My cultivation disguise has been exposed by Xiao Sizi.

The fierce wind high in the sky was as cold as steel knives, seeping into the seams of the white fabric.

Li Chen stepped on a steel longsword without a hilt, his figure swaying slightly in the wind. He quickly regained his balance, his right hand tucked into his sleeve, and plunged straight into the damp, cold sea of ​​clouds rushing towards him.

Looking down, a long, narrow island in the vast ocean was now billowing black smoke everywhere.

The five armies of the Tang Dynasty were like five red-hot irons, which had deeply burned into the heart of this land. Wherever they passed, cities and fortresses collapsed and cries of agony filled the air.

Li Chen didn't bother to give the purge of ordinary people a second glance.

It's perfectly reasonable for Old Li and his generals to settle those scores. When the younger generation is bullied, it's perfectly reasonable for the ancestor to confront the other ancestor head-on!

He's here today to dig out the filth that has lingered in this place for hundreds of years, right up to the ground.

Ahead, a towering, massive, cone-shaped snow-capped mountain has broken through the clouds, revealing its outline.

That is the highest peak in the heart of this island.

The mountaintop is covered in snow year-round, but due to the constant eruption of volcanic ash, a thick, indelible layer of deathly gray covers the once pristine snow. The mountain wind blowing across the ridge produces a dull, wailing sound, like the howling of ghosts and wolves, which is enough to make one's ears tingle.

Li Chen stopped in mid-air, a hundred feet away from the crater.

The air here is extremely murky. It not only lacks spiritual energy, but is also filled with a strong smell of sulfur, the stench of rotting flesh, and a kind of malevolent energy that clings tightly to the depths of the soil.

He closed his eyes, and the golden core in his dantian slowly stopped spinning. A wisp of divine consciousness, refined to its extreme, was like an invisible hammer, silently piercing into the dark hole of the volcano.

Divine senses penetrated the cold, hard obsidian layer.

It pierced through the scorching lava below, which was slowly writhing and glowing with a dark red light.

It went down for over a thousand feet.

Deep within the lava, at the core of the Earth's crust, Li Chen's divine sense precisely locked onto a dark purple ball of light that was beating violently like a heart.

The surface of the orb was covered with dense, black veins resembling tree roots, which spread in all directions and tightly gripped the depths of the entire island's underground.

These are the geological nodes of the Japanese islands.

For hundreds of years, this very spot has been drawing upon the malevolent energy and resentment from the seabed, nourishing the creatures of this land and giving rise to those barbaric, cruel, and inhuman beings.

"It's filthy."

Li Chen opened his eyes and patted his sleeves with a hint of dissatisfaction.

This godforsaken place has no spiritual energy to replenish him, and he doesn't want to waste his Golden Core essence on a large scale.

He reached into his sleeve with his right hand, and his spiritual space opened slightly. He casually pulled out a very ordinary steel longsword made by the Ministry of War.

The longsword had no extra patterns; it was just a cast iron weapon used by ordinary soldiers to cut people.

Li Chen gripped the sword hilt tightly and took a deep breath.

His meridians instantly lit up, and a wisp of pure purple golden core essence flowed along the meridians of his arm, pouring into the ordinary iron longsword like a flood bursting its banks.

Unable to withstand such terrifying immortal power, the longsword trembled violently, emitting a series of ear-piercing, almost explosive metallic cries.

The originally grayish-white iron blade turned bright red in a fraction of a second, and then a layer of dazzling purple-gold sword energy condensed and formed on the outer layer of the blade.

Li Chen took a step forward in the air, suddenly exerted force from his waist and hips, gripped the long sword tightly with both hands, aimed at the lifeless volcano below, and slashed down with all his might.

"Ugh—!"

A hundred-foot-long beam of purple-gold sword energy tore through space, whistling as it crashed down.

Before the sword's edge even touched the ground, the terrifying shockwave had already pulverized the black lava debris that had accumulated around the crater for years, sending it flying everywhere.

The thick snow covering the mountain collapsed and avalancheed under the impact of the tremor, as it lost its support at the bottom.

Heavy snow mixed with mudslides rolled down the steep mountainside like a tidal wave, shaking the entire mountain violently.

Just as the purple-gold sword energy was about to cleave the dark cave entrance in two...

The previously calm lava inside the crater suddenly began to boil violently, and the red light was extinguished in an instant, turning into a bottomless pool of pitch-black ink.

"boom!"

A black column of malevolent energy, as thick as a thigh, suddenly erupted from the depths of the lava without warning.

From within the black mist, a sharp ghostly claw covered in black scales and with nails a full inch long suddenly emerged. Its five fingers formed hooks, creating five fierce black streaks in mid-air, and it actually managed to firmly grasp the descending purple-gold sword energy.

The violent collision exploded above the crater.

The invisible energy transformed into visible ripples that swept across the mountainside, shattering several tall rock pillars at the edge of the crater into countless fragments.

The immense recoil sent Li Chen flying back three steps in mid-air, his steel longsword trembling even more violently.

The black mist below had also mostly dissipated.

A strange figure was hovering above the crater, staring intently at Li Chen.

The creature was a full ten feet tall, with no hair, and two dark red, bony horns on its bald forehead.

It was clad in an extremely ancient set of primitive armor pieced together from unknown animal bones and bamboo strips, and its body was shrouded in a thick, impenetrable layer of black malevolent energy.

Those narrow eyes were a lifeless, yellowish-brown, with pupils that slanted vertically like a feline's.

These are the native spirits and deities of the Japanese island, nurtured and born from the extremely yin energy of the earth's veins that have lingered there for hundreds of years. They can also be said to be the ancestors of all evil spirits and barbarians on this island.

It looked up at the young man in white robes standing in the sky.

On that face, which resembled withered tree bark, a bizarre, ugly smile slowly appeared, filled with mockery and disdain.

Instead of attacking immediately, it tilted its head and uttered a long string of obscure, hoarse Japanese bird language from its mouth full of fangs, sounding like bones scraping against a stone slab.

He speaks very fast and in a strange tone.

Although you can't understand what it's calling out, the arrogance in its eyes—the kind that comes from being a frog in a well, treating intruders as mere mortals, and the condescending mockery—is clear enough for even a blind person to see.

The longsword in Li Chen's hand tilted slightly, and the purple-gold true essence at the tip of the sword pulsed uncertainly once again.

"What are you babbling about, calling for your dad?"

Li Chen snorted coldly.

He didn't use his divine sense to communicate with the monster, nor did he have any interest in doing so.

The divine sense swept over the other party and found that it was just a low-level spirit body hybridized from incense worship and earthly evil energy. It was not even a proper Yin god, but at most a large-scale vengeful ghost.

Since it's a ghost, just chop it up.