Longzang

Chapter 287 A Better Ending (Part 2)
The house was built with walls of earth and a few broken bricks and stones. Inside, there was only one room. A stove was placed in one corner, and two mattresses were laid out on the other side. One was for adults, and the other, smaller, was probably for children.

Apart from that, the room contained only some odds and ends, a few broken bowls and plates, and a chipped water tank.

There were several dried vegetables on the stove, which had long since turned into dried vegetables.

This room clearly shows the owner's extreme poverty; it was practically bare. However, everything was arranged neatly and the room was spotless. There was even a small dent in the child's bedding, as if you could see a child curled up asleep inside.

But the room was too clean, obviously cleaned regularly, and completely different from the other rooms around it.

Wei Yuan scanned the entire room with his divine sense and found a wooden comb and a wooden hairpin on the straw pillows on the floor where the adults slept. He said, "It seems that this place was lived by a woman alone with her child. I didn't see anything related to men's lives."

Living in such circumstances and environment would be especially difficult for a single woman raising children alone. However, this is within a palace, so perhaps things might change.

Sun Yu walked into the earthen house, sniffed hard, and said, "There is still a lot of medicinal fragrance here. It has been in this room for quite some time."

Sun Yu walked along, sniffing the ground, and finally stopped by the children's sleeping mat. He said with certainty, "It stayed on this."

Wei Yuan was somewhat puzzled. Even if a monster needed to find a nest, it wouldn't choose a child's bed. There were larger beds nearby, and other houses even had beds and bedding, unlike this one which only had hay and two tattered burlap sheets.

After everyone searched with their divine senses, they still found nothing. However, Wei Yuan was still somewhat unwilling to give up. He squatted down in front of the child's bedding, parted the straw, and then saw a wooden doll. Half of the doll's head had been cut off, and the marks showed that it had been cut many times with a very dull knife.

Since acquiring the Bodhi Seed before the Buddha, Wei Yuan's spiritual senses had become even more acute. At this moment, he vaguely sensed a bloody and damp feeling emanating from the puppet, as if it were entangled with karma. So he casually put the puppet away.

The group left the earthen house and followed the trail of medicinal fragrance and residual alchemical fire in the air. The monster circled around several times, and probably realizing that Wei Yuan wasn't following, it headed towards the outskirts of the palace.

The group remained calm and vigilant, as the monster was too fast and a full-speed chase would only make them vulnerable to ambush.

Wei Yuan had just stepped out of the palace when he suddenly felt a sense of danger and immediately tried to cast a protective spell. But the light of the spell had barely appeared when a thin shadow struck Wei Yuan!
Wei Yuan grunted, stomped his foot, and his earth-shattering technique temporarily trapped the shadows. Immediately, the Demon-Suppressing Tower appeared and fell directly into the ground. At this moment, the Demon-Suppressing Tower was no longer real; even the earth-shattering technique couldn't stop it.

Then Wei Yuan held a crimson immortal sword in his hand, held it upside down with both hands, and plunged the entire sword into the ground until the hilt was completely gone!
A scream came from underground, and two more streams of black energy shot out, striking Wei Yuan. Then the monster quickly fled underground and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Wei Yuan drew his immortal sword and saw a thick, viscous black liquid about an inch long staining the tip, about to drip. Seeing this black liquid, he felt a surge of resentment wash over him, and he seemed to hear various roars and wails, his vision blurring slightly.

At this moment, the Demon-Suppressing Tower rose up in front of Wei Yuan, and the copper lamps on the middle layer of the tower were lit one by one. The light fell on Wei Yuan and immediately revealed streaks of black energy.

The black mist quickly dissolved under the light, leaving only a few wisps that couldn't be dissolved, which were then absorbed by the Demon-Suppressing Tower.

Wei Yuan felt a sense of relief and stood up. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain all over his body. Looking down, he found that he had three more wounds on his body. The skin and flesh of the wounds were turned outward, and they were bluish-black, constantly oozing black fluid.

Ji Liuli then handed over three more pills, one for replenishing qi, one for promoting muscle regeneration, and one for detoxifying. Each pill came in a very ornate box, which looked quite expensive.

Sun Yu treated Wei Yuan's wounds on the spot. However, what was speechless was that, as a high-ranking disciple of Xuanming Hall, Sun Yu had not brought any medicine for his injuries on this trip, and his whole body was covered with all sorts of strange and unusual poisons.

The monster's attack power was extremely strong. If those three blows hadn't landed on Wei Yuan, they would have been enough to cut the other cultivators in two. Only Ji Liuli could withstand them with his physical body, while Feng Tingyu was still a little short.

After a brief delay, the group continued their pursuit. This time, Wei Yuan had slain the monster and developed a vague connection to it, knowing its general direction.

The Crimson Night Immortal-Slaying Sword was inspired by the seven sword energies that appeared when the Laurel Immortal Tree was first born. In reality, it is an extremely yin and cold immortal sword. At this moment, a trace of sword intent is firmly attached to the monster, guiding Wei Yuan in the right direction.

Once outside the palace, they were only about ten miles from the edge of the cave fragment. The monster was lurking ahead, and there was no way to escape. However, Wei Yuan dared not be careless in the slightest.

The monster was indeed ferocious. The scream it uttered at close range just now shook Wei Yuan's primordial spirit. Even an ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator would have their Dao Foundation shattered upon hearing such a scream.

They hadn't gone far when Wei Yuan suddenly shouted a warning. He sensed the monster approaching at an astonishing speed!
Before Wei Yuan's shout had even finished, it had already appeared above the crowd and let out a shrill scream!
This scream instantly caused countless tiny vengeful spirits to rise within a radius of hundreds of feet. Although the cave was shattered, many small creatures still clung to life within it. Now, all the insects, ants, and small beasts had their souls shattered by this scream. Within a radius of several miles, all life had been extinguished.

Wei Yuan and the others were all in excruciating pain in their primordial spirits, swaying unsteadily. The monster's roars also contained attacks that directly targeted the soul; if one's will faltered or one's resolve crumbled, the power of the roars would be amplified many times over.

The roar was powerful enough to destroy a Dharma body; it was clearly a monster's killing move. But after the people of Taichu Palace swayed a few times, none of them fell.

Ji Liuli, needless to say, possesses the Nine-Layer Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, a powerful treasure for both offense and defense. Zhang Sheng, on the other hand, has an invincible spirit and an unwavering will; shouts cannot sway him. Feng Tingyu, adhering to the traditions of the Mingwang Palace, has a thick layer of muscle protecting his primordial spirit within his head.

Sun Yu was slightly inferior, but he was able to develop the Demon-Melting and God-Destroying Incense, and his research on the primordial spirit was extremely in-depth. He had taken many pills to enhance the primordial spirit's defense, so in terms of primordial spirit defense, he had long been at the Dharma Aspect level.

Among everyone, Wei Yuan had the weakest primordial spirit defense. However, although his defense was poor, his primordial spirit was incredibly thick. A roar that would kill other cultivators several times over only made Wei Yuan a little dizzy.

The shadowy monster, having missed its first attack, tried to escape, but the Demon-Suppressing Tower had already emitted a ring of golden light, creating ripples as it passed over it. Feng Tingyu's blade and Sun Yu's alchemical fire struck the monster simultaneously, delivering another heavy blow. Finally, a light drizzle fell from the sky, and the monster let out a piercing scream, clearly severely wounded by Zhang Sheng's sword. Ignoring everything else, it turned and fled. This time, the group didn't stand idly by and gave chase.

Several miles passed in the blink of an eye, and two tombs, one large and one small, appeared before Wei Yuan. The shadow monster circled once and then plunged into the smaller tomb.

Both graves were extremely simple, just two mounds of earth hidden among bushes and rocks. If it weren't for the two wooden tombstones, you wouldn't even know they were graves.

The shadow monster stopped fleeing once it reached this place and simply hid underground, as if this were its final lair.

At this time, no one knew what was hidden in the underground tomb, and no one was willing to go underground to fight the monster that could move freely underground. Therefore, Ji Liuli and Zhang Sheng discussed it and decided to kill it in formation.

Ji Liuli immediately suspended the Demon-Suppressing Tower above the tomb to block the monster's escape route, and then quickly set up an array with Zhang Sheng. Sun Yu and Feng Tingyu were placed into the two array eyes, one yin and one yang, becoming part of the array.

This formation was quite complex. It took Wei Yuan a long time to barely recognize it as the Northern Star Soul Refining Formation.

Once the formation was complete, Sun Yu spat out a ball of dark green alchemical fire, which Ji Youli caught in his hand. Wei Yuan vaguely remembered that when he first entered the Tai Chu Palace, Sun Yu's alchemical fire was a bright blue-white, but now it had turned into a somber and heavy dark green.

Ji Liuli placed the pill fire in the center of the formation and activated it. The central part of the formation instantly became dark and obscure, and a bright star appeared above it, its starlight illuminating the darkness.

The underground monster let out a shrill howl and charged out from the center of the formation, only to crash headfirst into the fire. Its entire body immediately burst into flames, finally revealing its true form.

A crimson sword light appeared in Wei Yuan's hand, slicing towards the monster like a streak of light. But at the last moment, Wei Yuan's hand suddenly trembled, but the sword light was too fast, and it had already swept past the monster's body in an instant.

At the four corners of the formation, four immortal swords were already suspended. They were falling even before the monster emerged from the formation, and just as it peeked out, the four swords fell in sequence.

With each sword strike, the monster's life force diminished significantly. In the blink of an eye, all four swords fell simultaneously, and its life force continued to decline until it finally dried up.

The monster crashed to the ground; it turned out to be a little girl who looked only six or seven years old. She was wearing a white dress, tattered and covered in blood.

After falling to the ground, she seemed to instinctively crawl towards a larger grave nearby, murmuring, "...I'm back, don't send me away again, I...I'm scared..."

The little girl had already lost all hope; she crawled two steps and then stopped moving, her little hand gripping the soil tightly.

There was silence for a moment.

After a moment, Wei Yuanfang asked, "What's going on?"

Ji Liuli's expression was solemn as he said, "She died a long time ago, but I don't know why she turned into a monster."

Sun Yu stepped forward and examined the girl's body, saying, "It's not a corpse demon. Her body is still very fresh; it looks like she's only been dead for a month."

Wei Yuan's first reaction was that it was impossible. The cave had been broken for several years, and the oldest traces of fighting and killing in the main hall were two or three years old.

Sun Yu pondered for a moment and said, "Either there's some secret treasure down there that can prevent the body from decaying, or it's possible that she's been possessed by a powerful Yin spirit, which is why her body hasn't decayed. But look."

Sun Yu lifted the girl's arm, rolled up her sleeve, and found that the small arm was bent and deformed in several places, like a twisted tree branch.

Sun Yu said in a deep voice, "This arm has been broken more than once. After the bone was broken, it was not treated, but was allowed to grow on its own, and then it was broken again after it grew back."

Feeling somewhat depressed, Wei Yuan walked to the two graves and looked at the tombstones.

The large tombstone is inscribed with "Tomb of Xu Shiqi", while the small tombstone is inscribed with "Tomb of my beloved daughter Shu Xinyi".

At this moment, Ji Liuli had finished surveying the surrounding terrain and said, "There is likely a place of extreme yin energy below that could give birth to such a powerful yin spirit."

“How could there be a Yin-dead place in a cave?” Sun Yu said.

Ji Liuli said, "Someone did it."

Wei Yuan immediately said, "Dig! Dig it up and see what kind of desolate place it is."

(End of this chapter)