Chapter 149: The Battle of Wushan
With a thought.
Lin Yi returned to the real world.
He looked around.
He realized that everything that had just happened in the Heart Spirit Domain...
...had taken place in the blink of an eye. Nothing in his surroundings had changed.
Just as Lin Yi and Wei Nan were about to leave,
a scream suddenly erupted from behind them.
Lin Yi quickly turned to look.
He saw Lishi’s body fall stiffly to the ground.
Wei Nan’s brow furrowed. "What the hell? What’s going on? Is he trying to pull a scam?"
Looking at Lishi, now surrounded by other students,
and thinking about how the tiger cub had just chewed Lishi up in what he called the Heart Spirit Domain,
an answer began to form in Lin Yi’s mind.
’Could it be that the Lishi the tiger cub chewed up was actually his heart spirit?’
Having one’s heart spirit devoured didn’t mean a person would die.
It just meant that from now on, he would never be able to cultivate Martial Arts again.
Even his intelligence would regress to that of a young child.
To put it bluntly, the man was now ruined for life.
"Let’s go. This has nothing to do with you."
Wei Nan nodded, though he still glanced back with a hint of worry in his eyes.
After Lin Yi and Wei Nan left the Martial Arts classroom,
it wasn’t long before they saw several teachers, the principal, and the school nurse hurrying over...
Lishi’s heart spirit had suffered a devastating blow.
His realm had plummeted, and his mind had regressed to that of a young child.
Regardless, none of the blame could be placed on Wei Nan.
Although the school did call Wei Nan in to understand the situation after the incident,
the fact was that Wei Nan had simply been sparring with Lishi.
Furthermore, he had lost the match in front of a crowd of students.
And when they left, Lishi had been perfectly fine.
Who could have guessed that just a short while later, he would end up in such a state?
There was no evidence to suggest that Wei Nan had anything to do with the severe damage to Lishi’s heart spirit.
Besides, the school didn’t believe someone of Wei Nan’s realm could inflict any damage on Lishi’s heart spirit.
So, just after noon,
Wei Nan and Lin Yi left the school.
"Lin Yi, did you notice earlier? Something was a little off about that Lishi guy!"
Later, as Lin Yi and Wei Nan were eating hand-pulled noodles at a noodle shop,
Wei Nan was still mulling over the suspicious things he had noticed during his spar with Lishi.
"What was off?" Lin Yi asked, startled, looking up at him.
Wei Nan shook his head. "I can’t quite put my finger on it. It was just for a moment, but I saw Lishi’s face, and it looked like it was covered in bulging veins. It was really disgusting..."
"No, don’t look at me like that! Seriously, I’m not lying..."
Wei Nan hurriedly explained.
Lin Yi smiled and nodded. "Alright, just eat up."
"The exams are tomorrow. Go home and get some rest. Don’t let this thing with Lishi affect you.
We’re supposed to get into a Martial Arts University together and go live in the New District!"
"Right!"
Wei Nan nodded and went back to eating.
...
「That night.」
After washing up,
Lin Yi sat cross-legged on his bed early and began to meditate.
Soon, he entered the state of the Star River Qi Transformation Technique.
A vast, starry sky appeared before his eyes.
The distant darkness was filled with brilliant starlight.
On the third star directly in front of him, the final point was just about to be lit.
This meant Lin Yi was on the verge of breaking through to the Three-Star Realm.
In the distance, a tiger cub wreathed in white light joyfully bounded toward Lin Yi.
A moment later, the cub reached him.
It ran around him cheerfully.
A smile touched Lin Yi’s lips as he watched the young tiger.
When he reached out his hand, the cub obediently extended its head.
It then lay down beside Lin Yi, just like a well-behaved house cat.
Lin Yi noticed that since that afternoon,
after the tiger cub had chewed up Lishi’s heart spirit, its body seemed to have changed slightly.
It was a little bigger than before, and the white light surrounding it was even more dazzling.
"Does devouring heart spirits help you grow?"
Lin Yi muttered to himself.
The cub looked up at Lin Yi, its eyes flashing as if it understood what he had said.
It even stuck out its tongue and licked its lips.
As if in response to Lin Yi’s words.
Seeing this, Lin Yi smiled and patted its head.
He then closed his eyes and re-entered his cultivation state.
And so the white tiger lay beside Lin Yi, silently keeping him company.
...
「Deep in the night.」
「At the foot of Wushan.」
An eerie, blood-red color saturated the long night.
Tumbling blood clouds, like plumes of bloody mist, shrouded Wushan.
Chu Zhengxiong, Han Bin, and the others stared up at the blood-red night sky.
Their faces were all grim.
"It’s a good thing we came today. Otherwise, those Blood Drop rats would have gotten their way!" Chu Zhengxiong said with a frown.
As he finished speaking, the captains of the other teams all nodded.
Aside from the Sixth Demon Hunting Team, which was on a mission in Xinghai City,
Teams One, Two, Three, Four, and Five were all present.
They all looked as if they were facing a great enemy, not a trace of a smile on their faces.
Even Chu Zhengxiong, usually the most level-headed of them all, had the same look in his eyes.
After a long moment, Han Bin said in a low voice, "Move up!"
The moment he uttered those two words,
SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH—
the five team captains led the charge up the mountain.
Their team members followed close behind, running into the mountains.
RUMBLE—
Instantly, the blood-red night sky above Wushan
let out a deep, deafening roar. The blood clouds churned as if trying to swallow the heavens and the earth, a terrifying sight that struck fear into anyone who saw it.
On Wushan, an altar stood in the very center.
It was surrounded by eighteen pillars.
Tied to each pillar was a person—both men and women—stripped of their clothes.
Their feet dangled in the air, a blood trough directly beneath them.
Blood flowed from their bodies, down the pillars, and into the troughs.
And every trough led to the altar in the center.
A figure in a blood-red robe was dancing wildly on the altar, as if performing some kind of ritual.
Each time he completed a segment of the dance,
the blood clouds overhead would surge and churn once more.
Occasionally accompanied by deafening BOOMS.
The scene was utterly gruesome, filled with an eerie and unpredictable atmosphere.
Once the eighteen people on the pillars were completely drained of blood,
more Blood Drop Believers immediately brought another eighteen people to replace them.
These people didn’t resist, cry out, or wail.
It was as if they were willing participants, obediently allowing themselves to be tied to the pillars.
Even though the eighteen people before them had all been bled dry and died,
it didn’t seem to cause them any panic at all...
Not even when they, too, were bound to the pillars, and their blood began to slowly trickle down into the troughs.
The blood clouds above grew even more turbulent.
It was as if they had received fresh blood, which excited them immensely.
Time passed, second by second.
The blood-red night sky became increasingly sinister and bizarre.
The blood clouds looked as if they had been soaked in fresh gore.
The person on the altar never stopped for a moment.
Even after two or three hours had passed, he was still there, dancing.
As if he had an inexhaustible supply of stamina.
Suddenly, a Blood Drop Believer in a blood-red robe ran over.
After whispering a few words to the person on the altar,
the figure, who had not stopped moving until now, slowly turned around.
Instantly, a hideous, terrifying face was revealed.
It looked particularly gruesome against the backdrop of the blood-red night sky.
There was not a trace of white in his eyes; they were completely filled with blood.
The corners of his mouth slowly curled up as a bloody aura erupted around him.
The next moment, the Blood Drop Believers surrounding the altar acted as if they had received some kind of command.
They quickly bowed deeply, then vanished from where they stood.
He then turned back and resumed his bizarre dance.
The lives of the people on the eighteen pillars were gradually fading.
Blood continued to flow down the troughs toward the altar.
BOOM—
With a loud bang,
a Demon Hunter Team Member was sent flying through the Blood-red Forest.
PTUI...
He spat out a mouthful of blood and, enduring the sharp pain, looked up.
Not five meters away, a believer in a blood-red robe was slowly walking toward him.
Just as the Demon Hunter Team Member propped himself up and got to his feet,
SWOOSH—
the Blood Drop Believer flashed before him.
He reached out and seized him by the neck.
Lifting the Demon Hunter Team Member clean off the ground.
The immense strength made the Demon Hunter Team Member’s face change drastically.
An intense feeling of suffocation robbed him of even the strength to resist.
Just as he was about to suffocate,
WHOOSH—
an arrow shot straight toward the believer.