As the wild ghost couple said, there iwas a cold pool beneath the deep valley, originally quiet and still.

Xie Bai and Yin Wushu poured thousands of pounds of force into their legs and feet, descending straight down like flowing fire, landing with a bang. Just as they stood up, they saw the shattered fragments of the barrier crushed by Yin Wushu, accompanied by fire, falling to the ground.

Those who fell into the cold pool caused countless splashes of various sizes, stirring the water surface endlessly. When the fire touched the water surface, it made a sizzling sound, continuous and successive, followed by a layer of smoke and dust enveloping the entire cold pool.

Those that fell on the ground quickly ignited the nearby grass and trees, making a crackling sound.

Because the barrier was broken, the air flow blocked outside rushed in all at once, blowing down along the surrounding mountains, echoing in the entire valley, sounding like the wailing of ghosts.

The originally quiet and treacherous valley suddenly became a mess.

"Damn, are you guys from the demolition office?" Li Dong, who finally crawled down from the cliff, muttered to himself, stunned by the sight of the disaster in the valley, "You're opening a fight as soon as you arrive."

However, in fact, Yin Wushu and Xie Bai had no one to fight. From the moment he landed, Xie Bai swept a glance at the entire valley amidst the firelight.

Although this valley belonged to this abandoned scenic area and had been wild for a long time, it had not become cluttered. Even though they came down with great fanfare and made the place smoky and fiery, it couldn't completely conceal the natural beauty of this place.

This cold pool lay in the western part of the valley, surrounded by forests on three sides and leaning against a steep mountain slope, with distinct layers.

The three of them walked around the edge of the cold pool, but did not find any living creatures on the shore. The valley wind penetrated back and forth through the forest, with no stagnant or diverted points, meaning there was nothing hidden in the woods.

Xie Bai's gaze naturally fell on the water surface covered by smoke and dust—there was nothing on the shore, so it had to be in the water. After scanning the shore, Yin Wushu stood by the cold pool and waved his hand. The raging fires in the valley, spreading and spreading everywhere, were all released by him, and naturally could be withdrawn at will.

Suddenly, those fires, which were spreading and had the momentum of spreading, turned into a long dragon with his movement, suddenly leaving the grass and trees, soaring into the air. After circling in the air for a while like a chain, it wrapped around the shore of the cold pool, leaving only a small gap where the three of them stood.

Li Dong, with his hands in his sleeves, squatted by the shore and glanced into the water, then looked up at Xie Bai, saying, "Are you going to jump into the water again? I'm afraid of water."

Xie Bai: "..." What aren't you afraid of?

Yin Wushu glanced at him from the corner of his eye, "When you disguised yourself as an ordinary person playing bungee jumping and soaking in hot springs, why weren't you afraid of heights or water?"

Li Dong, whose lazy bones had been exposed, sniffed and stood up silently. However, Xie Bai didn't plan to jump into the cold pool this time. He had ways to retrieve what was underneath.

He raised his hand and conjured black mist, which swept into the water like a vast net, then with a tug and pull, a net full of things was pulled up from the water.

Xie Bai shook his hand, throwing the collected black mist to the empty ground nearby.

Li Dong hurried over and said, "Master, can I borrow your black mist? How much for a day? I want to use it to catch fish with Feng Li. Every time the boss wants to eat fish, we have to go fishing."

Xie Bai coldly replied, "Specializing in retrieving corpses, killing evil spirits, resistant to dirt and covering blood. It hasn't been washed in over two hundred years. You can take it to catch fish."

Yin Wushu: "..." Even though he knew Xie Bai was talking nonsense, he still felt a bit uncomfortable.

After the large lump of things was thrown onto the ground, Xie Bai retracted the black mist. The things inside scattered in front of the three of them all at once. It was a pile of incomplete limbs, hands, feet, bodies, and heads. Fragmented, with blurred flesh and blood, they piled up like a small mountain.

A quick glance revealed that it was impossible to determine exactly how many people were inside.

"Ugh—" The little black cat clinging to Xie Bai's chest turned its head and looked, about to vomit again. It squinted its eyes and stuck out its tongue several times, then suddenly bumped its round head back against Xie Bai's chest, playing dead and motionless.

This scene was quite common for the three present.

Yin Wushu raised his hand and flipped through the broken corpses in the pile.

Xie Bai covered his eyes with bandages made of black mist to examine the bodies. After wrapping three loops of bandages, the pile of broken corpses took on a different appearance in his eyes— There were scattered dim lights of demon cores in this pile of corpses. Roughly counting, there were about twenty-five or six.

As far as Xie Bai knew, there were generally three ways for the Tai Xuan Dao to be aware of the abnormal situation of the demons and spirits under its jurisdiction:

One was when the demons and spirits came to find them actively, which had a specific method and was the fastest;

The second was when the demon's demon core was completely destroyed, Tai Xuan Dao would have a reaction. However, often the demon core would not lose all its power immediately, just like the ones Xie Bai saw, most of them still had residues. So in this case, Tai Xuan Dao would always know the situation several days later.

The last one was through other channels, such as human world news reports, oral rumors, and so on, to discover it actively.

But no matter which way, Tai Xuan Dao would not be late even if it knew late, never later than three days. So all the demon corpses retrieved were thrown into the water within three days.

Xie Bai also wrapped his hands tightly with bandages, then raised his hand and twiched it, then sucked a bloody arm into it.

The arm was covered with wounds of various sizes, with uneven sections. Bathed in the firelight, after flipping through it for a few glances, Xie Bai turned to Yin Wushu and Li Dong and said, "Bitten, all the wounds were chewed out by sharp teeth."

He threw the severed arm back into the pile of corpses, then casually sucked out a head with a bloody and unclear face, carefully examined it front and back, and then threw it back.

After that, Xie Bai directly lifted the entire pile of corpses with black mist, untied the bandages covering his hands, and expressionlessly reached into the pile of corpses. The mountain of limbs and broken arms shrank instantly at a visible speed. The flesh and skin, which had been slightly swollen by the water, shriveled rapidly as if all the moisture had been drained out, and then even the skin and bones were cleaned by Xie Bai.

The blood splattered from the demon corpses fell on Xie Bai's hands, forming a sharp contrast with his extremely fair skin, making Xie Bai, who appeared calm and composed, even more cold and frosty, as if his body and heart were both cold.

After Xie Bai dealt with the entire pile of corpses, the demon cores that were buried in the broken limbs rolled out one after another. With a sweep of his hand, Xie Bai collected the more than twenty demon cores together.

Then he flicked his fingers a few times, and then spread out his palm, a stack of dark yellow paper slips appeared in his hand, each recording which demon the more than twenty demon cores belonged to. He flipped through them and then handed the slips to Yin Wushu.

Li Dong also leaned over to look at the contents of the slips, and after reading them for a while, he said, "They are all older demons, with some skills, but not particularly strong... Why kill them? Even if you eat them, it might not be of much help, and it will leave a fishy taste in your mouth that won't go away." He muttered for a while, then suddenly "hissed—" with some confusion, "I found out that these seem to be all demons of the Yang attribute. Could it be that they were practicing some kind of nourishment technique and did not digest it?"

After Yin Wushu finished reading, he handed the slips back to Xie Bai and said, "It's not a nourishment technique, it's still a sacrificial formation."

"What?" Li Dong was stunned. "How do you set up a blood formation underwater?"

"As I said before, there are many kinds of sacrificial formations, and a blood formation is just one of them." Yin Wushu pointed to the cold pool. "There's also a water burial formation. It traps creatures of the Yang attribute underwater, where living demons tear, bite, and eat them. After consuming the last bit of flesh and skin, the formation is complete. This kind of sacrificial formation also involves exchanging lives for lives, but it sacrifices others' lives, not one's own."

"In that case, it's needless to say, this is a sacrificial formation, and the one on the mountain is also a sacrificial formation. It's impossible for sacrificial rituals to be popular recently, for everyone to participate in sacrificial rituals together, right? It must be the same sacrificial target, no doubt." Li Dong looked puzzled. "But who has such a big face, that everyone is eager to offer sacrifices to him?"

Xie Bai was most puzzled by this point: who exactly was capable of causing so many demons to wreak havoc for him? However, now was not the best time to stand and ponder the issue. The priority was to completely destroy the formation for safety's sake.

Thinking about the mysterious wounds that appeared on Yin Wushu's body after breaking the formation earlier, Xie Bai furrowed his brow. He was just about to ask Yin Wushu about the method of breaking this sacrificial formation and then let him do it when Yin Wushu had already raised his hand and summoned a black long knife.

Without a word, he swung his hand forward.

In the instant the long knife was swung, it increased by tens of meters, emitting a chilling aura. It forcefully split the surface of the cold pool into two halves, and with irresistible force, pierced straight into the bottom of the pool.

When the long knife reached a deep place, it clearly encountered the sacrificial formation at the bottom of the pool. Golden sparks directly splashed out from the bottom of the pool, and the water in the pool spun wildly, forming two whirlpools that obstructed the blade's attack from left and right.

As Yin Wushu withdrew the long knife and swung it out again, about a dozen black shadows suddenly sprang out from the depths of the pool. As agile as leopards, they surged towards the three people on the shore. Their slender bodies were pulled taut like bows, brimming with power.

In the reflection of the firelight, Xie Bai saw that among the beasts pouncing towards him, some had faces like dragonfish, with fan-shaped long fins under their faces. Their round eyes were wide open, with sharp teeth like saws, and they had a fiercely ferocious expression. On top of their heads were long and sharp horns.

Xie Bai shook the black mist in his hand, suddenly elongating it into a black whip. With a cold expression, he raised his hand and cracked the whip. The long and powerful whip body flexibly twisted in the air like a winding black snake, directly lashing at the eyes of those beasts.

With a crisp cracking sound, the beasts' bodies immediately burst open, revealing wounds deep enough to see bones. With a single whip, Xie Bai directly pulled the beasts pouncing towards him into the burning flames on the shore. Another whip pulled back those that had pounced towards Yin Wushu and Li Dong into the water, then he raised the whip handle, squinting his eyes to stare at the calmed surface of the pool.

Yin Wushu, on the other hand, didn't have the patience for this. He directly threw the long knife onto the pool, then grasped the handle in the air and manipulated the huge blade to stir clockwise in the cold pool. With tremendous force, it stirred the entire pool upside down so violently that it was anything but calm.

The giant knife stirred faster and faster, more and more frenzied, directly sucking the water in the cold pool onto the blade, swirling around it and turning into an upright water dragon.

Seeing this, Yin Wushu pulled the knife, and the entire cold pool was emptied of water, revealing the bottom.

 Li Dong straightforwardly summoned the octagonal bell while chanting, then shook it vigorously. A bone-chilling coldness suddenly enveloped the spinning water dragon's body.

The cold wind, wrapped in frost, circled the blade three times, freezing the water dragon into ice, making it impossible to thaw for a while.

At the moment when the entire cold pool was drained, Xie Bai seized the opportunity and raised his hand to whip fiercely. Just as the whip was about to descend in mid-air, dozens of piercing cries suddenly sounded from the sky, echoing incessantly in the valley surrounded by mountains, giving people a chilling feeling.

Immediately after, Xie Bai felt the other end of the whip being abruptly grabbed and pulled in the opposite direction with tremendous force.

Furrowing his brow, Xie Bai looked up and saw a group of large black birds swooping down. Each one had wings larger than a human's, with eagle-like faces and sharp horns on their heads, just like the beasts before. These birds had tremendous strength, and the wind from their wings alone was enough to knock over a normal adult.

Three of them directly hooked onto Xie Bai's whip with their sharp claws, attempting to break it directly.

However, Xie Bai's whip was not an ordinary one at all; it was impossible to break. Moreover, although Xie Bai appeared thin, what were three mere black birds when he exerted his strength?

With a cold laugh, he raised his hand and directly grabbed the three large black birds with immense force, pulling them along the trajectory of the whip and fiercely striking the bottom of the pool. The three black birds screamed and crashed into the soft mud at the bottom of the pool, breaking free from the whip.

Xie Bai raised his hand and cracked the whip again, pulling back the beasts that had pounced out and the struggling black birds into the bottom of the pool, separating their corpses.

While a dozen sinful creatures had just met their demise here, Yin Wushu's blade was also continuously buzzing. Amidst the violent tremors, the ice dragon enveloping him was directly shaken off.

Countless ice was shaken into sharp ice fragments, shooting straight towards the entangled black birds.

Numerous "poof" sounds were heard as about a dozen black birds were pierced by the sharp ice amidst their sharp cries, losing their balance and falling heavily from the sky.

Xie Bai glanced coldly around with the whip in his hand, confirming that there were no more living creatures. Then he raised his hand and turned the long whip into black mist, retracting it.

As the black mist disappeared, Yin Wushu, with a blank expression, slashed his sword towards the dried-up bottom of the pool, splitting the exposed sacrificial formation into two halves.

The firelight bursting out from the tip of the blade, reflecting the surrounding firelight of the cold pool, mirrored in his calm and waveless eyes, giving off an inexplicable sense of desolation.

Xie Bai was taken aback by this sight, frowning as he was about to speak, when Li Dong on the side said, "Hey—there's a cave here, and it's carved with a name, called Changshi Cave."

Changshi Cave?

Xie Bai was suddenly reminded of the dream he hadn't finished in the old temple before, and the place where the man in black stood before he woke up, which was the entrance to Changshi Cave, as described in the book he had read before falling asleep.

 

Translator : DarNan