***
Perfected Renhua, whose secular name was Yan Shouyi, was a member of the Yuntai Yan Clan and an elder of the Profound Heaven Sect. His grandfather was none other than the previous sect master of the Profound Heaven Sect—the renowned Sword Lord Taibai, Yan Chongyang.
It was difficult to imagine that someone like him could have any connection to the Blood Demon Ancestor, a loathed fugitive despised by all. And yet, they truly were connected.
To understand why, we must go back three hundred years.
Three hundred years ago, Perfected Renhua was merely a disciple of the Profound Heaven Sect. At the time, people still called him “Lord Renhua.”
He came from the Yuntai Yan Clan. Not only was his status noble, but his talent for cultivation was extraordinary as well. Profound techniques that others struggled to master came easily to him, while obscure classics that others could not comprehend were effortlessly understood at a glance.
In other words, he was a genius.
Geniuses were always arrogant, and they often lacked reverence for many things in the world.
Back then, Lord Renhua traveled freely throughout the Nine Provinces. Because he was interested in the spirit puppets of Donghua, he came to Donghua City. As fate would have it, it was around then that a farmer named Yang Dali dug up a shimmering, multicolored serpent scale from his own field.
Though Yang Dali could not identify the scale’s origin, he recognized that it was something rare and valuable. He wanted to sell it for some private spending money… and happened to run into Lord Renhua, who was traveling through the area.
Lord Renhua recognized at a glance that the object was extraordinary.
He paid Yang Dali for the scale, then went to the Yang family’s field and dug out the serpent buried beneath it.
It was a monster with a human face and a serpent’s body. Each of its scales gleamed like obsidian, refracting dazzling, multicolored light beneath the sun. Its body was enormous; when coiled up, it looked like a small hill. Though it had been dead for a long time, it remained lifelike, as if it were merely sleeping.
Lord Renhua immediately thought of the “hui serpent” recorded in ancient texts.
Hui serpents were descendants of dragons. Ever since the Dragon Ancestor, Torch Dragon, had followed Nuwa in ascending to the Ninth Heaven, the dragon bloodline had gradually vanished from the mortal world. Occasionally, there were tales of evil flood dragons stirring up storms or mirage beasts weaving illusions, but as for hui serpents… they had truly gone extinct.
Lord Renhua was naturally fascinated by the hui serpent. He therefore found a cave outside Donghua City and settled there, devoting himself to studying it. Whenever he needed someone to run an errand, he simply ordered Yang Dali to do it.
Before long, he discovered that hui serpent blood possessed the miraculous ability to revive the dead and restore flesh to bones.
It bears repeating: Lord Renhua was arrogant and lacked reverence for all things.
Thus, without a second thought, he used the hui serpent’s blood to treat the sick people of Donghua City.
Because he had no sense of reverence, he also failed to preserve the blood properly. Some of it flowed downstream through the river, eventually reaching Donghua City, where the residents drew water from the river to wash clothes and prepare food.
And then… disaster struck.
The “Donghua Blood Moon” erupted. Its source was the river water contaminated by hui serpent blood, while those who had been treated directly with the blood by Lord Renhua underwent the most violent mutations.
Lord Renhua had tried to stop it, but how could one man’s strength possibly be enough? When he finally realized that he had caused an unprecedented catastrophe, he… became afraid.
He fled Donghua City in a panic. On the road, he encountered members of the Profound Heaven Sect who had come to investigate after receiving word of the disaster. He put on an act and joined them on their way to Donghua. Then, while everyone was hesitating over how to resolve the crisis, he strongly urged them to seal off Donghua City so that the blood poison would not spread beyond it.
He was afraid—terribly afraid. He feared that the truth about what he had done would be exposed. Whenever he imagined the consequences, his hands and feet turned cold, and a chill spread through his heart. Someone who had always been a favored child of heaven, someone who had always obtained whatever he wanted, simply could not accept the possibility of falling from grace.
That was why he had been so desperate to seal off Donghua City.
In the end, things went exactly as he had hoped. Donghua City was sealed, and the disaster was classified as an accident. Lord Renhua let out a long sigh of relief, grateful to have survived his brush with calamity.
As for Wenren Ying… Wenren Ying was the product of his guilty conscience.
Lord Renhua had concealed the truth and fled from the responsibility he had borne, but what had happened in Donghua City remained like a dark cloud hanging over him forever.
It was under such circumstances that he encountered the young Wenren Ying, whose blood poison had flared up. Driven by a strange and secret desire for atonement, he took Wenren Ying in as his disciple and helped suppress the blood poison within him.
But… the others were not fools.
The Donghua Blood Moon had caused far too great a disturbance. To keep the truth hidden from everyone was no easy matter.
The sect master of the Profound Heaven Sect knew the truth and quietly suppressed it. From that point onward, however, Lord Renhua lost many opportunities. Whenever a talented child of the Yuntai Yan Clan emerged, they were sent to serve the Divine Firmament Dao Sect or the Pivot of the Heavens. Yet despite his own outstanding abilities, Lord Renhua was never chosen.
Even within the Profound Heaven Sect, he was pushed to the margins. He was never made sect master, never made clan head, and never given control over any important grotto-heaven. In the end, they merely made him an elder in name only, leaving him to muddle along in the Profound Heaven Sect.
Compared with the tens of millions of lives lost in Donghua City, such punishment amounted to nothing. Besides, the sect master of the Profound Heaven Sect had probably not done this to punish him in the first place. It was simply because Lord Renhua’s hands were dirty, and his prominence would bring disaster upon the Yuntai Yan Clan.
Yet after suffering such cold treatment for a century, Lord Renhua gradually grew resentful. His mindset became increasingly twisted. He began to believe that even if he had done wrong, he had already… already made amends through Wenren Ying.
But Wenren Ying would not forgive him.
No matter how comfortable life in the Profound Heaven Sect was, no matter how kind and loving Lord Renhua appeared as a senior figure before him, Wenren Ying never forgot that he wanted revenge.
He remembered what had happened, as if he were saying that every wronged soul in Donghua City remembered it too. Nothing but blood could soothe them.
In the end, Wenren Ying decisively destroyed his own spiritual abode, left the Profound Heaven Sect, and set out to hunt down the blood-poison demonic cultivators who had escaped.
As for Lord Renhua… at that time, he still possessed a trace of conscience and felt some guilt toward Wenren Ying, so he did not attack him.
After all, Wenren Ying’s spiritual abode had already been shattered, leaving him a cripple. Donghua City had also been completely sealed by an array formation. If he wanted to hunt down those demonic cultivators, then so be it.
But Lord Renhua’s retribution was not yet over.
More than a decade ago, signs of the “Five Declines” began to appear in his body.
The Five Declines, also known as the Five Declines of Heaven and Man, were the various symptoms that appeared when a high-level cultivator was nearing the end of their natural lifespan. Normally, someone with Lord Renhua’s cultivation could live for a thousand years or more without difficulty. Yet now, despite suffering from no illness or injury, his lifespan was unexpectedly nearing its end.
Even the master of Medicine King Valley within the Profound Heaven Sect could not determine why.
Fortunately, three hundred years ago, while traveling through the Nine Provinces, he had made a friend. That friend, Wu Guizhen, possessed the bloodline of an ancient shaman and was a master of divination. In his hands was a magical treasure known as the Grand Unity Yarrow Divination, which possessed the power to see through the secrets of Heaven.
He invited Wu Guizhen to Profound Heaven Sect and asked him to cast a divination on his behalf.
Wu Guizhen readily agreed. But after making his calculations, he let out a long sigh and said, “Heaven will not forgive you.”
…Heaven will not forgive you.
The Donghua Blood Moon! It was the Donghua Blood Moon again! Why? He had already endured more than three hundred years of cold treatment and punishment. Why would it still refuse to let him go? Why wouldn’t it leave him alone?!
And Wu Guizhen… Had Wu Guizhen already divined something? Would he reveal this matter to others and ruin his reputation?!
Perfected Renhua’s emotions surged, and evil thoughts arose in his heart. Without warning, he struck out with a palm and killed Wu Guizhen on the spot!
After killing him, Perfected Renhua spat out a mouthful of blood.
It was not because he regretted the murder. Rather, the symptoms of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man had appeared once more.
He estimated that he had less than thirty years left to live…
But he did not want to die! Of course he didn’t want to die!
And there was, in fact, one way to avoid death.
—Ascension.
But that was no different from a pipe dream. To ascend, one needed merit recognized by Heaven. Without merit to one’s name, anyone who attempted to ascend by force would only be struck dead by the heavenly tribulation.
But… what if he possessed such merit?
—A thousand years ago, Sword Lord Taibai could clearly have attained the Dao and become an immortal, but instead he sacrificed himself to suppress the great demon Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord. The treasure he used to seal Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord was a jade of merit brought down from the Ninth Heaven by an immortal crane.
In other words, the jade of merit was still somewhere in the mortal realm. Whoever obtained it would be able to ascend without suffering the lightning tribulation.
Thus, Perfected Renhua imbued his magical treasure, the Seven-Treasure Pine, with a human form and ordered it to search for the place where Sword Lord Taibai had sealed Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord.
As for himself… he entered seclusion.
He had to remain in seclusion for a long time, doing everything he could to delay the collapse of his body…
Who could have known that the Seven-Treasure Pine would be murdered?
He sent two disciples out to search for it, but Bai Yunsheng returned with news that Blood Demon Ancestor had killed Daoist Master Songfeng… Did they think they could bully him simply because he had remained in seclusion?!
Not a single one of them was useful!
He could only come out himself. Relying on his research into viper blood from many years ago, he tracked down the remnants of Blood Demon Ancestor’s primordial spirit.
After hearing him out, the Blood Demon primordial spirit naturally protested his innocence again and again, insisting that he had never done such a thing.
Perfected Renhua had no intention of investigating the death of the Seven-Treasure Pine. The most important thing now was to find someone to continue searching for the place where Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord had been sealed. Everything else was irrelevant.
Could the Blood Demon primordial spirit refuse? How would he dare?!
Daoist Master Songfeng had been active around Mount Mei before his death precisely because the seal was located there. Most likely, it was somewhere within Meishan City—perhaps even in the cave dwelling where he had once lived. Some surviving notes left behind there recorded several locations that he believed might be the sealing site.
And, by an extraordinary coincidence, one of those places was the very inn where Wu Guanyue was staying!
…And that was why the Blood Demon primordial spirit had returned here.
At this very moment…
“Mm… Xiaoyue…”
“Brother Ying… does it hurt? Then I’ll be gentler…”
“It’s fine… I’m all right.”
Blood Demon Ancestor: “…………”
Blood Demon Ancestor: “………………”
Damn it! The moment he came back, he heard these two murderers indulging in daylight debauchery again!!!
Separate them! They absolutely had to be separated!
Nothing
