Several months later, the Eastern Region had descended into a state of unprecedented turmoil.
High above the vast battlefield separating the forces of the Orthodox Alliance and the Seven Star Palace, a streak of golden light tore through the clouds, moving so rapidly that the naked eye could barely follow its trajectory. Behind it, countless dark streaks surged through the sky, their sinister auras intertwining as they pursued the golden figure relentlessly, occasionally releasing black beams of demonic energy that ripped through the clouds and exploded against the surrounding mountains.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions reverberated across the battlefield, sending enormous waves of spiritual energy sweeping through the sky. The golden figure twisted sideways, narrowly evading a black beam that passed within several feet of his body before striking a distant mountain, whereupon the entire summit erupted in a storm of shattered rock and billowing dust. Before the debris could settle, several dark figures emerged from the smoke, their hands forming seals as terrifying demonic techniques gathered around them.
"Don't let him escape! Surround him from both sides!"
A black-robed cultivator roared, his voice carrying across several miles as he thrust his palm forward. A gigantic skeletal hand emerged from the demonic Qi surrounding him, its five fingers stretching across the sky before closing towards the golden figure, while several other demonic cultivators simultaneously unleashed their attacks, sealing the surrounding space with streaks of black lightning, blood-coloured chains, and sinister talismanic flames.
The golden figure's expression darkened.
He abruptly stopped retreating.
His right hand swept backwards, and a golden sword light emerged from his sleeve, expanding into a brilliant arc that cut through the incoming skeletal hand. The enormous construct split apart with a deafening crack, its fingers collapsing into scattered fragments of demonic Qi, but the remaining attacks had already arrived. Black lightning descended from above, the blood-coloured chains shot towards his legs, and the talismanic flames surged forward like a sea of burning darkness.
The golden figure stamped his foot against the air.
A violent wave of spiritual power erupted around him, forming a circular barrier that forced the incoming attacks to slow for a fraction of a breath. He seized that fleeting opportunity, thrust his sword forward, and sent three successive arcs of golden sword light tearing through the encirclement. The first severed the blood-coloured chains, the second shattered the talismanic flames, and the third pierced through the chest of a pursuing demonic cultivator before continuing into the distance.
Blood sprayed through the sky.
The injured cultivator released a strangled cry and fell, his body tumbling towards the battlefield below, but the others merely tightened their encirclement. Their expressions were cold, and their attacks became even more coordinated as they attempted to force the golden figure towards the ground, where their numerical advantage would become more difficult to overcome.
Unfortunately, they had underestimated their opponent.
The golden figure suddenly reversed direction, his sword flashing as he swept through the gap between two incoming techniques. His body blurred, leaving behind a golden afterimage that was immediately swallowed by a mass of demonic Qi, and by the time the pursuing cultivators realised their mistake, he had already broken through their formation and was racing towards the distant horizon.
"After him!"
The black-robed cultivator's roar echoed across the sky.
Yet the pursuit continued to grow more distant.
Below them, the battlefield was even more chaotic.
Countless cultivators clashed across the plains, their techniques colliding with the weapons and talismans released by their opponents, while the roars of spiritual beasts and the thunderous explosions of divine abilities blended into an unending wall of noise. Swords flashed, flying sabres tore through the ranks, and enormous spells descended upon the ground, leaving behind craters, shattered fortifications, and rivers of spiritual fire that consumed everything caught within their reach.
The Seven Star Palace had finally abandoned its righteous disguise.
For generations, the palace had maintained its position among the orthodox factions, concealing its true connections and gradually extending its influence throughout the Eastern Region. That façade had now collapsed, and the forces it had concealed for so long had entered the war openly, revealing the demonic cultivators who had previously operated in the shadows.
Their appearance had transformed the nature of the conflict.
The Seven Star Palace's demonic cultivators possessed cultivation methods that differed considerably from those practised by ordinary orthodox cultivators, and although many of their techniques were unstable or required sinister sacrifices, their combat power was often exceptionally fierce. Some specialised in manipulating Yin Qi, others refined their bodies through blood sacrifice, while particularly vicious individuals could summon demonic creatures or transform the battlefield into a domain filled with poisonous demonic energy.
More troublesome still, their numbers were considerable.
The Orthodox Alliance's original military formations had been designed to deal with conventional cultivators, relying upon coordinated attacks, defensive barriers, and the combined strength of numerous lower-level practitioners. Against the sudden appearance of so many demonic cultivators, however, those formations frequently became ineffective, because the demonic side possessed too many unusual methods capable of disrupting their carefully arranged tactics.
In response, the alliance had begun deploying martial artists of increasingly high cultivation.
Xuan Gang experts now appeared regularly along the front lines, their powerful Gang Qi allowing them to break through the attacks of weaker demonic cultivators while protecting the alliance's lower-level forces. Some fought with enormous weapons that shattered defensive barriers with every swing, while others released condensed Gang Qi that swept across the battlefield like invisible blades, forcing entire groups of demonic cultivators to retreat.
Their arrival had helped stabilise the situation, but it had not solved the underlying problem.
The conflict had already reached a level where ordinary casualties could no longer be avoided, and both sides had gradually realised that allowing their Purple Palace cultivators to fight indiscriminately among the lower ranks would only result in unnecessary losses. Consequently, the battles had begun separating into distinct engagements, with Purple Palace experts frequently confronting one another in designated areas away from the densest concentrations of weaker soldiers.
These clashes were no less brutal.
A Purple Palace cultivator could release techniques capable of destroying entire military formations, and when several such experts fought simultaneously, the resulting spiritual storms could sweep across miles of terrain. Nevertheless, the alliance had managed to secure more victories than defeats in these engagements, allowing it to maintain a fragile balance despite the Seven Star Palace's increasingly aggressive tactics.
For a time, both sides had appeared content to continue fighting at this level.
Then the Devil Head appeared.
Several months earlier, reports had spread across the Eastern Region concerning a demonic cultivator who had slaughtered an entire mortal city, leaving behind millions of corpses and an overwhelming concentration of blood energy. At first, some factions had dismissed the reports as exaggerated rumours, believing that no cultivator would waste so much effort slaughtering mortals when the essence of powerful cultivators offered far greater benefits.
That assumption had changed when the investigators arrived.
The city had been reduced to a scene of absolute horror, its streets submerged beneath blood, its buildings stained crimson, and the remnants of an enormous formation still visible across the surrounding terrain. The traces left behind were unmistakably demonic, and the strength of the residual aura suggested that the perpetrator was no ordinary Purple Palace cultivator.
The evidence pointed towards the Golden Core Realm.
That discovery had immediately altered the situation.
Until then, both sides had largely restrained their Golden Core experts, deploying them only when the battlefield demanded intervention of comparable strength. Golden Core cultivators were valuable assets, and the death of even one could affect the balance of power between major factions, especially when their accumulated cultivation, divine abilities, and personal inheritances represented resources that could not easily be replaced.
However, the appearance of a demonic cultivator capable of slaughtering millions of mortals had forced both sides to reconsider their strategy.
If the Devil Head were allowed to continue operating unchecked, he could become an unpredictable threat that neither faction could afford to ignore. Worse, his activities might conceal a larger scheme involving the collection of blood essence, the refinement of forbidden treasures, or the preparation of some ancient demonic ritual.
Consequently, the major factions began deploying their Golden Core generals more frequently, using them to suppress dangerous opponents and prevent the conflict from spiralling beyond their control.
The consequences were immediate.
A Golden Core cultivator's divine abilities were on an entirely different level from ordinary spells and techniques, and even a minor divine ability could unleash enough power to devastate a vast stretch of terrain. Mountains could be split apart, rivers diverted, and entire valleys reduced to scorched wasteland, while the spiritual energy released by a single clash could destroy thousands of weaker cultivators before they even understood what had happened.
Although such attacks could not compare with the major divine abilities wielded by Nascent Soul True Monarchs, their destructive power was still sufficient to transform the surrounding landscape.
The battlefield had therefore become increasingly dangerous, and even the Golden Core generals had to exercise caution when choosing where to engage their opponents.
Yet amidst all this chaos, the Seven Star Palace remained strangely silent regarding the Devil Head.
Publicly, it issued no statement accepting responsibility for the massacre, nor did it acknowledge any connection between the mysterious killer and its demonic forces. Instead, the palace continued directing its troops towards the alliance's positions, allowing the war to consume the attention of the major factions while quietly investigating the identity and intentions of the Devil Head behind closed doors.
Within a secluded chamber deep inside the palace, several powerful figures had already begun discussing the matter.
None of them knew the Devil Head's true identity, but the timing of his appearance and the scale of the massacre had made it impossible to dismiss him as an insignificant rogue cultivator.
For now, the Seven Star Palace chose to observe.
The Eastern Region was already drowning in blood, and whatever the Devil Head intended to accomplish, the palace was unwilling to expose its own secrets before understanding whether he would become an asset, an obstacle, or a threat that might eventually turn against them.
While the major factions continued their investigations, the perpetrator of the massacre had already completed the next stage of his plan.
Far from the sect battlefield, within a mortal city that had once been filled with millions of inhabitants, absolute silence reigned.
The city had been prosperous.
Its streets had once been crowded with merchants and travellers, its markets filled with the cries of vendors, and its residential districts illuminated by lanterns whenever night descended. Now, however, there was no sound of conversation, no footsteps upon the stone roads, and no movement behind the countless windows overlooking the streets.
The silence was so complete that even the faint rustling of the wind seemed unnatural.
Blood flowed through the streets like rivers, filling the shallow depressions between the stones before gathering in the drainage channels and spreading towards the central district. Countless bodies lay scattered throughout the city, their faces frozen in expressions of terror, while the blood that had flowed from them was being drawn towards an enormous formation engraved across the ground.
At the centre of that formation floated a dark-red orb.
It was not particularly large, measuring only about the size of a human head, yet its surface contained a deep crimson radiance that seemed to absorb the surrounding light. Countless complicated markings moved beneath its surface, occasionally forming patterns resembling veins or tiny blood vessels, while the enormous formation beneath it pulsed with a rhythm that resembled the beating of a gigantic heart.
The full moon hung above the city.
Its pale light descended upon the rooftops, illuminating the blood-soaked streets and the countless corpses, while the formation at the city's centre gradually began to activate.
A deep hum spread across the ground.
The blood accumulated throughout the city trembled, then rose into the air in countless crimson streams, converging towards the central formation as though drawn by an invisible force. The streams moved through the streets, passed over the bodies of the dead, and spiralled upwards before entering the dark-red orb, whose radiance grew increasingly brilliant with every passing moment.
Then the corpses began to dissipate.
Their flesh and bones did not simply crumble into dust. Instead, their remaining vitality and the scattered fragments of their souls were drawn out by the formation, separating from the physical remains before flowing towards the orb in faint streams of pale light. The bodies gradually lost their colour, their skin turning grey before their forms broke apart into fine particles that scattered across the blood-soaked streets.
The process continued without interruption.
For six hours, the formation absorbed the remaining blood essence and dissipated soul fragments from the entire city, its crimson light becoming more intense as the orb gathered the final remnants of the massacre. By the time the last traces of spiritual residue disappeared, the streets had become eerily clean in some places, while in others, only dark stains and scattered fragments remained to indicate the catastrophe that had occurred.
At last, the formation's light faded.
The enormous patterns engraved across the ground dimmed one after another, and the blood that had accumulated within the channels was drawn into the central orb before the entire arrangement fell silent.
A figure stood in the middle of the formation.
He wore a simple dark robe, and his appearance was almost ordinary, apart from the faint pallor of his skin and the coldness that lingered in his eyes. There was no obvious fluctuation of spiritual Qi surrounding him, nor did he release the kind of pressure that would normally accompany a Golden Core cultivator, yet the bloody aura gathered around his body was so dense that merely standing near him would have made an ordinary person feel as though they were being watched by a predator.
He slowly raised his head and looked towards the orb.
A faint smile appeared upon his face.
The figure was He Jinfeng.
Or, more accurately, the body that had once belonged to He Jinfeng.
The original He Jinfeng's True Spirit had been completely consumed, leaving nothing of his former consciousness behind. The entity that now occupied his body had inherited his appearance, his cultivation foundation, and the knowledge contained within his Sea of Consciousness, but its thoughts, intentions, and memories belonged to a different existence entirely.
For the time being, it had no reason to abandon the name associated with the body.
After all, the major factions were already searching for the Devil Head, and the identity of He Jinfeng had become a useful disguise.
The dark-red orb slowly descended from the air.
The moment it settled above his palm, its surface rippled, and a faint wave of energy spread through his body. The figure's smile deepened as he sensed the power contained within the orb, his fingers closing around it before he guided it towards his abdomen.
The orb passed through his body without resistance, entering his dantian and settling into a position beside his Golden Core.
A low hum sounded within his body.
The two objects resonated with one another, their auras intertwining for an instant before the dark-red orb became completely still.
He Jinfeng flexed his fingers.
A powerful sensation spread through his limbs, and the spiritual Qi within his dantian responded with a degree of precision that had been impossible before the orb's formation. He could feel the additional reserve of power contained within it, as well as the strange connection that allowed it to reinforce his cultivation without immediately disturbing the balance of his Golden Core.
He finally relaxed.
His first step towards securing his future had been completed.
With this treasure, he would be far better equipped to deal with most Golden Core cultivators, especially those who relied upon prolonged exchanges of divine abilities to exhaust their opponents. Even if he encountered an enemy whose cultivation was comparable to his own, the additional power stored within the orb would allow him to sustain his techniques for considerably longer, while its influence could accelerate the release of his divine abilities and improve the efficiency with which he controlled his spiritual Qi.
More importantly, the orb was not merely a temporary source of strength.
It was a special natal treasure created through one of the methods recorded in the Underworld Prison Demonic Scripture, a treasure that could potentially grow alongside its master and eventually develop into a Rank 5 spiritual treasure possessing its own natal spirit.
The current orb was far from reaching that level, but its potential was considerable.
The Crimson Blood Core.
That was the name of the natal treasure method he had chosen.
Unlike ordinary treasures that remained external to a cultivator's body, the Crimson Blood Core was cultivated as a second core, existing alongside the Golden Core and serving as an additional reservoir of magical power. It could store energy, accelerate the recovery of spent spiritual Qi, assist with the comprehension of divine abilities, and reinforce its master's combat strength during prolonged battles.
Its greatest advantage lay in the way those functions complemented one another.
A Golden Core cultivator could release a powerful divine ability, but doing so consumed a considerable quantity of spiritual Qi, and repeated use would eventually weaken even an exceptionally talented practitioner. With the Crimson Blood Core supplying additional power and helping replenish what had been expended, He Jinfeng could maintain a far more aggressive fighting style, forcing opponents to defend against successive divine abilities while gradually wearing down their reserves.
The treasure could also help him accelerate his cultivation, because the additional reservoir of energy allowed him to maintain a more stable circulation of spiritual Qi while refining the essence required for further advancement. Its assistance with divine ability comprehension was equally valuable, since the energy stored within it could be used to sustain the repeated practice and experimentation needed to deepen his understanding.
However, the Crimson Blood Core's most ambitious function had not yet been completed.
The treasure was intended to develop a natal spirit.
Once that spirit was born, the Crimson Blood Core would no longer be merely a specialised reservoir of power, but an extraordinary spiritual treasure capable of responding to its master's will with a degree of independence. Such a transformation could greatly expand its potential, allowing it to assist with combat and cultivation in ways that the present form could not yet achieve.
The problem was that creating a natal spirit required more than spiritual Qi and blood essence.
It required the nourishment of countless dissipated soul fragments.
The Underworld Prison Demonic Scripture contained an ancient method for gathering such fragments, drawing upon the remnants left behind when living beings died and their souls began to disperse. According to the method, the scattered fragments could be absorbed into the Crimson Blood Core and gradually refined, increasing the possibility that a new spiritual consciousness might emerge within the treasure.
There was a significant distinction between the souls of ordinary mortals and those of cultivators.
When an ordinary mortal died, the soul would gradually dissipate, and its scattered fragments would eventually return to the cycle of reincarnation. Those fragments did not necessarily retain enough coherent memories or a stable sense of identity to form a complete personality, which made them easier to refine through the method recorded in the scripture.
Cultivators, on the other hand, possessed stronger spiritual foundations, and their souls could retain more substantial fragments of memory and consciousness after death. Absorbing such fragments without proper refinement risked creating conflicts between the remnants, potentially producing a confused and unstable consciousness burdened by contradictory memories and fragments of different personalities.
For a treasure intended to develop a stable natal spirit, that was an unacceptable risk.
That was why the entity occupying He Jinfeng's body had chosen to slaughter mortals rather than gather the souls of cultivators.
The method was cruel, but it served its purpose.
The Crimson Blood Core had now absorbed an enormous quantity of blood essence and dissipated soul fragments, bringing it one step closer to the transformation he desired. Whether those fragments would ultimately give birth to a true natal spirit remained uncertain, but the foundation had been established, and he would be able to continue nourishing the treasure through additional sacrifices if necessary.
He Jinfeng lowered his hand and gazed at the empty streets.
There was no regret in his expression.
Millions of lives had vanished, yet to him, the massacre had been little more than the gathering of materials required for his cultivation. Their deaths had provided the essence needed to establish the Crimson Blood Core, and if the resulting treasure continued developing as expected, the sacrifice would have been worthwhile.
He slowly turned towards the distant horizon.
The major sects were searching for him, and after the breakthrough to the Golden Core Realm, their efforts would only intensify. He could already imagine the response of the Orthodox Alliance once they discovered the full extent of the massacre, and although ordinary Golden Core cultivators no longer posed the same threat they once had, he had no intention of underestimating the forces that might be sent after him.
He had only just begun rebuilding his strength.
There were still secrets hidden within the mysterious finger, and the Underworld Prison Demonic Scripture contained methods he had yet to explore. Before confronting the most powerful figures in the Eastern Region, he needed to ensure that his foundation was stable, his Crimson Blood Core had matured sufficiently, and his current body could withstand the consequences of any further advancement.
He was not the original He Jinfeng.
He possessed none of that man's lingering attachments, and the desire for revenge that had once consumed the body's former owner meant little to him. If the unknown Golden Core cultivator who had injured He Jinfeng proved useful, he might investigate the matter, but he would not risk his plans merely to satisfy a dead man's resentment.
His objective was far greater than settling an old grudge.
He intended to understand the present state of the Eastern Region, recover what had been lost during his long imprisonment, and determine which factions had risen or fallen during the thousands of years he had spent sealed away.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"Still, I suppose I should welcome my guests properly."
His gaze shifted towards the distant sky.
He had sensed several auras approaching the city, their spiritual fluctuations carefully concealed but not enough to escape his perception. The major sects had finally followed the trail of the Devil Head to its source, and judging from the strength of the approaching presences, they had not come merely to investigate.
They intended to kill him.
He Jinfeng's smile widened, revealing a trace of cold amusement.
"Good. I've been waiting for you."
The Crimson Blood Core pulsed once within his dantian, releasing a faint crimson radiance that spread through his meridians before vanishing beneath his skin. He raised his right hand, and the surrounding blood-coloured formation began to stir again, its remaining energy gathering towards him as the first distant figures descended from the clouds.
The wind swept through the deserted city, carrying the stench of blood across streets where millions had once lived.
Above the rooftops, several Golden Core auras descended like falling stars.
And at the centre of the dead city, the Devil Head calmly waited for them to arrive.