Chapter 261: A Sleeper at the Side of the Netherworld Abyss

Xing angrily took the five low third-grade spirit stones, tossed the rest of the spoils to Qin Haoxuan, and after chewing them like beans, reluctantly transformed into the appearance of the rogue cultivator. He then found a few ropes and tied up Qin Haoxuan and Lan Yan, leading them away.

This single action of theirs had decided the fate of the remaining rogue cultivator. But at this moment, that man, whose name had already been marked by the King of Hell, was still fantasizing about how fat a sheep this Taichu disciple was.

Knock, knock, knock…

The door was knocked. The scar-faced rogue cultivator looked up and saw that his junior brother had returned.

“Junior Brother, what’s the harvest? Is that little fat sheep from the Taichu Sect fat or not?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

“Senior Brother, it’s incredible! A great harvest!” Xing, in his disguise, deliberately put on a joyful expression to lull the man into a false sense of security. He then pulled out the “bound” Qin Haoxuan and Lan Yan and kicked Qin Haoxuan in the rear, sending him stumbling. “The other one was accidentally killed by me, but I still caught two alive!” Taking this opportunity to get a little revenge, he kicked him extra hard.

“Haha!” the Twenty-First-Leaf rogue cultivator laughed. “So, the disciples of the Taichu Sect are nothing special after all.” Seeing his junior brother, he asked again, “You said there was a great harvest? What great harvest? Tell me quickly.”

Xing nodded and then moved closer, pretending that the harvest was so great he was afraid of being overheard. The scar-faced cultivator had no idea that this “junior brother” of his was actually Xing in disguise. The moment he leaned in close, Xing threw a punch.

SPLAT!

He didn’t even have time to condense his protective spiritual energy. His head was completely smashed by the “junior brother” he had trusted so deeply. A Twenty-First-Leaf rogue cultivator, without a protective talisman or his spiritual energy barrier, even with a relatively strong body, could not possibly withstand Xing’s fist.

After killing him, Qin Haoxuan walked in from outside. He chuckled lightly. “With your strength, you could have killed him with a single punch as long as he let down his guard. Why bother with all the tricks?”

Xing raised his fist with displeasure. “Have you forgotten? I am a demon. A demon who doesn’t even know how to use tricks, can he still be called a demon? Then what kind of genius demon would I be? A fool demon would be more like it.” After his little theory, he added more nonsense, “Why use the effort to step on an ant when you can just pinch it to death?”

After dealing with the two of them, Qin Haoxuan got busy. The business of killing and arson was well-suited for Xing, but it was more reliable for him to collect the spoils of war himself. Under Xing’s extremely resentful gaze, he collected all the valuables from the scar-faced man’s body. There weren’t many spirit stones, only about three thousand in total. For him, who now had one hundred and ninety thousand low third-grade spirit stones, it was better than nothing.

Xing’s gaze was like that of a resentful wife, his handsome face twisted with anger. He never would have thought that these two rogue cultivators were so close that one of them held all their joint assets.

After collecting the spoils, Qin Haoxuan remembered something that interested him. Hadn’t these two mentioned that their senior brother was maintaining a formation? How was it that he hadn’t seen any formation here?

“Wait!” Lan Yan suddenly stopped his small action of putting the spoils into the Qiankun Talisman. Her sharp eyes had spotted something among the items. “Give me that small gray ball.”

Qin Haoxuan found a small gray ball among the spoils. There was no spiritual energy fluctuation on it, and he had only glanced at it casually. Right now, he was very curious about what kind of array the two had set up, so he decided to examine the spoils in detail when he had time.

Taking the dragon’s-eye-sized gray ball, Lan Yan looked at it and infused a stream of spiritual energy into it. A few lines appeared on its surface. Her eyes lit up. “I know where it is. Follow me.”

Qin Haoxuan and Xing looked at each other and followed her to a desolate old courtyard in the prefectural yamen. The courtyard was not large, but when he walked up to it, he felt a slight repulsive force pushing away anyone who tried to get close. This force was nothing to him, but it would be impossible for a mortal to approach.

She pushed open the dilapidated gate. The inside was empty, with nothing but a thick layer of dust on the ground. She did not stop but walked towards the old building. She opened the door, and again, there was nothing inside. If not for the faint repulsive force outside, they would have surely thought she had led them to the wrong place.

Lan Yan walked around the house a few times, holding the gray ball, and then pressed a spot on the wall. The wall rumbled and rotated, revealing a secret room behind it. The moment the door opened, a wave of spiritual energy washed over them. He saw a barrier-like spiritual art on the door, and upon entering, he found that the entire secret room had a similar barrier, which was why he hadn’t sensed it before.

This semi-underground secret room was quite large and ingeniously constructed. If not for her finding the way with the gray pearl, the three of them would have had a very difficult time finding this place.

When he saw what was inside, he couldn’t help but suck in a breath. It was a huge array diagram, ten meters long and ten meters wide. Looking at the complex and obscure inscriptions on it, even he, who considered himself to have some knowledge of them, couldn’t help but swallow. Although the inscriptions were not as obscure as those for the Thousand-Mile or Mortal Talismans, their difficulty lay in their sheer number. Imagine a huge talisman paper, ten meters by ten meters, covered in densely packed inscriptions. They emitted a dark light; if one did not look closely, one might think there were many black insects on it. The largest of these inscriptions was no bigger than a fingernail, the smallest only the size of a grain of rice, and the space between them was so small that not even a needle could be inserted. And they also exuded a dark and gloomy feeling.

Having carved the inscriptions for the Mortal Talisman, he knew that an array diagram composed of hundreds of millions of inscriptions of various sizes could not possibly have been made in a short time. With his own clumsy skill, he wouldn’t have been able to complete it in ten or eight years, and that was without making a single mistake.

This dark feeling, how was it so similar to the small formation his Senior Brother Pu had set up when he had summoned the Nether-Creature? It was just that his senior brother’s small formation was so petty compared to this giant one. If the aura emanating from this diagram was the bright moon, then the formation he had set up back then was a firefly.

He looked at Xing, who was an expert in this field. “What is this? Could it have been set up by those two rogue cultivators?”

Xing interrupted him without a second thought. “How is that possible? Those two were as fragile as eggs. If they could set up such a formidable talisman, they wouldn’t have been so easily killed by us. This array diagram must have been drawn by someone else and then brought here by them to be installed.”

Qin Haoxuan nodded in agreement.

Although he knew what this giant array diagram was, he didn’t know its specific function. He looked at Xing again. “Is this thing for gathering spiritual energy or for practicing cultivation?”

As Xing was frowning in thought, Lan Yan, who had been silent all this time, thought of something and said with great surprise, “This is no ordinary formation. This is a great array that opens a two-way passage to the Netherworld!”

“What did you say?” Qin Haoxuan’s voice rose an octave, his face filled with horror.

Lan Yan, thinking he didn’t know what the Netherworld was, explained, “The Netherworld is another dimension, inhabited entirely by demons, each one of them immensely powerful. These demons love to eat cultivators, but they cannot come to our world. However, they can through some special means, though usually it’s just opening a one-way spatial rift. I never thought that in a place like this, I would actually see a two-way passage to the Netherworld.”

He, of course, knew of the Netherworld. And Xing had come from there. He had already witnessed how terrifying that place was. Although he had only seen the tip of the iceberg, it was enough for him to imagine its horror.

Xing, looking as if he had just had a sudden realization, said, “I know why those rogue cultivators were going against your Taichu Sect! Their real intention wasn’t to help a mortal king usurp the throne at all, but to use the war to draw your sect’s attention. Their real purpose was to cover up this passage to the Netherworld!”

“It’s a good thing we discovered it early. If this passage were to be activated, and a large number of demons from the Netherworld came over, then it would be a great disaster,” he said, wiping the cold sweat from his head.

Lan Yan looked at the array diagram with lingering fear, her eyes not blinking once. She muttered to herself, “It’s not just a disaster; it’s a great disaster! There’s already one Netherworld Abyss. If another group of demons were to come, it would be terrible.”