Chapter 542: Unfathomable

Kun Peng fell silent.

He sent his divine thought into the High Priest's sea of consciousness.

A moment later, he released his grip.

The High Priest had already turned into a soulless husk, falling from midair.

Kun Peng's complexion turned extremely grim.

The High Priest did not lie.

In his memory, Kun Peng saw, tens of thousands of years ago, a towering Shaman Tribe Great Shaman, body covered with totems, descend here and hand a jet‑black bone to the then High Priest.

The Great Shaman told him the bone was a fragment that fell from an Ancestor Shaman, containing supreme power.

As long as one pours living‑creature blood to constantly irrigate and sacrifice, the power can be awakened, linking with the Ancestor Shaman and receiving blessings.

This makes no sense at all!

The Shaman Tribe is supremely proud, regards all tribes as blood food, how could they support a weak tribe? And grant them an Ancestor Shaman's bone fragment?

There must be a larger scheme behind this!

Kun Peng's gaze fell again on the altar below, built from black bone.

He extended his hand, a massive suction came, pulling the entire altar into his palm, turning it into a palm‑sized black bone chunk.

He could feel that inside the bone chunk seemed to contain an enormous energy, sealed by some force.

Recalling Prince Donghuang's earlier reaction…

A ridiculous yet chilling thought surfaced in his mind.

Could it be…

That seemingly frail Prince Donghuang had long sensed something amiss behind this?

His so‑called "ill health" and "coma" were merely to get the Heavenly Emperor to issue him the decree to scour the Primordial Chaos?

His true purpose, from the start, was this seemingly insignificant… blood sacrifice?

Thinking this, Kun Peng felt a chill surge from his soles straight to his crown.

If so, Prince Donghuang's scheming mind would be terrifyingly deep.

Once the thought rose, it tangled Kun Peng's entire spirit like a wildly growing vine.

He began frantically retracing everything that had happened.

Prince Donghuang, in the treasury among countless items, happened to react to that black bone fragment.

He "perfectly" pretended to "coma" before the Heavenly Emperor, provoking thunderous wrath and prompting the Emperor to issue what he deemed an overblown extermination decree.

And he himself became the executor of that decree.

Everything seemed so coincidental, as if an invisible hand were covertly steering it all.

And the source pushing all this pointed to the prince who had long lain in Donghuang Palace, "frail and sickly".

"Impossible… absolutely impossible…"

Kun Peng muttered to himself, unable to accept the speculation.

How could a newly‑formed, Golden Immortal‑ranked infant prodigy possibly devise such deep scheming?

Not even he, a near‑saintly great being, nor sages like Xi Huang, had noticed any anomaly.

On what basis?

Perhaps it truly was just coincidence?

Kun Peng tried to convince himself.

But reason told him that the cultivation path offers few coincidences.

Especially when all this points to a massive conspiracy.

"Shaman Tribe…"

Kun Peng's eyes grew exceedingly solemn.

If the Black Stone Tribe's blood sacrifice truly involves the Shaman Tribe, this is far from an isolated case.

In the vast Western Primordial Chaos, how many pieces like the Black Stone Tribe are covertly manipulated by the Shaman Tribe?

What is their purpose in doing so?

Merely to support some weak tribes?

Kun‑Peng knows even with his toes that it's impossible.

Those guys whose brains are packed with muscle have no such leisure.

"It must be clarified!"

Kun Peng put away all contempt and murderous intent.

He realized he might have inadvertently touched a cataclysmic conspiracy against the entire Demon Race and even the whole Primordial Chaos.

In the years that followed.

Kun Peng changed his strategy.

He no longer waged open slaughter; instead he became a shadow, using his Demon Master identity and mastery of spatial laws to silently infiltrate thousands of tribes across Western Primordial Chaos.

He discovered the situation was far graver than he imagined.

Over thirty percent of the tribes were secretly performing blood sacrifices similar to the Black Stone Tribe's.

Their altars, without exception, were built from that jet‑black bone.

Their sacrificial chants differed, yet all invoked the so‑called "Ancestor Spirits" and "Earth Power".

These tribes, like malignant tumors, spread through every corner of Western Primordial Chaos.

They formed an invisible massive web.

And behind that web, all points to a single entity—the Shaman Tribe.

Finally, Kunpeng gathered all the clues into one place.

Myriad Bone Cave.

That is a famous dangerous place in the western Primeval; it is said that during the initial calamity of the Dragon-Han era, countless mighty beings fell there, and it has long been shrouded in endless resentful and murderous energy, so much so that even a Great Luo Golden Immortal would not dare to venture deep.

Kunpeng traced the subtlest energy flows on those black bone fragments, confirming that all the power of blood sacrifice ultimately flowed into this place.

He showed no hesitation, directly concealed his form, and slipped into Myriad Bone Cave.

The deeper he went, the stronger the yin-cold, deathly still aura became.

In the air, it seemed as if the blood stench and vengeful poison had condensed and would not dissipate.

Finally, in the deepest part of Myriad Bone Cave, he saw a scene that would be unforgettable for a lifetime.

It was an underground space even larger than the Northern Dark Sea.

At the center of the space was a blood pool so huge it could not be described in words.

Within the blood pool, what churned was not blood, but a black liquid formed from the condensed resentment, hatred, and despair of countless beings.

And at the center of the blood pool stood twelve heaven-penetrating, earth-penetrating stone pillars that rose into the sky, carved with twelve demon gods of various forms, emanating endless majesty.

These were precisely the manifestations of the Twelve Ancestral Witches.

The viscous, ink-like power of resentment in the blood pool was being frantically absorbed by the twelve stone pillars, then transmitted to an unknown location in a way Kunpeng could not comprehend.

This place is by no means merely a ruin.

This is the core of a formation so vast it exceeds imagination!

A formation that uses the resentment of myriad beings as a guide, the turbid murderous energy of the Primeval earth as a foundation, laid down jointly by the Twelve Ancestral Witches……a peerless vicious formation!

"Hiss—"

Even someone as ruthless and cruel as Kunpeng could not help but draw a sharp breath of cold air upon seeing this.

He finally understood.

The Witch Tribe is playing a very, very big game.

By spreading those so-called ancestral spirit holy bones, they tricked the myriad tribes of the Primeval into conducting blood sacrifices, gathering the resentment of countless beings here.

Their goal is certainly not to increase their own power.

Such power cannot be directly absorbed even by the Witch Tribe's tyrannical fleshly body.

Then what do they intend to use this power for?