novelraw Chapter 259
Chapter 259
“Finally escaped.”
Wang Yu did not return to Ten Thousand Poison Town but instead detoured northwest. That direction led toward Night Jewel Prefecture, under the jurisdiction of the Blood Reversal Sect.
There was no way he could go back to the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest.
He planned to heal in Night Jewel Prefecture. Once his injuries were fully recovered, he would make an appearance near the Northern Severed Boundary Mountain Range on the western side of the prefecture.
This was meant to mislead Jin Miaoshan’s intelligence network. After all, she knew that he possessed fragments of the Heavenly Soul Sect’s inheritance. How to show himself without arousing suspicion required some finesse.
After taking two strikes from Blood Demon Ginseng, Wang Yu was badly wounded.
He needed to rest and recuperate for some time.
Now that he had escaped danger, he was about to release Snowjade and let it carry him for a while.
But unexpectedly, the Immaculate Jade Toad that he had stored in his robes suddenly croaked twice. Startled, Wang Yu took it out. Because it had absorbed too much poison from venomous beasts,
the jade-like creature had changed from white to a dark purple-black color.After this ordeal, it seemed it would soon undergo its final cocooning phase, transforming into its complete form. When that happened, with it as his guardian, ninety-nine percent of the world’s poisons would lose all effect on him.
A blessing in disguise after surviving the poisonous beast horde.
“What’s wrong?”
The Immaculate Jade Toad yawned, stretched out its tongue, and licked behind his shoulder. A green, poisonous insect mark was drawn out and swallowed by it.
Its eyes closed, and it immediately fell into a deep sleep.
Wang Yu’s expression changed.
“A tracking mark?!”
He did not know exactly when it had been planted.
After some deduction, he guessed it must have been during the battle between Yellow Springs Monastery and Blood Reversal Sect. At that time, his full attention had been fixed on the fight before him.
If someone with malicious intent had secretly placed a tracking mark upon him amid the chaos, it was not impossible he would have missed it.
“The Immaculate Jade Toad devoured poison... this must be a Core Formation poison-path cultivator.”
He quickly reached that conclusion.
At once, Wang Yu fled toward Night Jewel Prefecture. Watching the toad already asleep, its body secreting mucus as it began to cocoon, he could only feel helpless.
Of all times, it had to be now!
Against a poison-path cultivator, the toad was far more useful than even a lightning corpse. With his internal injuries unhealed, he could not unleash the full power of his tempered body.
It seemed he could only rely on his two third-rank refined corpses.
As he pondered, Wang Yu released his divine sense. From between his brows, countless blue threads of light emerged, delicately probing the condition of his chest and abdomen.
The Divine Sense Threading Technique was extremely practical. Using it now, he could carefully reposition the broken bones in his chest and tie them together with threads of divine sense.
It was like performing a precise surgery.
After half an hour of careful work, Wang Yu activated the Corpse Demon Secret Technique’s Yin Blood Pill technique. In an instant, vast amounts of corpse qi and blood essence surged, aiding his recovery.
At the same time, the divine marrow within his dragon spine began to exert its effect.
The vitality of his Vajra Body was extraordinarily tenacious. With the secret art amplifying it, his recovery speed was astonishing—much faster than he had expected. What he thought would take months could be done in a few days.
Soon, he understood why.
When Blood Demon Ginseng struck him, it had used only brute force, not its innate plant-based mana or demonic blood power.
With no foreign energy invading his body, his powerful physique was able to recover swiftly. Within three or four days, he would be completely healed.
That was one of the few bits of good news from his journey through the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest.
“Who’s there?!”
Even as he was healing, Wang Yu was flying swiftly using his Frost Moon Wings. His speed was far from slow, yet something was following close behind.
At his shout, a mass of black-green poisonous mist burst out from the trees.
On its bald head was a crookedly carved character for “Poison.”
Gray-white hair grew in a messy ring around his temples. His face was grotesquely ugly—slanted brows, mismatched eyes, a hooked nose, and lips curled outward, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth.
Even among mortals, such a freakish appearance was rare—it was ugliness at its peak.
He was thin, hunched, and leaned on a cane carved with five writhing poisonous creatures.
His tattered robe was crawling with live insects.
Wang Yu immediately realized that this was likely the one who had placed the tracking mark. He had even seen this person’s name in Listening Wind Pavilion’s intelligence records.
Ranked second among poison-path cultivators—Five Poison Old Demon, Core Formation Stage, seventh layer!
He had once wiped out an entire third-rate sect. Listening Wind Pavilion’s assessment was that his strength could rival that of the Exalted Sect’s inner sect Core Formation cultivators.
That said much about his power.
“Jie jie jie…”
“Boy, hand over the items you obtained in that ruin. This old man might consider letting you die quickly.”
“Oh?”
Wang Yu raised an eyebrow.
“You old ugly ghost, are you not afraid of Yellow Springs Monastery’s vengeance?”
Being insulted by a junior, the Five Poison Old Demon did not get angry. Instead, he let out a hoarse laugh. “Though I do not know why you think one divine art can prove your identity, your escape route clearly isn’t toward You Prefecture.”
A black centipede with fiery red stripes crawled out of his mouth and hissed at Wang Yu.
“For a rogue cultivator, words alone mean nothing. The direction you fled cannot lie. You are not one of Yellow Springs Monastery’s people!”
Wang Yu no longer bothered to argue. The old demon’s reasoning was too precise, his logic airtight, and his conviction absolute.
It seemed there would be no avoiding a fight.
“Boy, I’ll say it again. The treasure… hand it over!”
“What treasure? The Medicine King stands right there. If you truly have the ability, why not try capturing it yourself?”
“Heh, you will soon understand what it means to live a life worse than death.”
After the venomous threat, the Five Poisons Old Demon pointed his staff at Wang Yu. The Fire-Spotted Centipede slithered swiftly forward, spitting out a blazing line of fire midway through its charge.
At that very moment, the Ice Chi Flame burst forth from Wang Yu’s palm. As a third-rank spirit flame, it easily overpowered the centipede’s fire line in an instant.
The creature’s body was soon enveloped in blue flames, inch by inch crystallizing into ice, while the interior burned so fiercely that it screamed in agony.
“Ban Ban!”
The Five Poisons Old Demon cried out in shock. The staff in his hand flew into the air, transforming into a furry serpent mid-flight. Wrapped in poisonous smoke, it lunged forward with vicious force.
Wang Yu frowned slightly. Something was off.
Low-level rogue cultivators often had all sorts of shortcomings, but for the Five Poisons Old Demon to have survived and cultivated up to the seventh layer of the Core Formation stage, he must have experienced countless battles. How could such a veteran use such a crude spell?
“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.”
In a thought, five Black Ice Wheels flew out, spinning rapidly and slicing the fur snake into six pieces. The creature was pitifully weak—just as he suspected.
“Is this a false body... or a clone technique?”
Upon hearing that, the Five Poisons Old Demon’s twisted expression suddenly became calm. He gazed at Wang Yu silently and said,
“You discovered it quickly.
Boy, even if you flee to the ends of the earth, you will never escape, jie jie jie!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the Five Poisons Old Demon exploded into a cloud of black-green mist that twisted into the shape of a skull, cackling as it rushed toward Wang Yu.
Wang Yu tried to burn it with the Ice Chi Flame, but it had no effect.
He then attempted to use the Yellow Spring Great Hand Seal. The divine ability indeed restrained spell-type attacks, and the poisonous skull shrank considerably, but since his mastery of the technique was incomplete and lacked sufficient spiritual power, he could not sustain it.
The poisonous skull eventually caught up, leaving a visible mark on the back of his hand—a clear sign of a tracking technique.
The enemy’s true body was not present.
Thinking carefully, Wang Yu realized that when the Five Poisons Old Demon went to Yin Ghost Mountain earlier, he had likely used a clone. That would explain why he had chosen to tail him, only revealing himself when exposed.
This meant the true body was waiting somewhere ahead, preparing an ambush.
“Such deep cunning.”
He could no longer go to Night Jewel Prefecture. Clenching his teeth, Wang Yu detoured northward. His plan was to circle widely around the southwestern edge of the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest, traveling left and then upward before heading east toward You Prefecture.
If the Five Poisons Old Demon’s clone and main body did not share memories in real time, then the enemy would be unaware of their exact conversation. He would only know that a confrontation had taken place and that Wang Yu had been marked with a Five Poisons Tracking Mark.
Given the dangers of the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest, choosing a longer detour would seem entirely reasonable.
And if he truly ran into the Five Poisons Old Demon’s real body, perhaps he could still invoke the authority of the Yellow Spring Monastery to bluff his way out.
Of course, that would be the ideal scenario.
…
…
At the former Yin Ghost Mountain, now the ruins of the Heavenly Soul Sect.
A battle that had raged for half a day had finally come to an end. Neither side had achieved complete victory;
at best, it was mutual destruction. Yet the Nascent Soul–level poisonous beast behind the conflict had achieved its goal.
On the poisonous beast’s side, the fourth-rank Moon-Swallowing Toad had been devoured by the Blood River and now served as the mount of the Sky-reaching Demonic Sunflower.
That massive black sun-shaped flower, blotting out the heavens, had taken root upon the toad’s body.
But the Blood Corpse faction fared no better. Nearly all ordinary Blood Corpses had perished, reduced to broken, mummified remains that would forever remain upon this land.
Half of the Blood Corpse Giants were also slain, though a fourth-rank Blood Corpse King was born among them—its status seemingly even higher than the four great Blood Demon Medicine Kings.
After the Blood Demon Polygonum multiflorum was snatched away by a fourth-rank Venomous Flood Dragon, the Blood Corpse King let out a heart-shaking roar.
From that moment, all Blood Demon creatures began marching southwest, ceasing their struggle with the poisonous beasts.
Their destination was none other than the mountain gate of the Blood Reversal Sect—or, more precisely, the Blood Dao Sacred Ground known as the Blood Abyss.
The poisonous beasts did not pursue.
Half a day later, an enormous shadow blotted out the sky. A colossal hand pierced deep into the earth, forcefully uprooting the super-grade spiritual vein of the region and carrying it into the depths of the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest.
From start to finish, the giant’s true form never appeared, but judging by the shape of the hand, it seemed to be a dragon’s claw.
Such an earth-shaking event immediately sparked a frenzy.
More and more forces converged upon the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest. Once both sides had withdrawn, the ruins of the Heavenly Soul Sect became an ideal site for exploration.
Slaughter, plunder, and betrayal began to unfold one after another.
Clearly, the deaths in this land had not yet reached their destined number.
Meanwhile, the movement of the Blood Dao creatures was far too great to ignore. As they advanced into the core territory of the Blood Reversal Sect, endless carnage followed in their wake.
Every city along their path fled in terror.
The impact was immense, especially in terms of reputation.
Several days later, outside Blood Abyss Prefecture, numerous Nascent Soul cultivators from the Exalted Sect gathered, dispatching a team to bypass the Blood Demonic creatures and seize control of the ruins within the Heavenly Demon Bone Forest.
The Yellow Spring Monastery responded swiftly as well, though their strategy was entirely opposite.
While the Exalted Sect’s Nascent Soul cultivators focused on occupying the Heavenly Soul Sect’s ruins, two late-stage Nascent Soul grand cultivators from the Yellow Spring Monastery pursued the Blood Demon Medicine Kings directly.
The three great forces were on the verge of collision.