsed today.

The dignified hegemon-level Chili Sect not only lost their Chief Prodigy.

Even their Golden Core Old Ancestor suffered a huge loss.

Once this news spread completely, the entire power map of the Central Plains would surely face a major earthquake.

Those second-rate Schools that were usually squeezed by the Chili Sect would definitely take the opportunity to bite back.

The bald donkeys of the Western Desert, the loaches of the East Sea, who wouldn't want to take a bite out of this fat piece of meat that is the Central Plains?

Chen Mu listened clearly from the shadows.

He did not move against those two heavily injured Loose Cultivators.

Only if these two lived to leave would they be able to spread the miserable state of the Chili Sect more widely.

Let it be chaotic.

The more chaotic it is, the safer the Luoyan Mountain Range will be.

The more chaotic it is, the greater the role of the Chengtian Pavilion's pair of eyes will be.

Chen Mu could even imagine the ugly state of Old Monster Chili raging impotently in his secret land at this moment.

This is the Cultivation World.

So what if one is high and mighty? When meeting an unreasonable chess player, one still has to have their hands and feet broken.

Chen Mu bypassed the core area where the ground fire was erupting.

He specifically chose to scavenge in the blind spots of the Formations.

Unknowingly, he walked to a geological fault at the very edge of the ruins.

The rocks here presented a strange cyan-black color.

It was completely out of place with the surrounding crimson volcanic rocks.

Chen Mu stopped.

The sub-dao seed in his Dantian suddenly transmitted a slight palpitation.

That was the instinctive craving of the [Ember-Born Flower].

In these ruins filled with death and destruction, there was actually something that could resonate with a wood-type dao seed?

Chen Mu flipped his wrist, holding his long blade horizontally in front of his chest.

He slowed his breathing and walked down along the fault.

The rocks under his feet became increasingly slippery, and even a layer of dense moss had grown.

The pungent smell of sulfur in the air gradually faded.

Replacing it was an extremely pure and moist Qi of Water and Wood.

In this dead land that had been completely plowed over by the Bing Fire Law.

The appearance of this type of attribute Qi was itself an extreme abnormality.

When the abnormal occurs, there must be a demon.

Chen Mu operated his Middle Stage Purple Mansion True Essence to the extreme, and the cyan-black Death Qi flickered incessantly on the blade.

He pushed aside a pile of collapsed stalactites in front of him.

A secret crack, only wide enough for one person to pass through, appeared at the bottom of the fault.

Deep inside the crack, a faint glimmer interwoven with deep blue and emerald green faintly shone through.

The moist breath seeped out along the crack, brushing across Chen Mu's cheeks.