Night had come. The village where Lu Si and the others had entered was burning. Everywhere only dead bodies could be seen. Smoke curled into the sky. Roofs had collapsed. Charred beams cracked like bones. The smell of burned wood and blood filled the air.
To the east of the village a woman was drinking blood from a corpse. Lu Si watched her. She was Xuan'er. She drank slowly, then sat in the lotus position and began to absorb the energy from the blood. Her breathing was calm. Her face showed no shock. Around them, Lu Si's brothers were gathering corpses from the surrounding huts and piling them in one place. They moved efficiently, without wasting time. But the shocking thing was this: there were no female corpses here. No wives, no daughters—no sign of any living woman who had been burned or killed.
Lu Si frowned. He wondered what had happened to them. He could not guess in that moment. He remembered the past few nights. He remembered what he had done.
*****
Few hours ago, Lu Si had slipped out of the house where the village master had settled them. There had been no one outside. A cold wind moved through the lanes and rustled the thatch. He walked without sound. He entered a village hut where a man and a woman slept. A three-year-old boy lay between them.
Lu Si came close to the sleeping woman. She and the man were plain farmers, no cultivators at all. He hid his presence, so they could not sense him. He put his hand on the woman's chest and kissed her. In that moment he used abmethod.
The woman's Yin energy flowed out. Lu Si felt it rush into him. The woman's body went dry and thin, as if someone had pulled the water from her bones. She died without waking, without understanding what had happened.
Lu Si repeated the same action in other huts that night. He took Yin from wives and daughters in the darkness. No one knew why their women died. Their bodies looked ancient, like corpses taken from a long-buried grave. They were pale, hollowed, and bloodless.
After that many things changed.
With every woman's Yin he stole, Lu Si's cultivation rose. He moved from Initial stage to Qi Transformation, third layer. He went back to his room and woke his brothers and Xuan'er. He told Xuan'er, "Now it's time for our cultivation."
He said to her, "I think you understand the method in the book. If you don't want to die, you must use this method to increase your cultivation."
Xuan'er hesitated.
Hours later, when villagers discovered that their wives, daughters, and sisters had died mysteriously, chaos broke out. People screamed. They smashed doors. They lit torches and searched every hut. They found women dead in beds, in the fields, in the wells. Their bodies were like corpses that had lain in graves for years. They could not tell what had taken them.
While the villagers panicked, Lu Si walked through the night carrying small stones. On each stone he had painted a character. He threw the stones in many directions, far from the place where he stood. When a stone hit the ground or the roof of a house, it exploded. Sparks flew. Dry straw caught fire. In a few moments flames spread across the village. Huts burned, and the fire swallowed everything. Lu Si's brothers rushed into the burning place at his order. They did not save the people—they fed the blaze. The fire covered the traces of what had been done.
Back to present
Xuan'er drinking the blood from dead body then refining it.But Lu Si said,"We don't have much time.You should first drink all blood.When we go in a safe place you would get enough time to refining it."
Xuan'er hesitated.According to the book, if one did not refine the blood immediately then impurities would enter the body. Those impurities could block future cultivation. She knew the risk.
Lu Si smiled, but his smile was cold. "So what?" he said. "You do not have to reach a higher stage. When you succeed in reaching Separate and Reunion, I will take your cultivation again and then I will free you."
What he did not tell her was the full truth. Next time they cultivated together she might die. About the impurities—he did not care. Impurities that mixed into her body would not enter his body. He had a way to protect himself from those things. He only wanted strength.
A group of righteous cultivators arrived shortly after, but Lu Si and the others had already left. Seeing the ruined village, the cultivators understood that an evil cultivator had been there. They searched with divine sense, but they could not find any trace of Lu Si. The techniques Lu Si had used were not from this small world. They were advanced, high-level methods that Lu Si had made or altered himself. The righteous cultivators looked at the charred ground and felt uneasy. They could not trace the enemy's path.
This same thing happened to other villages over the next twelve days. At first Lu Si had not rushed to strike. He had acted slowly and carefully. But as his cultivation rose, he became bolder. He moved faster. He used his methods more often. Villages after villages were ruined. Each time, villagers found their women dead with the same dry, hollow look. Righteous cultivators came to investigate, but always they were too late. Lu Si left nothing behind that could be easily tracked.
---
Zhang Han village was one of the places destroyed only moments before an Immortal Ascension stage cultivator arrived. Smoke rose in columns. The sky above the village was dim with ash. The cultivator belonged to a first-class family. He had come personally to investigate and to punish the demonic cultivator responsible.
He extended his divine sense and found 5 auras lingering among the ruins. He judged them by strength. One of them was at Separate and Reunion stage. One woman's aura showed she had reached Qi Transformation. Three others were at Initial stage, fifth layer. He laughed with cruel confidence. How could such weak people dare offend the righteous clans? He thought: today would be their last day.
He pushed his divine sense, searching for the demon cultivator. But something happened that he did not expect. As he sought, his soul shattered. It felt as if a blade had pierced and split his spirit. His body fell to the ground like an empty shell. His eyes were open, but nothing lived inside them.
Lu Si had used a new power then. In this few days he created sonething new.He is in Seperate and Reunion stage while he can use a saint stage power by that mysteriously Cherecter of Dao technique. He learned to use it not only for attack but also for defense, healing, and other techniques.
When the Immortal Ascension cultivator tried to find him,that cultivator devine sense can't endure the power of daobso his soul shattered.It happened because he use a concealment technique with this cherecter.
After that moment, Lu Si no longer worried about raw strength. He only needed time to raise his cultivation further. If he became strong enough, he thought, he would take Yang Kai's space-time river easily.
---
Twelve days passed and the pattern was clear. Villages burned. Women's Yin vanished. Lu Si grew stronger. The righteous cultivators could not catch them. The book's methods, Lu Si's stones, and the secret dao blade left no clear traces. People whispered that a demon walked the lands. Children cried at night. Farmers abandoned their fields.
Xuan'er continued to refine the blood she drank. She sat cross-legged in the smoke and absorbed the energy slowly, counting every breath. Lu Si watched her and the others as they moved on. He spoke in low tones to his brothers, planning the next steps, always thinking of one thing: to reach higher levels so he could seize the space time river that lay beyond, the power he believed belonged to Yang Kai.
That was what they did then. The nights grew darker. The roads were unsafe. Lu Si's name was not known, but his shadow moved through the countryside like a cold wind.