Chang Yusheng stood outside the formation, circling it over and over like a beast salivating over a piece of meat, unwilling to leave.
Pitch-black gas streamed from his body, steadily weakening the formation.
And it didn’t seem to be futile. The damaged formation on the ground was visibly being worn away.
As he slowly gnawed through its defenses and drew closer to the fissure within, he suddenly turned his head and looked behind him.
He was still covered in blood—not only the blood of the man he had killed, but his own as well. His expression was dark and sinister, making him look like a malicious ghost that had crawled straight out of hell.
In the direction of his gaze, Ye Chenyan’s group was steadily approaching.
“We caught up!” Tu Jiaojiao drew her long whip and looked at Ji Ruxue for confirmation. “Is that really an otherworldly evil demon?”
Ji Ruxue narrowed her eyes.
A corner of the light gauze covering her face lifted. White mist seemed to spread across her eyes, and her expression went utterly blank, without sorrow or joy, like some deity looking down from the highest heavens.
She only took one glance.
Her aura abruptly weakened for an instant before she quickly shut her eyes.
“Yes! Be careful. Attacking blindly will only kill the cultivator it possessed. You won’t damage its source at all.”
“Tch.” Ye Chenyan looked annoyed. “What a pain. Then how are we supposed to fight it?”
“I’ll do it.” Ji Ruxue’s expression turned focused. “The Esoteric Sect has fought otherworldly evil demons for many years. We have methods to force one out of a cultivator’s body. Without a vessel, it will be much easier to capture.”
“Capture?” Ye Chenyan raised an eyebrow. “Can’t we kill it?”
Ji Ruxue fell silent for a moment before answering softly, “If there were a way to kill otherworldly evil demons completely, they wouldn’t be so terrifying.”
“All we can do is drive them out of this realm.”
Tu Jiaojiao immediately caught the implication and turned toward her.
“Drive them out through what? Didn’t you say the hole in the sky had already been patched?”
Ji Ruxue fell silent.
She didn’t answer.
Yu Qingtang had figured it out by now.
This holy maiden of the Esoteric Sect simply did not know how to lie. Whenever she encountered a question she couldn’t answer, she just went quiet.
“Ahem!”
Yu Qingtang cleared his throat.
“Anyway, let’s deal [N O V E L I G H T] with the one in front of us first! We’ll cover you. You figure out how to catch it!”
Ji Ruxue visibly relaxed and gave Yu Qingtang a grateful glance.
She formed a hand seal, and her pair of spirit rings shot toward Chang Yusheng, intending to bind him outright.
Chang Yusheng flashed aside.
He moved with speed far beyond anything ordinary.
The leader of Golden Craft Hall paled.
“So fast! He was never this fast before!”
“Stop thinking of him as the man he used to be!” Tu Jiaojiao shouted. “That’s an otherworldly evil demon!”
Yu Qingtang settled the Dragon-Crane Zither across his knees.
For once, the instrument wasn’t throwing any tantrums. It cooperated fully with his attack, and there was even a faint fury behind its response, lending its power an unusual ferocity.
It looked very much like an old grudge.
The moment the Battle-Entering Melody sounded, everyone’s spirits lifted, and much of the fear in their hearts faded.
But Chang Yusheng was still harder to deal with than they had expected.
He seemed well aware of their reservations.
He simply stopped caring about their attacks and adopted an attitude of letting them strike his body head-on, forcing them to pull their blows themselves.
Yu Qingtang kept playing, sharing the Dragon-Crane Zither’s righteous indignation.
“These otherworldly evil demons are so shameless!”
The Dragon-Crane Zither gave a clear chime, as if agreeing with him.
“Tch.”
Ye Chenyan irritably rolled his neck.
“He was the one who ignored the warnings and insisted on coming in. If he gets hurt, he brought it on himself, right?”
Yu Qingtang froze.
Then he understood what Ye Chenyan meant.
Oh no. He’s had enough. He’s about to start hitting for real.
He hurriedly called out, “Jiaojiao!”
“Don’t worry!” Tu Jiaojiao replied with a perfectly serious expression. “He’s a cultivator from Rongzhou. I’ll explain it to his sect afterward!”
Yu Qingtang: “...”
He really shouldn’t have pinned his hopes on the short-tempered people of the Heavenly Fire Cult.
He whipped his head around.
“Miss Bamboo!”
Girl in the Bamboo nodded slightly.
“There’s no need to take his life. Breaking his arms and legs will be enough!”
Yu Qingtang: “...”
He could only turn toward his final hope.
“Ji—”
Ji Ruxue had already lifted her head, her voice firm.
“I understand! Attack!”
Yu Qingtang: “...”
As an upright, peace-loving, friendly young man raised in modern society, I really do not belong with you people.
The moment Ye Chenyan heard that, he shot forward like an arrow.
If he could solve something with his hands, he certainly wasn’t going to waste time talking.
His spearpoint went straight for Chang Yusheng’s leg.
Chang Yusheng sensed the killing intent.
His gaze suddenly sharpened.
Instead of dodging, he deliberately threw himself onto the tip of Ye Chenyan’s spear.
Yu Qingtang went pale.
“Careful!”
Ye Chenyan’s face was full of murderous intent, as though he had no intention of falling for that trick.
But just as the spear was about to pierce straight through Chang Yusheng’s body, he abruptly pressed the demonic weapon downward and whipped the butt of the spear across Chang Yusheng’s face.
Smack!
Yu Qingtang’s mouth twitched in sympathetic pain, and he sucked in a breath.
That looked plenty painful too.
Chang Yusheng’s body went limp.
He toppled flat onto his back.
Ji Ruxue’s spirit rings arrived half a beat later and instantly slipped over his entire body, binding him in place.
Tu Jiaojiao perked up.
“Did you get it?”
Ji Ruxue frowned.
“No. Something’s wrong. It abandoned this cultivator’s body and escaped. Stay alert! It may be trying to possess someone else!”
A flash of inspiration struck Yu Qingtang.
He whipped around toward the leader of Golden Craft Hall.
“You’ve had terrible luck today! What if it’s you?”
Everyone immediately turned to look at him.
The leader of Golden Craft Hall nearly jumped out of his skin.
“It’s not me! I’m completely normal!”
“You’re still high-risk!”
Yu Qingtang immediately started lowering himself into a cross-legged position.
“Come closer. I’ll cover you with—”
Everyone’s attention was fixed on him.
No one noticed the Heavenly Fire Cult disciple behind the Golden Craft Hall leader suddenly change expression.
The disciple reversed his weapon and slashed straight at the man’s back.
But Yu Qingtang had already sat down.
A golden lotus throne blossomed beneath him.
Yu Qingtang had made some progress in his cultivation by now and could control its size himself. At its largest, it could barely cover three adults—though if they were children, he could probably squeeze in two more.
Not only that, the golden lotus throne, which had once looked like nothing more than illusory light, now appeared almost as though it had been carved from translucent crystal. A faint jade-like solidity had begun to emerge, and its defensive power had increased dramatically.
Yu Qingtang had no idea the Heavenly Fire Cult disciple behind the Golden Craft Hall leader was attacking.
He had simply sat down.
Clang!
The disciple’s blade struck the Lotus Realm.
The weapon was torn straight from his hand and sent spinning far into the distance.
Yu Qingtang stopped halfway through his sentence.
His mouth fell open.
The leader of Golden Craft Hall spun around in terror, stumbled backward several steps, and squeezed himself against Yu Qingtang, nearly tumbling right into his arms.
“It’s him!” he shouted. “The otherworldly evil demon is in him!”
Having narrowly escaped death, the man broke out in a cold sweat.
He frantically felt around his own back, confirmed that he really hadn’t been injured, then turned and met Yu Qingtang’s gaze from where he sat inside the lotus throne.
Yu Qingtang stared at him blankly.
“Old Jin, you lived!”
“I’m not dead!”
The Golden Craft Hall leader was equally shaken.
His knees immediately went weak, and he dropped down in front of Yu Qingtang. He even bowed with complete sincerity.
“Thank you for your protection, Master!”
“No, no, no!”
Yu Qingtang hurriedly reached out to haul him up.
“You’ll shorten my lifespan doing that!”
The others did not waste the opportunity.
They tightly restrained the Heavenly Fire Cult disciple possessed by the otherworldly evil demon.
An illusory face emerged over his own, struggling desperately to tear itself free, but Ji Ruxue’s spirit rings truly seemed to counter these creatures. They actually managed to hold the mysterious spirit-form that normally came and went without leaving a trace.
Ji Ruxue had only just breathed a sigh of relief when she looked up.
Her pupils contracted.
“That’s—!”
Through the mist ahead, several figures could faintly be seen sitting cross-legged.
At the center of the formation they guarded was a fissure only a finger’s width across.
“What is it?” Ye Chenyan didn’t know the details, but the instant he saw that fissure, an ominous feeling rose in his heart.
“Looks like...” Tu Jiaojiao narrowed her eyes. “A space-time rift? Is this formation meant to stop anyone from approaching it?”
“No.” Ji Ruxue’s breathing quickened. “That isn’t a space-time rift. It’s a fissure in the Heavenly Dao.”
“There are plenty of great experts in this world who can manipulate spatial power. Cultivators capable of creating their own pocket worlds can all open space-time rifts. But those pocket worlds are still anchored to the Nine Provinces. They cannot transcend the restrictions of the Heavenly Dao.”
“But a fissure in the Heavenly Dao...”
Her lips trembled slightly.
“It truly opens into another world. It is also a gateway through which otherworldly evil demons can enter.”
“There’s actually another one here...”
Ye Chenyan narrowed his eyes.
“If that’s true, then with this fissure here, shouldn’t those otherworldly evil demons have invaded in force a long time ago?”
“Fortunately...” Ji Ruxue drew a deep breath. “The formation here has sealed the fissure and can still hold it back for a while. Once I return to the sect, I’ll immediately report this to the sect—”
Ye Chenyan was clearly unconvinced.
“Can the Esoteric Sect actually handle this?”
“Rest assured.” Ji Ruxue’s expression turned solemn. “The Esoteric Sect and the otherworldly evil demons are irreconcilable enemies. You may disagree with our beliefs, but we would never let an otherworldly evil demon go.”
“I’ll take this one back right—”
She was just about to take away the possessed Heavenly Fire Cult disciple when the situation suddenly changed.
The man let out a scream that sounded nothing like a human voice.
The otherworldly evil demon seized control of his body and dragged him bodily toward the formation.
The formation seemed to exert a peculiar attraction on the phantom.
Somehow, it even helped the creature resist the spirit rings’ pull.
It violently tore free of their restraint and flew straight into the formation.
Music rang out.
For one brief instant, the mist dispersed.
Only then did everyone finally see the cultivators inside the formation clearly.
Despite the passage of a thousand years, they were astonishingly lifelike.
Each music cultivator held an instrument, the group resembling a painted scene of musicians caught in the middle of a performance.
The phantom shrieked.
It spat out a sentence in some bizarre language none of them understood.
Then it abruptly exploded.
Black mist scattered in every direction.
The moment that mist fell across the scene, it was like sparks landing on painted paper.
The tranquil tableau shattered at once.
One by one, the music cultivators inside the formation opened their eyes.
Their features were refined, yet utterly devoid of life.
Like paper effigies, they stiffly and mechanically turned their heads toward the group.
Beneath their feet, the formation was steadily corroded by the black mist.
It flickered twice.
Then its power was exhausted.
It went completely dead.
“Oh no!”
Ji Ruxue’s face went white.
“They—they were already possessed by otherworldly evil demons a thousand years ago! This formation wasn’t only sealing the fissure. It was sealing them—the cultivators controlled by the otherworldly evil demons—together with the fissure!”
Ye Chenyan clicked his tongue.
“Don’t you cultivate the Heaven-Mending Formula? Can you mend that fissure?”
Yu Qingtang stared at him in shock.
“Huh?”
Ji Ruxue’s expression changed several times.
Then she answered with absolute resolve.
“Yes!”
Yu Qingtang stared at her in even greater shock.
“Huh?!”
One of you actually dared to ask, and the other actually dared to say yes?!
Before he could talk either of them out of it, the Dragon-Crane Zither in his hands suddenly began to shake violently.
For the first time, Yu Qingtang felt an emotion this intense from the instrument.
It actually ignored its master’s restraint and shot straight into the air.
Yu Qingtang instinctively grabbed onto it.
And then the zither dragged him along like a shooting star, hurtling straight toward the entire group of otherworldly evil demons.
Yu Qingtang: “!”
With the last of his strength, he twisted himself into the posture needed to activate the Lotus Realm while still flying through the air.
“Zither Bro, you’re not planning to use me as a weapon and ram them to death, are you?! Aaaaaah—!”
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