Chapter 252

Above a certain vast expanse of cloud sea.

A carriage glided through the air.

This carriage is extremely large, over ten zhang wide, richly decorated; from afar one could hear the lascivious sounds coming from within, making one's face flush involuntarily.

Suddenly.

Who?!

A sharp shout rang out, the voice filled with undisguised anger.

Whoosh—

The carriage curtains were lifted, revealing two handsome but pallid male faces; through the opening one could faintly see a mature, voluptuous figure, though the woman's expression looked extremely ferocious.

At her feet lay four or five feeble men, clearly drained, yet their faces bore a sickly satisfaction.

The middle-aged beautiful woman suddenly turned pale, her form twisting; in the blink of an eye she changed from a lovely lady into a white-haired, stooped old hag.

This change made the men who had been indulging stare wide-eyed; recalling what had just happened, some even flung themselves to the ground and vomited violently.

Seeing this, the old woman's face turned frosty; she waved her wrinkled arms, accompanied by a series of 'puff' sounds, and the strange odor inside the carriage instantly gave way to a strong smell of blood.

This person is none other than the Supreme Elder of the Union Joy Sect, a Yuan Ying cultivator renowned throughout the Cloud Realm—Snow Moon Fairy!

However, at this moment her appearance hardly matches the title 'Fairy'.

The anger on her face slowly faded.

Not even a scrap of information returned—could it be that Wanning has provoked some fellow cultivator?

If it were a Core Formation cultivator, given her fondness for Su Wanning, she would surely investigate.

Yet the sliver of her divided soul she had left with Su Wanning had just sensed the activation of the 'Possession Great Art' before she could learn anything, and the connection there was cut.

This makes it hard not to suspect that the perpetrator is likely a Yuan Ying cultivator like herself.

Even though she knew it was her senior disciple, she showed no mercy, indicating the other party does not fear her.

Corpse ghoul? Old hag? Blood child?

Possibilities flashed through her mind one by one, yet she got no answer.

At this point she ought to go check; even though it's far, with her Yuan Ying cultivation it wouldn't take particularly long.

But.

She had pressing matters this time out; considering the importance of this affair, she had to temporarily suppress her anger.

Don't let me find out who did this!

South Lodging Island, He Clan.

He Clan's patriarch He Yuanlin, after receiving Yunhe's summons, came alone to the council hall.

However, upon entering the hall he found no one present, only a delicate wooden box placed before the ancestor's desk.

He Yuanlin called out a few times, receiving no reply, then cautiously approached the desk and picked up the wooden box.

He slowly opened it.

Suddenly a thick demonic aura burst forth.

Recognizing what lay inside the box, He Yuanlin sucked in a breath and hastily closed the lid.

Demon Core?!

Inside this wooden box lay, astonishingly, two demon cores of early third-rank demon beasts!

Moreover, one is an earth-attribute demon core, the other a fire-attribute demon core!

As someone who has lingered in the Foundation Establishment stage for over a hundred years and only just managed to reach Foundation Establishment Perfection, He Yuanlin knew all too well what these two early third-rank demon beast cores signified.

For someone like him, with little lifespan left and no hope of reaching Core Formation in this lifetime, a single such demon core could, via the External Elixir Method, allow him to achieve the False Elixir Realm!

Although False Elixir cultivators cannot advance further, by relying on their false elixir power they can, to some extent, rival Core Formation cultivators!

They possess cultivation, mana, and even lifespan comparable to Core Formation cultivators.

It is something countless Foundation Establishment cultivators who cannot attain Golden Core dream of.

Taking a few deep breaths, He Yuanlin suppressed his excitement, trembling as he reopened the box, gazing at the two demon cores with a look of longing.

However, only now did he notice that inside the wooden box there was also a jade slip.

He carefully picked it up and infused it with his divine sense.

After a quick perusal, his expression became complex—somewhat wistful, somewhat disappointed, yet also tinged with a hint of hope.

The He Clan ancestor had gone out to seek further immortal fate, deliberately leaving behind two inner cores of early third-rank demon beasts—one for He Yuanlin, the other for a suitable member of the He Clan, to be distributed by He Yuanlin himself.

The ancestor actually looked forward to Yuan Ying.

He Yuanlin felt somewhat unreal about it.

Is this really their He Clan ancestor, who has little lifespan left?

But thinking back over the past century, the ancestor had progressed from early Core Formation to late Core Formation, pulling the entire He Clan back from the brink of collapse; this made He Yuanlin involuntarily entertain a notion he himself deemed somewhat unrealistic—what if the ancestor truly

We need to keep the line as is; we cannot add missing punctuation. We'll translate the Chinese as given.

However, as long as the ancestor's soul tablet remains, the He Clan's heavens will not collapse.

He Yuanlin carefully put away the wooden box; this will be one of the He Clan's greatest secrets for the next hundred years.

Performing the External Elixir Method also carries a chance of failure, but it is far easier and simpler than attempting to condense a Golden Core on one's own.

'With the ancestor absent, leaving these two demon beast inner cores is to let us safeguard the He Clan until his return.'

As the sole 'voice tube' of the He Clan ancestor, He Yuanlin believes he still understands the ancestor's temperament somewhat.

During these years without the ancestor, the He Clan ought to stay low-key, and he will announce to the outside that the ancestor has entered closed-door seclusion, after which he will no longer participate in outside affairs.

'Leaving these two demon cores, if He Yuanlin is lucky he should be able to condense an external elixir. Two external elixir cultivators, if they operate well, the He Clan should be able to survive—also a way for me to repay my years of 'blood-sucking.'

Vast cloud sea.

Standing on a small skiff, Yunhe in a wide cloak is receding into the distance.

If I wait until I return next time and the He family still exists, then I wouldn't mind bringing this family to see a world with a broader horizon.

These years, as the old ancestor of the He family, he found using the He family quite convenient.

Just that.

When he will come back, even he himself probably can't be sure.

Taking advantage of the fact that the upheaval in the Yun Shang Realm's Yun Shang Palace had just begun and hadn't fully erupted yet, he too had been targeted by a host of Yuan Ying Cultivators, so leaving early was the right move.

But before leaving, he still needed to make some preparations.

The Yun Shang Realm is vast; trying to find someone like him is like looking for a needle in a haystack, so the danger isn't that high for now, thus he needed to bring back some "special products".

Although both the Yun Shang Realm and the Dong Realm are cultivation worlds, due to their geographical location and overall environment, there are still considerable differences between them.

For example.

Because the Yun Shang Realm was once invaded by the yao tribe, it produces abundant cloud beasts, causing its development to differ greatly from that of the Dong Realm.

For elixirs of the same effect, the Yun Shang Realm's refinement method uses yao beast inner cores as the main ingredient, while the Dong Realm uses spiritual plants.

Also because of the cloud beasts, the Yun Shang Realm cultivators' myriad cultivation arts—artifact forging, talisman dao, even formation laws—will differ.

Of course, the greatest difference lies in the various materials produced only in the Yun Shang Realm, such as those from the cloud seas and cloud islands, which the Dong Realm lacks.

Since he can rely on the "ultra-long-distance transmission array", he naturally wants to maximize the benefits of shuttling between the two realms.

Thus.

During this period, Yunhe began to wander among the major market towns under various identities, extensively gathering the Yun Shang Realm's special products.

At the same time, he converted the items he had collected earlier in the Luo Tian Secret Realm into spirit stones one by one, or directly exchanged them for the Yun Shang Realm's special products.

Furthermore, during this time he constantly kept an eye on the movements of the Yun Shang Palace.

This terrifying force that dominates the Yun Shang Realm's foremost power cannot be easily toppled by relying solely on external forces, for those external forces are not united either, but nobody expected that the Yun Shang Palace would begin to collapse from within.

When Yunhe finished this operation, he also received the latest news.

The Yun Shang Palace's Sunrise True Lord, Moon Cassia Immortal, Star Expansion True Lord, and Six Dao Palace Master—four great cultivators at the peak of the Late Yuan Ying Stage—fought for seven days and seven nights on Tian Yun Island in the Yun Wai Realm; the outcome remained unknown, but this formally announced that the matter had been brought to the attention of everyone in the Yun Shang Realm.

Originally only a tiny few knew about this matter, but now everyone knows that the Yun Shang Palace is in chaos.

You should know, the Six Dao Palace Master who teamed up with the Star Expansion True Lord is none other than the Supreme Elder of the demonic path's Six Dao Palace, and also the number one demonic path figure in the entire Yun Shang Realm.

It's just uncertain whether the Sunrise True Lord and Moon Cassia Immortal will later be able to find any strong allies.

Now, the entirety of the Yun Shang Palace cannot be considered safe without Yuan Ying Stage strength.

This is a battle that will inevitably sweep across the entire Yun Shang Realm; many forces must pick a side, and even if they don't want to, they will be forced to choose, otherwise they will be the first to be wiped out; but once they pick a side, many things will no longer be under their own control.

In just a year's time, the Yun Shang Realm's situation has shifted dramatically, with countless forces already being ground to dust under this great storm.

Actually, during this period there is another interesting matter that Yunhe himself doesn't know whether it's true or false.

Initially, the Star Expansion True Lord did this under the pretense of wanting to invade the Yun Wai Realm, seeking the ancient yao tribe's celestial court ruins left behind, attempting to enter the Yao Shou Shijie under that banner.

But it's unknown from when this account began to diverge.

According to rumor, the Star Expansion True Lord's aim to find the ancient celestial court is correct, but it is not to invade the Yao Shou Shijie; rather, it is to release the yao beasts of the Yao Shou Shijie to descend to the lower realm and return to the cultivation world once again.

Because the Star Expansion True Lord knew his lifespan was limited, during an outing to seek immortal fate, he obtained a strand of "Heavenly Yao Qi"!

The Star Expansion True Lord absorbed this strand of "Heavenly Yao Qi", gaining a much longer lifespan, but it also caused him to become neither human nor yao.

He wants to find the ancient celestial court in order to completely transform himself into a yao tribe with a long lifespan, fully shedding his human body.

When this news came out, it caused a rift between the Star Expansion True Lord and the Six Dao Palace Master's side.

After all.

No matter how they fight, this remains an internal human conflict; if the Star Expansion True Lord truly becomes a yao collaborator, then their positions are completely different.

But what they are doing this time is to overthrow the Yun Shang Palace's "rule"; if they stop just as they've started, not only would their decades of plotting be in vain, but afterward they would surely suffer the Yun Shang Palace's frenzied retaliation.

Thus, each side holds to its own claim, and nobody can prove it.

As for how the subsequent events will develop, Yunhe does not know.

Because he has already arrived at that small cloud island which originally housed the "ultra-long-distance transmission array".

Begin repairing the "ultra-long-distance transmission array".

Back then he cut off a corner of the transmission array, worried that the Spirit Beast Sect's Golden Core cultivators from the Dong Realm would chase him and follow the array here.

However, his earlier destruction was relatively simple; relying on the diagrams he left behind and his current formation dao cultivation base, repairing the transmission array is still fairly easy.

The entire repair process also took him only a day.

"Hope that side isn't destroyed."

Looking at the completed ultra-long-distance transmission array, Yunhe placed spirit stones one by one, then took a deep breath.

Hum—

Fortunately.

The formation was undoubtedly activated smoothly, and the rising halo indicates that the other end of this transmission array has also not been damaged.

Yunhe waved his hand, releasing two puppets; after he leaves, these two puppets will stay quietly here to prevent any reckless cloud beasts from approaching.

Although he had set up formations all around the small cloud island, this concerns whether he can return in the future, so being cautious is never wrong.

Having done these.

Yunhe took out the "cloud feather" and stepped into the transmission array.

When he came, he was only at mid-Foundation Establishment; now, as he departs, he has already become a Late Jie Dan Stage cultivator!

(End of chapter)