Millions began to move. Stumbling, gliding, crawling, marching. An endless tide of death converging from every corner.
But not all responded.
In the shadow of a crumbling obsidian fortress, a figure stood unmoving—his long white hair fluttering in defiance of the stagnant air. His skin was pale.
His eyes were dim coals. Dead... and yet thinking.
Li Yang.
Among the countless dead, he was different.
He rembered.
A fragnt of a life long past still clung to his spirit like a dying ember refusing to go out.
He did not move toward the gate.
He simply watched.
"...An anchor has opened," he muttered. His voice was hoarse, dry as wind over tombstones. "So... soone dares to breach the World of Samsara?"
He didn’t move. Not yet.
But his fingers, long since dulled to sensation, curled faintly at his sides.
A hundred years.
He hadn’t kept count at first. But over ti, the emptiness of the Netherworld had turned into sothing familiar... sothing quiet. The silence dulled the mories, but never enough to erase them.
The pain.
The sect that hunted him down like a beast for what they called a sin.
"Was it really so hateful..." he said under his breath, eyes never leaving the pulsing rift in the distance, "to kill just for killing their holy daughter...?"
His lips curled. Not in a smile. Sothing smaller. A twitch of restrained madness.
"...After having a taste."
The mory flickered like a dying lantern fla.
Moonlight. Her fingers in his hair. The promise of eternity.
"They pretended I stole her purity," he whispered. "But she was the one who begged for it."
He chuckled. A hollow, bitter sound that echoed faintly through the broken ruins around him.
"They always rewrite the story once the blood dries."
The rift pulsed again, stronger this ti. A tug, subtle but firm, brushing against sothing deep within him.
Li Yang stared at it.
The gate wasn’t just any portal. He could feel it.
This one... it might lead back to his world.
His real one.
Xuanyan Great World.
A place of spirit rivers and sky-reaching sects. Of divine beasts and golden palaces.
If the gate truly linked to Xuanyan, then the world had just made a mistake.
Because he was here.
"To those self-righteous bastards at the Heavenlit Lotus Sect..." Li Yang whispered, his voice rich with ancient venom, "pray your foundations haven’t crumbled yet."
His hair rose slightly, caught by unseen wind.
"Because if I make it back... I will bury you beneath them."
Li Yang took a step forward.
Then another.
*
The mont the coffin began to glow, a strange tension filled the air.
Michael’s brows furrowed.
The coffin pulsed once. Then again. Then the lid cracked open.
A low hiss escaped from within.
Michael narrowed his eyes and instinctively cast [Detect] the mont the lid opened.
A blue pane snapped into existence.
[Evil Cultivator – Lv. 49]
[Rank: 2-Star Extraordinary Rank]
Michael’s expression froze.
So it really was a two-star Extraordinary Rank.
Exactly what he had hoped for.
He let out a low breath.
So my guess was right...
But even so...
Based on what he’d just experienced—based on the presence that had erged from the coffin—Michael quickly realized sothing else.
The energy consumption didn’t scale the strength linearly.
Dumping 80% of his mana hadn’t guaranteed this level of undead. It had simply given him a greater chance to summon sothing at the highest end of the range.
He was sure of it.
The skill wasn’t "the more you put in, the stronger it is."
No, it was a lottery. A rigged one, yes, with better odds the more he invested—but not a promise.
Michael narrowed his eyes.
A risk-like item, then. One that could burn him out without even delivering sothing useful—if luck wasn’t on his side.
And his luck.....well...
Still...
He wasn’t disappointed. Quite the opposite.
Because there was one more thing he noticed.
A faint tether, from the bond he shared with the coffin.
I could summon it again, Michael realized. And next ti, it wouldn’t cost nearly as much.
It wasn’t a permanent contract. Not like his undead legion. But it was an imprint. A marker. Sothing the coffin had carved into the Netherworld when it pulled the undead out.
As long as the item remained intact, Michael had the option to recall the sa undead again
Still, he hesitated.
[Evil Cultivator – Lv. 49]
Evil Cultivator.... sounded a bit too shady.
Li Yang opened his eyes.
The transition was... jarring.
To him the world was still shades of white and black.
But this world.....was filled with abundance of energy!
His breath stilled.
He inhaled deeply, and his already-dead nerves tingled faintly—almost like they were rembering how it felt to be alive.
The very air in this place was rich and dense. Alive with spiritual energy. It rolled across his skin like silk and soaked into his very bones.
If he still had a beating heart, it would have thundered in awe.
"This..." he muttered, eyes narrowing, "is ridiculous."
The spiritual energy here was so thick, it felt like the entire realm was built atop a spirit vein.
No. Not a vein.
A sea.
Even in the Xuanyan Great World, sacred lands this saturated were rare—and fiercely guarded by ancient clans, sects, or divine beasts.
To a cultivator, even a demonic one like him, this was paradise.
Li Yang chuckled, almost forgetting his current state. "If I’d been born here... I might have beco a god."
But just as that thought blossod—just as a trace of twisted hope dared to spark—his spiritual sense reached inward, scanning the condition of his spirit.
And everything changed.
His smile vanished.
"...What?"
Inside his spirit sea... was a chain.
A thin, silvery tether. Barely visible. But real. Anchored. And it pulsed faintly with foreign energy.
Li Yang’s expression darkened.
He followed the chain’s flow, and like ice plunging into hot blood, realization struck.
"This isn’t possession..." he growled. "It’s control."
Soone had pulled him from the Netherworld.
Soone had bound him.
His eyes snapped to the figure before him.
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