“Yes.”
The Daoist looked at Xu Ning, his answer surprisingly straightforward.
“This Great Dao, if they can cultivate it, why can’t I?”
“I have bitterly cultivated for six hundred and thirty-seven years, and I dare say I am no weaker than any prodigy of the immortal sects.”
“Yet these proud disciples of the immortal gates, even with dull aptitudes, are born able to choose their own fortunes, receive guidance from renowned masters, and knock upon the golden core Great Dao.”
“I had no gate, no path, so I was supposed to die trapped at the crystallization stage, waiting for my lifespan to run out?”
As his voice fell, a thread of blood light suddenly seeped from the frost-covered mud beneath his feet.
That blood light burrowed into the ground like a living thing, rapidly spreading toward the entire Medicine Manor.
Xu Ning’s brows tightened.
He didn’t understand what the man intended to do.
Thump!
A muffled sound suddenly came from beneath the earth.
Like a heart that had been buried beneath the Medicine Manor for years, beginning to beat for the first time.
Blood-colored patterns blazed to life from beneath the ruins, staining even the front courtyard with an ominous dark red.
“What are you doing?” Xu Ning couldn’t help but demand.
“Nothing much. Just taking back the fortune that rightfully belongs to me.”
The Daoist slowly spread his arms, letting the bloody wind whip at his tattered robe.
“These mortals have been under my protection for many years. Now that my Great Dao is about to be achieved, I borrow their lives for a single use. Is that not only fitting?”
Xu Ning’s expression finally changed.
“Did you not just say you were protecting them?”
“Protecting them until this very day was precisely for today.”
The Daoist’s tone was calm.
“All living beings are born to serve their purpose.”
“Today, I shall grant them a fate of Great Dao!”
Boom!
This time, the entire Medicine Manor shuddered violently.
Beyond the courtyard walls, countless pillars of blood light rose into the air.
The whole terrain of the Qingwu Medicine Garden suddenly sank.
The crumbling buildings shook violently, and large swaths of filthy red blood seeped from the cracks in the walls, spreading quickly across the ground.
The blood light crossed the road outside the manor and rapidly spread toward Qingwu Village.
Everyone present paled.
This blood formation covered not just the Medicine Manor!
What Liu Manqing had struck with everything she had was merely the tip of the iceberg.
The Daoist stood at the heart of the formation, his expression almost rapturous.
“They have received my protection for so many years. Now, it is time to repay that debt.”
The blood light clung to the ground as it spread, flowing past the muddy water where Zhou Huai lay fallen.
Luo Zhao’s gaze swept over, and a chill crept up his spine.
From the moment the Daoist had appeared, Zhou Huai had been lying there the whole time.
No begging for mercy.
No struggling.
Not even a single breath.
He couldn’t help but speak up.
“Manager Zhou?”
The figure in the mud gave no response.
Luo Zhao’s face tensed.
Just as he was about to look away, he saw Zhou Huai’s finger suddenly twitch.
Crack.
A faint sound of bone, landing in the courtyard at this moment, sent a chill crawling across everyone’s scalp.
Zhou Huai’s collapsed body suddenly arched upward, as if something from within had forcibly seized his spine.
His head hung limply, his limbs braced into the mud.
In a posture no living person could possibly achieve, he slowly stood up.
It wasn’t until his face turned toward the group that everyone noticed—Zhou Huai’s complexion was deathly pale.
He was already dead.
Yet blood still streamed from his mouth and nose, dripping down his collar and into the mud.
His skin had swollen and split from the filthy blood soaking through, his whole body like a leaking sac, blood endlessly pouring out.
The next moment, dragging that lifeless corpse, he took a step toward Luo Zhao.
Luo Zhao’s pupils contracted.
“W-what kind of monster is this!”
The words barely left his mouth before he flung out several talismans.
Zhou Huai was instantly blasted away by talisman fire, unable to get up for a long while.
A flicker of relief had just risen in Luo Zhao’s heart when, from beneath the collapsed medicine shed, a faint scratching sound came.
A tiny hand reached out from the mud soaked in blood.
This time, even Xu Ning’s expression turned extremely grim.
Those children who had long since died—they were standing up again!
They couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout.
Only their small corpses, propped up by blood energy, staggered blankly toward the heart of the formation.
Beyond the courtyard walls, in the direction of Qingwu Village, chaos erupted at the same moment.
Wherever the blood light spread across the earth, cries of agony rose, twisted and shrill.
Tightly shut doors and windows were forced open one after another.
Figures stumbled out of the white mist in droves, convulsing on the ground before crawling back up.
“It hurts… it hurts so much!”
“Help! Immortal master, save me!”
“Mother… I’m in pain…”
The screams crossed the courtyard walls, merging into a suffocating chorus of wailing.
Those people were crying, begging for help, shouting in terror that they weren’t monsters.
But blood was already pouring endlessly from their bodies, soaking their clothes, dripping to the ground.
Soon, the white mist was filled with staggering blood-soaked figures, dragged by some force, slowly turning toward the rear courtyard.
The crying grew hoarse.
From screams to snarls, to the skin-crawling sounds of gnawing and clawing.
Lu Hanyi’s face was ashen.
Zhaoxue’s blade trembled, but the cold could not suppress the stench of blood surging from all directions.
At the same time, the cries outside the courtyard had drawn near.
As the blood mist roiled, a crowd of blood-soaked figures smashed through the crumbling courtyard gate, stumbling and flooding into the rear yard.
Their mouths still begged for help, but their limbs no longer obeyed, crazily pressing toward the aura of the living in the field.
Luo Zhao clutched the clay jar and retreated in panic.
Among the blood corpses, a disheveled woman suddenly stopped.
Half her face had already swollen and deformed from blood energy, yet her murky eyes locked dead onto the clay jar in Luo Zhao’s arms.
“My child…”
A hoarse sob squeezed from her throat as she staggered forward, reaching out.
“My child…”
Before Luo Zhao could react, the blood patterns on the woman’s neck suddenly flared.
Her cry turned into a piercing shriek as she lunged forward, ten fingers clawing straight for the clay jar.
Luo Zhao stumbled, slipping backward into the mud.
The jar nearly slipped from his hands.
Xu Ning reached out to steady the jar, his other hand instinctively blocking in front of the woman.
Bang!
Her blood-soaked fingers clamped violently onto his arm.
At nearly the same moment, Lu Hanyi’s sword finger dropped.
A line of frost light cut through the surging tide of blood, instantly sealing the half arm the woman had grabbed toward Xu Ning.
But she was still entangled by three corpse puppets, and that strike came half a beat too slow.
The seal on Xu Ning’s wrist suddenly flared.
A wisp of cyan spiritual power flowed out along the captured arm and sank into the woman’s body.
The blood patterns on her body abruptly stalled.
Her twisted face slowly regained a trace of human expression.
“Immortal… Immortal master…”
“My child…”
“It hurts…”
Xu Ning’s pupils contracted sharply.
She was still alive.
These people refined into blood corpses—they hadn’t truly died yet!
A searing pain slammed through his meridians.
Xu Ning swayed, the seal on his wrist tightening violently as the cyan spiritual light collapsed.
A scream burst from the woman’s throat.
The blood patterns crawled back across her face, and even the frost sealed on her arm shattered apart.
She lunged at Xu Ning once more in madness.
Lu Hanyi’s gaze turned cold.
Zhaoxue cut through the blood tide with overwhelming momentum.
At the moment it reached her, the sword edge twisted hard to the side.
Bang!
The flat of the blade slammed into the woman’s shoulder, hurling her heavily into the mud.
That strike—she still hadn’t delivered a killing blow.
The Daoist’s gaze fixed on Xu Ning.
That faint wisp of cyan spiritual light had already dissipated, but he had seen it clearly.
No mistake.
That was life force.
Pure enough to shake his very mind.
The Danxia Palace’s treasured pill, the Nine Radiance Longevity Elixir—a single dose could extend one’s lifespan by centuries.
That was the most coveted thing for a cultivator like him, whose years were nearly spent.
But that wisp of spiritual power Xu Ning had just leaked—even the Nine Radiance Longevity Elixir was probably nothing compared to it.
Xu Ning endured the pain in his meridians and slowly straightened.
Meeting the Daoist’s gaze, a chill surged through his heart.
“What marvelous spiritual power…”
The Daoist’s look at him was even more scorching than the one he had given Lu Hanyi—and even more greedy.
As if Xu Ning were no longer a living person, but a great medicine to be taken and refined.
“How could a sword corpse compare to you?”
He raised a hand.
The blood corpses that had been charging and wailing all stopped at once.
The crying cut off for a single breath.
Then, face after face still dripping blood, they stiffly turned toward Xu Ning.
Luo Zhao’s scalp went numb.
“Xu, Fellow Daoist Xu…”
The Daoist’s fingertip dropped.
“Bring him to me.”
Rumble!
The entire courtyard full of blood corpses surged forward at once.
Lu Hanyi stepped in front of Xu Ning in a single stride.
Zhaoxue carved a cold arc, driving back the foremost blood corpses.
She didn’t dare to strike freely.
Among these blood corpses, there might still be those who could be saved.
She couldn’t bring herself to kill them.
The Daoist watched the scene, amusement threading his voice.
“Why not kill them?”
“They have already become monsters.”
“Since Lady Lu is carrying out heaven’s justice, you should cut them down cleanly.”
“Shut up!”
Lu Hanyi’s sword rose sharply, but before it could strike the Daoist, three corpse puppets wrapped in blood aura slammed into her path, forcing her back.
The cold frost spiritual power surged once more.
Soon, the tide of corpses nearly swallowed the three of them.
For every breath she hesitated, more figures flooded into the courtyard.
Just then, a dense thunder of footsteps came from beyond the manor.
The sound rapidly approached from afar—dull and chaotic, shaking loose dust from the crumbling walls.
Luo Zhao turned his head stiffly.
Qingwu Village in the thick fog had already been fully illuminated by the dark red blood light.
From the village entrance to the end of the mountain path, staggering figures filled the view.
They were drenched in blood—some still stumbled and cried, others crawled on the ground.
The blood formation dragged them together into an ever-growing tide, pressing toward the Medicine Manor in a vast procession.
On the slopes, within the white mist, blood-colored figures likewise kept rising.
A single glance showed them covering the mountains and fields, endless and without number.
“Save me…”
“No, I don’t want to become a monster…”
Countless broken voices mixed together, pressing down on the rear courtyard from every direction.
Luo Zhao clutched the clay jar, shaking violently.
“We can’t… we can’t escape…”
Only terror remained in his eyes.
“Out there… it’s all… all these things… What do we do, what do we do, what do we do.”
Xu Ning’s face was iron-gray, his breathing heavy.
Lu Hanyi suddenly spoke.
“Luo Zhao.”
Luo Zhao looked at her in a daze.
“Take him and leave.”
“Wha, what?”
Luo Zhao seemed not to have heard clearly, or perhaps couldn’t believe it.
Lu Hanyi gripped Zhaoxue, forcing up the last dregs of sword essence left in her body.
A sword cry rang out.
A layer of frost-white cold erupted from before her, freezing the blood corpses that lunged close in place, carving a narrow gap through the blood tide.
That strike aggravated her injuries, and blood again spilled from her lips.
Luo Zhao’s voice trembled.
“Lady Lu, that’s a crystallization-stage demon cultivator!”
“Outside, outside is already full of blood corpses! We can’t escape, we’re already done for!”
Lu Hanyi didn’t look back.
She simply stood crossways with her sword before the tide of blood, her blood-stained white robes fluttering endlessly in the foul wind.
“They cannot fly through the air. I will send you away.”
At those words, the two behind her were both stunned.
Lu Hanyi’s voice was cold to the bone.
“You being here is useless.”
“Get lost!”