Aotian watched in disbelief as the old man completely transformed into a dark and bizarre creature, as if all the coloration of his body had been replaced by black ink.
At that point, even the storage ring on the being's hand seemed to have been corrupted, and with a light explosion, it split in half, while various items flew upward, soon also being overtaken by impurities and losing their effects.
The more he saw it, the more frightened Aotian became.
'What the hell is going on?! Why did the impurities turn a person into something similar to a Shadow Beast?! And they're even corrupting and destroying items at an insane speed!'
His multiple minds froze for an instant as they processed the new information, while he observed, from within the earth and completely motionless, the old man on the surface lose all life in his eyes.
Even the sclera of his eyes was swallowed by shadow, leaving only a trace of carmine in the pupils, the last color left in a body wholly corrupted.
'So this is how Shadow Beasts are born! I thought they were a special race, born adapted to impurities, but they were probably just normal creatures that used to be spiritual beasts and were polluted by impurities…'
'But this is absurd! I've never heard of someone turning into a monster due to the accumulation of impurities, whether in this life or the other.'
'At most, there were those xianxia I read where people kind of turned into zombies after sinking too deeply into the Dao. There are also cases of going mad and dying because of heart demons.'
'But impurities never caused any of that nor had anything to do with it. They were always just a common and annoying pollution, not something corruptive…'
Aotian frowned even more as he realized he should not use his previous view of the world to judge things so lightly.
Staring at the creature, he stored the image before him—and the warning it carried—deep in his heart.
'It doesn't matter now. The important thing is not to allow any avatar to be polluted. I don't know what would happen if that occurred, whether it would harm me and my avatars or if it would simply create a monster capable of using special abilities. In any case, I can't let that happen. If necessary, I need to be prepared to explode the avatar at the last moment and avoid such an outcome.'
He thought with focus and prepared to leave, and also to ask the system if it had any information, but at that moment, the former old man, now a dark being, turned his face exactly toward where he was.
'Huh?!'
Aotian's eyes widened as the being began to run madly and punch the ground, digging and advancing toward him.
'He found me?!'
He thought, incredulous, and quickly moved to another spot, imagining it might be a coincidence.
Unfortunately, as if it could see him, the being changed direction and followed him, piercing through the soil like an experienced mole.
The more this happened, the more frightened Aotian became.
'How can he find me?! His energy fluctuations are only at the Soul Formation level. My techniques should conceal me!'
He began to think frantically with his multiple minds, trying to find the reason.
Aotian was not afraid of that monster, but rather of what it meant for it to be able to find him.
Dodging, he was basically acting out a game of cat and mouse, while at the same time incessantly searching for the cause of the situation. But while doing so, he accidentally attracted two nearby Shadow Beasts, which also, somehow, found his presence and pursued him relentlessly.
That was when he finally discovered the reason.
'It's the impurities that invaded my body! They're finding me through them!'
Aotian's eyes widened in shock as he felt the fierce impurities in his body, which were trying to invade madly, vibrating lightly as if attracting more of their kind to join the fight.
'Are these still impurities?!'
Gaping, he consumed more energy and mercilessly expelled those impurities from his body completely. Then, he changed locations again and, this time, those corrupted monsters completely lost his trail.
Hiding in another place, he watched them begin to wander aimlessly, as if they had completely forgotten about him. Aotian scratched his head helplessly as he saw his energy reserves drop even faster as he prevented any impurities from entering his body.
He pulled out a high-level spirit stone from his storage ring to recover, but as soon as it appeared, the few impurities inside it began to vibrate and soon attracted a large amount of impurities, which in mere moments devoured all the spiritual energy, completely blackening the stone.
Aotian's mouth twitched as he looked at the spirit stone, which now looked more like a piece of charcoal.
'It seems the impurities here are not special, but are under the effect of something, and that's why they're behaving so strangely, since even the impurities in my stone are acting this way.'
Frowning and pondering, he observed the stone in his hand, now filled with impurities that seemed to sense the energy in his palm, beginning to actively struggle to invade his body.
Aotian quickly dropped it to the ground and shook his hand, expelling the impurities that had entered.
That brief contact was enough for the nearby Shadow Beasts to turn their heads in his direction, but with the break in contact, they once again dispersed their attention.
'How troublesome. I can quickly isolate the impurities from my body, but I can't isolate the impurities inside the stone before it attracts more.'
'If I weren't afraid of this incarnation dying and revealing the perfect spirit stones, I wouldn't have avoided letting it carry some. With them being completely pure, I could replenish my energy and avoid attracting the attention of the impurities. But there's no use crying over spilled milk…'
He shook his head helplessly, watching his energy slowly but steadily decrease as he prevented any impurities from entering, unable to replenish much.
The spiritual energy in the air was so laden with impurities that he ended up spending more energy purifying it for use than simply maintaining his current state of gradual loss.
And that made Aotian deeply furrow his brows.
'No, staying like this isn't a solution. If I let the impurities enter, I can refine them more easily and with less expenditure than by not letting them in, and at the same time I can replenish my energy. But letting them in means becoming visible to the eyes of the Shadow Beasts, which implies fighting and spending even more energy…'
He fell into thought, but deep down he had already made his decision.
Taking a deep breath, he suddenly emerged from the earth. In his hand, a black sword rested loosely.
In his body, the impurities were once again allowed to enter, but there they were purified, and pure, clean energy was fed back into his dantian.
Even so, with them present in his body, the shadow creatures could easily sense him.
And as expected, immediately, the two Shadow Beasts and the corrupted old man looked at him in unison, then, without hesitation, charged like maddened beasts in his direction, with pure destructive desire in their black and carmine eyes.
Aotian did not flee this time, nor did he mobilize his energy to attack.
He simply walked forward, the grip on his sword growing firmer.
When the first beast, resembling a leopard, approached and leaped at him, with paws and claws thrusting toward him, Aotian twisted his body, and with a flash of his sword, black claws flew into the air.
Taking a swift step forward, like a shadow, he passed beneath the beast, as if everything were moving in slow motion, and, with a slash, his blade ferociously tore through the creature's chest, spilling blood and internal organs black as ink, which exuded a nauseating stench.
Without stopping, inertia still carrying the beast forward as it collapsed to the ground, Aotian stomped violently, cracking the earth. With the muscles of his leg coiling like a spring, he shot forward like an arrow toward the next attacking beast.
His sword was like a flash, and before the beast could react, its head flew upward with a spray of blood.
At that moment, the old man arrived from behind, ambushing him, but Aotian, as if he had eyes on his back, leaped, avoiding the creature's grab, and, with a somersault in the air, swung his sword and split the old man's head in half.
Landing softly on the ground, while the creature's body fell behind him, Aotian adjusted himself slightly and then walked toward the first beast, which, even with its chest split open, was still crawling toward him, leaving behind a trail of blood like pitch, as if it feared neither pain nor death, although its short, painful growls showed that it still reacted to pain.
Standing before it, without hesitation or waiting for it to gather strength to attack, he thrust the sword into the creature's forehead, destroying its brain.
Only then did it finally become motionless, as the breath of life, or whatever its previous state had been, dissipated.
Pulling out the blade and flicking it swiftly to the side, getting rid of the foul-smelling, impurity-covered blood, Aotian finally had time to investigate.
Walking to the old man's body nearby, he crouched down, observing it with a furrowed brow.
'The "quality" of the impurities in the old man does not exceed his own former realm. It appears that the impurities' nature—seeking to invade energy of the same level—remains unchanged. In the Shadowfallen Burial Mountain, it seems that higher-level impurities invading were actually an effect of the protective talisman we received upon entering, provoking this. It was planned to act that way.'
He blinked, scratching his chin, and after observing the corpses a bit more, he did not obtain many clues.
Aotian then stored them in his storage ring, where, separated by an independent space, the internal impurities would not attract external impurities. Perhaps they would even lose the fierce nature they had acquired while being in that small world.
As for why his own storage ring remained intact without attracting anything, it was because it had been created by himself using his powerful inheritances, so it basically had no impurities. Thus, as long as Aotian hid it and protected it with his spiritual energy, everything would be fine.
But his concern was not with that right now, but rather with everything happening around him.
'Something very wrong is going on. I need to find out what is making these impurities act like this,' he thought, with a furrowed brow.
When he left the Shadowfallen Burial Mountain back then, he carried Shadow Beast corpses with him and indeed tried to analyze them with Bao Hui's treasure analysis ability, but since the corrupted beast was not considered a treasure at all, the attempt failed and he unfortunately obtained no information.
At the time, he did not think much about it and ended up forgetting, merely purifying and destroying the useless corpses after studying them a little.
But who would have thought this could involve something so serious? Otherwise, he would not have given up studying those creatures so quickly.
This time, as soon as he returned, he intended to act differently and diligently study those beings, so as not to be so unprepared again.
Sighing, he resumed walking through that gloomy world with his sword in hand, while thinking about his endless list of tasks, which never seemed to shrink.
His current plan was to conserve as much energy as possible to avoid being polluted, while killing all shadow beasts and enemies in his path with his powerful physical body, which could finally show its usefulness.
But he needed to be cautious. Alone, with only a Soul Formation realm incarnation in a place where that level was merely the foundation, this would probably be the most difficult fight Aotian had faced since beginning his career as a cultivator.
Of course, he also needed to remain alert so as not to be found and hunted by a Seventh-Level beast, which he believed certainly existed in the depths of that world, because if that happened, he knew he would not have even a chance to flee, much less to fight.
'Well, it looks like it's time for my Missions Pavilion to work overtime again…'