Chapter Ninety-Nine: Blood-Bathed and Demonic

The carcass of the primeval Golden Crow finally sank into the abyssal depths of the Beiming Sea.
As the last stripe of daylight thinned away, night unfurled its dark curtain, and the Tiancang Mountains entered their most perilous hour.

“Rrroar… roar…”

From every quarter of the range came the feral howls of demons and beasts. Beneath the night sky, the ancient woodland seemed a mad carnival of monstrous life.

In one stretch of old forest, a wet, brutal crack split the air. Covered in dragon-demon power, Luo Hao, in the middle of his snarl, crushed the skull of a human realm warrior between his hands.

“Pchh!”

White brain matter and gleaming bone fragments sprayed outward. The scene was brutally obscene. Just as Luo Hao’s eyes were about to sink back into darkness once more, the blue jade lotus in his chest blazed again, its light dissolving into him.

“Whew—close call. I nearly lost control again.”

All along the way, he had come within the edge of annihilation countless times; whenever the crisis came, the blue-crystal lotus in his breast had always pressed his demonic intent down.

The ancient woods under night were even more treacherous now. If he lost himself to madness, he would forfeit all restraint, and then the human warriors and beasts coveting the Mountain-and-River Seal inheritance and the Azure Crystal Lotus on his body would find him all too easily.

He wiped the gore and pale brain mash from his hands, and in a heartbeat he vanished from sight. He needed to find a pool or a lake quickly—an outlet for the Azure Crystal Lotus to the serpent-drake. Time was almost spent. Xiaohei’s injuries would only hold out for ten days, and this was already the fifth.

Toward evening on the sixth day, a blood-smeared, spirit-ravaged figure emerged from a hollow in an ancient tree.

It was Luo Hao, who had been circling this same ancient woodland for nearly a day. In that single day he had endured the life of a lifetime, each hour harder than the last.

“Ghh—”

Luo Hao’s face was white and terrible; without the rasping breath still wheezing through his nose, he would have looked little different from a corpse. He spat out backflowing blood and did not dare to stop for even a heartbeat.

Half an hour earlier he had collided with the Black Kiao King. By the sudden rise in strength granted by the Dragon-Hidden Eight Steps and the Burning-Blood Arts, he had only barely escaped the calamity.

“No way I can keep running blindly like this. I’ll be trapped eventually. The Blackwater Tarn is nearby—I need to reach it at once.”

As soon as the thought struck, he forced himself onward.

“Bloodstains here!”

Just as Luo Hao had taken only a few breaths to depart, dozens of black-clad human warriors appeared at the tree hollow he had just left. Every one of them radiated a roaring blood aura. In a group of that size, their realm was unquestionably the Blood-Gathering Stage; by now even third-tier demons roamed the center of the Tiancang range, and warriors of the Qi-Spirit Stage dared not step this deep.

“Towards the Blackwater Tarn. Send word to Brother Yang and the Hall Master at once—let them lie in wait!”

The black-clad warrior barked at his companion. A disciple heard and dropped out of line instantly.

“Go. We’ll follow.”

Another wave of human warriors arrived moments later. Their leader glanced at the blood trail and turned back. “Tell the others. Target: the Blackwater Tarn.”

The Blackwater Tarn was merely the watering place for many beasts in the middle of the range, nothing miraculous about it. Today, however, it was no ordinary place.

“Rustle—”

Shuffling through pain and haste, Luo Hao finally reached the tarn. He scanned its surroundings with weary eyes. Only when he was sure there was no obvious sign did he drag his shattered frame out from the old forest’s shadow, staggering forward step by heavy step, as if each foot carried a thousand pounds.

“Hm?”

After only two meters, a tremor ran through him. Blackwater Tarn so silent—no insect chirp, not even a wingbeat—wrapped him in a dead stillness so complete the air seemed sharpened to a blade.

“Come out.”

His own voice came cold and flat. Yet when danger had been upon him, he somehow steadied. He had known, all along, that he was already in an ambush.

A savage, domineering laugh crashed into his ears.

“Haha! Ha ha ha!”

Blood taste surged into his nose and mouth at once. The newcomer’s strength was plainly beyond what he could resist.

“Luo Hao. Excellent. Excellent. Hand over the inheritance and the Azure Crystal Lotus, and I will gladly let you join my Ten Thousand Demons Sect.”

So he said as a man in black robes appeared above the void.

His robe drifted and rippled as he floated over, cold and superior; cold, forest-dark eyes burned with a glacial severity. It was a deathly crisis—an impossible one to resist.

One glance at that black-robed figure made Luo Hao’s marrow shiver. Even in his peak, he could not defeat such a man.

He needed to find a way out at once; that was all he could think.

From above, with a faint curl of his mouth, the black-robed man spoke. “Kid, I know you have a secret method that lets you cross cracks in the void for a short while. You can try now—if you still can.”

“Form it!”

No sooner had he said it than another voice rose from behind Luo Hao. At that sound, the murderous stillness in his eyes flared again and he twisted back, teeth grinding. “Yang Li!”

“Hum…”

Unnatural formation sigils flickered across the void. For a moment, Luo Hao felt out of place against the surrounding aether, as if reality itself did not quite fit him. A hundred paces away, Yang Li stood in black, eyes full of killing intent. Behind him stood dozens of disciples of the Ten Thousand Demons Sect.

Again Luo Hao fixed his gaze on the figure in the air and said, “Who are you?”

“One of the Ten Thousand Demons Sect. Master of Earth Demons Hall—Dian Qingtang.”

“I’ve never heard that name.”

At once, after Dian Qingtang spoke, Luo Hao gave him a cold, almost playful smile, then spoke a line that made everyone nearby almost retch.

“Whelp-like brat. You have no right to speak so disrespectfully to your Hall Master!”

The Ten Thousand Demons Sect was formed of ten demon halls; each hall’s head served as Hall Master, and by strength they ranked them. Dian Qingtang was the master of the Earth Hall, eighth among the ten.

“He is your Hall Master. He means nothing to me.”

Even wounded to the marrow, Luo Hao did not flinch. Instead he fixed the protesting disciple with a hard stare: “If you’re not satisfied, then fight. But a cur like you has no qualification even to die by my hand!”

“You—”

The disciple, stunned as if he'd swallowed a dead fly, froze for a breath, then surged, his soul-force erupting like a volcano. He hurled himself forward, prepared to end Luo Hao here and now.

“You’re no match for him.”

Yang Li lifted a hand and halted him immediately. He clearly carried weight among the sect disciples; the man stepped back at once.

One step, and Yang Li’s smile turned razor-thin. “Luo Hao, I must admit… at a time like this you are still this calm. I see no chance of making you quietly give up the inheritance and the Crystal Lotus. Yet once you die, all of it belongs to me and my Ten Thousand Demons Sect.”

“Is that so? I think otherwise.”

A strange smile spread across Luo Hao’s face.

The next instant, dozens of masked figures burst from the ancient woodland, and a voice rang out:

“Dian Qingtang, your sect has an enormous appetite. You want both the inheritance and the Azure Crystal Lotus—how do you not fear overfilling your stomach?”

“Mm?”

Dian Qingtang’s brow tightened. “You bark without showing yourself, hiding your face. Why not reveal who you are?”

“When my time to appear comes, I will appear openly. No need for baiting tricks. What one can seize, the worthy shall take. Whoever wrests the inheritance and treasures from Luo Hao, I will reward heavily.”

“Kill!”

With that command, the air erupted in clashing intent. Qi flashed across the dark like lightning, tossing up storm-swept fury. Dozens surged forward like starving tigers to pounce.

“Disciples of the Ten Thousand Demons: strike! Whoever kills Luo Hao—whether alive or dead—will receive direct spirit infusion from the Hall Master himself.”

At Dian Qingtang’s order, the sect disciples moved. Neither he nor the unseen stranger entered the fray. Clearly, the two powers were testing one another at a distance.

“Boom!”

Soul-force surged and crashed, and Luo Hao, squeezed from both sides by the mad assault, had no retreat left. There was only the way of one final battle.

“Hrrr!”

He roared. His fist flew like a dragon. In one descending stroke it became a dragon swallowing forward, and the disciples rushing him were blown back.

“Kill!”

His blows came hard and merciless, relentless as a storm. The air behind them screamed with fury like a tiger’s roar; strike after strike, unbroken.

“Tigers descend the mountain!”
“Tiger King, Salute the Moon!”
“The Tiger Roars in the Woods!”
“Tiger Upholds Heaven!”
“White Tiger Steps on the Sun!”

In this hour of life and death, Luo Hao grew all the more composed. He unleashed five forms of the End-times Tiger Method in succession, each blow like a panicked, thunderous roar, unstoppable, holding the Ten Thousand Demons disciples at bay. Oddly, the masked disciples seemed already to know exactly which five forms he would use.

“Whoosh—”

Their figures crossed and shifted; dense phantoms flickered before Luo Hao’s eyes in dizzying succession.

“Crack!”

Suddenly an immense field of stars unfolded among those illusions. In the next breath, countless stars seemed to fall. The sky itself broke apart, pouring into a storm of fire meteors that wrapped around Luo Hao.

“Ziwei Pavilion—Extinguish the Starlight!”

A cometary rain of hellish fire slammed down, swallowing Luo Hao in an instant. Great rivers of heat erupted. Countless tongues of flame snapped and devoured, and even the surrounding void seemed to catch fire.

“Clang! Clang! Clang!”

High purple light surged. The Bell of the Ten Thousand Demons pealed. As Yang Li shattered Luo Hao’s crushing fist with the bell’s blast, the image of Luo Hao swallowed by the meteoric blaze was seared into his sight.

Such power was catastrophic: even a practitioner of the Heavenly-Strength realm would be grievously wounded by a strike like that, let alone Luo Hao, already battered to near ruin. Though he had not died by his own hand, the needle in his heart had at last been pulled out.

“Whoosh—”

A wrong wind tore through the air. Every flame-jaw convulsed. The temperature dropped at once, and a sharp cold slid over the forest, making every limb shiver.

In the heart of that devastating meteor storm, a flickering mass of black vapour appeared. Within it, Luo Hao’s face emerged.

It was a face gone to bloody ruin. Flame had burned him nearly to cinder; he was drenched in blood, and through the blackened flesh, white bones jutted like glinting thorns.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! This is the sect I once dwelt in. This is the sect I once dreamed of! How laughable!”

A drop of crimson liquid fell from his eyes—a blood-red bead, whether tear or blood none could tell.

Exhausted eyes were slowly taken over by darkness. Even as the blue crystal in his chest shone as brightly as it could, it could no longer suppress the dragon-demon force within him.

“How can mere demonhood matter?”

With an ancient roar, darkness flooded outwards. An eternal sea of demon-black spread into the world again. Within that sea of chaos, the last sliver of clarity in Luo Hao’s eyes vanished. He lifted his head to the sky and howled, a sound vast even beyond a dragon’s cry.

“What is this?”

Dian Qingtang, who had watched below, flinched in astonishment. His eyes filled with black shadow. Even Yang Li, who had believed Luo Hao surely dead, was shaken—such a terrifying comet shower had not been survived by any ordinary man.

“Bang!”

The colossal fire-meteor, roaring like a beast, was shattered apart by the sound. Its raging tongues of flame scattered and dissolved. Luo Hao’s blood-soaked, blurred body rose slowly from the ruin, while a dark sea of demon force swelled and lifted around him.