Chapter 364: Du Sha

“Now.”

The moment the command dropped, the scarred brute and his companion frantically poured their demonic energy into the arrays beneath their boots, while Ni Tian unleashed two thick streams of dark, suffocating Qi from his palms straight into the remaining two nodes.

WUMMMM—!

The basalt floor trembled as violent, blood-colored light erupted from all four cardinal nodes.

Intricate runic veins etched into the volcanic rock ignited with a blinding, incandescent crimson, snaking across the stone like ravenous scarlet serpents before converging straight onto the central platform.

The moment the energetic circuit snapped shut, the central array jolted awake with an unearthly, soul-shredding shriek.

The air turned instantly frigid, saturated with the metallic reek of fresh gore and ancient malice.

From the glowing blood-red grooves carved into the stone, dozens of sickly crimson tendrils, thick, writhing strands of condensed baleful Qi, sprouted like parasitic vines.

They whipped violently through the air before lunging straight into the five unconscious bodies laid out across the altar.

The dormant sacrifices didn’t even have the luxury of waking to scream.

The crimson tendrils drilled viciously through their robes, puncturing flesh and sinking barbed roots directly into their dantian points, major meridians, and acupuncture gates.

Acting as an insatiable, ravenous maw, the array began greedily siphoning their cultivation and life essence.

Crack… hiss… gurgle…

A sickening symphony of breaking bones and boiling blood echoed through the sweltering caldera.

At a horrifying, visible pace, the physical forms of the five cultivators began to collapse in on themselves.

Their skin lost all luster, turning paper-pale before decaying into a bruised, sickly ashen gray.

Plump muscle fibers broke down into raw, liquid vitality, melting away until the tight parchment of their flesh clung directly to the sharp contours of their skeletal frames.

Vibrant streams of pure blood essence, glowing marrow Qi, and unrefined spiritual energy were forcibly dragged out through their open pores, channeled downward through the thirsty runic grooves like roaring scarlet rivers.

Their veins bulged black beneath the graying hide, pulsing weakly one last time before calcifying into brittle dust.

Standing on the northern and eastern nodes, the scarred brute and his companion watched the grotesque butcher’s block with wild, petrified eyes.

Cold sweat cascaded down their pale faces, their jaws trembling so violently their teeth clicked together.

They were demonic cultivators who had butchered dozens of righteous disciples over the past fortnight, yet witnessing their own kin, and their fallen comrade, being ruthlessly devoured and reduced to dried mummies in mere heartbeats struck a primal, bowel-chilling terror straight into their souls.

“Senior! It’s sucking our Qi too fast! We can’t hold—!” the brute shrieked, feeling the array aggressively draining his spiritual reserves through the soles of his boots.

“Hold it, or I toss you into the center,” Ni Tian’s voice cut through the cavern, flat and emotionless.

Terror instantly silenced their cries.

The two cultivators bit their lips until blood dripped down their chins, frantically burning their meridians to sustain the connection.

Meanwhile, even with his monstrous qi reserves, Ni Tian felt a sharp, hollow pull in his lower dantian.

Fueling two full cardinal nodes simultaneously was turning out to be an astronomical burden.

The ancient runic matrix was like a bottomless vortex, the moment the sacrificial drainage peaked, the array’s suction multiplied threefold, greedily siphoning his spiritual energy at an alarming, breakneck speed.

His Qi rushed through his meridians in roaring torrents, emptying his reserves at a rate that would have reduced an ordinary 9th-Stage Foundation Establishment expert into a dry, meridian-snapped husk within ten breaths.

Ni Tian narrowed his eyes, his jaw tightening slightly as he actively drove his inner furnace into overdrive, forcing a massive, concentrated surge of pure demonic intent into the twin nodes to forcibly satisfy the gate’s rapacious appetite.

SPLAT.

With a dull, hollow rattle of dry bone against stone, the five sacrifices in the center finally collapsed into withered, gray husks, their essence entirely devoured down to the final drop of marrow.

RUMBLE— CRASH!

The torrent of refined blood essence and massive spiritual energy surged from the platform, rushing up the colossal frame of the Asura Blood-Seal Gate.

The five palm-shaped indentations ignited in unison, blazing with a blinding crimson radiance that completely washed over the boiling caldera.

The towering ancient stone slabs, sealed tight for countless millennia, shuddered violently.

Decades of volcanic soot and sulfur flakes rained down in sheets as the colossal gate slowly, heavily ground inward, splitting down the middle and parting into the pitch-black abyss of the volcanic mountain.

A rush of ancient air blasted from the threshold, thick with the intoxicating, metallic scent of blood and the heavy, suffocating pressure of the ancient being.

Thud. Thud.

The exact moment the energetic lock broke, the scarred brute and his companion collapsed flat onto their backs.

They were completely drained of every scrap of Qi, their skin clammy and their chests heaving like dying fish thrown onto dry land.

Ni Tian casually lowered his arms, regulating his breathing as his internal circulation quickly stabilized his depleted reserves.

His dark robes fluttered softly as he stepped past the two half-dead cultivators.

“S-Senior…” the scarred brute whimpered, his trembling, blistered hand reaching up weakly from the dirt.

“The gate is open… the antidote… please…”

Ni Tian halted right at the threshold of the cavernous tomb.

He tilted his head slightly, his glowing crimson eyes casting a long, chilling shadow over the two gasping figures sprawled in the dirt.

Uncorking his gourd, he took a slow, leisurely swig of fiery wine, wiping a stray drop of liquor from his chin with the back of his thumb.

A faint, venomous smirk curled the corners of his lips.

“What is your name?” Ni Tian asked, his tone deceptively mild, almost conversational.

“T-Te Ning…” the scarred brute stammered through dry, cracked lips, his chest heaving frantically.

“And which path do you walk, Te Ning?”

“The… the demonic path,” Te Ning gasped out, sheer confusion muddling the terror in his eyes.

“And which path do I walk?”

“The demonic path, Senior…”

Ni Tian’s smile stretched into a cold, mocking sneer.

“Then tell me, Te Ning… in all your years under the heavens, have you ever seen a true demonic cultivator leave someone breathing who might one day seek vengeance or drive a blade into his back?”

Te Ning’s pupils contracted to needlepoints. A wave of pure, paralyzing horror crashed through his mind as the cold realization of his own foolishness set in.

“Y-You—!”

Te Ning’s pupils contracted to needlepoints. A wave of pure, paralyzing horror crashed through his mind as the cold realization of his own foolishness set in.

“Y-You—!”

PSTT! PSTT!

Before the desperate curse could tear from their throats, two pitch-black beams of concentrated death Qi from the Nether-Piercing Finger flashed through the sweltering air.

The strikes punched clean, smoking holes straight through the foreheads of both cultivators, extinguishing their life flames in a fraction of a heartbeat.

Their bodies jerked violently once before collapsing limp against the scorched basalt, their glassy eyes frozen in wide, lingering despair.

With an indifferent flick of his sleeve, Ni Tian stripped the spatial rings and resource pouches from all six corpses scattered across the caldera platform.

He tossed the new trophies into the bulging leather pouch at his waist, letting the metal clink heavily against the mountain of plundered wealth he had amassed.

Tilting his head back, he took one last deep, burning gulp from his gourd beneath the churning sulfurous sky, his dark, predatory sneer carving deep into his corrupted features.

“Now,” Ni Tian murmured, turning his gaze toward the pitch-black abyss yawning behind the colossal stone slabs, “let us see what treasures this ancient tomb has kept warm for me.”

Stepping boldly across the threshold, his black-robed silhouette was instantly swallowed by the ancient gloom.

The heavy, suffocating silence of the ancient tomb closed in around him the moment he breached the threshold.

Behind his back, the colossal slabs of the Asura Blood-Seal Gate slammed violently shut, severing the tomb from the outside world.

The sweltering volcanic heat of the caldera vanished in an instant, replaced by the biting, glacial chill of a subterranean crypt.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the east across the jagged crags of the realm, a completely different scene was unfolding.

The lanky demonic leader was on his knees, his forehead pressed flat against the damp, poisoned earth, trembling uncontrollably.

Towering over him stood a pale, gaunt young man cloaked in dark, suffocating miasma.

His skin was an eerie, corpse-like white, and coiled tightly around his right arm was a pitch-black serpent whose slit pupils locked onto the kneeling cultivator, flicking a split tongue that hissed with toxicity.

He was Du Sha, the Head Disciple of the Thousand Poison Sect from the Great Venomous Empire.

Du Sha stroked the head of the venomous snake with a long, blackened fingernail, his dark eyes looking down at the groveling coward like an insect.

“Is what you said true?” Du Sha asked, his voice a cold, raspy hiss that sent chills down the lanky cultivator’s spine.

“Is there truly the slumbering egg of a Tier-5 ancient beast sealed within that tomb?”