93: Chapter 93 Undeterred, one after another, an endless stream!

The fifteenth day after the Winter Solstice Grand Sacrifice in the third year of Yongning.

The concentration of demonic energy within Great Li experienced a historic collapse.

If there were a map of demonic energy distribution that could overlook the entirety of Great Li.

Then, half a month ago, this map would have been a suffocating deep gray, with only a glaring blue hole within a fifty-mile radius of the capital.

But now.

The entire map is covered in blue patches of various sizes.

Not sporadic spots, but vast blue areas, like a gray curtain chiseled through with countless holes.

And these blue areas are continuing to expand, spreading and connecting with each other.

Because these blue patches are not randomly distributed.

They correspond precisely to every town in Great Li garrisoned by demons.

The net that Su Yu wove was never a purposeless cast from the beginning.

Every node was aimed at a town.

In every town, there was a group of Mortal prepared to trade their lives for a blue sky.

When these nodes were activated simultaneously, thousands of demon strongholds within Great Li were broken one by one in just half a month.

The method of breaking them was not through sieges or capturing fortresses.

Instead, it was a group of Mortal walking up to you, sitting down, closing their eyes, and then burning you to death.

There is no way to counter this tactic.

Because you don't know who will detonate.

You don't know when they will detonate.

You don't even know how many people among that group of seemingly ordinary Mortal standing before you have already memorized the mantra.

Maybe ten percent. Maybe thirty percent. Maybe they all memorized it.

Furthermore, this attack has a characteristic that drives demons to complete despair: it is indefensible.

You kill them? They detonate before they die, and the effect is the same.

You don't kill them? They choose to detonate themselves, and the effect is the same.

You flee? They follow you to your new stronghold and continue to detonate.

Where can you flee to? There are over a billion Mortal throughout Great Li, they are everywhere.

You kill all the Mortal? Then where will your Blood Tribute come from? Where will your cultivation resources come from?

Killing is a dead end. Not killing is also a dead end. Fleeing is still a dead end. This is a stalemate that would drive any ruler insane.

And this stalemate is constantly worsening. Because the chain reaction caused by the decline in demonic energy is far more severe than the demons' worst estimations.

When the demonic energy of a town permanently decreases due to a detonation, that town becomes a forbidden zone for demons.

Pure spiritual energy is a deadly poison to demons; they cannot survive in areas where demonic energy is below a certain concentration.

Thus, they can only flee to areas where demonic energy has not yet been purified. But after fleeing there, they find that there are also Mortal there. The Mortal there have also memorized the mantra. Then, a new round of detonations begins.

The demons are being driven like livestock. Fleeing from one stronghold to another, from one city to another. Every place they arrive at, that place is soon besieged by Mortal.

They are not retreating. They are being hunted—hunted by their prey, hunted by the ants they have trampled underfoot for tens of thousands of years.

What makes the demons even more devastated is this: the weaker they become, the bolder the Mortal get.

Initially, those Mortal who dared to detonate were martyrs with hearts set on death, the nodes carefully selected by the Resistance Army over three years.

But after news spread of town after town being purified and demon after demon being burned to death, those ordinary Mortal who originally dared not act also began to stand up.

They saw with their own eyes the tragic state of demons being burned to ashes by spiritual energy storms. They saw the blue sky and clean air with their own eyes. They knew. This path is truly viable.

People are like this. When someone tells you that death can trade for a blue sky, you will hesitate. But when you see the first batch of people die with your own eyes, and the blue sky actually appears, the hesitation disappears.

It is not that everyone is no longer afraid of death. It is a choice between "living a wretched life like a pig or dog in demonic energy" and "dying to trade a blue sky for future generations." More and more people are beginning to feel that the latter is actually not that hard to accept.

Especially those who are already old, those who are already sick, those who have lost everything. They won't live much longer anyway. Instead of slowly rotting away in the erosion of demonic energy, it is better to walk up to a demon and have a glorious, blazing end.

Thus, more and more Mortal are participating in the detonations. The demons are getting weaker, and the Mortal are getting braver. This is an irreversible positive cycle. A positive cycle that is crushing the foundation of the demons' tens of thousands of years of rule. A single spark can indeed start a prairie fire.

... On a deserted hilltop. Xue Du received casualty statistics from various places. After reading them, its hands were trembling.

Half a month. Just half a month. The demons stationed throughout Great Li, those in the Qi Refining Stage, were completely wiped out! Not killed in battle, not blasted to death by spells. They were surrounded by Mortal and then burned alive by spiritual energy storms.

Those in the early Foundation Establishment stage mostly perished, with the rest fleeing while wounded. Those in the middle and late Foundation Establishment stages were forced to retreat to the last few high-concentration demonic energy strongholds on the border of Great Li to huddle together for warmth.

And Xue Du itself, with a cultivation of Golden Core Great Perfection, has seen its actual combat power drop almost to the early Golden Core stage. Because the demonic energy throughout Great Li is continuously declining. Not just in one place, but the entire Great Li.

Demonic energy is the foundation of Xue Du. Its Golden Core needs demonic energy to be nourished, and its demonic body needs demonic energy to be maintained. And now, the demonic energy that sustains it is disappearing bit by bit. It is like the roots of a tree being chopped off one by one. The tree is still alive, but it is already withering.

Xue Du even discovered an even more desperate problem. They dare not even collect the Blood Tribute anymore. Because no one can guarantee that the captured Mortal won't collectively detonate inside the Blood Refining Workshop.

If they detonate inside the workshop, the large number of demons gathered around the Blood Refining Workshop will become sitting ducks. The more they gather, the more dangerous it is. In the past, demon gatherings meant strength; now, demon gatherings mean death. The Mortal want exactly to find the place with the most demons and then detonate there. The more densely you gather, the happier the Mortal are.

Xue Du sat on the deserted hilltop, silent for a long time. It was thinking about a question. A question that even an old monster like it, who had lived for tens of thousands of years, could not figure out.

"These Mortal... what exactly are they after?"

They clearly know that detonating means death. It's not that there is a certain probability of dying, not that it is possible to die, but that they will die one hundred percent. There is no possibility of survival. Yet, they still walked up to the demons without hesitation. Not one person, not one hundred people. It is tens of millions of people. Wave after wave, endless.

Xue Du thought for a long time but could not figure it out. Because it is a demon. In the world of demons, there is no concept of legacy. They only live for themselves. So it will never be able to understand. Why would an old Mortal woman be willing to use the last few years of her life to trade for a blue sky that she will never see? Just because her grandson can see it. That is enough.