Run!
Elder Zhao gasped desperately, his lungs feeling as though they had been quenched in ice. Every breath was a needle of bone-chilling, searing agony.
He stumbled through the ebony corridor, his once-pristine white robes now in tatters. Along the way, he knocked over countless precious jade ornaments, scattering shards of porcelain across the floor—the picture of otherworldly grace entirely shattered.
Deep within his spiritual core, the Pure Yang Golden Core—the product of over three hundred years of bitter cultivation—throbbed violently, screaming a final, desperate warning.
The ambient spiritual energy was as thick and sluggish as mud. A suffocating, deathly aura gripped his throat.
Bang!
Hurling himself into his secret chamber, he slammed the stone door shut behind him. The internal gears ground together, locking it tight.
Elder Zhao roared, unleashing his true essence without restraint. The energy surged wildly into the eye of the defensive array, and instantly the chamber lit up as bright as day. Dozens of high-grade, golden warding talismans floated into the air, blazing with brilliant light.
This pure Yang energy should have vaporized a thousand vengeful spirits in an instant, had they dared to breach it.
No evil entity could possibly break through this.
It was impossible...
The golden talisman nearest the window soundlessly flickered out.
There was no explosion, nor the slightest backlash of dark energy. The ward's golden light simply vanished, turning into a dull scrap of paper that fluttered listlessly to the floor.
Then the second, the third...
A biting chill rolled into the room, swallowing the remaining light inch by inch. Elder Zhao's eyes turned bloodshot as he frantically activated his Spirit-Eye technique. His vision sharpened instantly, rendering every speck of floating dust crystal clear.
Yet, within the sweep of his divine sense, there was nothing. No living breath, no demonic presence. Total emptiness.
And yet, right there in the shadow of the writing desk, a slender figure wrapped in a hooded black robe suddenly materialized.
"Look at him!" a voice screamed frantically in the depths of his consciousness.
But the moment his gaze brushed the edge of the hood, his mind took a heavy blow. A wave of overwhelming vertigo crashed over him. Though his eyes saw a figure plain as day, his spiritual sense reeled in absolute chaos—one moment it perceived nothing but an empty corner, the next, a pile of old clothes.
Seeing with the eyes, yet empty to the soul. To look any longer was to plunge into an abyss.
"What are you?!" All of the elder's lofty dignity was gone, replaced by a terrified shriek.
The dark figure did not answer. It merely swayed.
Disregarding everything else, Zhao poured all three hundred years of his refined essence into his jade greatsword. Gales howled, tearing through the air as he brought the blade down in a crushing strike!
But the blade passed through the figure as if it were nothing but smoke.
The devastating weight of the blow struck nothing. His momentum spent, with no time to recover his footing, he stumbled forward.
In that brief moment his chest was left wide open, the temperature in the chamber plummeted. His breath turned to frost.
Black sleeves billowed, and a pale hand reached out soundlessly.
The surrounding shadows writhed like living things, suddenly coalescing into a jet-black scythe that radiated the chilling aura of the underworld.
There was no wind, no sound, and not a shred of vitality.
Before he could even channel his energy to protect his meridians, the scythe passed through his chest—as effortlessly as a hand slipping into a pocket.
There was no blood, nor any pain. Only a faint, brittle crack echoed from the depths of his soul.
The cultivation foundation, memories, and soul he had so proudly built over three centuries were cleanly severed by the blow.
Even his karmic ties to reincarnation were stripped away and utterly erased.
His Golden Core, once as brilliant as a blazing sun, instantly flickered out. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor.
Before his consciousness plunged into absolute darkness, an absurd thought flashed through his mind:
This thing is not human, nor demon, nor beast. It is not even alive... It is the end of days. It is the absolute end of all things.
Thud!
His forehead struck the agarwood desk with a heavy thud. A wisp of gray, decaying death Qi leaked from his lips, dissolving silently into the plush, expensive carpet.
The black hood slid back, revealing the pale face of a young man
"Phew..."
Xie Ren exhaled slowly.
The suffocating, terrifying pressure from moments ago evaporated instantly. His shoulders slumped, revealing a bone-deep exhaustion he could no longer hide.
With a practiced flick of his wrist, the giant scythe didn't disperse. Instead, he used its blunt, dark blade to hook the decaying, pale-yellow remnants of the soul, dragging it into his left sleeve.
As the remnant soul dissolved along his icy veins, a nauseating, greasy sensation rose in his throat. Finally, a bitter, chalky aftertaste settled at the back of his tongue.
"Blegh..." He spat a mouthful of black saliva to the side, landing right on the room's most expensive white jade ornament.
"What rotten luck."
Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he grumbled in a low voice, "Devouring these old cultivation monsters is always a nightmare. They leave your mouth tasting of burnt hair and cheap incense. Downing pills day in and day out... their very souls are pickled in the fumes of furnace fire and saltpeter."
As the last trace of death Qi dissipated, the scythe quietly melted back into the shadows.
Silence reclaimed the chamber. Aside from the cold corpse on the floor, there was only a frail figure that looked as if a gust of wind could knock it over.
The moment the scythe dissolved, the adrenaline keeping him upright vanished, leaving him utterly hollowed out. Xie Ren's knees buckled, and he nearly collapsed right next to the corpse.
Without the scythe's suppression, the bone-chilling cold surged back, invading his limbs like a violent tide. His fingers turned a bruised purple and grew so stiff he could barely bend them. He gasped, instinctively pulling his hands deep into his sleeves to grope for his small sleeve-warmer.
It was ice cold. The charcoal inside had died out an hour ago.
Of course. When it rains, it pours.
He looked out the window. The late-night winter wind was whistling through the cracks, cutting his face like knives.
An overwhelming wave of exhaustion hit him, bringing with it a searing, dry ache in his throat.
He had an hour at most to get back to the servant quarters of the White Heron Medical Sect, purge the sickening death Qi from his system, and down a massive pot of hot pear tea. Otherwise, at tomorrow morning's roll call in the apothecary, he'd probably cough his lungs out.
Besides, the supervisor already had it out for him, constantly sneering at him as a sickly freeloader and looking for any excuse to dock his measly monthly allowance.
To hell with the war between good and evil, and to hell with immortal cultivation. Filling his stomach was the only thing that mattered right now.
He didn't waste another second looking at the old monster's face. Crouching down, Xie Ren slipped his thin, practiced fingers toward the waist of the shriveled corpse.
A heavy storage pouch, pulsing with defensive runes, slid into his palm.
He weighed it in his hand. The satisfying heft of it made the corners of his chapped lips twitch upward. The entire life's savings of a Golden Core cultivator—this risk had been worth it after all.
He tucked the pouch securely inside his robes against his bare skin. Pulling his tattered hood tight, he forced the last trace of death Qi back into the depths of his spiritual core. His spine slouched once more, the cold sharpness in his eyes vanishing instantly. In the blink of an eye, he was back to his usual sickly, submissive self.
Stepping forward, he slipped silently into the thick fog outside the window.
Dawn was breaking.
A low-life apothecary servant had to get back to hauling water and doing chores once the sun came up.
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