Chapter 169: Each Harbors a Ghostly Plot

Having finished speaking, he raised auspicious clouds, which turned into a stream of light and flew toward the Tai Qing Sheng Ren Dao Hall beyond the thirty‑three layers of heaven.

When that clear light vanished on the horizon, Zhou Yi caressed the bone flute at his waist and whispered, "The watcher in the shadows should now appear."

As he had expected, deep within the You Ming Blood Sea, the Patriarch of Ming He, cloaked in a scarlet mantle, rode out on a wave of flaming red lotus; in the North Nether Abyss, the demon master Great Peng Bird, with wings sprouting from its back, also transformed into a hanging cloud and drew near silently.

These two powerful beings, long coveting the primordial violet qi, quietly met on the outskirts of Human Race territory. The twin swords of Yuan Tu Abh at the Ming He's waist flashed with blood glint: "A thousand‑year scheme, at last the time of reaping has come."

Great Peng Bird shook off the frost from its feathers and warned, "Do not be careless; the watchers in the dark are more than just you and me."

The two instantly turned into blood mist and black wind, slipping along the subterranean ley lines into the heart of Human Race territory.

The lord of the You Ming Blood Sea and the North Nether giant held their breath and focused, compressing their surrounding energy fluctuations to an almost imperceptible state.

They knew well that the ones spying on the Human Race were not only themselves; rash action might fall prey to a fisherman's profit.

Advancing along the secret route toward the Human Race's interior, the sights along the way caused the two Honghuang giants to feel a hidden alarm.

The resilience the Human Race displayed a thousand years ago when confronting the Demon Race, though eye‑catching, ultimately was outmatched in strength.

Thanks to the Great Master Miao Le's thousand‑year‑long preaching among the Human Race, this rare period of peaceful development completely altered the demographic landscape.

Now, traversing Human Race lands, celestial‑immortal‑rank cultivators are as numerous as stars, and Mysterious Immortal Realm strongmen are commonplace; this scene is a world‑shaking contrast to the past.

Even though it is still hard to contend with liches, this burgeoning vitality has made the Sea of Blood Ancestor and the North Nether giant wary.

They have not realized that the secret behind the Human Race's rapid leap lies within the cultivation traits of the "Zhe Tian Secret Classic".

Although this imperial scripture is difficult to advance in later realms, it can enable cultivators to reach the perfect Immortal Platform realm within a thousand years; those lacking innate talent will stall.

Sui Huang and other pioneers, cooperating with Zhou Yi's strategic layout, successfully cultivated thousands of split branches of the Peach Spirit Root.

These modified spirit plants, though not as potent as the original, together with the ancient Bodhi tree and the Enlightenment tea tree, formed a three‑dimensional cultivation support system.

Under the abundant spiritual energy of Honghuang, each split branch can bear several hundred spirit fruits after a hundred years, laying a solid foundation for Human Race cultivators.

Especially for cultivators who have not yet reached the Immortal Path, these spirit fruits can greatly shorten the time to break through realms.

Thus, the stable output of hundreds of thousands of spirit fruits every hundred years, combined with the imperial scripture's unique rapid‑success effect, ultimately forged the "Human Race Miracle" that makes even Honghuang's great powers look on in awe.

The Nine Heavens Cloud Sea suddenly showed violet qi drifting eastward for thirty thousand li, a sign of Human Dao's flourishing.

Millennia of time in the Human Race's Sacred Hall transformed into a seven‑layer merit golden wheel, within which appear totems of agriculture, weaving, warfare, rites and music—various civilizational symbols.

Zhou Yi stood atop Mount Buzhou; the innate Ba Gua diagram swirling at his fingertips suddenly froze, and at the 9,900th split of the Peach Mother Root, it conspicuously entwined the chaotic shackles that bound the world at its inception.

The North Nether's utmost yin qi and the Sea of Blood's filthy primal element converged in the Kunlun ley line, and the two opposing primordial forces tore a rift in the void.

The demon master's wings spanned the heavens, blocking the sun, while the flaming red lotus beneath the Ming He blossomed; yet within the folds of the space they traversed lay hidden three hundred sixty Blood‑God offspring clones and 129,600 North Nether cold feathers.

Sui Huang's fire in his hand suddenly turned into an eight‑zhang bronze halberd, its blaze illuminating the thirty‑three‑layer sealed array.

The figure appearing in You Chao's palm was not an ordinary building, but the innate Earth‑guarding cauldron that inverted the Nine Provinces.

The Zi Yi Clan's waist sash unfurled in the wind, manifesting a map of mountains and rivers where countless Honghuang races worship the Human Race.

The resonance of the three sacred artifacts generated Dao‑tone ripples, causing the protective aura of the two ancient giants to ripple.

Zhou Yi's light laugh set the celestial stars shifting; from the Purple Forbidden Enclosure flew eighty‑one Dao sigils, which upon landing formed a trapped‑saint chessboard.

The board's intersecting lines turned into branches of the river of time, while the black‑white twins evolved into a yin‑yang dual killing formation.

The demon master tried to spread its wings but saw its feathers encrusted with amber of time; the Ming He's Blood Sea clones were being extinguished one by one in the chess squares by the black and white energies.

"Companion, do you know what true formlessness is?" Zhou Yi drew from his sleeve a Primordial Measure of the Heavens, its scale advancing one notch each time, stripping a primal strand from each Patriarch's body.

When the ninth segment of the Measure of the Heavens lit up, the void revealed a vision of their defeat three days later.

This game of chess had placed its first move a millennium ago.

As the tenth segment of the Measure of the Heavens was about to illuminate, the Kunlun ley line suddenly emitted the sound of the Peach Spirit Root cracking.

Zhou Yi's Dao body trembled imperceptibly for a half‑breath, and the demon master's essential feathers seized the captured Human qi, turning within the North Nether cold tide into a fleeing …

The two Honghuang giants, the demon master Great Peng Bird and the Ming He Ancestor, could not have foreseen that Zhou Yi had mastered the Nine Secrets, the supreme method for probing celestial mechanisms.

The preceding secret not only refines divine consciousness but also discerns the mysteries of temporal law. When two ominous qi streams approached within thirty li, Zhou Yi's forehead spirit platform suddenly flashed a warning. Though he could not see the intruders' true faces, his fingertips already laid a counter‑move.

"Since the two have come, why not appear and reminisce?" Zhou Yi lightly brushed his robe sleeve, and where the void ripples swayed, two silhouettes were forced to materialize.

The flaming red lotus beneath the Ming He had not yet been cleared, and the North Nether cold tide in Great Peng Bird's sleeve still circulated, evidently startled by this unforeseen foresight.

Amid the roiling Sea of Blood, the Ming He Ancestor, treading the twelfth‑grade Lotus Platform, sneered, "Do the mere Human Race dare predict the heavenly plan? Hand over the primordial violet qi, and I will grant you a chance to reincarnate." The Abh, Yuan Tu twin swords inhaled and exhaled blood glint, turning the vast sky crimson.

"Not seen in a thousand years, Great Peng Bird companion, how did your North Nether Ice Secret regress to this?" Zhou Yi's gaze flashed like lightning across the demon master's hair tips, where three original feathers still bore faint cracks, "Back then at the Eastern Sea shore that opening of the heavens seal, does the companion still benefit?"

The demon master's face was like cold iron, and the space around his body subtly fissured.

The old wound, whose original source was shattered a thousand years ago, now throbbed faintly under the pull of the opponent's qi.

Seeing this, Ming He sneered, "Even a dying body dares to covet a treasure? When I take his life, I will share some cold broth with you."

"Patriarch, watch your words!" Zhou Yi suddenly pointed his sword at the azure void, the Nine Secrets Dao sigil swirling in his pupils, "The Sea of Blood does not dry, the Ming He does not die, but if I now trigger the Southern Brightness Fire…" Before the words finished, the twelfth‑grade Lotus Platform's fiery blaze strangely solidified in mid‑air.

Where the three qi currents interwove, space began to vanish inch by inch.

Zhou Yi seemed to stroll leisurely, but in fact he was covertly driving the preceding secret to its extreme; his gamble was that these two demon overlords, each harboring hidden motives, would ultimately fail to combine their attacks.

In the encirclement campaign against Zhou Yi, although the Sea of Blood's lord Ming He temporarily allied with him, everyone knew the true calculations of this demonic giant; when Zhou Yi falls, the allies will turn on each other to seize the primordial violet qi, marking the start of conflict.

At this moment Zhou Yi's injuries were clearly too severe to withstand; not only seizing the Heavenly Dao relic, even surviving under Ming He's sword was a problem.

"Insects of the ant kind only know how to twist their tongues; no matter how many traps you devise, today you will be buried in the Sea of Blood!" Ming He's body surged with scarlet murderous aura, his twin swords humming and trembling.