Hogg leaned on his staff, kneeling on one knee as he poured every bit of his two hundred years of mana cultivation into resisting the violent demonic qi that was eroding his mind. The blue veins on his forehead bulged. His gaze bypassed the god’s incarnation, landing on the person who still stood there, motionless.
Li Yuan stood in place, his brow slightly furrowed. The violent aura radiating from this thing was indeed quite heavy—but that was the extent of his reaction. It was roughly equivalent to the musty smell that hits you when opening a long-unventilated door; it made him slightly uncomfortable, but that was all.
The others, however, could no longer hold on. Setis’s mana was completely depleted, and she was relying solely on instinct to suppress her killing intent. The female ice-element teacher’s forehead was already bleeding from slamming it against the ground. Tyris and Marcus were still clutching each other's throats; if they continued, both would die.
His figure vanished from the spot once more.
In the next instant, he appeared directly above the head of the Blood Moon God’s incarnation. Ignatius sensed something and tilted his head back, wanting to let out another roar, but before the sound could squeeze out of his throat—Li Yuan raised his right hand, palm down, and gave the head a light pat.
“Slap.”
The sound wasn't loud, resembling a book being lightly tapped against a table.
The roar came to a screeching halt. The three-meter-tall body plummeted from mid-air like a ball being swatted down, crashing violently into the ground. The thunderous crack of shattering stone slabs made everyone's hearts tremble, and the pervasive violent aura vanished instantly with that single strike.
Everyone’s minds cleared at the same moment, and they slumped to the ground, gasping for air. Tyris and Marcus simultaneously let go of each other’s necks, both collapsing and breathing with a sound like broken bellows.
Li Yuan slowly drifted back to the ground, his hem fluttering slightly in the wind. He stood at the edge of the shallow crater, looking down at the creature struggling to crawl out. His expression was one of mild disgust—the smell on its body was truly foul.
Hogg used his staff to push himself up, his lips still bleeding. The way he looked at Li Yuan had completely changed. If he had only been suspicious and theorizing before, now those eyes held only one emotion: awe.
He took a deep breath and took a step toward Li Yuan.
“Sir...” His voice was raspy and urgent. “Please kill it immediately—if this thing continues to exist, all of Kajinson will become a living hell. No, not just Kajinson. Given the speed at which its aura spreads, the entire kingdom will be affected before long. Everyone will slaughter each other in hatred and madness until the last living person falls.”
Li Yuan didn't answer, merely casting his gaze toward the incarnation crawling out of the pit.
It had regained its footing, rubble falling from its shoulders. Its mouth was still split to its ears, baring sharp teeth. Thick aura of death and karmic debt were intertwined, oozing from every inch of its skin—he had smelled this scent in the hotel suite, but this was the aura of death from Ignatius amplified countless times.
But it wasn't just death; there was something else. Anger, despair, resentment, madness, hatred, sadness—various negative emotions were forcibly melded together by a twisted power, like countless pieces of rotting meat kneaded into a barely standing humanoid lump.
What had been drained from those cultists wasn't just mana and vitality, but also their obsessions, fears, and regrets—all the dark emotions that erupted at the moment of death had been swallowed by that crystal core. Of course... the deaths of those people alone were far from enough to create something this massive...
To elevate a creature's power to this level required far more negative emotions than that—so much that even demonic cultivators would find it a hassle. It would be faster to just cultivate normally than to spend time on this.
In the Kyushu Continent, there was a forbidden art among evil cultivators that used living souls and resentment to refine similar monsters, usually called a “Malice Puppet.” However, the thing before him was much cruder than a Malice Puppet, and its power was more complex. If he had to give it an evaluation—it was at the middle Nascent Soul stage, but its stability was terrible. The various negative forces within its body were clashing with each other, held in a forced balance only by that crystal core. Even if left alone, the internal collisions would likely cause it to collapse on its own in a few hours.
But a few hours was enough for it to slaughter the entire capital.
“It really is a bit over the limit,” Li Yuan muttered to himself after reaching a conclusion.
The power of the middle Nascent Soul stage would translate to something far exceeding a Heroic Spirit rank by this world's standards. For the people here, this thing was indeed difficult to handle.
Hogg, as a Heroic Spirit rank, was only at the late Golden Core stage in his eyes. Furthermore, the cultivation system here was far inferior to Kyushu in terms of tempering Divine Sense and mental fortitude; they had almost no resistance against this kind of violent aura designed to erode the mind.
It was indeed asking too much of them to handle this.
Ah, well. The karmic ties have already been formed; helping one more time won't hurt...
Li Yuan sighed inwardly and raised his right hand, his fingers slightly spread. Pale gold arcs of electricity began to dance in his palm. At first, they were just tiny specks of light, like a few insignificant stars flickering between his fingers, but they quickly converged into a brilliant golden bolt of lightning that hovered above his palm, emitting a crisp, low hum.
The light of the lightning wasn't piercing; it was as warm as jade, carrying a sense of peace that one felt instinctively. The residual violent aura in the air dissolved instantly upon contact with the golden light, like mist being struck by sunlight.
This wasn't some profound spell, but the most basic Daoist Thunder-Calling Art—spiritual energy channeling the power of heaven and earth, gathering lightning into a single beam to cleanse evil with noble spirit.
It was the perfect counter for an incarnation forcibly molded from deathly aura and negative emotions. Noble spirit naturally countered all things foul and sinister. This incarnation was, quite simply, a product of forced fusion; before him, it was no different from an ant.
He pointed his finger forward, unhurriedly.
The pale gold lightning shot from his fingertip, striking the incarnation square in the chest. The bolt of lightning pierced through its body like a blade through water, then exploded silently from within.
Countless tiny golden arcs spread frantically along those black veins. Everywhere they passed, the crimson skin peeled away like charred paper, revealing the rapidly shrinking black mana flow beneath.
It was a complete purification—the aura of death dissolved instantly before the noble spirit, like ice falling into boiling water.
The god's incarnation let out a raspy wail from the pain of having those foul substances forcibly stripped away.
Its flesh evaporated rapidly under the golden light. Black mist rose up, but before it could spread, it was struck and purified by the golden arcs, leaving not a single trace of residue.
The entire process took no more than three to five breaths. Once the golden light faded, only one person remained on the ground.
Ignatius knelt among the rubble. The crystal core in his chest had completely shattered into powder scattered on the ground, and his body had returned to its original size—no, it was even smaller than before.
His skin was dry and cracked, like leather that had been baked in the sun for months clinging to his bones. His muscles had atrophied to the point of being nearly skin and bones; the man looked as if every drop of moisture and vitality had been drained from him, leaving only a husk that could barely breathe.
Those blood-red eyes had returned to their original pale gray, but they were so dim they were almost white. His pupils remained dilated for several seconds before he managed to regain his focus.
He first looked at the rubble on the ground, then raised his eyes to the lusterless staffs scattered among the stones, and finally looked at the people around him who were lying or sitting but were all still alive. Finally, his gaze landed on Li Yuan, who stood not far away—the man who, from the moment he entered, had used less than two moves to turn everything Ignatius had prepared into ash.
He knelt on the ground, his lips trembling as he let out dry, raspy breaths, as if repeatedly confirming that something completely impossible had actually happened.
Fifty years of preparation had been turned into a joke by someone in two simple moves. He hadn't even been able to cause that youth any trouble—from beginning to end, the man's expression hadn't shown a single ripple.
“Impossible!”
His voice was as dry as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, the volume so low he was practically talking to himself. His shoulders shook as he said those words, trying to deny the reality.
“Impossible—the power of the Blood Moon God is absolute. no mortal can resist the descent of a god—fifty years ago, Hogg had to sacrifice his mana source just to barely interrupt an incomplete ritual. You—how could you—”
He choked, his chest heaving violently as he wheezed like a bellows. Those pale gray eyes swirled with a cocktail of emotions—disbelief, fear, despair, anger, and a sense of bewilderment he was unwilling to admit.
He looked down at his withered hands, then at the powdered remains of the crystal core on his chest, and suddenly, he laughed. He laughed until he was out of breath, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably, the sound echoing through the ruins of the buildings.
“—Hahaha—”
Nonsensical words began to tumble from his mouth as his entire body shook with laughter.
Fifty years of revenge and planning, centuries of inherited vengeful souls and obsessions, the descent of a god—all of it added together had been crushed in an instant by a tea shop owner who had come to demand compensation.
Was he in a comedy? Had all his years of endurance and sacrifice been for the sake of becoming today's joke? Had this stage, which took fifty years to build, been created just so he could perform this grand, pathetic monologue?
“—Our long-cherished wish—the Blood Moon God—”
The laughter stopped abruptly, cut off by a violent fit of coughing. His withered body shook like chaff. When the coughing subsided, he remained kneeling on the ground, never raising his head again.
His hands propped him up against the ground, yet he didn't react even as the sharp stones dug into his palms. He slowly raised his head to look at the sky; the dark red light curtain was gone, replaced only by the gray light of the afternoon sky.
Ignatius stared like that for a long time, then let out a faint sigh that was entirely different from his previous manic laughter—it was the sigh of a gambler who had bet everything and lost it all. With his final fury burned out, all that remained was a trace of exhaustion that couldn't even be called sorrow.
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