400: Chapter 400 A Shocking Conspiracy, Blood Sacrifice Across Realms

Chen Daoping's Divine Sense silver thread hung above the pile of fragments, motionless.

Those were fragments of ten-thousand-year void ethereal stone.

He carried a fist-sized ten-thousand-year void ethereal stone in his storage ring.

In the underground palace before his eyes, seven or eight small mountains of them lay shattered.

Roughly estimated, piecing them together would yield at least a dozen pieces.

The Divine Sense silver thread continued to probe deeper.

At the lowest level of the underground palace was an independent secret room, separated from the upper level by a sixth-rank isolation Formation.

The Formation was old but extremely well-maintained.

A massive projection of a Formation diagram floated within the secret room.

As soon as Chen Daoping's Divine Sense touched the edge of the diagram, his Sea of Consciousness jolted violently.

cross-realm teleportation array.

He had seen ten-thousand-year void ethereal stones, studied the basic principles of inter-realm transport, and had deduced the architecture of spatial Formations.

Thus, after scanning the Formation diagram projection for only three breaths, he confirmed it.

And in the very center of the diagram, a set of extremely complex Star Domain coordinates was marked in vermillion.

The direction of the coordinates was not within the Donghuang Realm.

Chen Daoping withdrew his Divine Sense.

Treasure tilted its head to look at him, the faint fluorescence of the underground palace's defensive light barrier reflected in its two toad eyes.

Chen Daoping said nothing.

He crouched where he was, taking a long time to sort through things point by point.

Fragments of ten-thousand-year void ethereal stone, the vital blood and remnant souls of Cultivators.

A complete version of an cross-realm teleportation array diagram, and external Star Domain coordinates.

With these four things brought together, the truth was already clear.

The remaining top Sects of the Donghuang Realm were building an cross-realm teleportation array.

Building it with what?

Naturally, with the lives of Loose Cultivators.

Chen Daoping glanced back toward the city's southern plaza.

There, Loose Cultivators at or above the Golden Core Stage were being conscripted daily and assigned to the Heaven-Fall Trench frontline.

Nominally, it was to resist the Demon Race.

Where did the bodies of those Cultivators go after they were sent to fill the gaps in the Formations and had their True Essence drained by the ley lines?

Their vital blood and remnant souls were put into jade bottles and stacked on shelves in the underground palace.

And the Heaven-Fall Trench's seventh defensive line—that meat grinder where a Golden Core Cultivator on average didn't survive more than two hours—how many people did it swallow every day?

This calculation wasn't hard to make.

Chen Daoping recalled the middle-aged Cultivator in silver armor he had seen at the plaza during the day.

A Mid Nascent Soul Stage who fought with his life to resist, only to have his crown pierced by a sword gang from a Soul Transformation Stage Cultivator on the city wall.

His clothes were pinned to a flagpole, killing the chicken to warn the monkeys.

It wasn't to deter the Demon Race.

It was to deter these tens of thousands of Loose Cultivators waiting to be slaughtered.

Filling the frontline with lives while sucking blood in the rear to build an cross-realm teleportation array.

Once the cross-realm teleportation array was finished, the high-level members of these great Sects would slip into it and leave without a care.

Leaving behind the low-level Cultivators and Mortals of the entire Donghuang Realm as fodder for the Demon Race.

What a grand scheme.

Chen Daoping crouched in the darkness for a long time. So long that Treasure began to restlessly scratch at his pant leg with its front claws.

He reached out and pressed down on Treasure's head with moderate force.

"Stop it."

The Three-legged Golden Toad quieted down.

The night wind brought a chill current of air from the direction of the underground palace, carrying a very faint scent of blood.

The remnant souls trapped in those jade bottles were still silently screaming.

Chen Daoping stood up and stuffed Treasure back into the Spirit Beast Bag.

He returned the way he came, sneaking into the ventilation ducts and back to the corner of the bottom floor of the Tianyuan Combat Readiness Alchemy Pavilion.

The Formation lines retracted into his fingertips; the Loose Cultivators dozing around him noticed nothing.

He leaned back against the Pill Furnace, assuming a posture of exhaustion, but his eyes did not close.

The cross-realm teleportation array diagram and the Star Domain coordinates were right there in that underground palace.

The two things he needed were both there.

The question was how to take them.

Three Void Refinement Stage Divine Senses patrolled the perimeter of the underground palace in a cross-pattern.

Even if a seventh-rank defensive Formation was seventy percent damaged, it still wasn't something he could force his way through.

Moreover, behind those Void Refinement guards, there were likely Body Integration level figures standing watch.

Taking it by force was seeking death.

Then he would take it by wit.

Chen Daoping closed his eyes and began to deduce.

The next day, he performed Alchemy as usual.

Out of ten batches of third-rank Medicinal Pills, he wasted four batches of materials and had one furnace explosion.

That Nascent Soul Stage deacon walked over, cursed a few times, and kicked over his herb basket.

Chen Daoping's hands shook as he picked up the Spiritual Plants from the ground one by one, repeatedly apologizing.

On the third day, an old Loose Cultivator at the neighboring Pill Furnace couldn't hold on and collapsed, twitching on the ground.

The deacon went over to take a look and checked for breath.

"Drag him out."

Two Foundation Establishment Disciples grabbed his arms and dragged him away.

That old Loose Cultivator's Pill Furnace was still hot, with half-finished medicinal liquid bubbling inside.

Chen Daoping lowered his head and added medicine to his own furnace, catching a glimpse from the corner of his eye.

The direction the old Loose Cultivator was dragged was not the exit.

It was somewhere deeper.

He didn't look further.

On the evening of the fourth day, another Loose Cultivator was dragged away.

This time it was a middle-aged man at the Late Golden Core Stage, with deep-set eyes.

The flesh on both arms was so withered that only a layer of skin covered the bones.

The marks of vital blood being forcibly extracted could not be hidden.

The direction he was dragged was still deeper inside.

Chen Daoping went out again that night.

He didn't go to the underground palace.

He found that fork in the road deep within the Alchemy Pavilion.

Following the faint aura left by those dragged-away Loose Cultivators, he followed it all the way to the end.

A sealed stone room.

Three Restrictions were pasted on the door, and inside lay a pile of more than a dozen recently deceased corpses.

Every one of them had been disemboweled, their Dantians hollowed out, and even the Sea of Consciousness at their brow had been pierced through with brute force.

vital blood extracted, remnant souls stripped.

The method was crude but highly efficient.

Dozens of empty jade bottles were stacked in the corner of the stone room.

They were identical to the ones on the shelves in the underground palace.

Chen Daoping backed out.

Returning to his corner, he leaned against the Pill Furnace and stared blankly at the cracked rock ceiling all night.

The fifth day.

The Nascent Soul deacon in charge of the Alchemy Pavilion suddenly appeared before Chen Daoping.

"You, come with me."

Chen Daoping stood up trembling, walking forward with a hunched back.

He was taken to a relatively clean side room, where a list and a spirit wood box were placed on a table.

Inside the box, more than a dozen third-rank Spirit Medicines were neatly arranged, all of good quality.

The deacon leaned against the doorframe, sizing up Chen Daoping.

"Which lineage's path did your former Sect follow?"

Chen Daoping shrank his neck: "Reporting to the lord, this old man comes from a rogue background and has no master. My Alchemy is all based on my own blind fumbling..."

"Cut the nonsense." The deacon raised his eyelids.

"The day before yesterday when you were refining that batch of Essence Recovery Pills, the segmented quenching technique you used for the third addition of medicine is an direct-lineage method from the Xuanling Sect's Medicine Hall."

"Rogue background? Who are you trying to fool?"

Chen Daoping's hands shook, and his knees bent halfway, about to kneel.

"The lord is wise. This old man did indeed work as a handyman in the Xuanling Sect's outer Sect for a few years when I was young, and I stole a bit of the basics, just the basics..."

The deacon waved his hand impatiently.

"Fine, let me ask you something. Do you know how to refine third-rank yanghun pills?"

Chen Daoping feigned hesitation and pondered for a long time, rubbing his hands as he spoke.

"yanghun pills are third-rank high-grade Medicinal Pills. This old man doesn't quite dare to guarantee anything; the success rate might be less than twenty percent..."

"Twenty percent is enough." The deacon slapped the list onto the table.

"Starting tomorrow, you don't need to refine third-rank healing Medicinal Pills anymore."

"Focus on refining yanghun pills, three batches a day; as long as one batch succeeds, it's fine."

Chen Daoping took the list and scanned it.

yanghun pill.

A Medicinal Pill specifically for nourishing a Cultivator's Divine Soul and repairing Sea of Consciousness damage.

In normal times, this is a good medicine for healing.

But in the current environment, combined with the corpses with pierced Seas of Consciousness in that stone room and the remnant souls floating in jade bottles in the underground palace...

The use of the yanghun pill had changed.

It was to be used to nurture those remnant souls, keeping the stripped souls active so they wouldn't dissipate too quickly.

Only then could they serve as higher-quality sacrifices to be poured into the base of the cross-realm teleportation array.

Chen Daoping tucked the list into his robe and left the side room with a thousand thanks.

Walking on the way back, his steps were still very slow.

Blending in perfectly with the half-dead Loose Cultivator laborers around him.