The heat was a physical thing, a crushing wave that rolled off Jiang Dao in sheets, distorting the air around him. It was the lingering ghost of the Extreme Yang Divine Fire, an echo of the cataclysmic power he had unleashed. Before him, the village lay in ruins, not just broken but pulverized. He had scoured every inch of this cursed ground, his bare hands tearing through earth and stone, carving trenches three meters deep in a desperate, furious search. But there was nothing. The black-robed figure, the source of this maddening ordeal, had vanished as if it had never been.
Frustration, hot and acidic, churned in his gut. It was an impossible riddle. Where had it gone?
With a conscious act of will, he felt the immense power begin to recede. The towering, monstrous form of the Divine Fire Body unraveled, muscles deflating, the oppressive aura shrinking back into his core. In moments, he was himself again—a man of impossible physique, wrapped in the tattered rags that were all that remained of his clothes.
His gaze fell upon the still form of Linghu, the old Taoist, lying crumpled on the ground like a discarded puppet. Contempt warred with necessity. He strode over, his hand clamping onto the front of the Taoist's robes, and hauled him unceremoniously to his feet.
"Daoist Master! Wake up!" Jiang Dao's voice was a low growl. He shook the older man, not gently, and pushed a searing thread of his own Extreme Yang True Qi into Linghu's body.
The Taoist choked, his eyes flying open with a jolt of panic. He scrambled upright, his gaze wild. "What… what happened to me?" Then his eyes focused on Jiang Dao's thunderous expression, and the pieces clicked into place with dawning horror. He looked around at the devastation. "I was compromised?"
"Compromised?" Jiang Dao's voice was dangerously quiet. "It seems, Daoist Master, that I have grossly overestimated your expertise. Your supposed knowledge of evil spirits is, shall we say, lacking. I operated under the assumption that you would sense such a profound corruption. Instead, you were its puppet from God knows when. If I hadn't intervened, your corpse would be cooling on this pathetic patch of dirt."
As he spoke, a sudden, chilling thought struck him. He lunged forward, grabbed Linghu again, and ripped his collar open, exposing the man's neck. He searched for the tell-tale signs—the sutures, the unnatural seam of a replaced head. But the skin was smooth, unbroken. At least that grisly fate had been avoided.
A bitter, ashamed smile touched Linghu's lips. "Gang Leader Jiang, are you alright? Did you… Did you eliminate the entity?"
The question sent a fresh wave of irritation through Jiang Dao. He released the Taoist with a shove. "I don't know if I'll be 'alright'," he snarled. "The damn thing is gone. It dragged me into some kind of illusion, a mind-trap. We fought a war in there, and when I broke free…" He proceeded to give a terse, brutal account of the battle within the phantasmagoria, the chilling whispers, and the final, inexplicable disappearance of his foe.
When he finished, a grim silence hung between them. To prove his point, to show the Taoists the true depth of their problem, Jiang Dao let the power rise again.
It was a grotesque and terrifying spectacle. His body swelled, muscles expanding with audible creaks and groans, erupting like granite plates beneath his skin. He shot upwards, towering over eight meters tall, his skin sprouting a coat of thick, black fur as coarse as iron wire. His eyes bled from black to a smoldering, predatory red. A palpable aura of pure destruction rolled off him, a promise of absolute annihilation.
But this time, it felt different. A cold dread trickled down his spine. The familiar killing intent that accompanied the transformation was no longer a sharp, focused tool. It was a chaotic storm, a wild, bucking thing with a will of its own, whispering temptations of mindless slaughter into the depths of his soul. It was trying to seize control.
His expression hardened. He slammed his eyes shut, turning his focus inward, away from the physical world. In the vast, dark space of his mind, he began to visualize. The Heavenly Demon Chart bloomed behind his eyelids—a colossal, indistinct shadow, an abyss of pure will that radiated an authority that dwarfed all else. As this mental titan took form, the riotous, murderous urges that clawed at his consciousness were caught in its gravity, twisted, distorted, and finally, absorbed into its immense silence.
He opened his eyes, the red slowly receding. He looked down at the awestruck Taoist. "Have you ever seen a curse like this?"
Linghu's face was a mask of utter gravity, his mind clearly racing through centuries of esoteric lore. The silence stretched, thick with tension. Finally, he spoke, his voice a low, unsteady whisper. "Gang Leader Jiang… forgive my bluntness, but I fear we have stumbled upon a Thousand-Year Evil Spirit."
"A Thousand-Year Evil Spirit?" The name itself felt heavy, ancient.
"Indeed," Linghu affirmed, his gaze fixed on Jiang Dao's still-monstrous form. "No common spirit possesses such profound power. They cannot manifest in daylight, let alone weave curses of this complexity. This is the work of something ancient, something far more cunning." He took a shaky breath. "Any entity that reaches the thousand-year mark is, at its absolute weakest, at the First-Revolution God-tier. The truly ancient ones, the ones for whom there are no solutions, can rival the Evil Gods themselves. In many ways, they are worse—more patient, more deceptive, more insidious."
He explained how these horrors were born. A common spirit, through sheer longevity, could develop a true intellect. With that intellect came ambition. It would begin to consciously feed, not just on fleeting emotions, but on the deep, ambient pools of malice and resentment that stain the world. For a thousand years, it would gorge on this negativity, the hatred of generations accumulating within it until it reached a critical mass, triggering a terrifying metamorphosis.
"They are nightmares made manifest," Linghu continued, his voice trembling slightly. "Even a Sacred Weapon offers no guarantee. The very beings sealed within those weapons are often Thousand-Year spirits themselves! Pitting one against another is a gamble at best. You might be trying to kill a five-thousand-year-old entity with a three-thousand-year-old one. They are of the same cloth."
"But their most dangerous weapon," he said, meeting Jiang Dao's gaze, "is their intelligence. They are masters of deception, of misdirection. There's an old saying: 'a cunning rabbit has three burrows.' A Thousand-Year Spirit has a thousand. The entity you fought here? I would wager my life that it was nothing more than a clone, an echo left behind to test you."
Jiang Dao's brow furrowed. A clone. That explained why his Celestial Master's Divine Eye had seen nothing amiss. He hadn't been looking at the real threat, only a shadow puppet. "Then this curse… how do I break it?"
"There are only two paths," Linghu said grimly. "Either you find the creature's true body and persuade it to release you willingly… or you kill it and consume its blood essence. The power that bound you will then be yours to unbind."
Jiang Dao let out a short, harsh laugh. Persuade it? A creature born of a millennium of hatred? He had a better chance of persuading the sun to rise in the west. That left the second option: find and kill a monster that was intelligent, ancient, and a master of hiding.
"How strong do you think it really is?" Jiang Dao demanded. "If that was just a clone, what is the main body capable of?"
Linghu hesitated, organizing his thoughts. "Based on your account… the fact you were able to disperse the clone suggests the entity is newly formed. It has likely just crossed the thousand-year threshold. Its power is probably still consolidating, fluctuating somewhere between Third-Revolution Dragon-tier and First-Revolution God-tier. But that is a temporary state. The more resentment it absorbs, the faster it will grow. And its greatest strength, its cunning, is already fully developed. This village… it was never its home. It was a piece on a game board, and we walked right onto the square."
A thousand thoughts swirled in Jiang Dao's mind. A cunning rabbit. The phrase echoed, mocking his brute-force approach. This wasn't a beast to be cornered and slain; it was a ghost to be hunted. He could feel the curse, a cold parasite latched onto his soul, growing stronger every time he unleashed his power. The strength it gave was a poisoned chalice, and the price was his own sanity.
His thoughts returned to the silent, dark titan in his mind. For now, the Heavenly Demon Visualization is my only anchor.
With a great sigh, like air rushing from a punctured mountain, he willed his body to shrink. The fur receded, the monstrous muscles contracted, and he returned to his human form, standing amidst the wreckage in his ruined clothes.
"Let's go," he said, his voice flat. "The hunt for this thing will have to be a slow one."
The carriage wheels groaned a mournful rhythm on the road back to Qianyuan City. Inside, Jiang Dao was a coiled spring of tension. He had already changed into a fresh set of robes, but the filth of the encounter clung to him. His first act upon returning to the Flaming Fist headquarters was not to rest, but to summon his right-hand man, Yan Wushuang.
"I want eyes and ears everywhere," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Qianyuan City and all the surrounding territories. I want to know about anything out of the ordinary. Every strange rumor, every unexplained disappearance, every whisper of a ghost. Report it all to me, immediately."
Yan Wushuang, a man who had seen Jiang Dao face down impossible odds, felt a chill at the gravity in his leader's tone. He knew without being told that the incident at Zhang Family Village was something far beyond their usual troubles. This was a foe that had left even the unshakable Jiang Dao unsettled. He bowed sharply and left to carry out the orders, his mind already racing.
With the city-wide watch in motion, Jiang Dao turned his steps toward the constant, rhythmic heart of his operation: the armory. The oppressive heat and the percussive clang of hammer on steel were a comfort, a familiar symphony of power and creation.
Inside, the master blacksmiths, Guo Dutian and Du Feng, worked stripped to the waist, their bodies slick with sweat under the forge's infernal glow. They were hammering away at two enormous slabs of glowing metal—the nascent forms of his new sabers. Even in this rough state, their scale was absurd. Each was over seven feet long, with a blade width that resembled a sharpened door.
"Gang Leader," they grunted in unison, not breaking their rhythm.
Jiang Dao's eyes drank in the sight of the glowing steel. "Double-edge them," he commanded. "I want to be able to flip the blade over and keep fighting if one side gets chipped."
The old Taoist Linghu, who had followed him like a lost dog, finally spoke up. "Gang Leader Jiang, as the blades near completion, you should consider feeding them your blood. A great deal of it. It is said that the blood essence of a powerful warrior can grant a weapon a spirit of its own. The stronger the warrior, the greater the awakening."
Jiang Dao's head tilted. The idea resonated with the half-forgotten legends of his past life. Blood-forging. Anointing a blade to make it an extension of one's own soul. It made a brutal kind of sense.
Without a word, he extended his hand over the anvil. He focused his will, and a thick, ruby-red droplet of blood welled up on the tip of his finger. Then another, and another, until a steady stream pattered onto the incandescent metal of the two sabers.
Hiss! Sizzle!
The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. The moment his blood touched the steel, the sabers flared with a violent, crimson light, glowing with an intensity that forced the blacksmiths to shield their eyes. An almost sentient heat pulsed from the metal. Guo Dutian and Du Feng exchanged a wide-eyed look and renewed their hammering with a frenzy, the clangor rising to a deafening pitch.
It was as if Jiang Dao's blood was a catalyst. The steel seemed to become more malleable, more responsive, shaping itself under the hammers with an unnatural speed. Intricate, web-like patterns began to emerge on the surface of the blades, and a faint, almost imperceptible aura of malice began to emanate from them. They were no longer just tools; they were sleeping predators, dreaming of slaughter in their cradle of fire.
Just as Jiang Dao was becoming lost in the forging process, he was interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps. His lieutenant, Xiang An, rushed into the armory, bowing deeply.
"Gang Leader, we've acquired most of the herbs you requested for the Dragon Blood Body Tempering Art. But two items remain elusive. We've checked every apothecary and esoteric merchant in the city. No one has even heard of them."
"Which two?" Jiang Dao asked, his focus snapping back to the present.
"Dragon's Beard Grass," Xiang An reported, "and Severe Blood Stone."
Jiang Dao repeated the names, tasting their foreignness on his tongue. He glanced at Linghu. "Daoist Master, do these names mean anything to you?"
Linghu stroked his beard, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Severe Blood Stone… no, that name is entirely unknown to me. But Dragon's Beard Grass… yes, I have heard tales of it." He looked at Jiang Dao. "It is an exceptionally rare plant of the Yin attribute, with… peculiar cultivation needs. It grows only on the coffins of the dead, feeding on the corpse's residual life essence."
"It lives off the dead?" Jiang Dao's lip curled in distaste.
"Not just any dead," Linghu clarified. "The corpse must have been a master of a specific life-force art known as the 'Yimu Divine Art.' Only their unique essence can give rise to the grass. It's not something you can just find. The only ones I know for certain who cultivate it are one of the Thirty-Six Heavenly Mandate Royal Clans—the Old Buddha Temple."
Jiang Dao's eyes lit up with a predatory gleam. The Old Buddha Temple. One of the three great powers, he was scheduled to meet the very next day. The threads of fate were weaving themselves into a convenient tapestry.
"So, this grass grows on the coffins of all their dead monks?"
"Only those who have not achieved what they call 'life transformation and reincarnation," Linghu explained. "Their order is a strange one. It consists entirely of men, which presents an obvious problem for continuing their lineage. So, they developed a… unique solution. When a senior monk dies, a new infant will, after a time, emerge from his prepared corpse. That child is his next life."
Jiang Dao stared, momentarily stunned by the sheer, grotesque strangeness of it. "He gives birth to himself?"
"And sometimes, a particularly powerful master can produce two or three infants from his single corpse. They are all him, separate vessels for his soul. They cultivate independently, and when they reach the higher echelons of power, they merge back into a single being, shattering their limits and achieving an incredible level of strength."
The world, Jiang Dao reflected, never ceased to find new ways to be bizarre. The Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountain was one kind of madness, and this was another entirely. "And the Severe Blood Stone?" he pressed. "You're sure you've never heard of it?"
Linghu shook his head firmly. "No, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Gang Leader, names change over the centuries. What was once called a 'Severe Blood Stone' might now be known as something else entirely—it could be a common pebble for all we know. To find the truth, you would need to consult a family with truly ancient, unbroken records, like one of the great De-spiritist clans or… the Heavenly Mandate Royal Clans themselves."
Jiang Dao nodded slowly. The path was clear. His trip to Four Directions City tomorrow was no longer just a political necessity; it was now a vital step in his own quest for power.
A primal urge stirred within him. He looked at the glowing saber on the anvil, at the hammer in Du Feng's hand. He strode forward and took the heavy tool from the surprised blacksmith. The weight felt good, solid, and real.
He raised the hammer high, his own formidable power surging through his arms, and brought it down on the waiting steel.
CLANG!
The sound was like a thunderclap, sharp and absolute. With every strike, he poured his own fiery will into the blade, the mysterious patterns on its surface deepening, glowing with an inner light. He was not just forging a weapon. He was forging an answer to the Thousand-Year Spirit, hammering his own indomitable resolve into a form that could kill gods and ghosts alike. The night was long, and his work had just begun.