Chapter 111: Devouring, Turning Against

Kilometer-sized giant, primordial ancient demon god, a monstrous thing with raging ferocious flames—the Nine-Headed Snake.

Now it is merely a dry skeleton, clinging to the pitch-black cave mouth like withered vines.

Wu Tie quickly searched his knowledge about the Nine-Headed Snake.

This huge dry skeleton……is actually useless.

Nine-Headed Snake, a ferocious beast, vicious to outsiders and ruthless to itself. Once it falls, its skeleton is utterly toxic—touch means death—and a deadly aura spreads everywhere; prolonged contact will surely bring all kinds of strange mishaps.

Wu Tie recalled that on the way here, in that patch of rugged, jagged rocky beach, those tiny creatures were extremely poisonous and highly aggressive.

Those guys might have been affected by the leaking aura of this Nine-Headed Snake, which is why they underwent that strange change.

Besides that, after the Nine-Headed Snake falls, its corpse leaves nothing of value behind; its entire essence instantly turns into lethal poison that spreads, turning the surroundings completely into a land of death……

Wu Tie abruptly turned his head to look at the pitch-black sandy-stone wasteland behind him.

This sandy-stone wasteland might very well be the toxic gas exhaled by this Nine-Headed Snake as it died.

Turning sharply, Wu Tie saw thousands of huge metal puppets trampling forward with loud footsteps.

He let out a sudden shout, leapt up, and flew toward the black cave mouth a hundred meters high on the cliff.

Chief Steward hurriedly followed behind Wu Tie, and several Mist Blade Assassins also rushed after them.

The ground trembled slightly as those metal puppets pursued, chasing all the way to the base of the cliff.

They seemed unable to fly, or perhaps this cliff is a forbidden zone for them; after the thousands of metal puppets reached the cliff base, they all stopped.

Lifting their heads, their eyes flashing scarlet gloomy light stared fixedly at the cave mouth for a while; then these metal puppets slowly turned around and leisurely departed.

From outside, the cave mouth is pitch‑black with no light at all.

But upon entering the cave, a vast blue‑white light shines forward from ahead, far brighter than the red light emitted by an ordinary False Sun. What's more astonishing is that under this blue‑white glow, nobody casts any shadow.

The air rolled with scorching heat; Wu Tie and Chief Steward, standing in the blue‑white light for only a short while, were soon drenched in sweat from being baked.

Wu Tie and Chief Steward glanced at each other.

This passage, about twenty meters wide and tens of meters high, has smooth walls that look like they were carved from blue‑white jade. Beneath the semi‑transparent stone walls, faint floating light bands appear and disappear, giving an especially mysterious, ethereal feel.

This is the ancestral land of the Mist Blade, a true secret realm worth a hundred, even a thousand times more than those metal caves outside.

The atmosphere grew a little strange.

Several meters behind Wu Tie, a few Mist Blade Assassins slightly spread their feet, gripped their long blades, and assumed an attacking stance.

Chief Steward suddenly laughed: "Wu Tie, remember my words—if you join the Mist Blade, I will take you as my disciple……You are a talent; the Mist Blade now urgently needs talent."

His fierce gaze lingered on Wu Tie's White Tiger Split in his hand, and Chief Steward's left arm twitched involuntarily.

He seemed to recall again the terror of that day when a White Tiger Split shot swept off his left arm, and the despairing pain that followed.

Chief Steward will never forget that he rescued Wu Tie because he personally witnessed Wu Tie's single shot killing two Changsheng Sect Chonglou Realm experts……The tremendous force of Wu Tie's shot, earth‑shattering and startling, made Chief Steward feel a chill.

"This place is the ancestral land of my Mist Blade." For no reason, Chief Steward added another wordy sentence.

Wu Tie looked at Chief Steward, slightly drew his left hand forward, making a gesture for Chief Steward to go first.

Chief Steward nodded, stepping forward carefully; the passage seemed to have no special arrangements, and the group smoothly walked several hundred meters to arrive in a spacious cavern whose ceiling is round and floor square.

In the cavern large enough to hold thousands, three thousand light‑red stone mats are neatly arranged on the floor.

Waves of heat rose from those stone mats, filling the air with a vigor‑boosting warmth. These stone mats seem helpful for stimulating blood‑line power.

At the cavern's core, a bucket‑thick fire vent on the floor spews a silent, glass‑like blue‑white flame that shoots up over a hundred meters, forming a hundred‑meter‑diameter fireball tens of meters above the ground.

Invisible restraints in the void firmly seal this fireball.

Blue light swirls, heat waves radiate, yet the fireball hovers silently there, like a clear blue‑white glass sphere, perfectly smooth with no ripples.

Inside the fireball, nine blood‑droplets the size of water jars hang suspended.

The nine blood droplets each have a different hue.

Red, white, green, blue, yellow, plus light purple, light silver, dark green, and deep green‑blue.

Chief Steward stared in shock at the fireball, at the nine blood droplets within it.

He felt the deadly allure of these blood droplets, wishing he could rush forward and absorb all nine into his body.

But he also sensed that if he actually lunged forward, he would be turned to azure smoke by the blue‑white fireball before even nearing the nine droplets.

"What… is this?" Chief Steward muttered unconsciously.

"Nine‑Headed Snake essence blood… the refined source‑attribute blood drawn from the skull of that Nine‑Headed Snake outside."

Relevant knowledge flowed in Wu Tie's mind.

That Nine‑Headed Snake must have willingly condensed this essence blood and handed it to someone willing to receive it; otherwise, as it lay dying, its blood would inevitably burn into poisonous mist and could not be preserved.

This flame is the Azure Night Divine Fire separated from molten lava; it is the most stable and heavy, best at dispelling impurities.

Wu Tie murmured: "Even if the Nine‑Headed Snake willingly refined its natal essence blood, it still harbors deadly poison; any other living thing daring to merge with it gains no benefit before being turned into toxic sludge."

"By tempering with Azure Night Divine Fire year after year, a little at a time we drive out the poison in the essence blood, leaving only the purest drop of source blood……" Wu Tie said solemnly: "Given the legendary might of the Nine‑Headed Snake, these nine masses of essence blood are so huge they could at least cultivate thousands of experts."

Wu Tie pointed at Chief Steward and then at himself, speaking solemnly: "You and I, ordinary mortals, have limited bodily capacity—we could probably absorb only a fingertip‑sized bit of essence blood, gaining a single divine ability of the Nine‑Headed Snake."

"The Nine‑Headed Snake has nine heads, thus nine innate divine abilities……Each person can absorb only a fingertip‑sized amount of essence blood, but here we have so much of it." Wu Tie kept repeating the knowledge flowing from his mind, and Chief Steward's eyes grew brighter and brighter.

"How strong would a single drop of essence blood make a person?" Chief Steward suddenly interrupted Wu Tie's explanation.

Wu Tie pondered, then spoke honestly: "The Nine‑Headed Snake is like a primordial ancient demon god; that outside Nine‑Headed Snake is kilometers long, clearly its aura is profound, its essence blood power is immense— a single drop can open up the Chonglou realm, letting one forcibly enter Chonglou Realm……thousands, or even tens of thousands of Chonglou Realm experts?"

Wu Tie himself was startled by that frightening number.

Thousands or tens of thousands of Chonglou Realm experts?

Is this the foundation left by the Mist Blade's ancestors?

No wonder it boasts the power to overturn heaven and earth, or to crush people to pieces.

If it weren't for Wu Tie being here, if Wu Tie didn't have the Old Iron Legacy knowledge, given Chief Steward's nature, if he greedily swallowed an entire water‑jar‑sized blood droplet, he would surely be reduced to ashes.

Chief Steward burst into loud laughter.

He laughed so hard he bent forward and backward, his mouth full of big teeth glittering brightly.

He saw the hope of Mist Blade's resurgence, he saw the magnificent scene of Mist Blade unifying the Cangyan Realm, he saw Mist Blade charging out of the Cangyan Realm, sweeping across the outer domains and conquering countless families and cities in a grand spectacle.

"Should I be thanking those traitors?" Chief Steward laughed loudly: "If it weren't for their betrayal, if they hadn't driven me to desperation... I even forgot the existence of the ancestral land myself, I wouldn't even think to seek opportunity there."

Chief Steward laughed brightly: "Expel the deadly poison? Right, right, no wonder the ancestors' saying—don't return to the ancestral land when water runs dry and mountains end... Hahaha, it seems even the ancestors couldn't be sure about these..."

Chief Steward's laughter suddenly stopped.

He looked at Wu Tie with inexplicable tension: "These nine drops of Nine-headed Serpent essence blood... what about their toxicity?"

Wu Tie narrowed his eyes, carefully examining the nine drops of Nine-headed Serpent essence blood for a long time, then nodded seriously: "You see, there's not a trace of impurity, the color is pure and uniform... after all these years, the toxicity has long been burned away."

Wu Tie also pointed at the dark green blood bead: "But this essence blood possesses the Nine-headed Serpent's innate deadly poison divine ability... who would dare to take it? I wouldn't dare..."

Just as the words "I wouldn't dare" left his mouth, Chief Steward began earnestly discussing "the suffering of happiness," worrying where to find a batch of fearless, death-defying loyal subordinates to take this deadly poison essence blood...

Wu Tie's chest armor suddenly cracked in several places; that white egg shattered his astonishingly defensive armor, turning into a white light that shot out.

In the astonished gazes of Wu Tie, Chief Steward, and the others, the white egg plunged into the fireball condensed from the Azure Night Divine Fire, then fiercely dove into a red essence blood that obviously represented the fire-attribute divine ability of the Nine-headed Serpent's five-element innate ability.

With a gurgling sound, the fire-attribute essence blood was sucked dry by the white egg in just a few moments.

Chief Steward screamed hoarsely: "No!"

Wu Tie abruptly stepped back a few paces, planted himself against the stone wall, and lightly waved his Wind and Cloud Banner with his left hand, shouting sternly: "It has nothing to do with me... that egg..."

The light and shadow around Wu Tie twisted slightly, a thin mist arose and swirled around him.

Several Mist Blade assassins who had followed Wu Tie and Chief Steward here suddenly drew their straight blades, surrounding Wu Tie from all directions.

Immediately afterward, with no sound of footsteps, over twenty Mist Blade assassins clad in tight soft armor and wielding straight blades suddenly appeared in the air.

Judging by their numbers, they were practically the same Mist Blade assassins who had been soaked in the light red pond in the iron cavern, all of them having arrived.

Wu Tie looked at Chief Steward and sighed.

It seems Chief Steward had also made two-handed preparations; these assassins were evidently tailing them all the way here. They just followed far behind, so Wu Tie hadn't noticed them.

"Chief Steward..." Wu Tie roared.

"Make him stop!" Chief Steward clenched his fists, jumping hysterically, shouting angrily at Wu Tie, his gaunt face twisted with ferocity.

"I can't!" Wu Tie told Chief Steward seriously.

He truly couldn't control that white egg.

The origin of this egg is mysterious; it is a thread of life left by an ancient expert for himself, and even for this egg, that expert directly shattered the Formless Divine Cauldron, using it as material, ultimately forming this egg.

What could Wu Tie do?

Wu Tie was also helpless.

The white egg made a "hiss" sound and slipped into the second silvery-white blood bead, which represented the metal-attribute divine ability of the five-element innate ability.

Chief Steward's eye corners burst open, two streams of blood spraying out.

In just a few breaths, that blood bead was also swallowed clean by the white egg.

"You deserve to die." Chief Steward looked at Wu Tie and screamed hoarsely: "I was blind—how could I have saved such an ungrateful wretch like you!"

Wu Tie's face twitched violently; he was truly innocent.

Actually, he had been full of hopes to gain some benefits from Mist Blade's ancestral land to solidify his foundation.

After being stimulated by Zhu Zixi, Wu Tie's craving for great power grew ever fiercer, but given his pure nature, he truly never considered "black eating black"!

Even though he had received Old Iron's complete classic tutorial on "black eating black"...

Wu Tie truly hadn't thought of it that way.

This was purely an accident.

But Chief Steward did not regard this as an accident.

He hoarsely shouted at a group of subordinates: "Stop that... that... egg!"

Chief Steward felt he was going mad.

The hope of Mist Blade's rise, the hope of Mist Blade's ascendancy—actually being destroyed by a single egg?

Three Mist Blade assassins shot up into the sky, leaving afterimages, swinging their straight blades with both hands to chop down at the white egg.

With a "hiss" sound, the three Mist Blade assassins, upon touching the fireball formed from the Azure Night Divine Fire, vanished instantly—no trace of green smoke remained, directly vaporizing, along with all their weapons, hidden implements, and metal items on their persons, turning into a wisp of gas that dissipated without a trace.

Chief Steward stood dazed.

Wu Tie looked at Chief Steward and said in a low voice: "The power of the Azure Night Divine Fire is immense; unless one has the strength of an ancient demon god like the Nine-headed Serpent, ordinary people who touch it will surely die..."

As Wu Tie spoke, he himself felt something was off.

He and Chief Steward together glanced at the white egg.

Unless one has the strength of a Nine-headed Serpent... otherwise touching it means death? Then what about this egg?

Chief Steward drew a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pointed a deathly pale finger at Wu Tie: "Capture him alive... break his limbs, cripple his cultivation... this egg must be related to him."

Chief Steward gave a resentful laugh; dark lines flickered densely beneath his skin, and black scales began to sprout on his skin.

Over twenty Mist Blade assassins silently charged at Wu Tie, each straight blade flashing with a piercing cold light.