We Agreed On Experiencing Life, So Why Did You Immortals Become Real? - Chapter 449: Kill Him!

A full month had passed since Xiao Mo’s tribulation crossing.

During that time, just as Yan Ruxue had said, she and Qin Siyao took turns caring for Xiao Mo.

Jiang Qingyi would also come to check on him frequently.

Although every time Jiang Qingyi came, she wore an expression of obvious displeasure, she always ended up staying for a very long time.

With each passing day of careful recovery, Xiao Mo’s body gradually healed.

At last, when Xiao Mo removed the bandages wrapped around him, new flesh had already grown beneath them.

Compared to before, Xiao Mo felt that his complexion was somewhat fairer and his appearance somewhat better than it had been.

No wonder cultivators generally looked far more refined in appearance than ordinary mortals. After all, a fair complexion covers a multitude of flaws, and as long as one’s bone structure was not too unpleasant, one rarely turned out looking poor.

After entering Foundation Building, Xiao Mo’s physique had also grown considerably stronger.

Not only that.

Having read Confucian classics continuously for an entire month, he had actually managed to condense a thread of righteous qi within his chest.

At this point, Xiao Mo decided to make swordsmanship his primary cultivation path, with the Confucian way as a supplement, and body-tempering fist techniques as an additional discipline.

For most cultivators, this kind of approach would not be considered wise.

After all, a person’s energy and focus are limited.

In the eyes of most cultivators, mastering one path completely is worth far more than being familiar with ten thousand paths in part but Xiao Mo had the Sage’s Heart, and on top of that he had earned several rewards from the Book of a Hundred Lives that had refined his spiritual roots and bone structure over time.

So Xiao Mo felt that cultivating multiple paths simultaneously should not pose too great a problem for him.

After recovering from his injuries, Xiao Mo continued his cultivation at the Dao Inquiry Platform.

Jiang Qingyi, as she always had, continued to teach Xiao Mo swordsmanship.

Compared to when he was at the Qi Refinement realm, Xiao Mo’s learning speed at Foundation Building was significantly faster, fast enough that even Jiang Qingyi found it somewhat difficult to believe.

Jiang Qingyi felt that Xiao Mo was actually a match for herself, who possessed an innate sword bone from birth.

It was only because Xiao Mo spent time cultivating both the Confucian way and occasionally studying formation arts in addition to his swordsmanship, which slowed his progress in the sword path slightly.

As for the ten thousand hearthfires that had manifested during Xiao Mo’s tribulation crossing, although all three of Yan Ruxue, Qin Siyao, and Jiang Qingyi were deeply curious, none of them pressed him about it.

They felt that asking would likely yield nothing useful anyway.

Xiao Mo had been confined within the deep palace the entire time and had never gone anywhere. He himself might not even know how it had come about.

Yan Ruxue’s own best explanation was that the merit Xiao Mo had accumulated in his previous lifetimes had not completely dissipated.

When Xiao Mo encountered mortal danger during his tribulation crossing, the merit of ten thousand hearthfires had moved of its own accord to protect him.

It was a form of karmic cause and effect, in its own way.

Another month passed, and Xiao Mo consolidated his realm and prepared to advance toward the middle stage of Foundation Building.

At the same time, in a small town within the borders of the Liang Kingdom, a man dressed in black robes walked along a deserted street, making his way toward the edge of the city.

A summer wind blew from behind the man, stirring the lanterns hanging beneath the eaves, and brushing across the wind chimes being sold at the small stalls along the street yet the marketplace, which had once been bustling with life, was utterly still.

Rats crawled openly onto the tables of the wine shops, then leaped down and disappeared into their holes.

The singing houses of the city no longer rang with the bright, warbling voices of the women within. Only colorful ribbons of silk drifted in the wind, rising and slowly falling again.

In a single night, all twenty hundred thousand residents of the town had vanished without a trace.

This city had become a dead city, empty of every living soul.

Walking out of the town, the man flew off in a particular direction.

Two days later, the man descended from the air.

“We greet the Sect Master!”

The two disciples standing guard at the mountain gate saw their sect master return and quickly clasped their hands and bowed.

“Mm.”

The man gave a nod in acknowledgment and walked into the sect.

Returning to the main peak within the sect, the man made his way to a cave dwelling.

He opened the underground tunnel entrance within the cave dwelling and descended step by step.

When the man reached the bottom, he activated a technique, and the torches lining the walls on all sides ignited one by one.

Directly ahead of the man stood a colossal stone statue, three zhang tall.

Around the stone statue, broken and deteriorating formation markings were carved into the walls, and rusted swords were planted at various points throughout the formation, like rows of aged guardians, preventing whatever lay within the formation from ever seeing the light of day.

“Master!”

The man knelt on one knee and paid his respects to the stone statue.

The statue’s eyes glowed with a faint, eerie green light, and the mottled cracks running across its surface looked almost as though green blood flowed within them.

“Did you bring what I asked for?” The stone statue spoke slowly.

“I brought it, Master.” The man drew a blood-red orb from within his robe. “These are the souls of all twenty hundred thousand residents of Shitou Town. Please accept them, Master.”

“Good!”

As the words fell, the stone statue shuddered violently.

The blood-red orb drifted upward into the air above the statue.

Within the blood orb, the souls of twenty hundred thousand people wailed and wept without cease, but it was all in vain.

Under the immense pulling force, the twenty hundred thousand souls seemed to become a single river, pouring into the statue’s open mouth.

It lasted for a full half stick of incense’s time before the sound of the wailing souls in the stone chamber finally faded into silence.

The orb, once blood-red, shifted to a vivid jade green, and floated back down into the man’s hand.

“RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE!”

Waves of spiritual energy rippled outward.

The cracks across the stone statue’s surface grew more numerous, while the rust on the swords planted in the formation grew thicker, as though a single light touch would cause them to crumble into gray iron dust and scatter through the air.

“More!” The statue’s eyes flashed with greed. “I need more souls. Beyond ordinary commoners, the more cultivator souls the better! Especially cultivators at the Dragon Gate realm and above! Understood?”

“Yes, Master!” The man nodded heavily, though a flicker of difficulty crossed his eyes.

The man organized his thoughts and spoke slowly. “But Master, though your subordinate also wishes to relieve you of your burdens and capture more cultivators for you, wandering cultivators are not always easy to come across, and their cultivation levels tend to be relatively low.”

“If your subordinate were to capture disciples from established sects in the mountains, the sect masters and elders of those sects would certainly come hunting your subordinate down.”

“Your subordinate does not fear death, but he fears that it would interfere with Master’s great plans.”

“Heh heh heh…”

The stone statue let out a cold laugh.

It knew perfectly well what this human cultivator was thinking.

With a single thought from the stone statue, a flash of green light sank into the man’s body.

The bottleneck that had kept the man trapped at the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm for five hundred years suddenly showed faint signs of loosening.

The man was overjoyed, and pressed his forehead to the ground before the statue. “Many thanks for Master’s generous gift!”

“Do not worry. Once I break free from this confinement, your reward will be plentiful. Simply do your work well for me. Is that clear?” The stone statue said with enticement.

“Understood, Master!” The man’s words at this moment carried considerably more sincerity.

“Very well. Go. In addition to gathering souls for sustenance, there is one more matter I need you to attend to.” The stone statue spoke slowly.

The man lowered his head. “Please give your orders, Master.”

“Not long ago, I sensed an aura that I find deeply, deeply disagreeable. It should be somewhere to the north.”

The stone statue’s body shook loose fragments of stone, which gathered together ceaselessly, encasing a single drop of green blood within.

“Take this stone and go north. The closer you get to him, the stronger the stone’s reaction will be.”

“I want you to find that man,”

“And then!”

The hatred in the stone statue’s voice seemed to have been condensed over tens of millions of years.

“Kill him!”