Chapter 144: Suppressing the Baleful Aura

Behind a concealed deck in the massive flying ship's wreckage, a blue-robed figure quietly watched the group high above.

Jiuyou's gaze was calm, the faint scent of blood still lingering in his nostrils. Suddenly, a bloody light flashed in his eyes. His heart seized, and an overwhelming surge of bloodlust instantly rushed to his head.

A faint voice echoed in his ears, as if seeping from the very depths of his sea of consciousness.

"Kill them. Kill them all. Pull up the weeds... and eliminate the roots."

His eyes gradually flushed scarlet. Just as he was about to lose complete control, a soft chime rang at his waist. The Heavenly Clarity Bell trembled slightly, and its crisp ring poured over him like a basin of cold water, snapping him awake.

Jiuyou blinked and shook his head, forcing down the inexplicable madness. He quickly concealed his aura, took one last look at the figures above, and vanished in a blur.

The moment he left, Shangming seemed to sense something. He frowned, glancing toward where Jiuyou had just been hiding. A moment later, his brow smoothed out.

'What a terrifying baleful aura. Just how many people has this kid killed?' he thought. 'But this is fine. It makes him qualified to serve as one of my primary ingredients. He is quite strong, though, and the Blood Abyss Sect is a more pressing matter right now. Better not to invite unexpected trouble. Letting him live a little longer won't hurt.'

Half a day later, ten thousand li to the north, a flickering red light pulsed inside a pitch-black cave.

A blue-robed figure sat cross-legged in its depths. Large beads of sweat rolled down and soaked his back, his face shifting between pale and livid. Murky, blood-red mist occasionally seeped from his body, corroding the surrounding rock and decaying the vegetation wherever it drifted.

Jiuyou drove his method, sending his magic power racing through his meridians to desperately suppress the churning baleful aura. But the dark energy acted like a living creature; the moment he pushed down one layer, another surged up to take its place.

"This damned baleful aura is truly a lingering ghost," he muttered as he fought to suppress it.

"Dong Yanwei actually has some skill, managing to invite that person here. Fine by me. A feud makes for the best nourishment. Dong Yanwei, you had better break through to the Nascent Soul Late Stage as soon as possible and come seek your revenge, hahaha!"

Before his laughter even faded, his expression suddenly darkened.

'Wait, what is going on?'

The baleful aura was actually eroding his mind.

When he circulated his method earlier, he had been able to suppress the vast majority of it, even absorbing and converting a small portion for his own use.

But the momentum of the baleful aura right now was far stronger than before, completely beyond his ability to easily dissolve. Had the Heavenly Clarity Bell not awakened him from his loss of control in time, he likely would have rushed out to fight. Plunging recklessly into a battle in that mindless state would have been no different from courting death.

'Could there be a problem with the Nether Capital Art?'

Jiuyou's thoughts raced as he pondered the possibility. The deeper one cultivated a method, the easier it was for it to influence a cultivator's mind. Demonic Path methods were especially notorious for this.

The Nether Capital Art was not something he had created himself. Rather, he had stumbled upon it on a corpse back when he was still a Looting Cultivator in the Foundation-Establishing stage.

Seeing that the method provided a path all the way to the Nascent Soul realm, he hadn't hesitated to switch to it. He was already a demonic cultivator, so transitioning to a higher-grade method posed no major obstacles and didn't require him to scatter his cultivation and start over.

But as his cultivation advanced, his temperament grew increasingly bloodthirsty. He eventually went so far as to found Soul Wraith Island, rearing a batch of expendables specifically to slaughter for his own amusement, extracting their souls and refining their spirits.

Back then, he could still suppress the murderous impulses in his heart and peacefully deduce the subsequent stages of the method. But now that he had reached the Nascent Soul Late Stage, that long-repressed urge was actually beginning to strike back.

Had he made a mistake in deducing the method? Or had he simply killed too many people?

Perhaps it was both. On his journey to this point, the blood staining his hands was likely something even a Demonic Path Grand Cultivator like Gu Xuanzhou couldn't hope to match.

Jiuyou took a deep breath, suppressing his chaotic thoughts, and carefully differentiated the baleful aura from a karmic barrier.

A karmic barrier was an external force—the final trace of resentment and unwillingness from the cultivators who died by his hand. Like lingering smoke and dying embers, it could be wrapped up in his magic power, crushed, and turned into nourishment for his meridians, actually helping him break through bottlenecks.

But what entangled him right now was something else entirely.

It was the killing intent he had cultivated on the battlefield over the years. It was the sensation at his fingertips when he severed a head. It was the momentary stagnation just before a Nascent Soul shattered. It was the expressionless normalcy of watching rivers of blood flow.

Those things had never dissipated. They had simply rusted into his bones layer by layer. They shared the same origin as his magic power and the same roots as his method, mutually nourishing and inextricably intertwined.

The more he killed, the heavier the baleful aura became; the heavier the baleful aura, the more he wanted to kill. If this continued, the baleful aura would erode his entire body and pollute his Nascent Soul, ultimately leading to his soul and spirit scattering.

Jiuyou fell silent for a long time before slowly raising his head. A residual redness lingered deep in his eyes, but they were no longer murky.

He had endured untold hardships to reach this day. He had consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Longevity Fruit, reverting from old age to youth. He had broken through to the Nascent Soul Late Stage, standing at the very pinnacle of this world.

He still had eight or nine hundred years to live. He had not yet reached Deity Transformation, nor had he seen the world beyond this heaven and earth.

He could not die here.

"I merely killed tens of thousands of ants. Does a mere body of baleful aura think it is worthy of ruining my path to immortality?"

He closed his eyes and, bit by bit, forced the churning baleful aura back into his bones.

Several months later.

Jiuyou stood up in the cave and circulated his Nether Capital magic power. The spiritual light flowed around his body as normally as ever, completely unimpeded.

A moment later, he retracted his magic power and gave a slight nod.

The baleful aura accumulated over the years in his body had been suppressed once again, and it would not act up in the short term. However, the price was obvious: he had to constantly divert at least thirty percent of his magic power to keep it down. That meant the combat strength he could currently muster was only seventy percent of his peak.

That level of strength was still enough to completely crush an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator. But if he were to run into an existence like Shangming again, it would fall short.

Jiuyou stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out of the cave with a calm gaze.

He knew very well that suppression was merely a stopgap measure; it treated the symptoms, not the root cause. He would have to kill fewer people in the future and could no longer wipe out entire sects and clans on a whim. But having walked this path for so long, his accumulated sins of slaughter were already too heavy. Merely staying his hand would not be enough to wash them away.

He already had a rough idea of a method that could truly cure the baleful aura from its roots: switching his cultivation to the Daoyang Ten Palaces Art.

During this period, he had repeatedly studied this method.

The method was exquisite, the foundation profoundly stable. It was far beyond comparison to the ordinary methods he had seen in the past.

The method was divided into ten layers. With every layer cultivated, a palace would be opened within the body, making his magic power increasingly dense and pure. Upon reaching the tenth layer, one could directly challenge the Deity Transformation bottleneck without needing any external assistance.

More importantly, this was a method of the Righteous Path.

If he could truly switch to this method, not only would the baleful aura have nothing to cling to, but the faint bottleneck hindering his future cultivation path would also be shattered alongside it.

By then, paired with the Golden Sun Mountain, Golden Luo Bowl, and Golden Li Ember Moon Swords in his hands, probably no one would be able to refute him if he called himself the leader of the Righteous Path.

There was only one difficulty: switching methods meant scattering his cultivation and starting over. He was already at the Nascent Soul Late Stage. Even he couldn't say he had absolutely no hesitation about throwing away all his cultivation to begin anew.

But he only hesitated for a moment.

He had walked this path for over a thousand years; what risks hadn't he taken? A method was nothing more than a boat used to cross a river. Righteous or demonic, as long as it could carry him to the opposite shore, he would board it.

His lifespan was still ample, his foundation deep, and his meridians clear. Even starting from scratch, it would only take him a century or two to return to his peak. Compared to being dragged to his death by the baleful aura in the future, this trade was worth it no matter how he calculated it.

He had already set his sights on the Northern Plains. Nine Sun Mountain, Jinli Stone. Once he gathered everything needed to complete the Jinli Sword Formation, he would come back and focus entirely on this method.

Jiuyou stepped out of the cave. The night wind blew against his face, carrying the chill of the wilderness. Raising a hand, he gathered his collar tighter. His feet crunched over the loose gravel as he headed north. He didn't deliberately quicken his pace, nor did he show the slightest hint of a rush.

The road was still long. Whatever was meant to come would come; there was no use being anxious.