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Novel: [The Primordial Law]
Volume 4: [Shuangsheng Dao Sect (Twin Rice Sect)]
Chapter 174 (429): [Fragrant Rice Fields, Throughout the Land]
(174th of Volume 4)
Translator: Shadow Knight AK
Editor: Shadow Knight AK
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The Spiritual Master who had previously besieged Li Weiyi, riding a deer-like Exotic Beast, stood atop the county town's tallest building, holding his breath in fear as Li Weiyi entered the town.
The Divine Wing Marquis himself had personally intervened, yet failed to return.
What exactly had caused that distant, earth-shattering explosion?
The Spiritual Master demanded coldly, "Who are you? Where's the Marquis?"
Li Weiyi glanced at him from afar.
The Spiritual Master's heart trembled.
Already haunted by a premonition of doom, he slapped a talisman onto his body, turned, and fled, vanishing into the forest outside the town at top speed.
Li Weiyi stared in astonishment.
This was a Seven-Star Spiritual Master with profound mastery of talismans - why would he flee without even putting up a fight?
Li Weiyi didn't pursue.
After searching the area, he found no trace of the Windchaser Beast.
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he raced toward the source of the Blood Mist.
Landing on the watchtower where the Spiritual Master had stood, he gazed at the hundred-meter-wide cavern entrance nearby.
At the cavern's mouth, countless civilians were being herded like cattle.
It was indeed a Blood Sacrifice - and the offerings weren't livestock, but human beings.
At that moment, the swarm of insects led by the Seven Phoenix-Winged Moth Emperors was locked in fierce combat with seventy to eighty Demon Kingdom experts.
The surviving humans scattered in panic.
"Don't let a single one escape! Kill them all!"
Li Weiyi's eyes flashed with cold resolve as he struggled to suppress his surging emotions.
He channeled an endless stream of Spiritual Qi into the Purple Heaven Thunder Seal in his palm.
The Thunder Seal soared into the air, expanding to several dozen meters in size, and crashed into the entrance of the underground cave.
Instantly, violet lightning crackled through the cave, dispersing the Blood Mist and causing the ground to crumble with deafening roars.
The Blood Sacrifice was interrupted.
The blood-red patterns that had been spreading across the ground vanished.
Li Weiyi, riding the luminous silhouette of a Yellow Dragon, descended to the cave entrance.
Raising his sword overhead, he channeled the Six-Jia Yang Lightning and unleashed a series of downward strikes before leaping into the darkness below.
The altar was constructed deep underground, in a vast, cavernous space.
As Li Weiyi landed atop the altar, the air reeked of a nauseatingly pungent stench of blood.
He surveyed his surroundings.
Beneath the altar stretched a veritable Blood Sea, its crimson depths teeming with countless white bones.
For a fleeting moment, his heart stopped beating.
There was no doubt: the majority of the city's inhabitants had been sacrificed here.
This was the war of extermination!
This was a battle for the survival of the entire Living Realm. No one could remain neutral - either fight or die.
Li Weiyi felt no heart-wrenching grief, only a profound silence.
With a single palm strike, he shattered the Young Marquis into pieces, tossing the remains into the Blood Sea.
The fragments mingled indistinguishably with the countless white bones already submerged there.
"Boom!"
Channeling his Spiritual Qi, Li Weiyi summoned the Purple Heaven Thunder Seal and utterly destroyed the altar.
With a leap, he soared back to the ground.
Within the county town, the cacophony of battle cries, screams of agony, insect chirps, collapsing buildings, and the desperate shouts of survivors coalesced into utter chaos.
A heavy weight pressed on Li Weiyi's chest.
He stood utterly still, gazing toward the distant Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain.
The three-thousand-zhang-high cliff face was shrouded in a luminous barrier.
The crimson patterns on the barrier rapidly faded.
From the summit of the Immortal Plains, deafening roars of Wind Thunder echoed, and a dim yellow light illuminated the surroundings.
The ground trembled violently as sword light stretched ten thousand zhang into the sky. The intensity of the battle there was palpable, as if celestial gods were clashing in a divine duel.
'What was the outcome of the Transcendent confrontation?'
'Were Tai Shi Bai, Tai Shi Yu, and Xingyuenu still alive?'
A wave of perception swept over Li Weiyi, like a gentle breeze brushing his face.
"Damn it! A Giant of the Longevity Realm is probing with their Intent. The commotion here must have alerted the Demon Kingdom's powerhouses at other Blood Sacrifice Altars."
Li Weiyi sprinted toward the city gate, recalling all seven Phoenix-Winged Moth Emperors.
He then activated the final Life-Preserving Talisman Tai Shi Yu had given him - the Divine Swiftness Talisman - and fled eastward at breakneck speed.
By the time the Divine Swiftness Talisman's power waned, Li Weiyi had already covered over four hundred miles from the county town, arriving in a hilly, mountainous region dotted with tombstones and burial mounds.
Looking back, he could no longer see the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain.
Only the sun climbed higher in the sky.
His pursuers hadn't followed, clearly prioritizing guarding the altar.
Li Weiyi could predict the fate of the surviving townspeople, but he was powerless to intervene.
He buried this helplessness deep within his heart, resolving to cultivate diligently, striving to one day change this cruel world and usher in an era of justice and light.
"What's that fragrant smell...?"
Li Weiyi turned south.
A vast cloud of fine golden powder drifted through the air, sweeping over the hills and past him, racing northward.
Soon, the entire surroundings shimmered with gold.
The powder swirled in the wind, transforming the sky into a pale golden hue.
The golden powder settled on the ground and vanished instantly.
Li Weiyi sensed something was amiss.
He held his breath, drew the Myriad Manifestations Staff-Spear, and scanned his surroundings warily.
From the staff-spear's tail, the Earth Spirit Child chuckled merrily, its voice ringing with delight.
"What is it?" Li Weiyi asked.
The Earth Spirit Child told him that the Yin Qi beneath the ground was rapidly intensifying.
"Crack!"
A tombstone several meters away, where the powder had settled, immediately emitted a faint golden glow.
Behind the tombstone, a rotting hand clawed its way out of the earth.
A horrifying sight unfolded before Li Weiyi's eyes.
From the grave mound, a decaying corpse clawed its way out with unnatural speed.
The corpse's tattered robes hung loosely, its mouth opened in a silent shriek, revealing rows of sharp teeth, and golden flames burned in its eye sockets.
Smelling the scent of the living, it charged toward Li Weiyi in a half-run, half-leap.
Li Weiyi swung his staff, shattering the corpse into pieces.
"Crack!"
"Whoosh!"
Across the entire hill, corpses erupted from their graves one after another, some already reduced to bare bones.
"It's the fragrance of rice..."
"Corpse Cultivation Rice has finally spread across the land. From the endless corpses beneath the earth, Rice Corpse Yin Soldiers have risen, sweeping across the Twenty-Eight Prefectures. They devour every living person they encounter, until all humans in the Living Realm are consumed."
Their speed and strength are more than double that of ordinary humans.
In moments, Li Weiyi was surrounded by hundreds of Rice Corpses.
"Boom!"
Li Weiyi unleashed his Dao Heart Manifestation, sending the Rice Corpses flying.
He then turned east and fled.
Along the way, endless waves of Rice Corpses surged forward, drawn by the scent of living flesh, lunging to devour and attack.
Even with Li Weiyi's cultivation, he secretly worried about exhausting his Spiritual Qi and physical strength, as the hordes seemed inexhaustible.
"Centered on Fu Prefecture, the power of Corpse Cultivation Rice has engulfed several prefectures, including Qiu Prefecture and Liang Prefecture. As the fragrance of rice spreads, countless Rice Corpse Yin Soldiers will awaken, becoming predators across the entire Living Realm."
"I can only hope the Zuoqiu Clan breaches the Twin Rice Sect's Cultivation Headquarters soon, resolving this cataclysmic disaster at its source."
....
Seven hundred miles away, Master Guan, a Blood Mud Man, arrived from the east and stood atop a mountain peak, gazing at the sky-blanketing rice powder stretching to the horizon.
"The Corpse Cultivation Rice has finally erupted. They intend to transform the Lingxiao Realm into a Rice Realm."
A voice of exquisite beauty echoed, "The Lingxiao Realm is the perfect place to cultivate Benevolent Rice. Within a short time, we can produce vast numbers of Ricefolk to mine, retrieve coffins, and forge Spiritual Artifacts, resolving the Demon Kingdom's critical shortages of weapons and provisions."
"Yu Daozhen's support for the Twin Rice Sect and establishment of the Rice Realm will be his greatest achievement, giving him the upper hand in the power struggles within Xiaoyao Capital."
"If he fails now, Demon Consort Chang Yulu and her ruthless allies will seize the opportunity to strike."
Xia Jin ascended the mountain, her breathtakingly beautiful eyes scanning the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain.
She saw clusters of Blood Mist shrouding the Immortal Plains like cages.
Enveloped in spiritual radiance and fragrant mist, she wore a green gauze feather robe, her figure exquisitely sculpted. Through the hazy veil, one could glimpse her impossibly long jade-like legs and snow-white arms.
Xia Jin, the Demon of Qixia Lake, was one of the Four Great Demon Kings of the Lingxiao Realm - and its most beautiful.
She asked doubtfully, "Uncle-Master, you wouldn't be lying to us, would you? If the Mist Heavenly Sovereign had truly returned, the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain wouldn't be in such a state. She would have settled everything with a single sword strike long ago."
Master Guan erupted in a furious tirade, "This old man risked everything to meet your Master, fearing you'd misjudge the situation and follow Qilin Zhuang to the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain to die! And you dare doubt your Uncle-Master? I've dared to do anything in my life, except harm your Master!"
"The situation is clear! Qilin Zhuang has returned for revenge. You can't possibly believe he'd compete with Yu Daozhen for the Lingxiao Realm to establish a Demon Kingdom, can you?"
"If the Rice Realm is established, will Crescent Lake even have a place to exist? Fight! First, destroy the Blood Sacrifice Altar beneath the Immortal Plains!"
Xia Jin had already made her decision.
"As long as we don't ascend to the Immortal Plains and walk into danger, this king wouldn't mind lending the Mist Heavenly Sovereign a hand. As for Master, her involvement in the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain war would have too great an impact. Our demon clan can't afford to offend the Flying Phoenix. But Master will intervene at the Twin Rice Sect Headquarters."
"I hope Junior Sister manages to obtain the Book of Radiant Stars - that would be a tremendous gain!"
Master Guan had lured his junior sister out precisely with the news that the Book of Radiant Stars was at the Twin Rice Sect Headquarters.
....
Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain, North Pond Pass.
The armies of the Five Northern Provinces stood arrayed before the pass, spears and swords at the ready, their formations tight and disciplined.
Tang Shituo commanded from outside the North Heavenly Gate, the northernmost point of the Cloud Heaven Immortal Plain, guarding the lifeline for the evacuation of Lingxiao City's citizens.
From this vantage point, he could survey both the epoch-defining battle raging to the south and the clashes unfolding below the Immortal Plains, around the eight Blood Sacrifice Altars - a sprawling battlefield stretching thousands of miles.
Beneath the Immortal Plains, the Northern Territory's two Transcendent figures, Ancestor Wanyan and Ancestor Tuoba, were locked in combat with two Transcendent Dead Spirits.
These spirits had been specifically stationed here to prevent the Snow Sword Tang Court from destroying the northern Blood Sacrifice Altars.
These weren't the only Transcendent Dead Spirits present. Other shadowy figures lurked in the distance, deterred by Tang Shituo's overwhelming presence from making rash moves.
They were waiting for him to leave for Lingxiao City, hoping to seize the opportunity to annihilate the Snow Sword Tang Court's forces and breach the pass.
A vast tide of refugees poured out of Lingxiao City's North City Gate.
Martial-Mystic Cultivators from the Immortal Realm and Dao Seed Realm led the charge, followed by those from the Five Seas Realm.
The higher one's cultivation, the faster they fled.
"Activate the Heaven Gate Formation and let them pass," Tang Shituo ordered, his gaze fixed on a black-robed elder hidden among the crowd.
With a blur of motion, he teleported before the elder: "Li Longshu, still trying to escape?"
In the next instant, Tang Shituo had seized the elder and lifted him into the air, away from the crowd.
"Boom!"
The elder's body exploded, revealing the severely wounded Li Longshu hidden within.
No match for Tang Shituo, Li Longshu perished utterly amidst a final, agonized scream.
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END OF CHAPTER
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