The world was no longer comprised of horizons or landmarks; it had been reduced to a viscous, coppery veil of red mist. Jiang Dao stood at the center of this suffocating silence, his expression a mask of stone. He wasn't merely looking; he was hunting with his ears, every fiber of his being tuned to the frequency of the fog. Somewhere ahead, the low murmur of voices drifted through the haze—muffled, hurried, and moving away.
His brow furrowed. He felt the phantom pull of the chase, the instinct to close the distance. But before he could take his first step, the silence was shattered.
"Ah!"
A scream, jagged and raw, tore through the damp air. It wasn't the sound of a man facing a fight; it was the sound of a man being erased.
"Ah! No! Help! Aaargh!"
The cries followed in a frantic, rhythmic succession, coming from a few hundred meters ahead. They were short, punctuated by the wet thud of something hitting the earth. These were the same voices he had heard only moments before—now reduced to the primal register of the dying.
Beside him, King Nanling stiffened. The air around the veteran Spirit Exorcist seemed to chill. They both knew the score now. Until this moment, the "monster" had been a theory, a ghost story whispered to keep children inside. But the sheer speed of those deaths transformed the theory into a lethal reality. They didn't rush. To rush was to invite the same fate. They waited.
Slowly, the screams subsided into a terrifying, hollow quiet. The mist billowed, carrying the faint, metallic scent of fresh blood mixed with something ancient and foul.
"The world is a butcher shop, and we are just the meat," Nanling whispered, his voice trembling with a veteran's caution. As a high-ranking Spirit Exorcist, he had seen kingdoms fall to things that didn't have names. He knew that in this realm, knowledge wasn't power—it was a weight that could sink you.
Jiang Dao waited ten minutes. He counted every heartbeat, feeling the rhythm of his own internal furnace. Finally, he moved. His heavy boots crunched softly against the unseen floor of the world as he waded back into the thickest part of the crimson fog. Nanling followed, his mouth opening as if to protest, but no words came out. He simply drew his spiritual energy close, a thin, shimmering veil of protection.
Visibility was a luxury they no longer possessed. They moved like ghosts in a dream, losing their sense of north and south. After ten minutes of wandering the void, they found the wreckage.
The bodies were scattered like discarded husks. Jiang Dao knelt beside one, his eyes narrowing. It was the same as before. The Spirit Exorcists—men who had trained for decades to withstand the supernatural—were shriveled, their skin clinging to bone like old parchment. Their eyes were wide, frozen in a final, agonizing revelation of terror.
"Not a single wound," Jiang Dao muttered. He reached out, hovering his hand over a chest that should have been rising with breath. "It didn't eat them. It drank them. It took the blood and the essence through the air itself."
He stood up, and as he did, the temperature around him began to climb. Inside his chest, the Primordial Fire Demon Astral Qi began to churn, and the Black Demon Evil Qi Art ignited in his veins. His skin took on a deep, smoldering glow, turning the color of cooling embers. His internal organs became a roaring furnace, and the heat radiating from him began to push back the dampness of the mist.
He began to walk again, his gait steady and intentional. He knew the members of the Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountain were close; the victims had mentioned them before the silence took them.
Swish.
A shadow flickered in the periphery of his vision. It was faster than a heartbeat, a blur of ink against the red.
"Who's there?" Nanling barked, his spiritual aura flaring.
Jiang Dao's eyes were like burning coals. "Let it play its games," he said, his voice a low rumble. "It wants us to panic. It wants us to run."
They continued deeper. The mist seemed to thicken, pressing against Jiang Dao's heat. Then, a sudden, piercing cold struck his intuition.
Directly beneath his feet, a shadow detached itself from the gloom. It wasn't a three-dimensional creature; it was a flat, writhing patch of darkness that clung to the dirt, lunging toward his ankles with jagged, claw-like extensions. Simultaneously, a whip-like tentacle erupted from the center of the shadow, aimed directly at his vitals.
"You've overstayed your welcome!" Jiang Dao roared.
He didn't dodge. He stomped.
His foot came down with the force of a falling mountain. Upon impact, the Fire-Poison Astral Qi erupted from his sole like a volcanic vent. The ground shattered, and a scream—this one not human—pierced the air. The shadow twisted and buckled under the searing heat, its two-dimensional form thrashing as if it were being fried on a griddle.
It tried to retreat, sliding across the earth like spilled ink. But Jiang Dao was faster. His massive frame blurred, and his hand shot out, expanding into a terrifying, claw-like shape. He didn't just grab the shadow; he grabbed the reality it was attached to.
He snatched the black tentacle mid-air. It felt cold, like grabbing a piece of dry ice, but his internal fire neutralized the sting. With a guttural grunt, he yanked upward.
"Get out into the light!"
CRASH.
The earth literally peeled back. He ripped the entity out of the ground, its body a confusing mass of darkness and shifting geometry. Before it could reform, Jiang Dao swung it like a flail, slamming it repeatedly into the broken earth.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
With every strike, he pumped his Fire-Poison Evil Qi into the creature's core. It shrieked, a sound like metal scraping on glass, until finally, the tentacle snapped. The remaining mass of the shadow tumbled into the mist, vanishing instantly.
Jiang Dao stood over the crater he had made, a severed piece of the shadow still sizzling in his hand. Within seconds, the fragment withered into grey ash, blown away by the hot wind of his own aura.
"Did you kill it?" Nanling asked, catching his breath.
"I didn't have to," Jiang Dao said, his eyes returning to their normal hue. "My Fire-Poison is a parasite. It's inside that thing now, eating it from the center out. It will die screaming, miles from here."
As they moved forward, the mist finally began to fail. It thinned, revealing the jagged bones of a lost civilization. They had reached the edge of the fog, and what lay beyond was a sprawling ruin of collapsed palaces and obsidian pillars.
In the heart of the ruins stood an ancient sacrificial altar. Atop it, a sphere of pulsing, blood-red light cast long, dancing shadows across the debris. Floating within that light was a single object: a dark red glove, the size of a predator's paw, woven with thick, pulsating veins and muscle fibers.
"The Heavenly Destiny Divine Artifact," Nanling whispered, his voice thick with a mix of awe and greed.
Jiang Dao stared at it. "It looks like a piece of a corpse. I've felt Sacred Artifacts before—this doesn't feel different. Where is the 'destiny' in this?"
Nanling shook his head, his eyes never leaving the glove. "You're looking at its power, not its nature. A Heavenly Destiny Artifact doesn't just break things. It rewrites the script of the world. Some grant the ability to walk through walls or kill a man by speaking his name. Others can stop time itself. But more than that, they change the luck of the bearer. You own this, and the heavens themselves start favoring you. You become the protagonist of your own life. And it grows. It eats other artifacts to evolve. It can even purify your very bloodline until you are more god than man."
Jiang Dao's mouth twisted into a cynical line. "Destiny," he spat. "If destiny is real, then who is holding the pen? Who is the one playing with us?"
Nanling didn't answer. He was too busy watching the other players on the field.
The ruins were not empty. To the left stood the forces of the Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountain. They were a grotesque sight—undead warriors dripping with cadaverous fluids, led by a figure that looked like a seven-year-old child. But the child's eyes were pits of pure, ancient Yin energy. He was a "Spirit Corpse," a creature of terrifying power.
To the right was a group of women in flowing red silks, their faces beautiful but vacant, dancing slowly in the chill wind. In their center sat a small white fox wearing a red vest, its eyes gleaming with a mockery of human intelligence. This was the "Wenxian Dao," a faction of non-human entities that Jiang Dao had crossed before.
The tension was a physical weight. Neither side moved for the altar, for they knew the first one to reach for the prize would be the first one to be torn apart.
Suddenly, one of the one-armed Corpse Demons turned its gaze toward Jiang Dao. It moved with a sickening, twitching speed, appearing before him in a blur of rot.
"New blood," the demon rasped, its emerald eyes fixed on Jiang Dao. "Join us, or become part of the scenery."
Jiang Dao didn't hesitate. He bowed his head slightly, a move so uncharacteristic that Nanling gasped.
"I have long admired the strength of the Thirteen Corpse Demon Mountain," Jiang Dao said, his voice smooth and devoid of its usual edge. "I am willing to serve. My strength is yours."
The demon let out a wet, rattling laugh. "Smart. But loyalty is a lie without a chain. Swallow this."
It held out a writhing, white insect—a Three-Corpse Demon蛊. The smell of the thing was enough to make a man's stomach turn.
"My lord," Jiang Dao said, maintaining his facade, "I have a weak stomach for vermin. Do you have a poison pill instead? I would rather die by a toxin I can swallow than a bug that crawls."
The demon paused, then grinned, revealing rows of jagged teeth. It fished a glowing green pill from its belt and tossed it. Jiang Dao caught it and, without a second's delay, tossed it into his mouth. He didn't swallow it into his stomach; he tucked it into a pocket of Fire-Poison Qi in his throat, sealing it away so the poison could never touch his system.
"Good," the demon hissed. Then it turned to Nanling. "Your turn."
Nanling looked at the pill, then at Jiang Dao. His mind raced. Was Jiang Dao a coward? Had he truly broken? The thought of being a slave to the undead was more than he could bear.
"I'd rather rot!" Nanling yelled. He threw the pill back at the demon like a bullet and bolted toward the red mist.
"Kill him," the Spirit Corpse child commanded. The one-armed demon roared and gave chase, leaving Jiang Dao standing among the undead.
Jiang Dao watched them go with a cold, calculating eye. He didn't care about Nanling's pride. He was here for the Spirit Corpse. He could feel the creature's power—it was likely a "Dragon Rank" threat. Between the fox and the corpse, a direct fight would be suicide. But a snake in the grass? A snake could kill a king.
He moved into the ranks of the Corpse Mountain, ignoring the pitying looks of the other enslaved exorcists. He watched as the Spirit Corpse child and the White Fox began their verbal sparring.
"The Heavenly Destiny belongs to the land of Great Ye," the child rasped. "And we are the masters of this land."
"The artifact belongs to whoever can hold it," the fox replied, its voice like silver bells. "Your clan is a rotting relic. Why shouldn't a new power take the stage?"
The child's face twisted. Black, obsidian scales began to ripple across his skin. "Then die for your ambition!"
The two leaders collided in the air, a clash of pure Yin energy that sent a shockwave through the ruins. The sky seemed to darken as their powers bled into the atmosphere.
But amidst the grand battle, a small, terrified voice broke out from the ranks behind Jiang Dao.
"Another one! He's gone!"
Jiang Dao turned. A few feet away, one of the enslaved Spirit Exorcists had collapsed. In the few seconds Jiang Dao had been watching the leaders, the man had been turned into a shriveled husk. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Jiang Dao felt a cold sweat prickle his neck. He had been standing right there. His senses were at their peak. His fire was burning. And yet, he hadn't felt a thing. He hadn't heard a movement.
The monster wasn't in the mist anymore. It was here, in the clearing, and it was invisible.