Chapter 837: Li Dao Beacon Fire

The sky over the Li Dao border glowed an unnatural crimson, as if the ever‑burning alchemical fire had scorched it for a thousand years. Jian Fan stood on "Bone‑Viewing Cliff," looking down at the ant‑like swarming shadows in the gorge; three hundred boys and girls were being driven by Mysterious Li Dao cultivators toward the Human Settlement Tower's main furnace. The copper bells on their wrists rang crisp with each step, creating an eerie resonance throughout the gorge.

"The Secret Essentials of the Mysterious Gate records: 'Boys and girls of pure bone‑blood can refine a Nine‑Turn Human Core Pill.'" Jian Fan whispered the inscription carved on the cliff wall, her fingertips brushing the weathered characters. Her bronze mask glimmered coldly in the sunset, reflecting the complex eight‑trigram pattern on the dome of the Alchemical Furnace below. In her eyes those patterns became chains that wrapped around the slender golden Qi‑threads of the children.

Suddenly the deer‑shaped seal behind her ear warmed slightly. In the distance, on a mountain path, the Mysterious Li Dao Master was performing the "Pure Dust Ritual." Each swing of the jade ruyi in the old master's hand forcibly stripped three‑tenths of a child's golden Qi‑thread. Jian Fan saw the extracted golden strands twist in the air into agonized human shapes, then being sucked into the purple‑gold gourd hanging inside the master's body.

"When humans get ruthless, they truly have no match…" Her pupils contracted as she noticed the gourd's surface etched with a miniature star map—the layout of the eight Dao halls of the Nan Ting Mountain Region. Each hall's position corresponded to a dark star on the gourd, and the star representing the Mysterious Xun Dao Hall had just gone out.

At the Zi hour, thirty‑six Alchemical Furnaces of the Human Settlement Tower spewed green smoke simultaneously. Jian Fan mingled with the medicine‑delivery team, watching the boys and girls being herded into the central furnace. Their golden Qi‑threads suddenly interwove into a net, appearing in Jian Fan's spiritual sight like trembling spider silk under a moonlit night.

"Ignite the furnace!" The Mysterious Li Dao Master's technique abruptly halted. He was startled to see the furnace flame turn jade‑green, a hue that reminded him of the "Calling Deer Spiritual Fire" recorded in the sect's ancient texts. The eight‑trigram runes on the furnace wall cracked one after another, replaced by some ancient vine‑like pattern.

Jian Fan's figure grew clearer within the flames. She had removed her mask; golden markings spread across her cheeks as if alive. As the first child's golden Qi‑thread was about to be severed, the bronze ancient sword in her hand emitted a long deer call. The blade's black crack spanned the entire Alchemical Furnace, enveloping all three hundred golden Qi‑threads.

"Mysterious Gate sages above!" The Mysterious Li Dao Master presented his destined Accumulation Device, the "Li Fire Mirror," yet its surface reflected a phantom of a giant deer. Antlers hung with stars, each star mirroring scenes of the Human Settlement Tower's pill‑refining over the years. Most terrifying, the child souls that should have been refined now stood beside the giant deer, gazing coldly at him.

"What person?"

Boom!!!

The exploding shockwave overturned seven side furnaces; amid the chaos Jian Fan seized a girl about to plunge into the sea of fire. The copper bell on the child's wrist suddenly unlocked on its own, its tongue turning into a piece of emerald‑green antler velvet.

"This is…" As Jian Fan's fingertip touched the antler velvet, a flood of memory fragments surged into her mind. She saw, three thousand years ago on a full‑moon night, the final Calling Deer being surrounded and hunted by sages. The deer's right antler was broken, matching the shape of the bell's tongue. Even more startling, the face of one of those sages bore a striking resemblance—about seventy percent—to the current Mysterious Li Dao Master.

"Wretched beast, die!" The Mysterious Li Dao Master's dust brush transformed into countless fire snakes that lunged forward. Jian Fan neither dodged nor flinched, merely exhaled softly. The fire snakes abruptly reversed direction, coiling around the master's limbs; they were resentful souls controlled by human core pills, now rebelling under the Calling Deer's aura and turning against their master.

When the wails echoed through the gorge, Jian Fan was weaving the three hundred golden Qi‑threads into a cocoon. Within the cocoon a vague young‑deer shape emerged, nuzzling affectionately against her wrist. She suddenly understood why she sensed the Human Settlement Tower so keenly—each child's Qi carried a faint Calling Deer bloodline. After the ancient slaughter, the sages had injected the remnants of Calling Deer souls into human embryos to cultivate superior "medicinal material."

Jian Fan shook her head; the human race, in pursuit of its own Qi, truly was beyond cure.

Before dawn, Jian Fan stood atop the ruined summit of the Human Settlement Tower, idly turning the purple‑gold gourd she had taken from the Mysterious Li Dao Master. She discovered a fragmented star map etched on its base; when her blood dripped onto the map, two of the eight star points—Mysterious Kun Dao and Mysterious Dui Dao—brightened anew.

"Chu Shanhe must have already sensed it." She gazed toward the Ten Thousand Dao Mountains, where the cloud layer was forming a vortex. The golden Qi‑thread on her wrist tightened, delivering a dangerous warning.

Jian Fan swiftly formed a seal; twelve bronze void mirrors materialized around her—an ability gained after devouring the Mysterious Xun Dao Master. The mirrors reflected Chu Shanhe's scene of him deliberating before a star chart, his antler lantern burning unusually fiercely.

Suddenly, all void mirrors displayed the same image: beneath the icy layer of the Nether Abyss, a bronze coffin trembled. The sealing runes on the coffin lid extinguished one by one, finally revealing a complete eight‑trigram diagram—the layout of the eight Dao halls of the Nan Ting Mountain Region.

"So the sages' tomb is the formation's eye…" Jian Fan shattered the void mirrors, discovering ice‑crystal patterns that had mysteriously appeared on the back of her hand. These patterns matched the carvings on Chu Shanhe's lantern, the oldest curse mark of the Calling Deer clan.

Heavy footsteps thundered through the gorge as the surviving Mysterious Li Dao cultivators formed a Great Exorcism Array. Jian Fan smiled lightly, slicing a spatial rift with her bronze ancient sword. Before her figure vanished, she deliberately let a piece of emerald‑green antler velvet drift into the ruins' center, the severed antler finally returning after countless days and nights to the place of its owner's bloodline.

Within the Grand Altar of the Mysterious Gate in the Ten Thousand Dao Mountains, the star chart before Chu Shanhe began to fracture. Bronze star tracks twisted and deformed one after another; the mercury reflected not the heavens but a pair of pale golden eyes that surfaced whenever he attempted to divine the eight Qi‑threads, the eyes appearing within the constellations.

"The third location." Chu Shanhe stroked the crack on the antler of his lantern—this was the "Observing Heaven Lantern" passed down from his master three hundred years ago; now flames on the lantern continuously projected images of burning reeds in Qingping Marsh and the collapse of the Human Settlement Tower. He suddenly pressed a point at his brow; a clear qi burst from the Heavenly Spirit Cover, condensing in the air into a miniature model of the Nan Ting Mountain Region.

Among the eight beams of light, the glows representing Xun, Li and Dui flickered violently. Worse still, he saw blue‑golden chains swaying deep within the Deep Earth Vein—those were the "Human Dao Foundations" sealed by the True Dao Elder, foundations that should have been eternally stable now showing signs of loosening.

"Sect Master! An urgent report comes from the Mysterious Dui Dao Hall!" an Elder burst into the observation platform clutching a shattered jade slip. The moment Chu Shanhe received the jade slip, a clear deer call rang in his ears.

Dew clung to the jade slip, forming a line of small characters: "Boundary Monument awakens, nine branches appear in the world"