The Black Mire Swamp lay suffocated under a perpetual, stifling shroud of murky green poison mist. Mud bubbled and glopped, occasionally belching putrid gases, while broken bones lay half-submerged, silent testaments to the land's peril. The air was thick and foul, reeking of rotting vegetation and the despair of living beings.
Lin Mo stood silently at the swamp's edge, his blue robes pristine, starkly contrasting with the surrounding filth. A few steps behind him, Zhao Yan looked pale, straining to circulate his spiritual power against the miasma's corruption, his eyes unable to hide his fear. Even from this distance, he could feel the heart-palpitating resentment and towering sin emanating from the swamp's depths.
"E-Elder... the intelligence was correct. The depth of sin here far surpasses Greenwood City," Zhao Yan's voice trembled, the Star-Calming Compass at his waist vibrating violently, pointing towards the swamp's core.
Lin Mo offered no response. His vision had long transcended the mundane; what he saw were countless twisted, wailing threads of karmic sin, coiling and pulsing like polluted veins throughout the area, all converging towards a powerful life signature in the deepest part of the swamp—Early Nascent Soul.
"Wait here."
Before the words fully faded, Lin Mo took a step forward, his figure vanishing into the thick miasma. Where he passed, the murky green mist parted around an invisible barrier, unable to enter a three-foot radius around him.
His intrusion was like a stone dropped into stagnant water, instantly shattering the swamp's false peace.
"Kekekeke! Fresh blood and souls, delivered right to our door!"
Amidst the shrill, grating laughter, three black figures shot out from the depths of the mire, radiating palpable killing intent. The leader, clad in black robes with a sinister face, wielded a bone sword wreathed in dark energy, his cultivation at the peak of the Golden Core stage. Behind him, one controlled several skeletons with green flames dancing in their eye sockets, while another brandished a soul-summoning banner stitched together from human skin.
These were the three demonic cultivator chieftains of the Black Mire Swamp.
"Brat, no matter who you are, trespassing in the Black Mire Swamp means you leave behind your life and your soul!" The peak Golden Core cultivator licked his bone sword, a cruel light flashing in his eyes.
Lin Mo swept his indifferent gaze over the three, as if examining evidence on a docket.
"Plundering living beings, inflicting torture, refining souls, crafting banners. Sin is grave, violating core statutes of the Life Volume of the Lex Universae," his voice was calm, yet carried the undeniable tone of a pronouncement. "Evidence is conclusive. Trial is unnecessary. Judgment: Existential Erasure."
There was no warning, no process.
As the word "Erasure" fell, the Law was already enacted.
The three cultivators, who mere moments ago were brimming with menace, froze abruptly. Their sinister grins, the killing intent around them, the magical tools they had summoned—every trace of their existence in this world—was utterly wiped away in an instant by an invisible force.
Like a sandcastle collapsing, leaving no trace in the wind.
The spot was empty, as if the three had never been there. Only the faintly stirring miasma proved the recent events were not an illusion.
Silence.
A deathly silence enveloped the area.
It lasted only a moment.
"ROAR—!"
An earth-shaking roar erupted from the swamp's depths. The mire's mud boiled, the murky green miasma churned violently! An aura vastly more vast, icy, and brutal than the Golden Core stage exploded forth, like an ancient, slumbering beast awakening fully!
"Who dares destroy my subordinates?! Die!"
Boom!
Mud exploded as a figure shrouded in thick, almost tangible black Profound Malice-energy shot into the sky! It was a gaunt, ghost-like old man with deeply sunken eye sockets holding flickering will-o'-the-wisp flames. The pressure radiating from him made the swamp ground for miles around tremble!
This was the master of the Black Mire Swamp, the Black Malice Patriarch, an Early Nascent Soul mighty figure!
Hovering in mid-air, he locked his deadly gaze onto Lin Mo, his killing intent nearly solidifying. "You little..." He began to utter a threat, but as his spiritual sense swept over Lin Mo, he found he couldn't perceive the man's depths at all. A nameless trepidation struck his heart.
Lin Mo looked up at the malice-radiating figure, his gaze still as placid as an ancient well.
"The principal culprit appears," he stated flatly, as if noting a fact. "Sentence enhanced."
He raised his right hand and made a gentle grasping motion towards the empty air.
"Edict: Spiritual Severance."
The words became Law, the rules rewritten!
The Black Malice Patriarch, poised to unleash a thunderous strike, face changed drastically! To his horror, the vast, tidal wave of Nascent Soul spiritual power surrounding him was suddenly severed from his control! It was as if an invisible, absolute prohibition had forcibly cut off his connection to the world's spiritual energy, even imprisoning the cultivation he had honed for centuries within his body, utterly unmovable!
"No! Impossible! What have you done?!" the Black Malice Patriarch shrieked in utter terror. He plummeted from the sky, crashing into the muddy swamp in a wretched state. Deprived of his spiritual power, the Blackwater Profound Malice he relied on instantly dissipated, revealing his withered, skeletal true form.
Lin Mo paced calmly, stepping on the void as if it were solid ground, walking step by step towards the struggling Patriarch.
"According to the Lex Universae, your crimes permit no leniency," Lin Mo's voice was icy, the pronouncement of a god of death. "Judgment: Soul Annihilation, True Spirit Dissipation. No reincarnation, forever."
He extended a single finger, pointing at the face of the Patriarch, now filled with despair and disbelief.
There was no light, no sound.
The Black Malice Patriarch's pupils dilated abruptly. Then, his entire being—from his physical body to his Nascent Soul, down to the deepest imprints of his soul—disintegrated and dissolved like sand scattered by the wind, silently transforming back into the most fundamental particles, returning to heaven and earth.
The mighty figure who had dominated this region was no more, form and spirit utterly destroyed, leaving not a trace behind.
Lin Mo retracted his finger as if he had merely completed a trivial task. He glanced around, sensing the thick sin of this place slowly beginning to dissipate now that its source was gone.
"Cleansing complete."
He turned and took a single step, already back beside the stunned Zhao Yan at the swamp's edge.
"Next location."
Zhao Yan jolted back to awareness. Looking at the composed Lin Mo before him, then at the terrifying swamp that seemed as if nothing had ever happened, he swallowed hard, his voice filled with utmost awe:
"Y-Yes! Elder!"