Chapter 812: Side Story 4: 49

That was a tall man, his hair bound with a jade cap, wearing a black robe embroidered with splendid dragon patterns in gold thread.

When he rose from the stone coffin, his body was extremely stiff, with no flexibility, and he simply stood up straight.

Xiao Jiu could only see his profile.

Even just his profile, Xiao Jiu could tell the man was extremely handsome, exuding an indescribable noble aura… and a strange fragrance.

His skin looked tight, his cheeks rosy, his jawline defined—nothing like a corpse that had lain in a stone coffin for many years.

Xiao Jiu understood in her heart that, no matter how human the person before her looked, he was no longer human.

Perhaps sensing Xiao Jiu's gaze, the man slowly turned his head to look this way.

The moment his full face met Xiao Jiu's, she couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air.

This man's physiognomy… was full of noble aura, but his fate held a great obstacle—if he could overcome it, he would become the supreme ruler; if not… wrong!

Wrong, wrong.

Xiao Jiu hastily withdrew her gaze, shook her head, and forced herself to calm down.

That's a corpse!

When a person's lifespan is exhausted, the first sign is the forehead lines slowly spreading apart; at that point, one can no longer discern their physiognomy.

Therefore, many fortune-tellers have a rule: they do not read the faces of the dead.

Xiao Jiu is not a fortune-teller, yet she analyzed this dead man's premortem fate from his face—an utterly unreasonable thing.

What on earth is this man?

Crackle!

When another bolt of heavenly thunder was drawn down, Xiao Jiu finally came to her senses.

The golden compass in her hand spun wildly, trembling incessantly in her palm.

Xiao Jiu's gaze swept over the man's body, but she found no place where the golden compass could resonate.

Neither of the two coffin lids that had just been flung aside.

So, where exactly was this golden compass originally embedded?

No matter what, Xiao Jiu knew in her heart that this man before her could not be allowed to stay.

And the man had already begun to move.

When he had just stood up, his body was still extremely stiff, but now it had gained flexibility; he leapt up, his body even more agile than an ordinary person's.

Xiao Jiu also leapt up without hesitation, meeting him with a palm strike.

For this palm strike, Xiao Jiu gathered all her strength.

Because she was uncertain of his strength, this first strike could not be careless, lest she fall into a disadvantage as soon as she attacked.

The man was no pushover; he raised his hand to catch Xiao Jiu's palm strike.

At the moment their palm winds clashed in midair, Xiao Jiu felt the man's formidable spiritual power!

This is the earth's vital breath! It is the power of living beings!

After the palm strike, Xiao Jiu fell back to her original position.

It was not that she was overmatched, but rather astonishment.

Xiao Jiu even began to doubt her own judgment.

Is the opponent human or a corpse?

If it were a corpse, why does it lack any corpse aura, and its cultivation method seems not to be yin and evil?

But the sacrificial pit before was full of—clearly fresh blood!

What on earth is going on?

After lowering his hand, the man actually smiled at the corners of his mouth, reached out again toward Xiao Jiu, and said, "My thing, it's time to return it to me."

He was asking Xiao Jiu for the golden compass.

Xiao Jiu instinctively gripped the golden compass tighter.

She scanned the man's entire body again, and finally her gaze locked onto his eyes.

Their eyes met, and the man's eyes also took on a smiling look.

Then he saw Xiao Jiu raise her hand toward him.

Palm facing his face, a wave of heat brushed over him; the man seemed to hear a chanting of incantations, a strong force drilling into his mind in a strange way, as if to probe the depths of his soul.

The next moment, Xiao Jiu saw the man's pupils suddenly turn a deathly white.

In those smiling eyes, there was nothing but whites—no pupils at all.

Indeed, this is a corpse.

A corpse refined to an extremely high realm.

This corpse's surface is no different from a human's, and it emits a strange corpse fragrance.

But when Xiao Jiu used Dream Weaving Witchcraft to probe his consciousness, he finally gave himself away.

Even if a corpse has been refined to an extremely high realm and awakened spiritual awareness, the depths of its consciousness still differ greatly from that of a living person.

Xiao Jiu, with a single probe, knew the depth.

But just as Xiao Jiu was about to withdraw her hand and launch a further attack on the man, his deathly white pupils suddenly gained color again.

His pair of pupils rapidly became a set of vertical pupils.

One was green, the other red…

Gu Ya had told Xiao Jiu that she always had terrifying dreams.

In the dream, a pair of eyes stared at her, making her feel afraid.

And those eyes were vertical pupils! One red, one green.

Xiao Jiu also compared the vertical pupils that appeared in Gu Ya's dream with those of Liu Junyan, confirming it could not be Liu Junyan.

I never expected that she would see this pair of mandarin-duck-colored vertical pupils here with her own eyes!

But Xiao Jiu had just confirmed that the thing before her was a corpse!

What on earth is going on?

These vertical pupils…… aren't the man's before her! Rather…… they belong to the person behind him who controls and refines him!

The instant Xiao Jiu realized this, her whole body had already retreated backward, and the man also lunged forward to strike at her.

At this moment, the man's aura changed completely.

A powerful internal force, with an extremely overbearing momentum, came down upon Xiao Jiu from above.

Xiao Jiu, however, did not exert force to meet the man's attack.

She feinted with a palm, releasing a ball of Nirvana fire, then swiftly brushed past the man's body and rushed straight toward the top of the stone coffin.

Above the stone coffin, blood mist still lingered.

Xiao Jiu sent a palm wind forward, dispersing the blood mist, then looked down into the stone coffin from above.

Xiao Jiu's move was too fast and too unexpected; before the man could react, Xiao Jiu was already hovering above the stone coffin.

As Xiao Jiu had guessed, inside the stone coffin there was another set of coffin and outer coffin.

There was a coffin, there was an outer coffin, and not just one layer.

But what Xiao Jiu never imagined was that those several layers of coffin and outer coffin were actually floating within the stone coffin.

All around and beneath the coffin and outer coffin was nothing but blood water!

As it turned out, all the blood water in the Sacrificial Pit had been sucked into the stone coffin.

Even more terrifying, Xiao Jiu saw something within that expanse of blood water!

That thing coiled around the coffin and outer coffin, looping around it again and again, not beneath the blood water; even though she couldn't see its full form, Xiao Jiu could still tell it was a giant snake!

It had no horns, its body covered in a net-like pattern, a triangular head—undoubtedly a giant poisonous snake.

The moment she saw it, Xiao Jiu understood everything.

This is the behind-the-scenes manipulator of the events at the Yinjun Mountain Ancient Tomb and the Meng family.

It schemed for the heavenly noble aura within the Yinjun Mountain Ancient Tomb, it schemed for Liu Junyan's true dragon aura, and the Meng family was merely its retreat.

It had calculated everything, yet it alone missed the great calamity destined for it—Xiao Jiu.

A destined great calamity?

Xiao Jiu suddenly recalled the man's facial features she had seen at first glance just moments ago.

So, that was not the man's face at all, but the face of that giant snake……