2: All things are tainted by magic

A wisp, two wisps...

The Devilish Qi seemed to possess life, flowing spontaneously within his body without needing deliberate guidance, slowly increasing.

All the absorbed heterogeneous energy was swallowed and transformed by it without resistance, with an efficiency far exceeding the Blood Fiend Demonic Technique he Cultivated in his previous life.

Not only that, but this “Myriad Things Demon Contamination” phenomenon, akin to pollution, was even slowly spreading outside his body, silently eroding the surrounding free energy.

No wonder it was said that a Cultivator’s prolonged stay would turn the surrounding environment into a Demonic Land.

This Cultivation Technique itself was a living, constantly expanding source of pollution!

“Myriad Things Demon Contamination...”

Li Ke truly understood the terror of this forbidden Cultivation Technique at this moment.

Feeling the numbness in his body gradually recede.

Li Ke slowly sat up, carefully examining the stable in front of him.

Pale sunlight pierced through the gaps in the wooden planks above, illuminating the dim, damp wooden house.

Not far away on the ground, the horse carcass’s neck was slowly dripping viscous blood.

The surroundings were deathly silent.

Despite it being daytime, there was no human sound, no neighing of livestock, not even the most common chirping of insects or birds.

It was as if the entire world had been drained of life.

Li Ke came to the horse carcass, squatted down, and carefully examined the wound on its neck.

The wound looked Li Ke bite marks, with an unnatural charred black color at the edges.

The surrounding flesh had a strange withered appearance, emitting faint traces of cold, foul Qi.

“It looks Li Ke traces of some kind of demonic creature...”

Li Ke frowned, his gaze sweeping over the horse carcass and the chopper scattered nearby.

He instantly had a plan in mind.

He used the chopper to cut through the horse carcass’s dry, stiff hide, cutting off a piece of fur stained with some viscous, foul blood.

Then, he extended his index finger, dipped it in some viscous horse blood, and quickly drew on the dirty fur.

Soon, a blood-colored Talisman, seemingly simple in structure but subtly emitting a strange aura, gradually formed on the horsehide.

The Soul Summoning Talisman.

This was one of the lowest-grade and most widespread basic Talismans in the Cultivation world.

Its function was singular: to summon wandering lonely souls and wild ghosts from the nearby area.

Although its grade was low, it sometimes had miraculous effects.

Li Ke flicked his hand lightly, and the Soul Summoning Talisman spontaneously ignited without fire.

An invisible fluctuation, imperceptible to the naked eye, spread silently around the stable Li Ke a pebble dropped into still water.

A moment later.

An extremely faint, almost transparent phantom floated in lightly, passing through the thick wooden wall of the stable from outside.

Its form was blurry, Li Ke a tattered piece of cloth that had been haphazardly torn, barely maintaining a rough human outline.

Li Ke frowned.

This living soul was too badly damaged; it had clearly suffered unimaginable torment before death.

He extended a finger and pointed it with extreme precision at the center of the weak living soul’s forehead.

“Soul Search!”

A surge of spiritual fluctuation, Li Ke shattered glass, abruptly rushed into his mind!

Instantly, some fragmented, inverted images appeared before his eyes.

A dark secret room...

On the cold stone floor, a complex hexagonal star pattern was carved with an unknown pigment...

In the center of the pattern, seven ancient-looking brass oil lamps, shaped Li Ke spoons, were placed...

A middle-aged man, dressed in luxurious silk clothing, his face vaguely discernible, was lying at the position pointed to by the “spoon handle,” his eyes tightly closed...

This ritual... this setup...

Li Ke’s heart suddenly leaped!

Although the images were blurry and many key details were missing, the arrangement and core structure of this ritual...

It actually bore some resemblance to the secret rituals of the Cultivation world!

However, it was mixed with many strange symbols, making it seem similar yet not, neither one thing nor another, exuding an evil aura.

“It’s Baron Charles...”

From the fragmented memories remaining in his original body, Li Ke recognized the middle-aged man lying in the center of the ritual as the master of this manor.

It seemed that the current anomaly in the manor was most likely caused by this fellow himself!

The information flow from the Soul Search abruptly ceased.

The already fragmented living soul could not withstand the impact of the Soul Search Technique, completely transforming into a barely perceptible wisp of green smoke, dissipating into the air Li Ke snowflakes exposed to sunlight.

Li Ke shook his throbbing head, feeling a wave of dizziness.

The small amount of Devilish Qi he had managed to accumulate in his body was almost completely depleted due to the use of the Soul Search Technique.

This was still because the Devilish Qi transformed by the Demon Summoning Cultivation Technique was incredibly pure; otherwise, at this stage, he would have been unable to perform the Soul Search Technique at all.

“My Cultivation is still too weak...”

“Restoring my strength is the top priority; I cannot act rashly anymore.”

Li Ke took a deep breath of the cold air, maintaining absolute calmness.

Prudence was his greatest reliance for surviving in the brutal Yuan Demon Sect and climbing to a high position step by step.

No matter when or where, this prudence could not be abandoned.

He found a small compartment in the stable’s dark corner where dry fodder was stored.

He used a relatively sturdy wooden stick to firmly prop the wooden door shut from the inside.

Then, he plunged into the pile of dry grass, which reeked of mold, completely burying his body with thick fodder, leaving only an extremely concealed, tiny gap just wide enough for his sight to pass through, to observe the outside.

After completing all these preparations, he immediately collected his thoughts, and Li Ke an old monk in meditation, he once again sank into a state of Cultivation.

The Summoning Demon Scripture began to operate silently within his body.

The surrounding chaotic energy particles and dense Death Qi were drawn in Li Ke a hundred rivers returning to the sea.

...

Time slowly passed.

Unbeknownst to him, night had already fallen.

Pale moonlight filtered through the gaps in the wooden planks, casting mottled shadows on the dirty ground.

Bang...

Suddenly, a dull thud came from outside the stable, Li Ke something heavy hitting the ground.

Li Ke’s tightly closed eyes instantly opened, his gaze piercing through the gaps in the wooden planks, warily looking outside the compartment door.

It was pitch black outside the door, and the moonlight was extremely faint, barely outlining the blurry silhouettes of a few rows of wooden houses in the distance, Li Ke lurking monsters in the darkness.

Li Ke hid in the hay, suppressing his aura to the extreme, even his heartbeat becoming faint and slow, Li Ke a lifeless stone, motionless.

After this period of Cultivation, the Devilish Qi in his body had grown from just a few wisps to over a dozen wisps.

At this moment, they were intertwining, attracting, colliding, and Fusing in the center of his Dantian Qi Sea, slowly condensing into a drop of ink-black liquid.

“Devilish Qi liquefaction, Qi Condensation First Layer.”

Li Ke’s heart was unruffled; he merely calmly confirmed this fact.

Bang...

Another dull thud sounded outside, clearly closer, seemingly just outside the stable door.

Li Ke remained expressionless, still staring intently at the faint light filtering through the crack in the wooden board in front of him.

Bang...

Another muffled thud!

A dark, stiff black shadow suddenly fell, right in front of the wooden door of the compartment where Li Ke was hiding, blocking the only gap!

Only a thin, decaying wooden board separated the two!

A strong stench of decay permeated through the cracks in the door, directly assailing his nostrils.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

Li Ke in the hay and the black shadow outside the door both remained motionless.

After a long while,

Bang...

The dark, stiff black shadow, exuding a dense Death Qi, slowly and stiffly jumped over the gap, making another dull sound.

Faint, pale moonlight once again filtered through the gap.

A cold thought emerged in Li Ke’s mind: “A zombie...”