Chapter 219: Southern Wasteland? Southern Wasteland!

"From today on, I am the new Sect Leader!"

"Although, for now, this new Blood God Sect consists only of me!"

"But that does not matter; by raising this Blood God alone, I can control it even better!"

After Su Ping obtained the Sect Leader certification, he did not stop the Blood God Ritual.

With a thought, he activated the Sect Leader permissions, forcing the Blood God's main body to lower its mental defenses.

In that instant, the chaotic collective will of the past generations of Sect Leaders and Elders within the Blood God seemed to perceive something, causing the Blood God's Shenchong to tremble as it tried to resist.

"Blood Chain!"

"Lock!"

Su Ping gave a light shout, and the Blood-colored Chains wrapped around the Blood God's main body clattered as they tightened.

This caused the Blood God's massive figure to jerk to a halt.

The various resistances on its body dissolved, allowing Su Ping's Greedy Wolf Divine Sense to surge inside.

"What is this!"

"No! I am the third-generation Sect Leader of the Blood God Sect, you cannot kill me!"

"I am the Great Elder, you lot cannot..."

Inside the Blood God Consciousness Sea, the mixed billions of thoughts boiled over at this sight.

Many consciousness entities that had long since gone mad revealed their identities, wanting to resist.

However, they were no longer their original selves, but merely a collection of杂念 (stray thoughts) that had inherited some memory fragments.

The power they could drive came from the Blood God itself.

At the moment the Blood God's power was locked by the Blood Chain.

They were like parasites that had left their host, forcibly torn apart by Su Ping and then stripped out of the Blood God Consciousness Sea.

This process was equivalent to completely formatting the Blood God, this large-scale computer.

It swept away all the various trash generated over these thousands of years in one go.

Afterward, facing the Blood God's main body, which had lost its agility and become even duller, Su Ping began to pour in his own Divine Sense Mark.

The biggest trouble with this operation was that the Blood God's birth itself was a product of the thoughts of all living beings; as time fermented, accidents would always happen.

Su Ping's method for this was to feed it more Blood Qi Living Souls to dilute the thoughts of all living beings within the Blood God's main body.

Combined with the Blood Chain, he ensured its controllability as much as possible!

This was not Su Ping's original invention either.

It was a line of thought conceived by a certain past Sect Leader.

It was just that past generations of Sect Leaders wanted to do it but lacked the conditions.

It could only be realized by Su Ping.

Could this be considered fulfilling some obsession that the past Sect Leaders of the Blood God Sect had toward the Blood God?

Feeling that all the Blood Qi beads had finished decomposing within the Blood God's body and had merged into every aspect of it.

Only then did Su Ping completely set his mind at ease.

He immediately connected to the Blood God's main consciousness to check the status of the several people from the Artifact Heart Sect it had swallowed.

Su Ping had deliberately waited until those people stopped moving before taking control of the Blood God, precisely because he did not want to disturb the Blood God's meal.

Now that he looked, Su Ping was slightly shocked.

He discovered that besides the fragments of the Giant Immortal Boat, there were only the corpses of two Golden Core Elders inside the Blood God.

These two Golden Core Elders were wrapped in a world of blood, their physical bodies appearing uncorrupted.

In fact, their Divine Souls had long since dissipated.

Even these two physical bodies were beginning to slowly decompose and melt from the inside.

"Did two escape?"

"But this is within reason; the people who came from the Artifact Heart Sect this time clearly did not have low status, so it is normal for some to have life-saving items!"

Su Ping was not greedy; he manipulated the Blood God's main body to spit out the two Golden Core corpses it had swallowed earlier along with other undigested items.

Su Ping cast a divine ability to manifest hundreds of translucent giant hands to sort out the useful items.

Thanks to the fact that Golden Core Cultivators all used Storage Spirit Tools, and these things were known for their sturdiness due to special materials.

The Storage Spirit Tools of these two Golden Core Elders fell into Su Ping's hands intact.

Although Su Ping could not open them yet due to the Divine Sense Seal.

However, Su Ping, who had sufficient experience in opening ownerless items, had already thought about which places to set up an Array and then use the thoughts of all living beings to slowly grind away the Divine Sense Seals of these Storage Spirit Tools.

…………

Artifact Heart Sect, inside the Immortal Palace floating above the sinkhole.

The alarm bell rang out with a clanging sound.

The remaining Elders set off one after another toward the depths of the Immortal Palace.

Inside a spacious Cave Abode where the Spirit Qi was dense in those depths.

The walls of the Cave Abode were densely covered with expensive Talismans used for warding off evil and calming the mind.

The Artifact Heart Sect's Divine Weapon Bronze Mirror floated in mid-air, the mirror surface shooting out green light, shining upon the Sect Master sitting cross-legged on a prayer mat.

Beside the Sect Master, their Personal Disciple, who was a Golden Core Elder, stood guard.

After suffering a miserable failure in the Blood God Secret Realm, and then being swallowed into the body by the Blood God's main body.

This Golden Core Elder knew in his heart that this trip had already fallen into the worst possible outcome.

He hurriedly grabbed the Sect Master, who was in a state of madness, and by relying on the contingency plan left behind by the Sect Master—who was also his master—he managed to temporarily obtain control of the sect's Divine Weapon.

Afterward, with the help of the Divine Weapon's ultimate technique that severely damaged his vitality, plus the fact that the Blood God had no believers to support it and was acting entirely on instinct, its actions were chaotic.

Only then was he able to bring this Sect Master back into the Immortal Palace.

However, escaping the Blood God Secret Realm did not mean the matter was over.

Because the Sect Master had accepted a massive amount of Blood God inheritance knowledge and become corrupted, he had already turned into a ticking time bomb.

Looking at the Sect Master, whose every cell in his body was swelling, making him unrecognizable even to those familiar with him.

This Golden Core Elder worried immensely about the future of the Artifact Heart Sect.

The other Elders who arrived, after helping to stabilize the Cave Abode Barrier.

They no longer had the heart to review why this trip to the Blood God Secret Realm had failed.

Or whether there were external enemies interfering.

They were even more terrified about where the Artifact Heart Sect would go from here, now that they had lost the Sect Master, their backbone!

A cave in the coastal region.

With a flash of red light, Su Ping's figure appeared inside the cave.

After obtaining control over the Blood God.

Su Ping learned almost all the inheritance knowledge of the Blood God Sect from it.

Among this inheritance knowledge, a Blood God Seal was mentioned.

This was a Secret Treasure specifically refined after opening the Blood God Secret Realm.

Once recognized by this seal, one could store the Blood God Secret Realm within the Blood God Seal, thereby carrying it with them!

This meant Su Ping could take this Secret Realm back to Water Blue Star to deal with the Abyss Challenge.

It was just that the Blood God Seal had been snatched away during a siege while the second Sect Leader of the Blood God Sect was still alive.

Fortunately, the party that snatched it did not possess the Blood God Secret Method, and since they could not use this special Secret Treasure, they had to keep it as a mere collectible.

Over the following thousand years, this Secret Treasure fell into the hands of different forces due to various accidents.

It was not that the successive Sect Leaders had never thought of snatching this matching Secret Treasure back.

But they became increasingly unable to do what they wished.

Because the Blood God Sect's greatest trump card, the Blood God, had undergone a qualitative change as time accumulated, making it harder and harder to control.

Relying on the Blood God's true form to fight had become a matter of mutual destruction.

Even the Sect Leader and the Elders avoided, as much as possible, any major battles that required the use of the Blood God's true form, so as to avoid losing control and sacrificing themselves for the Blood God Sect ahead of time...

"They dare not use the Blood God Power."

"I, however, do not have this worry; at worst, when I am about to lose control, I will stop using it, then return to Water Blue Star to retrieve more Blood Qi Living Soul and Blood Chain!"

"Furthermore, if I want to retrieve the Blood God Seal, it is best to do it as soon as possible, lest there be complications!"

"According to the memories in the Blood God inheritance, the rate of deterioration in Nanhuang is worse than many people think."

"If Nanhuang were to completely fall, or even sink directly into the outside world... that would be troublesome!"

Su Ping immediately summoned the Blood God in his capacity as Sect Leader, then began to locate the position of the Blood God Seal using the Blood God Secret Technique.

As expected, the Blood God Seal was somewhere in Nanhuang.

Su Ping recalled his knowledge of Nanhuang.

After the Evil Qi Tide erupted, Nanhuang could be called a place of lawlessness where demons ran wild.

Especially in these past two years, various large and small sects in Nanhuang had fled to the Central Region as if escaping a disaster.

Nanhuang had completely lost all order.

Evil Spirits, the Demonic Path, the Side-Door Path, and various Incense Divine Paths were all mixed together.

Almost every moment, battles were breaking out over increasingly scarce cultivation resources or population.

And this was still Nanhuang before the Blood God Sect ran away.

This period of time might not seem long in the eyes of a Cultivator.

But against the backdrop of accelerating Evil Qi invasion.

This period of time was enough for the general environment to deteriorate by another level.

Su Ping used a Communication Jade Slip to leave messages for the managers of the Jiuye Mountain Market and the overseas island settlements.

Then he summoned the Gourd and sat upon it.

With his Foundation Establishment Late Stage Dharma Power circulating, the Gourd acted like a jet plane, spitting out a pale blue flame from its mouth, and carried Su Ping into the distance as a streak of red light.

There were many dangerous natural barriers between Nanhuang and the Central Region.

Lacking experience, one could easily get lost in the Insect Mist, Deadly Poison Gas, and other such death zones, resulting in the destruction of both body and Divine Soul.

It was rumored that large Evil Spirits comparable to Golden Core Cultivators lurked in many places.

For the vast majority of Cultivators.

Only by traveling together on large Immortal Boats could they guarantee a high probability of passing safely.

However, with the deterioration of the environment, the larger sects in Nanhuang had basically all run away.

There were fewer and fewer Immortal Boats traveling between Nanhuang and the Central Region.

Moreover, the danger was increasing, and news had even emerged of large Immortal Boats encountering disasters and being destroyed along the way.

In the Nanhuang territory, ten thousand meters above a misty jungle spanning ten thousand miles.

Three large Immortal Boats, ranging from seven hundred to nine hundred meters in length, were moving forward cautiously and slowly.

These three large Immortal Boats were not well-prepared because they had departed in a hurry.

They even lacked large-scale equipment to detect hidden dangers and experienced captains.

Yet, they had no choice but to leave.

Heaven Sword City, from where they set sail, had encountered an irresistible Evil Spirit outbreak, forcing them to set sail early to seek refuge.

And then, an important navigation Immortal Boat was actually infiltrated by Evil Cultivators!

They could only watch helplessly as that Immortal Boat plummeted from high altitude, then vanished into the rolling black fog emerging from the city district, unable to emit a single echo.

On the deck of an Immortal Boat.

An old man with a bitter expression, accompanied by a pair of young children, looked toward the distance with worry.

These three were a grandfather and his grandchildren, coming from a small sect in Nanhuang that was a vassal to the Heavenly Sword Sect.

Because they were proficient in the art of artifact refining, their sect usually lived quite comfortably.

When the Heavenly Sword Sect relocated, they were promised very early on that they would follow them out of Nanhuang.

It was just that they had waited until now.

If not for the sect leader feeling that waiting any longer would lead to the destruction of the sect, they would not have taken the disciples to run to the Immortal Boat port of Heaven Sword City, and then exhausted their family fortune to buy tickets.

They might have truly died without a burial place in the Evil Spirit catastrophe that erupted within the city!

This truly frightened them.

Even though two days had passed, they still dared not stay in the cabin, only thinking of standing on the deck so that they could escape at the first sign of trouble!

Besides this pair of grandfather and grandchildren, there were plenty of others on the deck sitting or standing with the same mindset.

Luo, a Deacon of the South Wilderness Chamber of Commerce to which the Immortal Boat belonged, observed the reactions of these people.

In his heart, however, he felt that these people were really overthinking it.

If the Immortal Boat were to truly encounter trouble, what chance would they have of surviving?

As for these Qi Refining Cultivators on the deck before him, even if they were lucky enough to land safely, they would follow by meeting disaster after the next danger arrived.

"Have you still not made contact with Deacon Zhang's fleet?"

Luo withdrew his gaze and looked back at his subordinates in the cockpit.

A white-haired old man holding a Bronze Array Disk in both hands gave a bitter smile and said:

"Since three hours ago, we have sent out more than ten messages, but there has not been a single reply."

"Furthermore, the array map no longer displays the location of their fleet."

"..."

Luo's heart sank, but he consoled them:

"Perhaps they encountered fog; Deacon Zhang's side is well-prepared, they certainly will be fine."

After saying this, Luo looked around and ordered the old man to continue sending messages.

Only by joining with other fleets would their fleet have a greater chance of successfully leaving Nanhuang.

Dozens of seconds later.

Luo, who was deep in thought, heard exclamations.

Then he saw his subordinates in the cockpit looking ashen-faced one by one.

Luo was slightly startled, but quickly reacted.

He discovered that the surrounding environment had somehow turned into a hazy fog.

"How could we have entered the fog!"

"I don't know, this fog appeared suddenly! Not a single one of the warning Dharma Artifacts gave an alarm!"

"It has changed again, these desperate realms are starting to change again!"

The old man holding the array map shouted in a hoarse voice with a hint of despair.

The people on the deck also exclaimed.

Clearly, they had also discovered the abnormality in their surroundings.

Especially since, very quickly, black shadows appeared in the fog.

Strange creatures with black wings, no limbs or facial features, and shaped like black spheres all over, rushed out from the fog.

These winged black spheres constantly collided with the shield of the Immortal Boat.

Each collision caused the shield to bloom with ripples.

"It's Chimei monsters!"

"How could they come to attack us!"

"It's Evil Qi! These monsters in the desperate realms have also been invaded and polluted by Evil Qi!"

A Cultivator used a Dharma Artifact to detect the abnormality on those black spheres, his whole body trembling.

For them, this was undoubtedly the worst answer!

"Accelerate, rush out of this fog!"

Luo made a decisive decision, not caring whether they would run into other strange things because of the excessive speed.

The other two Immortal Boats seemed to have made the same decision.

All three Immortal Boats began to operate at full power to accelerate.

In the fog, the Chimei monsters pursued relentlessly, but were gradually left behind the Immortal Boats.

However, before the Cultivators in the Immortal Boats could breathe a sigh of relief.

In front of the three Immortal Boats, a figure resembling a mountain suddenly appeared.

Through a Dharma Artifact, this figure was shockingly revealed to the Cultivators as a dark purple lion-headed giant.

This lion-headed giant was draped in a Kasaya and held a large ring-blade in its hand.

"It is the Jade Lion Venerable, the Incense God of salvation worshipped by the Snow Mountain Beast Taming Sect!"

"It... how could it be here!"

Luo recognized the background of this giant, and his heart turned ice-cold.

This entity was once a physical Incense God Puppet, cultivated with great effort by the Nanhuang beast-taming lineage after absorbing the essence of the Incense Divine Path Secret Technique and combining it with their own abilities.

They used the Spirit Beast as a host body for the puppet, allowing them to apply the various secret arts for controlling Spirit Beasts to it.

This caused the Spirit Beast to continuously break through its realm, eventually becoming a Spirit Beast at the Golden Core Late Stage.

It later became one of that sect's most important foundations.

Yet, they never expected to see this Spirit Beast here.

It is just that... if the Jade Lion Venerable's Incense God Puppet is here, then where did the others from that sect go?

Furthermore, this Spirit Beast... can it still be considered a Spirit Beast now?

The Immortal Boat began to decelerate amidst the Deacons' hesitation, but that massive figure took the initiative to approach.

Then, even without the aid of Dharma Artifacts, the Cultivators standing on the deck were able to see the figure's appearance clearly.

It was indeed a lion-headed giant with a body a thousand meters tall.

Only, this lion-headed giant's entire body had long been covered in tiny tentacles.

Inside the Kasaya, there seemed to be something else wriggling, creating various protrusions.

Even a child no older than ten could see that the giant before them had long since transformed into some kind of monster!

"The Jade Lion Venerable has fallen and lost control!"

"We are finished!"

Deacon Luo had already considered this possibility in his heart when he saw the phantom, and after seeing it with his own eyes, he fell completely into despair.

Several loud bangs reached their ears.

It was the accompanying Immortal Boat that was the first to be attacked by the Jade Lion Venerable.

The Immortal Boat's shield was shattered by a single strike from a large ring-blade at least eight hundred meters long, and then it was cleaved in two.

Countless Cultivators screamed as they fell downward along with the broken Immortal Boat.

But before these Cultivators could fall.

Many dark purple tentacles emerged from the blade's handle, accurately piercing into each of the Cultivators.

Then, it swallowed them all into the blade body, where they vanished.

The Immortal Boat where Deacon Luo was located also had its shield shattered by a single slap from the lion-headed giant's massive hand, and then the giant grabbed the bow of the ship.

The large blade was swung up once more.

It looked as if it were about to strike down, leaving the Cultivators on this entire Immortal Boat to face their doom!

A streak of red light suddenly tore through the mist and crashed directly into the back of the lion-headed giant's head.

In the blink of an eye, the Cultivators on the deck trembled as they discovered the giant's entire lion head had exploded.

Then, a roar that resounded across the sky of the entire Mist Forest rang out.

The red light that had shattered the lion head erupted with blinding radiance.

In the next breath.

A blood-colored giant hand, more magnificent and towering than a high mountain, reached out from the red light and grabbed the Jade Lion Venerable, which was still moving after losing its head.

It was as easy and simple as an adult grabbing a toy doll no larger than twenty centimeters.

It dragged the Jade Lion Venerable's body directly into the red light!

The Cultivators in the surviving Immortal Boat stared in a daze.

They had never expected such a development.