Chapter 77: The Dead Had Not Perished – On Sinking Spirit Mountain. Part 2

“Nothing to worry about then. Just wait a bit more.”

Wei Tingxia settled back into the corner, listening to the group’s worries and deliberations. His fingers idly toyed with the golden bracelet on his wrist.

Compared to when Yan Xinfeng had given it to him earlier, the bracelet’s surface now quietly shimmered with molten gold-like flowing lights and fiery hues—a strand of sword qi at soul formation perfection stage. Once released, not just this small cave, but the entire Wind Bone Secret Realm would turn to dust in an instant.

Yan Xinfeng had sworn earlier that sword qi was too fierce to gift, but seeing Wei Tingxia about to enter the cave, he unhesitatingly stored one inside and instructed him not to hesitate if anything went wrong.

He spoke with conviction, full of his own logic: “This secret realm has been around for centuries. If it’s gone, it’s gone. It’d be good for those old guys to find a new one. No secret realm is more important than human lives.”

Wei Tingxia toyed with the sword qi in the bracelet, feeling no pain from the injury at all. After playing with it for a while, he even whispered to System 0188: “I’m hungry.”

Yan Xinfeng’s sword qi was quite delicious.

[I don’t recommend you eat it,] System 0188 asked. [Can you even digest it right now?]

He couldn’t digest it, so he could only savor the taste.

Wei Tingxia withdrew his hand and turned his gaze back to the cluster of figures at the front of the cave.

These trapped people had limited knowledge and no power to resist, so they knew very little. Even so, that woman named Ji Jiao had still hit the nail on the head and pointed out the key issue.

The demon cultivators had trapped people in the Wind Bone Secret Realm to summon something.

However, to summon ordinary evil creatures, why would they need to fill it with so many lives and so much blood? Unless what they wanted to summon was something that crawled out from the deepest depths of the nine-layered Demon Abyss…

“…”

Wei Tingxia had a bad premonition in his heart.

About a quarter of an hour later, a chaotic noise of a massive object moving suddenly came from the cave entrance.

Everyone was startled and turned to look toward the entrance in unison.

Before the dust had even settled, an abnormally tall and burly figure blocked the cave mouth.

The demon cultivator looked extremely fierce and ugly, his face covered in rolls of fat and scars, his eyes gleaming with savage light. He carried a massive cleaver that was still dripping blood, the dark red stains on the blade sending chills to the heart.

“Anyone who doesn’t want to be chopped in half, get the hell out of my way!” His roar made the cave buzz, and the ferocious aura emanating from him pressed down so hard that people could barely breathe.

Faced with this absolutely unbeatable power, everyone’s faces turned pale, knowing resistance was futile.

They could only retreat fearfully and slowly like driven livestock, squeezing out a clearing near the cave mouth.

Immediately after, another demon cultivator roughly shoved in a string of people bound tightly. There were six or seven of them, all looking disheveled.

Hearing their footsteps, Wei Tingxia looked up, his gaze sharpening slightly—

The attire on these people, with its style and details, was clearly the uniform of Sinking Spirit Palace.

He tsked inwardly, realizing that Yan Xinfeng’s martial nephews had been rounded up.

The Sinking Spirit Palace disciples all had their eyes covered with thick black cloth. Among them, the hot-tempered Han Huali, even while bound, stuck out his neck and cursed: “Shameless bastards! Sneaking up from behind—what kind of skill is that? If you’ve got the guts, let grandpa go and fight fair and square…”

“Pa!”

A crisp, resounding slap cut him off.

The demon cultivator backhanded him viciously, snapping his head to the side. Blood immediately appeared at the corner of his mouth, and the rest of his words turned into pained gasps.

The cave fell into dead silence. After that one slap, the other captives were too scared to make a sound. The younger ones huddled behind their senior brothers and sisters, pretending they didn’t exist.

Wei Tingxia also pretended to be frightened, shrinking into the crowd unnoticed to lower his presence, quietly observing with just his eyes.

The burly demon cultivator glanced around, seemingly satisfied with the effect. He let out a ferocious laugh and retreated with the escorting demon cultivator, cursing under their breath.

Only after the heavy footsteps faded did the Sinking Spirit Palace disciples struggle to help each other remove the blindfolds. Suddenly exposed to the dim light in the cave, they squinted uncomfortably, looking around warily and in confusion.

“This… what the hell is this place?”

One young disciple asked in a trembling voice, the panic on his face not yet faded.

Ji Jiao pushed through the crowd and stepped forward, her brows furrowed, her sharp gaze sweeping over these new arrivals who were to be sacrifices: “How did you get brought in?”

Qi Ming, the oldest among them, coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood before answering: “We’re disciples of Sinking Spirit Palace. We were searching for spirit herbs at the edge of the secret realm when we were suddenly ambushed by a group of demon cultivators. The strength gap was too big; we couldn’t resist at all. They blindfolded us and shoved us all the way to this damn place!”

“What about your jade tokens?” another asked anxiously. “Did you crush them?”

“I did,” A-Jing said, tossing a handful of shattered jade fragments to the ground. “But it didn’t work.”

Uncle Yan had said that once the jade token shattered, even a thousand miles away, he would arrive instantly. Since he hadn’t come, it meant their distress signal had been blocked.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Han Huali, who had just been slapped, opened his mouth again. “What the hell is going on here?”

This kid truly embodied that saying about cursing out making the heart clean. From the moment he arrived, he was full of fire, every sentence laced with swears.

Wei Tingxia didn’t want to cause panic, so while Han Huali scanned the surroundings, he subtly shifted outward, just enough to expose his face to the light.

Han Huali’s eyes nearly bulged out.

“How are you here!!”

He practically flew over to Wei Tingxia, stumbling a couple steps midway because he couldn’t stop in time, nearly kneeling on the ground. He looked at Wei Tingxia like he was a god, his eyes shining brightly.

“Weren’t you with Uncle Yan?” His mouth moved lightning fast. “Why are you here? Is Uncle Yan here too? Where is he?”

As he spoke, Han Huali pushed himself up and looked around wildly, trying to spot Yan Xinfeng. When he didn’t find him, he flopped back down, staring intently at Wei Tingxia.

“Hey, say something,” he urged. “Did you get separated from Uncle Yan? Did you two split up? Uncle Yan wasn’t captured too, was he? Is Uncle Yan okay…”

He was so excited he was incoherent, on one hand thinking that since Wei Tingxia was here, Yan Xinfeng couldn’t be far and they were saved, on the other hand worrying that maybe Yan Xinfeng had just left and they were done for.

It was only after Qi Ming came over and hauled him up that Han Huali shut his mouth.

“Sorry, he’s just too excited.”

Qi Ming slapped Han Huali hard on the shoulder to signal him to calm down, then turned his puzzled gaze to Wei Tingxia: “Why are you here?”

“I came on my own.” Wei Tingxia said. “The demonic qi here is very dense; it’s easy to detect.”

“…”

It was probably because, back on the skyboat when he hadn’t woken up yet, Yan Xinfeng had said a bunch of things he shouldn’t have. In any case, Qi Ming now looked at him strangely, as if in his mind, Wei Tingxia had thrown himself into the net.

“It’s fine,” Wei Tingxia reassured patiently. “They’re just trying to summon something. They probably won’t succeed.”

Han Huali couldn’t hold back again: “What makes you say that?”

His mind was in chaos, leading him to ask such a ridiculous question.

Wei Tingxia smiled faintly and said nothing.

Han Huali got it.

Oh, right—this was a demon fiend. No one in the world understood those demon cultivators’ intentions better than him.

Han Huali suddenly realized and slapped his forehead.

That slap woke up the onlookers around him too, and everyone realized that Wei Tingxia’s identity seemed quite extraordinary.

“Who is he exactly?” Ji Jiao asked Qi Ming. They had faced off in the Sect Grand Tournament years ago, so they were half-acquaintances.

Qi Ming hesitated, then vaguely replied: “He’s… an old acquaintance of Uncle Yan.”

“Uncle Yan?”

Ji Jiao didn’t react at first. Instead, the hot-tempered young man froze for a moment before suddenly shouting a name: “You mean Cloud-Cutting Lord?!”

Qi Ming nodded: “Yes.”

“Then where is he now?!” The young man’s eyes burst with ecstatic light, as if he had seen a savior. “If he’s here, then we—”

His hopeful words were cut off as another deafening rumble came from the cave entrance.

The heavy stone door was roughly shoved open again.

This time, the figure who entered was completely different from the two ferocious demon cultivators before.

The newcomer wore dark purple ornate robes, tall and straight in stature. Though his face carried the sinister pallor typical of demon cultivators, his features were unexpectedly handsome. But the casual, superior evil aura between his brows made people shudder.

He strode into the cave casually, as if strolling in his own backyard, followed by the burly demon cultivator with a face full of bulging flesh.

Now, that burly demon cultivator showed none of his earlier bravado. He hunched his back, extremely deferential, and carefully reported: “…My lord, these are all the materials we’ve captured so far. Once we gather a few more, we can set up the complete blood array, and then we can begin…”

The handsome demon cultivator lazily grunted “Mm,” his gaze sweeping over the terrified crowd in the cave like a searchlight.

Suddenly, his sweeping gaze paused, locking precisely on Wei Tingxia in the corner.

A playful arc hooked at the corner of his mouth. Without hesitation, he walked straight toward the corner where Wei Tingxia was.

The crowd automatically parted a path under his invisible pressure.

The demon cultivator stopped before Wei Tingxia. Under everyone’s stunned gazes, he extended a pale, slender finger and lightly, teasingly, and ambiguously brushed Wei Tingxia’s cheek, his knuckle rubbing at the corner of his eye.

The action was full of ill-intentioned intimacy.

“…”

This sudden, highly insulting gesture plunged the entire cave into dead silence.

The burly demon cultivator following behind cursed inwardly at how lustful this higher-up was, but he immediately plastered on a fawning smile, stepped forward, and said in a low voice: “If my lord likes him, just take him away. We’re not short one sacrifice anyway…”

“Oh, is that allowed?” the demon cultivator drawled.

The burly one nodded and bowed eagerly, grinning obsequiously: “Of course, of course! It’s his fortune that my lord fancies him! Take him away; it won’t delay the main business!”

Hearing this, the handsome demon cultivator chuckled in satisfaction. His finger teasingly traced Wei Tingxia’s pale cheek again, as if appraising a new toy.

“Little one, hear that? Come with me, and I’ll spare your life.”

Wei Tingxia seemed to freeze for a moment, his long lashes trembling slightly, casting a small shadow under his eyes.

He looked dazed by this sudden stroke of luck, or perhaps weighing his options.

A moment later, he slowly stood up, his movements carrying a sluggishness from shock.

Then, under everyone’s gazes, he obediently placed his hand on the one that had just caressed his cheek.

Seeing him so compliant, the demon cultivator’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes flickered. He gripped Wei Tingxia’s wrist through his clothes in return and led him toward the cave mouth.

Passing the Sinking Spirit Palace disciples, he deliberately paused and swept his gaze over Qi Ming, Han Huali, and the others.

Everyone met his eyes and froze. The heavy stone door rumbled shut again, sealing off inside from out.

After a long silence, Han Huali reacted first. He collapsed to the ground as if drained of strength, wiped his forehead hard, then cursed shakily: “Goddamn it!”

Qi Ming let out a heavy breath. A-Jing and the other two female disciples supported each other, whispering comforts: “It’s okay, it’s okay…”

The others might not recognize this demon cultivator, but didn’t they?

That was clearly Uncle Yan!

Connecting it to Wei Tingxia’s sudden appearance in the cave, the six of them quickly pieced it together.

Han Huali sneered, rubbing his still-sore cheek. It seemed someone else was in for it.