Chapter 384: A Rankless Ability, the Great Demon of the Ghost Clan

Baichuan stared blankly at the familiar scene before him, his long dragon body somewhat stiff, frowning in puzzlement as he kept looking around. What was going on?

How did he just come back directly?

He had only just returned to the past, hadn't even begun exploring, and now he was back again?

Just like that, one chance was gone?

Baichuan began to think back over the previous situation. He seemed to have been suspicious that a turtle spirit had a problem, and was about to make a move on that seemingly weak turtle spirit, and then everything went black…

In other words, the turtle spirit definitely had a problem!

To be able to take him out in an instant while he was on guard — no matter how you thought about it, it couldn't possibly be a being of the True Immortal realm; at the very least it should be a being of Immortal grade!

But what on earth would make an Immortal-grade being willingly stay by the side of a mere pseudo-immortal Shi Long corpse the whole time? What had the past Shi Long gone through?

Various doubts flashed through his mind. The next moment, Baichuan gathered his thoughts and stopped thinking further.

Since that strange, mysterious turtle wanted him to bring it along, then he would stop probing and just bring it along. Thinking this, Baichuan silently looked toward a certain special ability — 【Spirit Absorption】.

【Spirit Absorption: Having been tainted by a mysterious power, it grants the ability's host a constitution capable of absorbing countless remnant spirits. When facing a fatal crisis, there is a chance of activation, drawing upon the power of spirits to revive, continuously amplifying oneself until power infinitely blows apart the self.】

This was the explanation behind the ability that Baichuan hadn't finished reading last time, and also the first special ability he had encountered without a grade. He silently stared at the three characters "infinitely" in the ability's explanation.

Perhaps, this might be the key to breaking his situation.

Thinking this, Baichuan once again activated the Ability Panel.

As the familiar scene played out, a faintly familiar summoning came once more through the darkness by his ear.

Baichuan directly opened his eyes, no longer wasting time checking the Ability Panel. After slapping dead all the XiaoXieGui trying to tear at his flesh with a few swipes of his claws, he carefully observed his surroundings.

What met his eyes were the corpses of XiaoXieGui killed in twos and threes not far away, seemingly clawed to death through the neck by some creature's claws.

Seeing this, Baichuan recalled the words of that little turtle spirit from last time — the other had been guarding by his body's side the whole time, driving away the approaching XiaoXieGui. In other words, those words were true?

While thinking, just as he was about to look for a certain figure, he heard a startled cry.

"It's here!"

His heart tightened. Baichuan turned around without showing anything on his face, and sure enough saw a little turtle spirit standing like a human drop what was in its hands and run over joyfully.

"Who are you?"

The questioning voice once again came from Baichuan's mouth. At this moment he was like a vicious dragon that had just inexplicably awakened, unfamiliar with everything, wary of the unfamiliar visitor, and even wanting to kill it.

……

After that, Baichuan just quietly watched the mysterious turtle spirit replay that previous scene before his eyes, like an audience member in the stands watching an old general on the stage.

In the end, he stopped testing and simply brought it along as it wished.

"Tell me, where is the Demon Court?"

Since he had brought it along, Baichuan simply pretended not to know about last time's encounter, and directly treated it as a little demon, unceremoniously asking for the information he wanted to know.

As if it had gotten the answer it wanted, the little turtle spirit was first stunned upon hearing this, then said somewhat awkwardly: "Sir, you may not know, but the Demon Court isn't a single entity — it's a massive force gathered together by the four great Demon Kings."

"Which ones? Where is the nearest one?"

Baichuan narrowed his crimson dragon eyes and said in a low voice.

"Yes!" The little turtle spirit straightened up and hurriedly said: "They are scattered at the four corners of Yao Huang Da Di. The Demon King of the eastern plains is called BaiHaoYaoWang, the Demon King of the western forest sea is called QinYuanYaoWang, the Demon King of the southern swamp region, the Demon King…"

The little turtle spirit carefully glanced at Baichuan before saying softly, "The Demon King of the southern swamp region calls himself Dragon King… and is also the closest to us here."

"Good, we'll head to the southern swamp region first."

Hearing this, Baichuan said decisively.

……

Yao Huang Da Di, Long Ze.

On the boundless green-and-yellow grassland, a dragon-like procession snaked and wound its way through the grass.

Looking closely, it was a procession of countless travel-worn commoners carrying large amounts of luggage on their backs, along with a few people stepping on sword-light flying back and forth to maintain order — a procession that seemed to be fleeing.

In fact, that was indeed the case.

This procession really was fleeing. At its very front, the leader was FangShouRen, the head of the Fang family — a Nascent Soul clan.

The Fang family had originally been a prominent great clan in a small country in HeZhou. Their ancestor was at the Nascent Soul realm, enjoying a thousand years of life. At its peak, the great court of state knew only the Fang family and not the monarch.

But no matter how mighty its former power, now it could only flee in panic carrying all its wealth.

Because HeZhou no longer possessed the peace and prosperity of the past, and had long since fallen into the smoke of war.

It was a conflict between HeZhou's sovereign nation and XiZhou's sovereign nation — two great sects of the Hua Shen Realm!

The cause was unknown; it was not a truth they could know.

All they could do was, before the flames of war spread to them, take every bit of wealth they could carry, cross Long Ze of Yao Huang Da Di, and flee toward the peaceful ShengZhou.

It was also thanks to the small country where their Fang family resided being not far from HeZhou's border region; otherwise, relying on a mere Nascent Soul, it would have been very hard to shelter so many people in their escape from this vast HeZhou.

After all, times had changed. Ever since a large group of strange creature races appeared before the eyes of the world from who-knows-where, the wilderness of every region in the entire world had become extremely dangerous. Countless terrifying ghost races that seemed fragile but could easily kill Nascent Soul or even Hua Shen cultivators in close combat were everywhere.

Some of the great ghost kings could even fight on equal footing with "Immortals" above the Hua Shen realm, and even cause "Immortal Fall"!

At this moment, at the front of the procession, inside a sturdy and magnificent great flying vessel, two men — one older, one younger — sat facing each other, pouring tea and drinking.

"Long Ze — legend has it that this place was not originally called Long Ze, but JueZe. It was a land of poisonous insects where life was rare. Those who lived here were either the sparse Miao people who lived and danced with the poisonous insects, or the Yao Zhai of spirits clustered together."

"However, ever since the Dragon Palace of the demon domain was destroyed by the four kings of the Demon Court, the Southern King — a 'dragon' — occupied this place and renamed it Long Ze."

"Now, as we pass through here, we must be extremely careful. If things go wrong…"

Those ordinary loose cultivators can be abandoned!

The last sentence, the imposing and dignified man did not speak aloud, but the cold glint that flashed in his eyes betrayed his thoughts.

In the eyes of these cultivation clans, loose cultivators were a group with even less value than mortals. After all, once they reached a new place, as long as they took out various pills and treasures, those loose cultivators would naturally swarm like sharks scenting blood. But mortals were different.

Although they lacked the talent for cultivation, in the secular dynasties they were protected by dynastic law. Especially in some dynasties that followed the Conferring Gods system of mortal faith, mortals were of paramount importance, and cultivation clans could not act arbitrarily. Yet although they were cultivators, they still could not do without the service of ordinary people — especially loyal, faultless mortals.

No matter where, the mortals they brought with them were the most important resource after a clan's migration, allowing them to smoothly get through the early period.

"Yes, Father."

Upon hearing this, the young man FangShouLi's heart also clenched; as the most outstanding heir of the Fang family, he naturally could hear the unspoken meaning behind his father FangShouRen's words.

"Ah—"

Just then, a series of shrill screams and cries rang out from outside the flying ship.

"Something's happened!"

In an instant, father and son exchanged a glance, and a surge of spiritual light erupted from their bodies as they flew out from within the ship's cabin.

The next moment, having just exited the flying ship, both father and son's pupils suddenly contracted, because they suddenly discovered that at some unknown time, an extremely exaggerated white fog had spread across the boundless grassland! Visibility instantly dropped to nearly zero!

That white fog was as solid as substance; now as the two Fang family members looked around, where could they see the massive formation from before? Only wave after wave of screams kept coming.

At this moment, everyone on the entire flying ship was as if facing a formidable enemy.

FangShouRen instinctively formed hand seals to summon a gust of spiritual wind, attempting to blow away this white fog. However, this spiritual wind—which at the early Golden Core stage could normally easily blow away a small mound—didn't budge at all in the face of this seemingly thin white fog!

The Fang family patriarch at the late Golden Core stage, seeing this, also furrowed his brow. With a great wave of his hand, he raised a sea of fire that spread over, but the result was still useless.

"Wuu wuu wuu..."

It seemed the actions of the two Fang family members had angered something. From within the white fog, a woman's crying suddenly rang out, and a flash of white shadow streaked past, trailing beads of blood...

At the same time, Baichuan—who had been traveling non-stop with the little turtle spirit toward the southern swamp region—also came to a halt.

"D-Dragon Lord, this is bad! We seem to have run into a great demon of the Ghost race!"

The little turtle spirit's tearful, terrified voice rang out at just the right moment. Baichuan merely glanced at it, then paid no more attention to that pretentiously mysterious turtle spirit.

He began recalling the information about the Ghost race in his mind.

The so-called Ghost race is the collective name for mysterious races like XiaoXieGui. It is text information that some powerful cultivators obtained by breaking through strange runes after breaking into clustered Ghost tribe settlements.

As for great demons, they are ghosts within the Ghost race who are powerful enough to possess their own special text titles. Their strength varies, but at the very least they equal the Spirit Transformation realm—which is the Planet Overlord, Earthly Immortal Realm that Baichuan was once most familiar with.

This world is somewhat similar to the cultivation worlds in Baichuan's memory, but its development is extremely vigorous, far surpassing all the worlds Baichuan had ever experienced!

"It's merely a great demon, no matter."

Gazing at the flickering, strange white fog around him, Baichuan smiled.

Just right to let him try out the true power of his newly acquired ability!

As his words fell, the aura around Baichuan changed. A dazzling crimson radiance shot out from his violent dragon eyes. The various ghost shadows around his ferocious, terrifying evil dragon—which had already been whimpering intermittently—seemed to receive some kind of stimulus, stretching their figures with bared fangs and claws, tearing wildly at the void. An even denser, more sinister aura began to quietly spread out.

At this moment, as if having received some kind of boost, Baichuan's pair of crimson dragon eyes actually pierced straight through this strange white fog, and through it he saw—

A figure entirely black and white!

"So it was you putting on this ghostly act!"

Looking at that figure, Baichuan unconsciously revealed a fierce grin, stretched his cracking dragon body, and began approaching step by step.

At this moment, set off by this hazy white fog, Baichuan's bearing actually made him look even more like a hellish evil ghost than the original creator of the white fog!

An evil dragon among ghosts!

"Damn it, where exactly is it? Show yourself!"

Within the white fog, FangShouLi and his father, together with the surrounding guest cultivators and attendants, stood back-to-back, warily observing their surroundings. Even the cold sweat that quietly seeped from their foreheads, they didn't dare wipe away. He had never encountered such a troublesome creature.

Not only did its entire body have not a trace of spiritual light, it also didn't use various faba and spells to kill enemies like their cultivators did. It only had silent, teleportation-like mysterious movement, and that sharp sword in its hand that seemed to be ground from some creature's bone—once the bone sword struck, it would only return after drawing blood!

In just a few encounters, not only had several guest cultivators died one after another, even the two father and son had sustained countless wounds, and several of their protective faba on their bodies had been directly destroyed.

Those were all piled up from spirit stones far more expensive than real gold and silver!

In such a short time, several top-grade faba had already been destroyed!

Even the flying sword had been knocked several notches out from the collisions.

Lost in thought, he looked at the conspicuous notches on the flying sword, and his heart grew even colder.

But just then, perhaps due to his lapse in attention, a shadow instantly swept past.

"Puh!"

"Ah! No!"

In pain, a severed hand flew up, blood spraying.

FangShouLi could hold on no longer and fell to the ground.

"Monster! Monster!"

"Run! Run fast! This isn't something we can fight!"

Death after death, coupled with the fact that one of the strongest cultivators in everyone's eyes—the young master of the Fang family—had his hand severed.

Those guest cultivators who already didn't have deep feelings with the Fang family could no longer suppress the fear in their hearts, and scattered in all directions seeking to escape, hoping for a way to survive.

"Bam!"

A dull thud sounded.

That was the sound made by a panicked fleeing cultivator who accidentally crashed into something as hard as a thick wall!

In an instant, that mere Foundation Establishment cultivator fell from the sky, and his flying sword lost its light and dropped to the side.

In his panic, that Foundation Establishment cultivator couldn't help raising his head to look at the newcomer, and in an instant his gaze froze,

"Weng weng weng..."

The earth trembled slightly, caused spontaneously by something extremely heavy trampling the ground.

But at this moment, that Foundation Establishment cultivator no longer had the energy to pay attention to these things, because what appeared before his eyes was a monster even more terrifying than that "monster"!

Sky-piercing sharp dragon horns, crimson dragon eyes filled with endless violence, a sturdy muscular dragon body, and countless wailing, crying ghost shadows clustering around the other party.

"Don't, don't, you can't kill me! My grandfather is a Nascent Soul mighty figure! If you kill me, grandfather definitely won't let you off!"

On the other side, watching the woman holding the bone sword approach step by step, FangShouRen—who was closest to her—could no longer suppress the fear in his heart, muttering to himself as he shrank back. But suddenly the woman stopped, the blood on the bone sword in her hand dripping nonstop.

She seemed to sense something and turned to look toward......

(End of this chapter)