[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-dragon-lies-hidden":3,"chapter-the-dragon-lies-hidden-the-dragon-lies-hidden-chapter-121":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Dragon Lies Hidden",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2289419,4477,"Chapter 121: Blood Curse","the-dragon-lies-hidden-chapter-121",121,"\u003Cp>A clot of blood qi surged into Wei Yuan’s spiritual sense, transforming into a colossal ghost beast. The beast opened its eyes and saw only boundless, endless earth—suddenly lost and bewildered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But a Great Witch’s blood curse possessed its own sentience; after circling a few times, it locked onto the place with the strongest fortune and lunged at the full moon in the sky!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Shadows stirred within the moon, revealing a bird-headed creature with three eyes. One of its eyes opened, casting a cold glance at the ghost beast—immediately, the beast turned and fled from Wei Yuan’s spiritual sense, following the invisible threads of karmic connection, diving straight into the doll.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous, his body hollow and powerless; two hot streams surged from his nose. He wiped his face—and his hand was coated in ink-green blood, reeking of rot.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He suddenly sensed something, pulling a doll from his robe. The doll’s once-cheerful face was now twisted in agony, black blood oozing steadily from its eyes. When Wei Yuan pressed harder, multiple wounds appeared on the doll’s body, and black blood began seeping out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The black blood burned like fire where it touched his skin—he hurled the doll to the ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was the Great Witch’s blood curse!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fortunately, the doll had absorbed part of the damage; otherwise, Wei Yuan didn’t know if he could have survived this assassination curse, fueled by the lives of hundreds. Even with the power of mountains and rivers protecting him, the Witch clan’s blood curses were infamous for their strength—especially when a Great Witch sacrificed hundreds to amplify them. Without the doll to bear the burden, Wei Yuan knew he had no chance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What Wei Yuan didn’t know was that now it was he who bore the curse’s damage, not the doll—though the outcome was the same.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After being struck by the blood curse, Wei Yuan’s mind reeled. In his vision, human cultivators around him kept collapsing; hundreds of human sacrifices on the platform behind never even showed their faces before their heads were severed. Wei Yuan turned to find someone—but no one was there. Only then did he remember the knights who had followed him were all dead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charging the formation was a one-way path—they had known it the moment they spurred their horses forward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan was suddenly seized by an indescribable rage. He wiped the filth from his face, leapt from his horse, and strode toward the platform!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Around the platform stood over a thousand elite Witch warriors. These soldiers wore different armor—covered in rusted iron chains, the personal guards of the Great Witch. Behind them, another three thousand rear troops remained unmoved; Wei Yuan stood alone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Over a hundred iron-chained Great Witch guards advanced. Only their eyes were visible—cold, emotionless, glowing with the hollow light of beast-like puppets.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan said nothing. The power of mountains and rivers converged upon him; his spear became a dragon in the heavens, piercing each Great Witch guard to the ground—within a zhang, all became a dead zone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Countless iron-guarded Witch warriors and surviving heavy-armored knights surged like a gray iron tide, surrounding Wei Yuan. Within the tide, he was a solitary boat, slowly yet resolutely fighting upstream, leaving behind only a trail of corpses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Witch nobles and sorcerers on the platform had been laughing, thinking this human cultivator of mediocre cultivation was insane—daring to challenge a Great Witch? Others had tried before, but they came with armies—and still failed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But their laughter slowly faded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unnoticed, the human had pushed forward dozens of zhang through the encirclement, still fearless, tireless, mechanically and silently harvesting Witch lives. As he drew near, the Witch nobles and sorcerers felt an ominous pressure—the ordinary body before them seemed to harbor an endless underground fire, ready to erupt as a volcano that could destroy a world!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the Tai Chu Palace, Pei Tinghai sat alone, watching a chessboard. Black and white stones moved on their own, locked in fierce battle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Suddenly, he sensed something—he knew his spiritual thread had been activated. Moments later, a faint green mist appeared above his head, fine as raindrops, sinking into his immortal body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pei Tinghai’s face showed surprise. He looked up at the mist, murmuring: “So much heavenly bounty? Must be an aged Law Form. Did the kid kill someone? Which Xu family member, I wonder?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He knew well the power of the spiritual thread he’d sent—enough to severely wound a Law Form, but far from enough to kill. With Wei Yuan’s current strength, even if a True Person’s Law Form were split in two, he couldn’t hold it. Was the boy hiding another trick? Pure luck? Or did he have powerful outside aid?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pei Tinghai pondered—but made no move to use an immortal technique to investigate. The Shattered Domain’s realm was fragile; using immortal techniques risked unpredictable consequences, and each use carried a heavy cost.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“If it’s good news, does it matter if I learn it sooner or later? Why rush?” Pei Tinghai chuckled, shaking his head. The chess battle raged fiercely, but he no longer cared to watch. He picked up his fishing rod, ready to fish in the mortal world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had barely sat down by the cliff when his brows knitted—he felt a slight itch on his hands. He rose, walked to a basin, and washed them. The water turned thick green; his hands were caked in black blood mixed with pus.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pei Tinghai sneered: “Someone dares to curse me?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pus and blood on his hands sprouted crimson threads, stretching into the void. Pei Tinghai reached his hands along the threads into the void, grasped something, and tore it open!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only then did he withdraw his hands, calmly washing them, then drying them with a pristine white towel. Suddenly, he understood. A smile curled his lips. “You little brat—you used me completely!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In Lan Shen Palace, the Great Witch on the platform screamed, collapsing to the ground, clutching his head and wailing. Above his head, a colossal Fear Serpent Law Form appeared—but now split in two, its upper and lower halves desperately trying to reconnect, yet failing each time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan’s eyes lit up—Immortal backlash!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The moment the opportunity arose, Wei Yuan exited his state of absolute cold fury. He knew the curse’s backlash alone wouldn’t kill a Great Witch—so he had prepared something far worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan sank his spirit into his spiritual sense, using knowledge from his spellcraft class to locate the trail of the curse’s intrusion—and made it visible. A dark red and ink-green path appeared, one end vanishing into the void.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan’s spiritual sense followed the trail instantly to its source: the Great Witch’s spiritual sense. The Great Witch, reeling from the Immortal backlash, his Law Form torn apart, his spiritual sense defense utterly shattered—now completely defenseless. But his spiritual sense was filled with rolling blood pools and endless ink mist, teeming with countless flying insects—Wei Yuan shuddered at the sight, dared not enter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan’s spiritual thread shifted—he lifted a gray wind sphere from his own spiritual sense, hurled it far into the Great Witch’s spiritual sense, then turned and ran!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now that hope lay ahead, this was no time for desperate, head-on combat. Wei Yuan immediately exited his fury, switched to survival mode, and fled at full spiritual speed—adding a layer of fortune protection for safety.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No sooner had he turned than a scream of unbearable agony erupted behind him. The Great Witch’s spiritual sense cracked open in countless fissures; blood and ink mist shot out like geysers, like a bursting water bag. Inside, the entire spiritual sense boiled—countless insects turned to dust in an instant!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan’s vision went black—he nearly fainted. Only when a strand of fortune dissipated did he stay conscious. He fled at full speed back to his own spiritual sense. In the instant before he entered, he heard another scream—then the second, thicker strand of fortune protection shattered into ordinary fortune.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Great Witch on the platform convulsed violently, shrieking in agony. Swarms of insects burst from beneath his robes—but as soon as they flew out, they dropped dead. The giant serpent Law Form above him no longer tried to reconnect its halves; both ends writhed desperately, their bodies cracking open.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Great Witch reached out toward Wei Yuan, trying to drag him down to die with him—but Wei Yuan, amid the battlefield, suddenly manifested dozens of flaming immortal swords, hurling them wildly in all directions, then vanished in flashes, fleeing a hundred zhang away. His escape was as determined as his earlier suicidal charge.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Great Witch hadn’t expected Wei Yuan to flee so fast. With a final, furious roar, his serpent Law Form dissolved. His head slowly drooped—and he was still.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>!.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Two Immortal Lords had struck from afar—this Great Witch died with no injustice. With his death, the hundreds of guards beside the platform collapsed simultaneously, dying without a sound. Their bodies and primordial spirits were bound to the Great Witch’s life—if he died, they could not live.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan, who had just been fleeing, stopped. Around him, flaming immortal swords materialized, forming a circle—distant observers saw it as the legendary Flame Lotus Immortal Array, radiating overwhelming might.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan raised his spear to the sky and roared: “The Great Witch is dead! Brothers, charge with me!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan roared three times—the first in the official dialect of Tang, the next two in the newly learned Witch tongue, both infused with spiritual power so every soldier across the battlefield could hear.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>All surviving human cultivators surged with renewed morale, leaping from their trenches and fighting back desperately. The Witch forces collapsed—high platform tilted; slaves pushing it turned and fled. But they were chained to the cart—running instantly unbalanced the platform.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Witch generals and noble sorcerers on the platform leapt down—some fled outright, others grabbed their subordinates’ poison lizards and ran. The rear army still had three thousand men, intact. But with the Great Witch dead and their noble leaders scattering, they too turned and fled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Witch Yu rear army was composed of relatives of noble sorcerers—best-equipped, only deployed to harvest battle trophies when victory was assured, and quickest to flee when things turned sour.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wei Yuan spurred his horse, spear in hand, thirty-six immortal swords circling him like a blazing lotus, charging into the Witch rear army! Seeing this demon of slaughter coming for them, the Witch rear army scattered in panic, fleeing into swamps and dense forests.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Behind, Xu Wenwu watched, blood boiling. He burst from hiding, snatched a fallen magical longblade from the ground, pulled—unmoving. Pulled again—still unmoving.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xu Wenwu sighed deeply. “I have courage enough—but this blade fears battle!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Witch army broke. Wei Yuan pursued relentlessly—any group that tried to regroup received a Jade Mountain strike. He chased for an entire night, spanning hundreds of li, until dawn approached.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this pursuit, Wei Yuan’s hundred immortal swords circled him, radiating terrifying might—but most kills came from the Jade Mountain. The swords’ actual kills were few.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But after this battle, the entire Witch Yu clan would know Wei Yuan was a man with a hundred immortal swords. They’d study ways to counter them—most likely using sealing curses. By the time they finished their research and prepared—only then would they discover Wei Yuan had already changed his immortal foundation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>(End of Chapter)\u003C\u002Fp>",1896,"2026-06-20T03:38:27.933Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","0522f3eafac53e10ee97fa218974d2f9011b0c9466f91b1d9cab43071044c36b","the-dragon-lies-hidden-chapter-122","the-dragon-lies-hidden-chapter-120",1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-dragon-lies-hidden-cover.jpg"]