Chapter 76: The Birth of the Blood Corpse
A city called Jiulong—by no ans a small city—connected to the official road that cut across the border between Sichuan and Yunnan, was dying as silence engulfed it.
Man-Sa Calamity Emperor watched that sight with eyes brimming with exhilaration.
So might say it was a sudden occurrence, but it was not. The present result was the culmination of what he—Man-Sa Calamity Emperor—had been planning ever since the mont of his revival.
No, perhaps it had begun fifty years ago, when his breath had first been cut short.
Several years before Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s death, he had been engrossed in a single pursuit.
That was the Living Jiangshi.
Even after surpassing the Transformation Realm, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had been frustrated by how difficult it was to dominate the Central Plains. As a thod to effectively deal with the countless martial artists of the Central Plains, he had chosen the rare monstrosity known as the Living Jiangshi.
It was because he had co across records stating that, in the past, the martial world of the Central Plains had suffered catastrophic devastation due to Living Jiangshis.
After encountering those records, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor led his fleet and scoured the vast seas, eventually uncovering the thod to create Living Jiangshis.
The na of that thod was the Living Corpse Revivification Art.
Fortunately, it was a sinister art that matched best with the evil arts Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had been cultivating.
The reason Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had leapt for joy upon obtaining the Living Corpse Revivification Art was because, once perfected, it would allow him to mass-produce Living Jiangshis without limit.
Then ca several years of closed-door cultivation.
He ultimately perfected the Living Corpse Revivification Art—but Man-Sa Calamity Emperor instead fell into despair.
This was because the final step he realized upon its completion required Hellish Killing Intent.
Hellish Killing Intent.
The residue of wicked emotions exuded by those suffering in hell.
In other words, Living Jiangshis were created using as their foundation sothing that could never exist in the Living World.
Because of that, the emptiness Man-Sa Calamity Emperor felt—after all the effort it had taken to obtain the Living Corpse Revivification Art—was beyond description.
But he could not let it end there. His yearning to unify the Central Plains was not so feeble.
He steeled his resolve and began searching for another way.
In the process, he ca to harbor a hope—perhaps places where Living Jiangshis had once been destroyed might still retain traces of Hellish Killing Intent.
He searched through records and traveled, one by one, to locations where Living Jiangshis had appeared and then been destroyed.
Henan in the Central Plains, the Northern Sea—the land of ice—and even Tibet, the land of high plateaus.
In the Central Plains and the Northern Sea, he searched exhaustively, but could not find even a trace of Hellish Killing Intent.
Tibet, however, was different.
There, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor discovered a small amount of Hellish Killing Intent.
He caught its scent—an aroma that drew him in like the fragrance of heaven.
But the place from which that scent emanated was despair itself.
It was a forbidden zone called the Ten Thousand Demon Prison, located deep within the Potala Palace, the ruler of Tibet.
He did not know why a prison said to confine all demons of the world existed at the very heart of the Potala Palace, but the scent of Hellish Killing Intent was undeniably coming from there.
Yet Man-Sa Calamity Emperor could never cross the walls of the Potala Palace.
If he himself was at the Transformation Realm, then the Potala Palace also possessed masters of the Transformation Realm.
Not just one—two of them.
That was not all. Thousands of masters with piercing gazes resided there.
A single mistake could strip him of everything.
He even considered mobilizing his Fleet of Five Hundred Ships and the warriors of the loyal Hundred Island Fleets, but there was no way to bring them to the Potala Palace, deep within the Tibetan plateau and far from the sea.
Because of that, while wandering anxiously around the vicinity of the Potala Palace, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor encountered soone unexpected.
Without even knowing what intent Man-Sa Calamity Emperor harbored, that person suddenly rushed up to him, insisting they beco friends.
He was one of the Transformation Realm masters possessed by the Potala Palace.
It was Eightfold Confusion Monk.
Just as Eightfold Confusion Monk was delighted to have t soone of a similar level for the first ti, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor was also pleased.
Truly, pleased.
Because bait he could make use of had willingly wandered right into his trap—how could he not be?
Of course, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had no intention of taking responsibility for how the other party interpreted that feeling.
Well, one way or another, it was true that Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had liked it.
Perhaps recalling those mories, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor—who had been gazing at Jiulong as it was dyed in death—suddenly burst into mad laughter.
“Kuahahaha.”
There was no opponent more pleasing than prey that walked into a trap of its own accord.
That had been Eightfold Confusion Monk, who babbled excitedly about a first friend, about a one-and-only friendship.
Just as everything was flowing exactly as Man-Sa Calamity Emperor desired, that damned bastard appeared.
Judging by how he growled at Eightfold Confusion Monk, they were clearly not on good terms—but he interfered anyway.
At a glance, he saw through the fact that Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s intentions were impure.
Was it because evil resonated with evil?
Or was it because he had cultivated the Heaven-and-Earth Great Shift Divine Art—said to be a demonic art among demonic arts—that he pierced through the wickedness of Man-Sa Calamity Emperor, who practiced both evil arts and the sinister Living Corpse Revivification Art?
Man-Sa Calamity Emperor still did not know the reason, but that bastard had instantly discerned his intent.
And thus, the fight began.
Cunningly, that bastard proposed the laughable pretext of a one-on-one duel.
Eightfold Confusion Monk swallowed that transparent lie whole.
Well, it made sense—Eightfold Confusion Monk was soone who longed to clash freely with others of similar ability.
He did not even notice that the bastard had used a trick in the drawing of lots to choose the opponent.
Though Eightfold Confusion Monk acted as if he had comprehended everything in the world, in truth he knew almost nothing about worldly matters between people.
That was probably why he had believed Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s feelings to be friendship as well.
The duel between Man-Sa Calamity Emperor and that bastard spilled blood—damn it all.
Man-Sa Calamity Emperor himself had entered the fight with intent to kill, so he did not resent the bastard’s hand that pierced through his chest.
He was simply bitter that he had failed to win.
Even so, he had no intention of ending things obediently. He had not lived such a vicious life just to die so aninglessly.
Thus, he devised a plan for revenge.
For a plan ford in such a brief instant, it was so ticulous that even Man-Sa Calamity Emperor himself could hardly believe it.
To fasten the first button of that plan, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor forcibly roused his consciousness, which was fading into death, and staked all the remaining internal energy within his body to cast a single incantation contained in the Living Corpse Revivification Art.
It was an incantation that would manifest from the sect sword spiritually connected to him. Man-Sa Calamity Emperor wagered everything he had left on that incantation.
Hoping that soone would one day undo the incantation placed upon that sword and resurrect him.
The mont the incantation imbued with Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s wish was completed, that bastard—the Young Cult Leader of the Bright Cult, known by the epithet Blood Shadow Demon Venerable—crushed Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s heart with his hand.
Perhaps recalling that mont, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s body trembled violently.
“That damned bastard—without fail!”
Grinding his teeth as he spat out a chilling voice, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor once again looked toward the city.
Death filled nine-tenths of the city.
Wasn’t the population of this city, Jiulong, said to be one hundred thousand?
If he killed them all and filled it with blood, that would make the final tenth.
It was a phrase he had heard endlessly in hell.
Most of those in hell did not even know what those words ant, but Man-Sa Calamity Emperor—who had mastered the Living Corpse Revivification Art—knew all too well what they signified.
That was why he had ford this plan.
A plan that even the nephew who had summoned him back from hell knew nothing about.
Thus, the first step of the vast plan Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had forged in hell—enduring all manner of suffering and vowing to inflict the agony of hell upon all people—was now being set in motion.
That exhilaration washed over his fury toward the Blood Shadow Demon Venerable, making his body tremble once more.
He did not even begrudge pouring out every last shred of Hellish Killing Intent that remained within him to create the Blood Demon.
Ah! You were wondering how Man-Sa Calamity Emperor ca to possess Hellish Killing Intent in the first place?
Had you forgotten where he had been revived?
Despite harboring enough Hellish Killing Intent to create well over five thousand Living Jiangshis, he had produced only a little over one thousand—and that, too, had all been for the sake of what was happening now.
Even those thousand-plus Living Jiangshis he had created were treated as re sacrifices to draw in Eightfold Confusion Monk.
To deceive the eyes of the world, he had ostentatiously moved the Living Jiangshis from Guangdong to Sichuan.
That was not all. Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s sche had been set in motion even earlier—before he ever unleashed the Living Corpse Revivification Art at the Foshan Fist Sect.
Eightfold Confusion Monk likely did not know this, but when he first heard rumors about Living Jiangshis, the Living Corpse Revivification Art had not yet been used at the Foshan Fist Sect in Guangdong.
The reason such rumors had nevertheless spread was that when Man-Sa Calamity Emperor departed from Hainan, he had already dispatched people to deliberately spread those rumors in Tibet.
Otherwise, Eightfold Confusion Monk could not have heard them so quickly and rushed into the Central Plains.
All of it had been done to align the timing.
The timing of the plan Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had laid out.
And just as Man-Sa Calamity Emperor had anticipated, Eightfold Confusion Monk once again walked straight into the trap.
Because Eightfold Confusion Monk valued children as dearly as ever, luring him had been no trouble at all.
The result of all those plans was that sight.
“Kraaaaah!”
Howling at the moon like a beast was Eightfold Confusion Monk.
His eyes, completely filled with crimson bloodlight, and the teeth inside his mouth, dripping with blood, had transford into sothing sharp like a ferocious beast’s.
It was a change ant to easily pierce prey’s flesh and suck out its blood.
A Blood Demon.
A demonic monstrosity that craved blood.
Yet it was alive while dead—a Blood Corpse, according to the Living Corpse Revivification Art.
Among all the wicked demonic beings in the world, it was a demon among demons, standing at the pinnacle.
Even a Blood Corpse made from an ordinary person would have been terrifying—yet this was a Blood Corpse made from Eightfold Confusion Monk, soone who had transcended the human realm.
It was such a powerful demonic being that even its creator, Man-Sa Calamity Emperor, could not begin to guess what it might do.
And that was not all.
There was no one who fit that line more perfectly than Eightfold Confusion Monk.
A Blood Corpse created from such an Eightfold Confusion Monk. If that Blood Corpse were to be filled with the blood of one million living beings and the resentnt of one million living beings……
Perhaps even imagining it brought him ecstasy—Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s eyes glead wildly as he laughed.
“Keuheuheuheuhahaha.”
Man-Sa Calamity Emperor’s sinister laughter and the horrific howls of the Blood Corpse shook the night of Jiulong, a border city of Sichuan now covered in death.
The Tang Clan closed its gates.
It had no choice but to do so.
The number of survivors from the sudden bloodshed barely exceeded one hundred, and even when combined with the experts of the branch strongholds, the total did not surpass five hundred.
It was not a small number, but the absence of true masters was devastating.
There was not a single Peak Master, and even Master-level experts were few enough to count on one hand.
After expressing their gratitude to the Cult Leader and Yul Han, the Tang Clan shut its gates.
The sudden closure of the Tang Clan dealt a trendous shock to Qingcheng Sect and Mount Ei, which had jointly dominated Sichuan.
It seed they were also deeply shaken by the fact that, amid the bloodshed erupting everywhere, they themselves had played no role at all.
Even so, Qingcheng Sect showed no intention of descending from the mountains, and Mount Ei acted as though it did not matter as long as they themselves were safe.
That was why the absence of the Tang Clan—who had encompassed the secular martial world of Sichuan—was felt so keenly.
Seizing that opening, a newly erged religion called the Ghost Cult rose with unstoppable montum.
Beginning in Sichuan, bloodshed broke out across Guizhou and Yunnan in all directions.
Cities were sotis swallowed by death overnight.
That was the case for Jiulong and Dechang in Sichuan, and for Xuanwei and Gubei in Yunnan.
Among the people, whispers began to spread about demonic beings.
And along with that ca rumors that if one worshiped those demonic beings as gods, one could avoid the calamity of bloodshed.
What appeared within those rumors was precisely the Ghost Cult, which served demonic beings as gods.
At first, the Ghost Cult rely demanded a few coins as offerings, but at so point it developed into a heretical cult that did not hesitate to perform human sacrifice.
Since this heretical cult had arisen in Sichuan—clearly territory of the Hundred Paths—the sects of the Hundred Paths stepped forward.
With Qingcheng Sect still remaining in the mountains and Mount Ei refusing to act, several righteous small and mid-sized sects of Sichuan sent martial artists forth, raising the banner of punishnt.
They never returned.
No one even knew whether they were alive or dead.
Then, several days later.
The sects that had dispatched those martial artists were all swallowed by death.
Dozens of martial artists, their families, the workers employed by the sects, and even the dogs and chickens they raised were found dead—every one of them drained of blood.
The spread of the Ghost Cult caught fire.
In villages where children bought with money had been offered as human sacrifices, flags signifying the Ghost Cult fluttered.
While neighboring villages were covered in death, the villages where those flags waved remained unhard.
It beca the turning point at which all of Sichuan fell into the black grasp of the Ghost Cult.
For reasons unknown, while the situation deteriorated to that point, Qingcheng Sect remained holed up in the mountains, and Mount Ei did not erge.
Though not as severe as in Sichuan, Mount Dian—the overlord of Yunnan, where the Ghost Cult also ran rampant—dispatched its experts.
They entered Sichuan in pursuit of the true nature of the Ghost Cult.
Because Sichuan was where their investigation had to take place, Mount Dian’s investigation group first sought out Qingcheng Sect.
It was to explain the reason for their visit and eliminate any chance of misunderstanding.
However.
The Qingcheng Sect that Mount Dian’s investigation group visited was in utter chaos.
They even double-checked the sect’s signboard, wondering if this truly was the Qingcheng Sect renowned for its purity.
Several hundred Qingcheng Daoists had ford a formation and were surrounding it—their own sect, Qingcheng Sect.
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