Chapter 250: FOUND YOU!

After the mutated Golden Mountain disciple finished with the last of his former brothers and slowly turned its head toward Gu Fan and Song Yan, its hollow purple eyes locked onto them.

"Heheheh!" A wide, unnatural grin stretched across its face, splitting the rotting skin at the corners of its mouth. Thick black blood dripped from its chin as it raised one clawed hand and pointed.

A guttural, layered command rolled out of its throat, and the pack of elite undead hounds immediately responded, snarling as they lowered their massive bodies and prepared to charge.

Gu Fan watched the scene with mild interest. Then he smiled.

He calmly released Song Yan’s waist and took a single step back, giving her space.

"Why don’t you protect me this time, Miss Yan?" he said lightly, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

Song Yan’s eyes narrowed, but she did not refute his words. There was no use saying otherwise.

She forced down the freezing ache of her cursed meridians and drew her long, flexible spiritual sword in one smooth motion.

By now, the three massive rotting hounds lunged at her throat at the same time.

Song Yan did not retreat, and she stepped forward into the attack, her body moving with the practiced grace of a veteran who had survived decades of clan politics.

Her white robes flared slightly as she pivoted on the ball of her foot. The flexible spiritual sword whipped out in a wide, horizontal arc so precise it looked almost effortless.

The first hound’s front legs were severed cleanly at the joints. Black blood and rotting bone sprayed across the stone floor in a wide fan, yet not a single drop touched Song Yan’s white silk.

And then without stopping to admire her job well done, she continued the motion without pause, the tip of her blade sliding upward in a rising cut that opened the second hound’s throat from jaw to chest.

The beast’s head rolled sideways as it collapsed, thick dark blood gushing across the polished stones.

By now, the third hound was already in the air, jaws open wide. Song Yan twisted her body sideways at the last possible moment.

The massive claws missed her by inches. As the beast passed, she reversed her grip and drove the flexible blade straight up through the soft underside of its jaw, piercing the skull from below.

The tip emerged from the top of its head in a spray of black fluid and shattered bone. She withdrew the sword in one clean pull and stepped back.

The overall slaughter of the three hounds took less than three seconds.

Three dead, undead, or dead again after undead hounds lay in pieces on the floor, black blood pooling around them.

Song Yan stood in the middle of them with her white robes still completely spotless, not a single drop of blood on her skin or clothing. Only the tip of her spiritual sword glistened darkly.

She exhaled once, steadying her breathing, and looked back at Gu Fan without a word.

Gu Fan leaned his shoulder against the cold stone wall, an appreciative smirk curling onto his face as he lazily observed her combat forms.

In all that massacre, what he really admired was how her heavy breasts bounced and her thick thighs flexed under the white silk robes with every lethal strike.

"Not bad, Miss Yan," he praised, his eyes raking over her curves, "Every time you make a move. I can’t help but feel torn between what to admire more. Your sword play or your..."

Song Yan bit her lower lip and ignored the lecherous gaze running loose on her body.

With her job done, she decided to move back, but just than a sudden sharp spike of freezing pain erupted in her chest.

And the mutated Golden Mountain disciple roared and leaped high into the air at the same time, bringing its massive corrupted claws straight down toward her head.

Before Song Yan could raise her blade, Gu Fan blurred out of existence using his King-Grade movement art and appeared directly in front of her.

He did not bother drawing a sword. He simply raised his bare hand and caught the mutated monster’s descending claws in his palm, stopping the terrifying kinetic force dead without flinching.

"You are disturbing our talk, and that is annoying," Gu Fan looked at the mutated beast with deadly eyes.

Gu Fan’s fingers closed around the mutated disciple’s massive clawed hand.

At first the Demonic Corpse tried to pull free, its remaining strength still considerable. Gu Fan simply smiled and increased the pressure.

There was a wet, cracking sound as the thick bones inside the hand began to give way. The blackened, rotting flesh could not withstand the concentrated Origin Realm strength.

His skin split, and muscles began to tore.

And then with a sudden, sickening burst, the entire hand exploded outward in a spray of dark blood, shredded black flesh, and shattered bone fragments.

Thick pieces of corrupted meat slapped against the stone floor and the nearby walls. Black blood sprayed across Gu Fan’s forearm and the front of his robes.

The mutated disciple let out a distorted, layered roar of pain and rage, stumbling back as the ruined stump of its arm sprayed continuous jets of thick black fluid.

Gu Fan did not give it time to recover.

He stepped in, channeled a massive bone-crushing wave of his 2nd Stage Origin Realm pressure into his free fist, and drove it straight into the center of the monster’s chest.

The impact was catastrophic.

The entire upper torso caved inward and then blew apart in a violent shower of dark sludge, shattered ribs, and chunks of blackened flesh.

When the dust settled, what remained of the Demonic Corpse collapsed into a bubbling pile of black goo on the floor, the corrupted Qi dispersing into the air like foul smoke.

However Gu fan did not stop there.

He smoothly pivoted and unleashed a wide horizontal wave of raging Purple Nether-Ghost Fire that swept across the hall, engulfing the remaining elite undead hounds in violet flames. The beasts let out distorted howls as the purple fire rapidly reduced them to nothing but steaming, sizzling piles of blackened ash and scorched bone in a single satisfying second.

The treasure hall fell silent. The only sounds were the soft sizzling of melted corpses and Song Yan’s heavy, ragged panting as she leaned weakly against her spiritual sword.

Gu Fan casually walked over to the shattered remains of the mutated disciple, unbothered by the foul stench. He reached into the dark muck and ripped out a shattered spiritual core from the cultivator’s chest, inspecting it under the dim light.

"Come look at this, widow." He held the corrupted core up, pointing out a microscopic dark purple runic mark etched into the very center.

"The dungeon isn’t generously offering free rewards. It’s putting collars on its livestock. The second these greedy idiots swallow a high-tier pill or grip a glowing weapon, the demonic mark embeds itself into their meridians."

He tossed the core back into the muck and wiped his hands on a clean scrap of cloth.

"The stronger the treasure they take, the easier they are for the dungeon’s automated arrays to locate, control, and consume whenever it gets hungry for refined Qi."

Song Yan stared at the glowing jade boxes still resting on the pristine pedestals in absolute horror. The entire dungeon was nothing but a massive, highly efficient slaughterhouse designed to fatten greedy cultivators before butchering them.

"What about Tianyu and Bai Bing?" she asked frantically, voice trembling with genuine concern for her nephew. "If they find one of these outer halls and take a treasure, they will be mutated!"

"Please." Gu Fan scoffed and rolled his eyes. "The Ice Fairy is a someone who wouldn’t accept a free glass of water without checking it for poison first."

"And your nephew, let us say Bai Bing will keep him in check."

Before he could continue mocking the dead, Song Yan suddenly let out a sharp, agonizing gasp. Her spiritual sword clattered against the stone floor as she collapsed onto her knees.

The intense physical exertion of the sword dance, combined with the dense demonic energy pouring into the hall, had completely breached her fragile internal suppressions. The Yin-Consuming Heart-Rotting Gu erupted in full force.

Thick, sickeningly dark black veins rapidly crawled up her pale neck, spreading across her collarbones and dipping dangerously low into her heavy cleavage. Her skin turned a sickly, freezing shade of blue.

"Ahhh... it burns..." she whimpered, body violently shivering as she clutched her chest. The bone-piercing cold assaulted her organs.

Gu Fan’s eyes narrowed.

The moment Song Yan’s legs gave out, he stepped forward and caught her burning, shivering body before she could fully collapse. One strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her soft voluptuous curves flush against his broad chest.

At the same time he extended his spiritual sense directly into her body.

His consciousness slid past her skin, through her frozen meridians, and locked onto the source of the problem almost instantly. Nestled right beside her heart, coiled tightly around the core of her dantian, was the Yin-Consuming Heart-Rotting Gu. The parasitic worm pulsed with greedy black light, its body swollen from the dense demonic energy of the hall.

Song Yan, desperate and half-conscious, tried to circulate what little spiritual qi she still had left in a frantic attempt to suppress the cold.

The Gu reacted instantly.

It sensed the sudden movement of qi and mistook it for an opening. With a vicious, almost triumphant pulse, the parasite lunged deeper, trying to bite straight into her heart meridian and flood her entire system with its freezing poison.

It was wrong.

Gu Fan’s lips curved into a cold, amused smile as he felt the parasite’s terror through his spiritual sense.

"Found you!"

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[A/N: And with this we have finally reached another milestone! 250 Chapters and counting... Thanks for all your support!]