The opening scene reveals the story of Yao Lao, alarming the Soul Emperor.

The storm tightened up very quickly.

All the golden wind blades scattered throughout the space stopped their erratic wandering and turned around in unison, piercing towards the center of the three death gates from all directions.

Like a thousand arrows returning to their source.

The first to fall was the Seventh Elder.

He and the Third Elder exchanged more than a dozen blows within the illusion array, both sustaining injuries. The Seventh Elder's right rib was cracked by the Third Elder's palm strike, and the Third Elder's back was ripped open with two bloody gashes by the Seventh Elder.

Before the two could determine a winner, the golden wind blade arrived.

The Seventh Elder was blocking the attack from the "shadow" in front of him, his back completely exposed.

Dozens of wind blades pierced through his protective battle aura at the same time, cutting more than a dozen wounds from his back to his waist and ribs, and blood instantly soaked through his entire black clothes.

He staggered and fell to his knees.

The wind blades didn't stop. A second wave followed immediately, this time severing the meridians in the limbs.

The Third Elder's situation wasn't much better.

He was struck by the Seventh Elder's palm three times, while the Seventh Elder was struck by his palm twice. Both of them had half of their arms broken.

When the golden wind blades arrived, he reacted half a beat faster than the Seventh Elder. He dodged to the side, but only avoided the first three. The fourth wind blade pierced through his exposed armpit after he dodged, severing two ribs.

He groaned and knelt on one knee.

Crack Mask is the strongest of the three and has persisted the longest.

He didn't get too deeply entangled with the other two.

He sensed something was wrong from the very beginning; the attack methods of those "shadows" were all too familiar.

Although he was rationally aware of the situation, his body's instinctive reactions were beyond his control.

Within the illusionary array of the Gate of Death, all senses are distorted to the extreme. Every rushing shadow carries real killing intent and a deadly attack judgment. No matter what the mind thinks, the body will choose to block first.

He blocked it, and he took it.

The Third Elder's two attacks struck his left leg, dislocating his knee. The Seventh Elder's palm grazed his side, leaving a scorch mark.

Now that the golden storm has tightened, he supports himself on one leg, facing the overwhelming golden wind blades. The remaining blood-red battle aura in his hand is so thin that it can only protect the vital parts of his torso.

The first wave of wind blades sliced ​​off the left half of his mask.

His face was revealed, covered in scars, with bloodshot eyes and a face contorted with fear.

"Stop!" he roared hoarsely.

The wind blades didn't stop.

"I agree to your terms! The list of stolen goods, their hiding places, everything—I'll give you everything! I'll even cripple my cultivation!"

The wind blades didn't stop.

The second batch arrived, severing his right ear and leaving three deep, bone-revealing wounds on his right arm.

He let out a miserable howl, the sound echoing through the canyon.

On the carriage shaft, Hunyu tilted his head.

"I said ten breaths."

The sound from behind the curtain traveled through the storm and reached the ears of the cracked mask clearly.

"You've exceeded your time limit."

The face of the man with the cracked mask turned deathly pale.

"What I just gave you was an opportunity, not a negotiation."

Hunyu placed the white feather fan on his lap and rubbed his temples with the fingertips of his other hand.

"You killed thirty-seven passing groups in this valley. Caravans, travelers, disciples from small sects. Some had only a few people, some had twenty or thirty."

"You sacrificed their lives to create the blood array, made a fortune from their goods, and forged your broken sword with their souls."

"Three years have passed, and not a single survivor has been left."

He looked down at the golden lines on his palm that were slowly bleeding, his tone as flat as if he were reading from an account book.

"I'm not a good person, and I don't need to stand up for anyone. But you stopped my car."

"If you stop my car, you have to pay according to my rules."

"I'll find the list of stolen goods and their hiding places myself. I don't need you to tell me."

The cracked mask understood what he meant.

The face revealed after the mask shattered, all its arrogance and ferocity crumbled in that instant.

"No……"

"Death Gate, strangle."

As the last word was uttered, the golden runes within the three death gates all stopped rotating and began to shrink towards the center.

Where the runes passed, space itself was torn open with cracks.

It's not a metaphor.

It is a spatial crack visible to the naked eye, and the golden cross-section is so sharp that it has no thickness.

The crack starts at the edge of the circle and propagates towards the center.

The Seventh Elder was the first to be pushed to the center.

He no longer had the strength to stand up. He knelt on the ground with his arms hanging at his sides, and there wasn't a single patch of undamaged skin on his body.

Golden cracks closed up from his back, crossed, and sliced ​​through his body.

No sound.

There wasn't even time to let out a scream.

His body shattered the instant the cracks converged, turning into countless tiny fragments that were swept away by the golden storm along with the blood mist.

The Third Elder lasted two breaths longer than him.

He opened his mouth as if to shout something, but the cracks appeared faster than his vocal cords.

Golden lines began to spread upwards from his feet, across his calves, thighs, waist, and chest.

The final crack sliced ​​through his throat.

His body was broken into seven pieces, which shattered one by one and were swallowed by the storm.

The Cracked Mask is the last one.

The spatial rift paused for a moment in front of him.

He could see the patterns of the cracks clearly.

The eight trigrams and their directions.

Each crack corresponds to a position in the Eight Trigrams Formation, with precision down to the last detail.

"What...is it...you..."

The crack didn't give him a chance to finish speaking.

Cut off from head to toe in one stroke.

The two halves of the body split to the left and right, shattering into dust in mid-air and being completely devoured by the golden light.

The storm has stopped.

The illusion array dissipated.

The abyss and the sea of ​​fire receded, and the rubble-covered ground reappeared.

The golden patterns on the cliff face gradually faded, and eight feathers flew back from eight directions, re-embedding themselves into the ribs of the white feather fan.

Three riddled corpses fell from the sky, landing one after another on the gravel ground in front of the carriage.

It can no longer be called a corpse.

It looked more like three piles of minced meat, barely maintaining the outline of a human, with blood flowing from the gaps in the shattered armor, staining a large area of ​​the surrounding ground red.

The Valley of Despair fell silent.

The wind stopped.

Even the black-horned beasts stopped howling, and the three-headed beasts hunched over, lying on the rubble, too afraid to move.

Hunwu leaned against the side of the carriage, one eye open and the other covered in blood, looking as if all his strength had been drained away.

He stared at the three piles of things on the ground, his mouth agape.

Five-Star Dou Zong.

Four-star Dou Zong.

Samsung Douzong.

Three Dou Zong.

He died without even knowing that the person who killed him wasn't even a fighter.

"Soul Crow".

Hunyu's voice came from above the carriage shaft.

The soul-crow mechanically raised its head.

Hunyu had already stood up. His white robes were stained with some dust, and there was a small bloodstain on his fan. It was unclear whether it was his own or a splatter.

His face was paler than before, and his lips were almost colorless, but his tone and expression remained unchanged.

It's like everything that just happened was just a trivial matter.

"Even though you're injured and can't move, can you still drive?"

Hunwu paused for two seconds before realizing that he was asking if he could still continue his journey.

"Yes...it can be opened."

He gritted his teeth, got up from the ground, and steadied himself by holding onto the carriage shaft.

Hunyu nodded, turned around, bent down, and crawled back into the carriage.

Before the curtain was lowered, he said one more thing.

"Push those three piles of stuff away a bit, so they don't get on the animal's hooves. Find a place to stop along the way and clean up the bloodstains."

"Don't mention this matter a single word before we reach Zhongzhou."

The curtain fell.

Hunwu stood on the carriage shaft, the night wind blowing into his gaping wound, making him wince in pain.

But he didn't complain at all.

His hands trembled as he bent down to push the three piles of minced meat.

It wasn't because of the injury, it was because of fear.

He had killed many people in his life, but he had never seen such a method of killing.

Without using a single breath or taking a single step, he sat in the carriage drinking tea and locked the three Dou Zong into a meat grinder cage.

Let them kill each other and become battered and bruised, then crush them cleanly and thoroughly.

There was no anger, no pleasure, and no superfluous emotion throughout the entire process.

It's like stepping on three bugs that are blocking your way.

Hunwu kicked the last piece of flesh off the road, wiped the blood from his face, and climbed into the driver's seat.

The whip lashed out, and the three-headed black-horned beast shuddered and took a step forward.

The carriage took off again and flew out along the canyon's exit.

Inside the carriage, the curtains were closed.

Hunyu leaned against the car wall.

The white feather fan slipped from his hand and fell onto his knee.

He looked down at his hands.

The golden lines on both palms had burned through two layers of skin, and there were bleeding cracks from the fingertips to the base of the palms.

A burning sensation surged in my chest, as if something was burning inside my internal organs.

He opened his mouth, and a mouthful of blood rushed to his throat.

He swallowed the blood back.

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve and closed his eyes.

The law load of the second-layer array diagram far exceeded his expectations. Although the cold iron ore vein of the Soul-Slaying Valley provided a huge amount of energy, the backlash his physical body suffered also increased exponentially.

At this rate of energy expenditure, his body won't be able to hold out for long.

We need to find a way to repair the physical body.

It needs to be done as soon as possible.

But now is not the time to think about these things.

It's still four days' journey to Zhongzhou.

Four days later, he would not be facing three exiled Dou Zong.

It is the Soul Emperor.

He closed his eyes, and his breathing gradually calmed down.

But just as he was about to fall asleep, he heard the deep voice of Hunwu outside the curtain.

"Sir, we've left the valley."

After a pause, Hunwu added another sentence.

"Thirty li outside the valley entrance, there is a city. A flag is planted at the city gate."

"The flag of the Heavenly Gang Hall."