Chapter 998: Blood Sword King Puppet

In an underground cavern, blood surged in all directions, its miasma steaming upward.

This cavern was enormous, tens of kilometers wide, its depths floating with the bones of countless races: human, tiger, ox, and Skullblood Vine Demon.

The Blood Dao treats every living being equally.

Jiang Ding arrived here, revealing his form as a late-stage Soul Transformation Wood-Vine Demon, emerald branches thrashing wildly.

This vine demon was once a king of the Wood-Vine Demon race in the Mo Shi Xiao Gao Jie, later vanishing without cause.

Some speculated he had fled as a slave, others that a high-ranking Jiao Mo Emperor Clan member coveted his vital Wood-Vine Demon heart—yet no definitive conclusion emerged.

Thus, Jiang Ding borrowed him as a false origin.

"Chì!"

Jiang Ding pulled out a blood egg half a person's height and hurled it into the center of the blood lake.

He sat cross-legged, muttering incantations, periodically casting Dao Laws, extracting treasures from this realm to smelt into the egg, refining the blood egg forged from the Dong Xue He Wang until it responded to his will like an extension of his own limb.

The surrounding blood lake stirred with each law, rising as blood dragons that plunged into the egg, slowly elevating its aura.

There was no choice—the Dong Xue He Wang was too weak.

Though he possessed the realm of peak Soul Transformation and decent escape ability, his true strength barely surpassed that of a Hua Shen Chu Qi cultivator.

Such power could accomplish nothing.

What Jiang Ding intended was to refine him like a treasure or puppet, infusing him with myriad materials to reforge him entirely and elevate his strength.

As for this blood lake, it was the Dong Xue He Wang's own contingency.

"... Spare..."

"... Spare my life..."

Within the blood egg, a handsome, eerie face faintly surfaced, pressed against the semi-transparent shell, pleading.

"The strong devour the weak—that is your law."

"You must abide by it, even when you are the one being devoured."

Jiang Ding's expression did not change; he withdrew a fifth-rank Blood Sun Iron, ignited it with magic power, turning it into a pool of crimson molten metal, and cast it into the half-person-tall egg—scalding crimson metal triggered another piercing scream from within.

"Dong Xue He."

"Rest assured, I will not kill you."

"In special circumstances, special logic applies; morality yields before survival, and should not be harshly judged."

"If you are fortunate enough, you may yet survive."

Jiang Ding spoke slowly.

He cast another series of Dao Laws, forcibly plunging the Dong Xue He Wang back into slumber, regardless of whether he understood or not, rendering him powerless to interfere further.

This was truth.

Jiang Ding harbored no deep animosity toward the Dong Xue He Wang.

In this brutal society ruled by the Jiao Mo Emperor Clan, the Dong Xue He Wang had done well enough—he had no luxury for morality.

No one could look down upon the Dong Xue He Wang unless they could truly do better.

If the final war ended in victory, Jiang Ding would release him and grant him a true top-tier Blood Dao lineage to mend his dangerously hollow foundation.

Naturally, this is the morality of now.

If the realm's situation stabilizes and the Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong and human order prevail, should the Dong Xue He Wang retain his past Blood Dao ways, he would be killed.

Times change.

Jiang Ding, free of distractions, accelerated the refinement.

At present, Jiang Ding had emerged from his soul-hidden state to begin refining a treasure—this was perilous; if a Great Emperor passed nearby, there was a one or two percent chance he would be discovered.

Yet, as an infiltrator in a foreign land, one must act—impossible to remain perpetually safe.

In truth, even in soul-hidden state, risk remained, for this was an alien realm; only by swiftly completing the mission and achieving the mother realm's strategic objective, then returning to the Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong, could true safety be claimed.

While Jiang Ding refined his treasure, the war in the Yan Shi Star Region raged fiercely.

Just over a decade later, Yan Liu Emperor Son had gathered millions of his own clan and slave troops, completely surrounding the Mo Teng Xiao Gao Jie seized by Cang Kong Emperor Son.

Cang Kong Emperor Son, faced with such overwhelming force, dared not sortie, retreating behind his internal array defenses.

Yan Liu Emperor Son's army, seeing this, surged with morale and launched relentless assaults on the arrays.

First to engage were the slave armies commanded by Jiao Mo Emperor Clan cultivators, who bore the brunt of the Mo Teng Xiao Gao Jie's deadliest arrays, wearing down their edges with their flesh and blood to clear traps and obstacles for the subsequent Jiao Mo Emperor Clan main forces.

Countless elite warriors and soldiers of the fox, human, tiger, and Skullblood Vine Demon races fell within the arrays; tens of thousands of cultivators died every moment, the stench of blood and severed souls filling the small realm.

In the surrounding Minor Thousand Worlds, countless slave families wore mourning white.

Yan Liu Emperor Son turned a blind eye.

When one batch of slave troops perished, another was summoned from the rear—insignificant.

Even in death, the flesh and souls of these slave cultivators were collected by the Jiao Mo Emperor Clan's rear-line overseers, used as raw materials for crafting treasures and pills—nothing wasted.

Under this brutal assault, Cang Kong Emperor Son's Mo Teng Xiao Gao Jie defense array slowly eroded.

Jiang Ding also monitored the ongoing Yan Shi Star Region war through various means.

Fight.

"Does the Jiao Mo Emperor Clan possess no inheritance similar to the Ding Gao Jie Array?"

Jiang Ding was astonished, quickly confirming one fact.

The Ding Gao Jie Array is a defining hallmark of the Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong, distinguishing it from lower-tier sects—it regulates the flow of celestial qi across a realm, controls natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and storms, and can concentrate the entire realm's power against enemies, offering partial enhancement to Liang Xu-level beings.

A true masterpiece of Immortal Dao, integrating production and combat.

Yet the Jiao Mo Emperor Clan never developed anything similar.

"Not bad."

"Good news."

Jiang Ding felt a measure of relief in his heart: "The Horn Demon Imperial Clan — this Immortal Dao civilization has finally revealed a gap in Immortal Dao technology far weaker than the mother domain, one with clear strategic value."

He recorded this test result, preparing to transmit it back to the rear in due course.

Those Void Refinement great powers, each one cunning and far-seeing, would surely find a way to exploit this advantage to the fullest.

"Condense!"

Amid Jiang Ding's swirling thoughts, the hand seal he had been holding for over ten years gradually came to a stop.

Hum!

The surrounding heavens and earth hummed and trembled; countless streams of blood qi and metallic threads surged wildly toward this spot, nearly giving rise to a blood-path anomaly spreading across several thousand kilometers — but it was absorbed by the formations laid out around the area, without affecting the outside world.

Several hours later, the restless anomaly gradually subsided.

At the spot, within the cavern where the blood lake had dried up, a white-haired-as-snow, strikingly handsome and eerily beautiful cultivator in a blood robe stood rooted in place, his entire body radiating an incomparably sharp, incomparably bloodthirsty terrifying aura, as though he would only rest content after slaughtering every living being beneath the heavens.