The Demon Lord's Invasion

Chapter 17: By the Green River

In the Demon Realm, where the heavens grew dark, the earth dimmed, and fragments of Chaos reigned in all directions. Qiong Sang looked at the completely unconscious Jiang Tang, shook his head with a sigh, and with a flick of his divine sense, formed a fine thread that slowly burrowed into the center of Jiang Tang’s brow. The next moment, Jiang Tang suddenly sat up with a start. First, he let out a “Wah!” and vomited a mouthful of black blood; then, looking down at the indentation in his chest that hadn’t yet healed, he wondered to himself just how much power that old man’s final two punches had contained. “Twelve layers of restrictions, heh.” Qiong Sang picked up a storage pouch, let out a cold chuckle, and opened it in an instant, spilling the corpses of demon beasts and insects all over the ground. Glancing at the other two storage pouches, Qiong Sang didn’t rush to open them. Instead, he manipulated his demonic energy to devour the corpses of the beasts and insects, then channeled the demonic energy extracted from them into Jiang Tang’s body. “Injuries like these, while not fatal to someone as demon-possessed as you, require a massive expenditure of demonic energy to repair your physical body. If you’d taken just two more punches, you would’ve definitely died,” Qiong Sang muttered. “Cough!” Jiang Tang coughed, spat out a mouthful of black blood, and took several deep breaths before speaking: “I know full well how powerful a Spirit-Martial Realm physical cultivator is—it’s absolute dominance. However, that old man is far too naive. While the power of the stars is indeed terrifying, without the support of a powerful cultivation technique and a solid foundation, the path of cultivation is fraught with difficulties. Otherwise, he wouldn’t still be stuck at the late stage of the Spirit-Martial Realm at his age.” “Even so, killing you right now would be a piece of cake. Fortunately, he’s venting his anger rather than harboring a genuine intent to kill; otherwise, all he’d need to do is shatter your skull and destroy your spiritual sea, and you’d be dead for sure.” After Qiong Sang finished speaking, he looked at Dongfang, who was busy fiddling with something not far away, his eyes betraying deep fear. “Who exactly is that monk?” “A strange man!” Jiang Tang replied with a bitter smile. Finally, he added, “He isn’t really a monk—the little novice monk puppet was made for him by me. As for his identity, I don’t know either. Anyway, he was trained by the state; he was sent to some place at the age of eight to conduct research ever since. As for how he died, he says he doesn’t know.” “The government? Which country?” Qiong Sang was clearly even more confused. “You don’t know? Then how did you find out about the monk?” Jiang Tang was puzzled as well. Qiong Sang seemed to realize something and said, “It seems your understanding of monks is limited to the Nine Provinces. Have you heard of the Buddhist Realm?” “Uh… I’m not interested.” Jiang Tang didn’t want to talk to this guy—he hated it when people thought he was ignorant! In this world, one cannot sense the passage of time. Jiang Tang had no idea how long he’d been sitting in meditation until his injuries had almost completely healed, at which point he opened his eyes. When he opened his eyes, Jiang Tang was taken aback—Qiong Sang was gone, and Dongfang had somehow managed to gather a pile of cultivators’ corpses. “Did you kill them?” Jiang Tang walked over, asking curiously. “I picked them up,” Dongfang replied, placing a severed lower leg into a large earthenware jar. Jiang Tang leaned in to take a look out of curiosity—and immediately regretted it! Inside the earthenware jar were swarms of tiny bone spiders, each about the size of a thumb. Instead of being white, they were jet-black all over—clearly, they had been corrupted by demonic energy! The severed lower leg turned to white bone the moment it hit the water, sending a chill down Jiang Tang’s spine. “You didn’t feed them with your essence blood, so they hatched without any humanity—and on top of that, you let them become demonic,” Jiang Tang said irritably. “They’re test subjects; I won’t let them live long,” Dongfang Wujing said coldly before getting back to work. “I feel like this demon of mine is a fake!” Jiang Tang shook his head and sighed. “I feel like this Ancient Fierce Beast of mine is fake, too.” As Qiong Sang’s voice trailed off, he suddenly floated over to Jiang Tang’s side and continued, “The Netherfire Ants are about to crawl up to the surface of the sand with the black box. You’ll be able to get out in a moment.” “What about the queen ant?” Jiang Tang suddenly asked. “I don’t know. They were probably killed by the Extreme Yin Twins. I’ve raised them for so many years, hoping they’d evolve into true demon ants and run rampant across The Continent. But after twenty thousand years, they’re still the same. Oh well, oh well.” “Oh, right!” Qiong Sang suddenly remembered something and looked at Jiang Tang. “You really need to be careful from now on. The young man I killed was a descendant of the Shenwu Emperor. That Shenwu Emperor was truly a remarkable figure—ten thousand years ago, it was he who absorbed ninety percent of the demonic energy here, advanced to the Intent Martial Realm, and formed his Demon丹. However, I imagine he was very concerned about his demonic transformation being discovered. All these years, no one even knew he was a Mo Xiu. Since you’ve killed his descendant, you’ll inevitably become a mortal enemy of the Shenwu Empire.” “Don’t the descendants of Mo Xiu have demonic blood in their veins?” Jiang Tang asked, furrowing his brow. “They do,” Qiong Sang nodded and continued, “I suspect he must have had a child before coming to the Sand Sea. After all, back then, the Sand Sea was far more terrifying than it is now—no one dared to venture in without reaching the Spirit Martial Realm. Given that he was thirty years old, it’s quite normal for him to have had a child. But afterward, he probably didn’t dare to have any more children; otherwise, the Shenwu Empire wouldn’t exist!” “Is he still alive, then?” Jiang Tang’s question sounded somewhat terrifying, but he knew such people existed—after all, there was an ancient monster in Nikuang Mountain who had lived for over ten thousand years! However, Qiong Sang shook his head and said, “He’s dead—he died five thousand years ago. Perhaps you’ve heard the rumor: Beihai Ice Lotus Mountain vanished into thin air overnight. Afterward, the sea demons became demonic and triggered a beast tide. Others didn’t know the cause and assumed a spatial rift leading to the Demon Realm had appeared on the seabed, but I’m certain it was because, after his death, his physical body couldn’t control the demonic energy. Not only did it blow up Beihai Ice Lotus Mountain, but it also turned the nearby sea demons into demons.” “What kind of cultivation level did he have? How could he have blown Ice Lotus Mountain to smithereens?” Jiang Tang was stunned. He’d heard this legend since he was a child, and he’d even seen a map from five thousand years ago—Ice Lotus Mountain was marked as enormous on it; if scaled to Earth, it would cover the entire land of Japan! “I only know he was very powerful; exactly how powerful, I don’t know.” Qiong Sang shook his head and sighed, “He shouldn’t have died. The reason he died was because he resisted the demonic energy. Little Jiang Zi, you must remember this: once you’ve accepted it, you must not abandon it. Otherwise, the fate of the Shenwu Emperor will befall you!” Qiong Sang’s eyes—formed from the condensation of his divine soul—flared like dancing flames, a deep,幽 blue, as if wounded, as if moved by some deeper feeling. He continued, murmuring, ““Through you, I’ve finally come to realize that a Mo Xiu like you is a True Demon—which is different from falling into demonic possession. Those who fall into demonic possession are as numerous as the hairs on a cow; it happens in the blink of an eye, resulting in a complete loss of reason. And the so-called Mo Xiu cultivation techniques are nothing but distortions—either evil or demonic. The techniques of a True Demon can only be created from scratch, following your own will. Cultivate however you wish, as long as you firmly believe in your own path, you may very well have the chance to reclaim what is rightfully yours!” “The Way?” Jiang Tang remained silent for a long time, as if he had gained some insight, but in the end, he merely shook his head. When Jiang Tang emerged into the vast desert, the blinding sunlight made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open. Accustomed to using Yuan Power to see in the darkness, he suddenly felt a bit drained when he stopped using it. This adventure had saved his life; now that all his blood had been replaced with demonic blood, his physical body would no longer deteriorate as rapidly as before. However, he had not yet obtained the Spirit Marrow. Spiritual marrow is not the bone marrow found in medicine; rather, like the essence of blood, it is the refined essence of bone marrow cultivated through cultivation. Once extracted, it cannot be regenerated. Without spiritual marrow, he would never be able to reach the Qi-Martial Realm. No matter how strong or resilient his physical body might be, when facing a practitioner of the Spirit-Martial Realm, his bones would still be as brittle as paper. “At least I’ll have plenty of time to search for it in the future,” Jiang Tang thought to himself. Shaking off his despondency, he glanced around, then immediately summoned his wolf golem and rode it toward Dongfang. The Green River flows from Beichuan in the northwest into the Sand Sea. After winding through nine bends and eighteen turns, it continues eastward. Jiang Tang didn’t know which of the river’s many twists and turns had come into view; he only knew that after spending so long underground, the sight of the Green River filled him with nothing but excitement! Jumping off the wolf golem and casually stowing it away, Jiang Tang leaped down the earthen slope, cheering like a fool. He ran to the banks of the Green River, cupped his hands to scoop up the water, and gulped it down more than a dozen times. “Ah, that’s refreshing!” Jiang Tang wiped his mouth, used his wet hand to toss his curly hair back, and two contented dimples appeared on his dark, youthful face. Just as Jiang Tang stood up to leave, suddenly, his whole body froze! On the banks of the Green River, amidst a sloping patch of green grass and trees, a woman dressed in snow-white robes sat by the water’s edge. A gentle breeze ruffled a few strands of her long, black hair—unbound and unadorned—slightly obscuring her breathtaking profile. Jiang Tang could see how beautiful this woman was, yet her beauty failed to touch his heart—just as when he looked at a statue of Guanyin: no matter how exquisitely carved it might be, it simply failed to evoke even a hint of beauty in him; all he felt was an instinctive sense of awe! But unlike Guanyin, in his heart, this woman was terrifying—utterly terrifying! Even with his Spirit Martial Realm spiritual perception, he had failed to sense a woman standing ten steps away—a woman who was actually upstream from him, having taken off her shoes to soak her feet! The Green River—you cannot wash your feet there, let alone swim. That is the rule—an unwritten rule of the Sand Sea! But Jiang Tang dared not speak up! “Splash!” Suddenly, a massive head emerged from the Green River—the head of a giant python. Shimmering black scales spread from its head down its neck and into the water, and its overwhelming aura caused Jiang Tang to instinctively take a step back! Earth Dragon! It was the very Earth Dragon that Li Yishang, Yuan Shangpiao, and Jiang Tang had jointly cornered into a desperate situation, forcing it to shed its physical form to advance in power! A third-tier Earth Dragon that had mastered a divine ability! It had already been formidable when it first grasped its divine ability; now, over a month later, Jiang Tang had no idea how far its mastery of that ability had advanced. “Hiss, hiss!” After the Earth Dragon’s four cold eyes swept over Jiang Tang, it flickered its tongue. Then, like a pitiful child, it rubbed its massive head against the exquisite bare feet of the woman in white, as if expressing its grievances! The woman in white said nothing; she merely turned her head toward Jiang Tang. In an instant, Jiang Tang felt a suffocating sensation in his chest! He could guarantee that if this woman’s long, center-parted hair had ten thousand strands, there would definitely be five thousand on the left and five thousand on the right. Plus, he really wanted to ask: “Did you get it straightened? Where did you get it done?” “Once I have time, I’m going to get this bowl of instant noodles straightened out too.” But he still didn’t dare ask! He just subconsciously reached up and brushed back a strand of curly hair that had fallen across his forehead. On the fair, delicate, oval face of the woman in white, her eyes—with their stark contrast of black and white—were as indifferent as water. She gazed calmly at Jiang Tang for a long time, then suddenly turned her head and stroked the Earth Dragon’s head. Instantly, the Earth Dragon transformed into a small snake and slithered along her wrist, disappearing into the wide, white sleeves of her robe. Emerald-green water trickled down the woman’s ankles, some splashing into the water, some onto the grass. Meanwhile, the woman, her bare feet as beautiful as white jade sculptures, stepped into thin air, rose gracefully, and soon transformed into a streak of light, shooting off into the sky! “Whoa! That was terrifying! It scared me so much I didn’t even dare to breathe in the black box—even though I don’t actually need to breathe!” Qiong Sang suddenly floated out, flitting back and forth beside Jiang Tang, shouting and screaming with excitement! “What’s got you so worked up?” Jiang Tang asked irritably. “Don’t be silly! I sensed it—that imperceptible flutter in her spirit when she looked at you. That emotion is… no doubt about it—she’s definitely into you!” “Holy crap!” Jiang Tang immediately shook his head from side to side. “Please don’t put ideas in my head—otherwise I’ll really start missing her!” Once before, Jiang Tang had listened to a troublemaking friend who told him that a certain girl in his class had a crush on him. From that moment on, he couldn’t stop sneaking glances at her or thinking about her. When he finally mustered the courage to find out, he discovered it had all been just a joke! Although he hated that kind of prank, that was just Jiang Tang’s nature—and now that Qiong Sang had mentioned it, he was genuinely afraid of repeating the same mistake! But Qiong Sang replied with a straight face, “Little Jiang Zi, since we’re teaming up, I won’t make fun of you. She’s very strong—you probably won’t find another like her in Xian Zong at this age—but she’s still a woman. What’s so strange about being attracted to a man?” Jiang Tang froze, turned to look at Qiong Sang, and frowned. “Are you saying she’s from Xian Zong?” “I’m very familiar with the aura of Xian Zong’s cultivation techniques—I’m absolutely certain,” Qiong Sang affirmed. Jiang Tang’s expression darkened even further, and he fell silent. At first, Qiong Sang found this a bit odd, but suddenly, it seemed as though he’d thought of something. He looked at Jiang Tang in surprise and said, “Could the person in that painting be her? She does look a bit like her! Only she isn’t quite as mature. Right, right—to unite the Human Race’s top powers, they’d first send their most gifted disciple…” “That has nothing to do with me now,” Jiang Tang coldly interrupted Qiong Sang, summoned his wolf golem, mounted it, and rode off.