Chapter 238: Behind the Scenes Revealed (Please Subscribe)

The people at the bottom, in pain and fear, ran and ran until they reached a large mountain col.

Surrounded by mountains on three sides, there was only one path leading in; Gray Falcon had observed it upon returning and judged that there were no issues here.

The people converged here, all wounded and exhausted, and with the corpse-transformation still not purged, they looked up to see no way forward, their eyes going dark with despair as they collapsed, wails filling the air.

Gray Falcon stood silently at the entrance path, turning around with an expressionless face to look at the group from Yunyi City, who had also gathered there and were appearing hesitant.

They had originally been destroying the formation points, and upon discovering the commotion here, they had tacitly converged and followed along.

In any case, they had already destroyed enough, breaking the barriers of that demonic formation, and could escape its range.

If they continued to destroy it, there was no guarantee the person behind the scenes wouldn't do something specifically targeting them.

Someone capable of setting up such a demonic formation, their cultivation went without saying; it was certainly far beyond their own!

Therefore, these people naturally dared not make another move.

And the reason they followed the movement here was naturally because they had duties and official business; despite encountering such a turn of events, they could not simply run back to Yunyi City.

Since they could not truly leave, then if that demonic formation had any further changes that might affect them, the point where they could exert effort would clearly lie with this group of people!

Therefore, once things changed, they would have to cut the weeds and dig up the roots to avoid the fire spreading to themselves...

Then the Foundation Establishment cultivators of Yunyi City discovered that the target Ren Li had asked them to find was blocking their path.

The attitude was quite clear, leaving them looking at each other, not knowing whether they should turn hostile.

"Forget it, let's wait and see."

As one of them spoke, the others chose to acquiesce, and the two sides fell into a silent standoff.

Outside the city, hearts were filled with anxiety and lives were as cheap as grass, while inside the city, the slaughter and fierce fighting were in full swing.

The night grew deep, and the moonlight was ominous.

At this moment, Du En, having returned to the Chiwu Mountain Range, observed all directions and listened to all sides while flying; he could see the moon currently reflecting an ominous blood color, and could see that this spirit-nurturing land was already in chaos, the entire mountain range shaking and collapsing.

He arrived at the place where he had separated from Gray Falcon.

At this time, there was no need to struggle to drill holes to go underground to investigate the culprit's tracks, because at this very moment, as the earth-shaking ended, the entire mountain range collapsed directly from the middle, sinking into a huge deep valley, revealing the scene underground.

The spirit-nurturing veins laid out in this mountain range used this place as a base point, extending and radiating toward the entire mountain range; looking down from high altitude, one could see it outlined a slender, gorgeous, and elegant form.

Countless growth points of the third-rank Red-Leaf Wutong trees, just like the roots of feathers, were all toppled over at this moment due to the earth-shaking, the mountain collapse, and the collapse of the spirit-nurturing land.

The red leaves overlapped, as if returning to their original form, becoming individual feathers.

Thus, the scene in the middle section of the Chiwu Mountain Range now looked exactly like a phoenix lying here, crushing this mountain range, letting its blood spread out, making the feathers exceptionally scarlet and eye-catching...

"Years ago, the Immortal Sect took action, and so the phoenix died here; its blood stained the mountains of Wutong trees, and the Immortal Sect used its corpse, bones, and meridians as the foundation for this spirit land, ultimately shaping this Chiwu Mountain Range that has lasted for thousands of years."

A feminine male voice sounded, explaining this situation.

A phoenix had once died here, and it was the good work of the Falling Feather Immortal Sect!

Du En was not surprised, nor was he disgusted or angry; he only calmly focused his gaze on the deep valley, on the origin of all those veins, which should be the location of the fallen phoenix's heart.

There was a one-zhang-tall Wutong tree standing proudly, growing there.

Its stem was blood-brown, straight and unslanted, lush and ostentatious; the leaves were like raging flames, and as it left the underground and saw the light of day again, it seemed very excited in the night breeze, actually emitting faint, crisp chirping sounds.

The fourth-rank spirit item that Du En had previously sensed could accumulate proficiency for his spirit-seeking skills was exactly this: the Phoenix-Blood Wutong!

And now, standing with his hands behind his back in front of this Phoenix-Blood Wutong, was a person.

He had a feminine appearance, was quite tall, and wore a purple-black long robe; facing the gaze Du En cast, his raised eyes held a hint of hysteria and the madness of someone with nowhere left to turn.

"Are you, Cui Wei?"

Du En asked.

This person had the cultivation of a Golden Core Perfection, and in this place, logically speaking, only the City Lord of Chiwu City, Cui Wei, possessed such cultivation.

Moreover, given the sequence of events, if this City Lord were plotting in the dark and manipulating things from behind the scenes, it would be within reason.

"Yes, it is me."

Cui Wei did not hide it in the slightest, because at this point, it could no longer be hidden.

"Years of hard work, one could say it all fell short of success; my struggle seemed meaningless, just like this Phoenix-Blood Wutong, growing cautiously in the center of the spirit-nurturing land, thinking it could avoid the eyes and ears of the Immortal Sect, yet not knowing that on my first day of taking office, I had already been told of its existence."

Speaking to this point, Cui Wei pulled out an ugly smile, as if mocking, or perhaps manic, speaking without restraint:

"It's truly ridiculous, don't you think? It struggled, grew silently, but in the end, it was only because the current fourth-rank peak was not enough, and it had to be allowed to grow to the fifth rank, or back to the seventh or eighth rank; in any case, there would only be one final result."

Listening to this, Du En only said: "So you used it, used the layout of the spirit-nurturing land, to make it serve you, secretly influencing and controlling people inside and outside the city through the branches of the Red-Leaf Wutong, so that you could turn them into zombies."

"No, no, no, you've thought wrong; if I really did that, I would have been discovered and caught by the Inspection Guard long ago; how could I have managed to hide it until now?"

Cui Wei denied it flatly, and had no intention of hiding it at all, "I only adjusted some of the layout of the spirit-nurturing land, and took out the third-rank Red-Leaf Wutong piled up in the warehouse, mixing it into food, water, pills, and spirit meals, only then letting them develop normally and become plump."

Speaking of this, he couldn't help but lick his lips, appearing very strange.

Du En sensed something, but the extension of his divine sense and the arrival of his perception were severely interfered with by the Phoenix-Blood Wutong, making it impossible to confirm anything in those forms.

He fell into silence, his gaze shifting, attempting to see through the inside and outside of this deep valley.

Cui Wei seemed to notice, but did not care, instead speaking to himself as if boasting: "They became plump normally, with no way to find anything unusual, and at the same time, they became available for extra use; I once obtained a demonic scripture in my early years, the core inheritance of the Heaven Corpse Sect, which records a bunch of evil methods for refining corpses."

This person's mental state was clearly abnormal, chattering incessantly, but Du En did not stop him.

For one, he could take the opportunity to continue observing the situation here, and for another, he could learn some of the background.

Of course, one could not believe it entirely; it needed to be discerned.

(End of chapter)