Chương 36: They’re Already Coming (1/3)

He stepped over to the dead physician, each measured footfall pressing into the blood-soaked stone. The faint crimson glow of the damaged array beneath his boots pulsed weakly, casting wavering shadows across the mutated corpse draped over the crystal coffin. Drawing his dagger—the blade still faintly smeared with grave-rot from earlier—Shi Yan callously pressed the steel edge into the dead man's freshly severed cervical spine. The wet cartilage gave with a sickening, fibrous scrape.

He angled the blade deeper, scraping it against the pooling, highly volatile blood-Qi still desperately trying to circulate through the corpse's dying nervous system. The substance clung to the steel in viscous, glowing threads—luminous crimson streaked with oily black veins. It hissed faintly against the metal, releasing thin tendrils of steam that carried the acrid tang of scorched copper and rotting meat.

Smearing the glowing, toxic demonic blood across the surface of the green jade slip—acting as a makeshift spiritual conductive paste—Shi Yan dropped to one knee, the impact sending a dull shock through his freshly reconstructed bones. The cold stone pressed hard against his kneecap. He firmly pressed the jade directly into the intersection of the primary array grooves on the stone dais, grinding it down until the slick blood filled the carved channels and the jade sat flush with the surface.

Will this work? The logic is the same, isn't it? Let's think…

The array is a generator. The blood is the copper wire.

The reaction was instantaneous. The residual ambient energy of the array—still cycling sluggishly through the shattered runes—acted as a massive generator, surging through the bloody "wire" and violently booting up the jade slip. The entire dais shuddered. A sharp, electric hum split the air, rising in pitch until it became a piercing whine that set his teeth on edge. The crimson grooves beneath his boots flared brilliant white, casting harsh, flickering light across the swamp.

But because it was abruptly powered by raw, uncalibrated environmental energy rather than the delicate, precise control of a cultivator's spiritual sense and Qi, the jade couldn't safely transmit its encrypted data directly into a mind.

Instead, the archaic artifact short-circuited. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the jade's polished surface, glowing molten orange from within. It forcefully projected its contents outward, casting a chaotic, wavering hologram into the humid swamp air. The light refracted through the gray mist, scattering into ghostly, overlapping images that twisted and reformed with each pulse of the array's dying heartbeat.

At first, it just looked like a series of complex, intersecting geometric lines—glowing threads of gold and crimson suspended in midair, slowly rotating like the skeleton of some impossible celestial sphere.

An array? His gaze flickered with brief confusion, dark eyes narrowing as he tracked the spinning diagram. Is this the Demonic Blood Array? Is this the same blueprint used by Physician Li? So the jade just contains the instruction manual for constructing the spiritual array?

But then, out of nowhere, the array diagram distorted. The optical illusion shivered violently, lines collapsing inward as though sucked into an invisible vortex. The complex lines of the blueprint unfurled with a sharp snap, transforming into rows of glowing golden text hovering in the murky swamp fog. Each character burned with steady, ancient light—perfectly formed, flowing calligraphy that seemed to breathe with its own inner radiance.

A two-tier verification message? Then does that mean his method managed to bypass the fake content, or uncover the hidden contents of this jade slip?

Despite the initial confusion, he began to read and immediately frowned. His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching beneath the scarred line of his cheek.

Perhaps because the jade slip was an authentic immortal artifact used by an Orthodox Sect, the message wasn't written in plain, straightforward text.

Instead, the floating golden calligraphy was stylized as a cryptic poem—a series of famous native idioms layered with heavy, sinister double meanings. Each phrase twisted on itself like a serpent swallowing its tail, elegant on the surface but venomous beneath.

Shi Yan crossed his arms, the fabric of his burnt tunic pulling taut across his shoulders. Cold swamp wind gusted through the grove, making the hovering text flicker and sway like lanterns in a storm.

The first vertical line of glowing text flickered in the dark, each character pulsing in time with his heartbeat:

"The creeping winter frost was safely buried within the fragile jade lotus. The roots wither on schedule."

Winter frost? Jade lotus? He frowned deeper, brow furrowing as he turned the flowery words over in his head. They aren't talking about gardening. The lotus is a common native metaphor for a pure woman. The wife. The "creeping winter frost," possessing a schedule... an insidious, slow-acting toxin?

So, basically, they didn't just casually extort Physician Li. They intentionally poisoned his wife with a slow-acting toxin to create this exact crisis? The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

He moved his eyes to the second line of text, the golden light reflecting in his dark pupils like distant flames:

"We have handed the weeping, blind dog a torch of black fire. Believing it to be the light of salvation, he eagerly burns down his own kennel to forge the cure."

Blind dog with a torch. This time, he was utterly silent. His expression hardened, going flat and cold—the thousand-yard stare of a soldier parsing enemy intelligence through layers of deception.

Black fire... they mean the array?

So, they didn't threaten him into building this...

Instead, they broke his mind and secretly fed him the blueprint for this exact Demonic Blood Array piece by piece. They groomed a peaceful, desperate healer into a radicalized terrorist?

The wind howled through the willow canopy overhead, rattling the skeletal branches. Behind him, Uncle Chen's wheezing breaths hitched in the mud, but Shi Yan didn't turn. His focus remained locked on the floating text, absorbing every syllable with the precision of a man dissecting a live explosive.

Shi Yan read the final, longest string of characters, each word dripping with sanctimonious malice:

"When the crimson pearl is fully condensed beneath the weeping branches, the white cranes shall finally descend from the shifting clouds. We shall righteously purge the mad dog, cleanse the kennel of sin, and carry the pearl back to the high peaks for our venerated ancestors."

The last one didn't even need much for him to translate. It was easy. The whole puzzle clicked into his mind like the final tumbler of a lock falling into place.

So in simple terms, they assassinated this physician's wife, manipulated him into abandoning his humanity to become a demonic beast, specifically with the intent to mass-produce a high-tier pill. And now they planned to descend, "purge" the evil they had created, and confiscate this "pearl" as evidence?

Now everything made absolute sense. Clicking his tongue several times—sharp, dry sounds of disgust—he looked once again at the corpse of the physician and the corpse of his wife, still pristine beneath the crystal coffin's flawless surface.

How else could Physician Li, a simple, kind cultivator in this chaotic demonic world, working in the village as a healer, have gained access to a complex, ancient Demonic Blood Array?

How could he single-handedly wipe out the Silk & Ash Chamber caravans guarded by Tier-2 elite cultivators?

The answer... Because the Cloud-Mirror Sect was quietly feeding him intelligence and clearing the board for him.

It was a textbook false-flag proxy operation.

Which means... those Orthodox cultivators are already on their way here, huh?

He turned his back on the crying villagers and the dead physician, boots grinding against the blood-slick stone with deliberate finality. The freezing rain intensified, fat droplets hammering against the charred, ragged remains of his burnt tunic. Water streamed down his scarred face, tracing the ridges of old wounds, dripping from his jaw in cold rivulets. He ignored it completely. Shall we hunt them too?

But before he initiated his extraction, his eyes caught a heavy, leather-bound scroll practically fused to the dead physician's chest—half-buried beneath the mutated scales and congealed blood.

During the fight, Shi Yan had noticed Physician Li attempting to form a final mudra that required deep, explosive leg compression. The physician's thighs had bulged grotesquely, veins standing out like iron cables beneath green-scaled flesh, before the technique was aborted mid-execution. Whatever cultivation technique the man had been trying to invoke had died with him.

He then knelt down and pried the scroll from the corpse. The parchment was sickening—it wasn't paper, but dried, cured human flesh painted with oxidized blood. The surface was waxy and translucent, revealing the faint outlines of old veins beneath. It gave off a faint, sour reek—like aged leather soaked in vinegar and iron. The texture under his fingertips was disturbingly warm, as though it still retained the ghost of living heat.

The moment his fingers brushed the demonic artifact, the glowing blue interface of his System violently overrode the golden text hovering in the air. The holographic poem shattered into fragmenting pixels, dissolving like smoke scattered by a gale.

[Artifact Scanned. Data Extraction Complete.] [Technique Acquired: Blood-Ignition Flash Step.] Oh?

Shi Yan raised an eyebrow, the faintest flicker of interest breaking through his otherwise impassive expression. Then, for the first time, another screen extended before him—layered over his vision in sharp, clinical lines of pale blue light.

[Lore Registry: An ancient Demonic Movement Art originally developed by the extinct Blood-Sea Asura lineage. Designed to bridge the gap against high-tier cultivators.] [Native Mechanics: To execute, the practitioner must violently compress the blood in their lower extremities using their Dantian. The resulting internal explosion generates enough instantaneous forward velocity to shatter the sound barrier.] [Lethal Drawback: Utilizing this technique severely fractures the Dantian and irreversibly scorches the Spiritual Root. Prolonged use results in spontaneous internal combustion.] You can do this? His eyes widened slightly, surprise flickering across his scarred features—genuine, unguarded curiosity. He glanced down at the grotesque scroll in his hand, then back at the hovering blue text, mentally cataloging the implications. For a moment, the faintest ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Looking at how... useful the System was... but only for a brief moment before he began reading the full information, his expression cooling back into calculating neutrality.

So, a cultivation technique that violently burns the Dantian and scorches the Spiritual Root? Then... no wonder the Orthodox sects consider it forbidden suicide.

Hmm... it is an interesting technique, but usually it requires Qi and a Dantian, which he didn't have, but...

System, can you convert this? Once again, he thought the way he had when he created or modified the Phantom Veil technique—calm, clinical, framing the request like an engineer submitting a design modification.

Perhaps... rip out the Dantian requirement. Hardwire the explosive propulsion directly into my muscular and cardiovascular systems?

He waited, as usual, rain streaming down his face in cold sheets, breath misting faintly in the frigid air. His fingers drummed once against the scroll's leathery surface.

And then his lips bloomed into a smile—a slow, predatory curve that didn't reach his eyes.

[Command Accepted. Anomaly trait engaged.] [Bypassing Daoist Qi-Locks...] [Isolating Demonic Blood-Combustion Blueprint...] [Daoless Physiology Detected. Modification Protocol Engaged.] The System's blue interface flashed, running biological diagnostics in real time. Lines of scrolling data reflected in his dark pupils, each calculation appearing and vanishing in fractions of a second.

[Host lacks Dantian and Spiritual Root. Target organs for critical magical backlash do not exist.] [Rerouting energy requirements. Technique adapted to rely purely on extreme cardiovascular overdrive and Tier-2 muscular density.] [Integrating payload into physiological framework...] [Technique Acquired: Blood-Ignition Flash Step (Physiological Toggle).] [Effect: Violently hyper-pressurizes blood in lower extremities to generate instantaneous supersonic forward propulsion.] [New Cost: Zero magical backlash. However, the sheer physical G-force and internal blood detonation inflict severe micro-tears on leg ligaments and rupture localized capillaries. Requires 30 seconds of physiological cooldown between activations. Consecutive use within cooldown period guarantees catastrophic bone fragmentation and muscle rupture.] So now it had become a technique, a massive burst of kinetic force that damaged the chassis. Thirty seconds of cooldown to let the muscles stitch themselves back together, huh?

He tapped his fingers against the scroll's grotesque surface, the dull tap-tap-tap rhythmic and deliberate as he processed the data. His eyes narrowed slightly, running through combat scenarios with the cold efficiency of a tactician calculating ammunition expenditure.

For them, perhaps, breaking the cooldown was a death sentence. For me, with a drastically fortified cardiovascular system, it's a severely taxing, high-risk mobility buff?