In the silent city skyline,
an indescribable power quietly awakened, seeping out from the depths of an office building.
It was accompanied by a low, long sigh, like a lament from the earth itself.
The power spread rapidly. Even the sturdy, transparent glass curtain walls,
began to visibly mottle and decay under its corrosive influence, until they rotted completely.
Immediately after,
the window frames connected to the glass, as if afflicted by some mysterious Curse,
also began to flake and fall apart. Large chunks of debris danced in the air, a harbinger of the apocalypse.
The walls were like diseased skin, peeling away in great, festering patches to reveal the hideous steel skeleton within.
At the same time, an unspeakable stench filled the air. The odor was thick and acrid, as if tens of thousands of corpses had been left to bake in the sun for days.
The reek of decay was enough to make one retch.
The faces of the Martial Artists present turned grim. They frowned, clamping their hands over their mouths and noses to ward off the foul smell.
Two King-level experts among them looked especially grave. They exchanged a look, a flicker of shock and doubt in their eyes.
"This smell... such a thick stench of rot. Could it be..."
Tan Hengshong took a deep breath, trying to glean more information from the air.
"The rotting man who was suppressed over the Demon Cave?"
Zheng Yi's brow was furrowed with uncertainty.
"That's right. It's him."
Tan Hengshong nodded, his voice heavy. "What is this Evil Spirit doing here in our Dalang City?"
The conversation between the two men, Tan Hengshong and Zheng Yi,
echoed through the empty streets, mingling with the waves of stench and the ceaseless fall of debris to paint a bizarre and heavy scene.
"The Queen didn't lie to us. The problem really is at the Demon Cave."
"We should have arrested Chu He from the start. The Queen was too soft-hearted."
"That Chu He is infuriating. If he wasn't capable enough, why did he go to the Demon Cave and pretend to be something he's not, acting all relaxed? He wasn't just fooling himself—he was fooling all the people of the Great Jing Empire and completely disregarding their lives!"
In another corner, the livestream's audio equipment captured everything with perfect clarity.
Hearing this, the audience in the livestream chat erupted in discussion, angry and dissatisfied with Chu He's actions.
They might not have known about the "rotting man,"
but they could feel the terror and danger of that power from the crumbling buildings.
Xiao Cangqing, though arrogant, was no ignorant brute.
He had an in-depth understanding of the powerful Evil Spirits recorded by the Great Jing Empire and their characteristics.
The rotting man. The very name of this Evil Spirit was enough to strike fear into people's hearts.
Its most distinct traits were the nauseating stench of rot it exuded wherever it went and a power that could corrode anything.
This Evil Spirit was as powerful as a King-level expert. Combined with its insidious corrosive ability, it was considered an extremely thorny opponent even for those at the King Level.
Back then, the Great Jing Empire had paid a terrible price to suppress the rotting man; several King-level experts had lost their lives in the process.
In the end, the Evil Spirit was successfully suppressed atop the Demon Cave, becoming a part of it.
Yet now it had appeared in Dalang City, which meant something had truly gone wrong at the Demon Cave.
'But what exactly happened at the Demon Cave?'
'What happened to the Time Girl Group?'
'And does any of this have anything to do with Chu He?'
Xiao Cangqing had no time to ponder these questions.
He glanced at the livestream cameras covering the scene from all angles, knowing countless eyes were watching.
Then, with a gentle flick of his sleeve, a long, slender sword slid out from his cuff.
The blade was snow-white and unadorned with any patterns, looking utterly unremarkable.
As the sword vibrated, waves of cold energy radiated outward, seeming to freeze the very air.
Suddenly, the ground trembled violently.
The office building before them, already weakened by the corrosion, collapsed with a deafening ROAR under the shock of the tremor.
Dust billowed up from the ruins like a waterfall,
obscuring the sun and instantly shrouding the surroundings in a gray haze.
The already heavy gloom seemed to thicken, the light blocked by the thick pall of dust.
The oppressive atmosphere was like the silence before a downpour, sending a chill down the spine.
Deep within the rubble, a burly figure gradually came into view.
He stood quietly, his hands clasped behind his back.
His face, however, was rotted beyond recognition.
Maggots writhed within his shriveled eyeballs, sometimes poking out, sometimes burrowing back in.
The horrific sight was enough to make one's blood run cold.
This burly man, reeking of decay, was holding a bottle of iced tea.
He paid no mind to his rotting appearance as he twisted off the cap and downed the tea in one go.
But the liquid just streamed out of a rotten hole in his throat, spilling onto the ground and leaving a mess.
He clicked his tongue and sighed with regret.
"Absolute Zero!"
Xiao Cangqing's voice rang out in the oppressive atmosphere.
Without another word, he plunged the snow-white sword in his hand into the ground.
Immediately, a terrifyingly low temperature burst from the sword's tip, spreading rapidly across the ground.
The dust on the ground instantly condensed into ice crystals, which expanded like a giant web of ice, enveloping everything.
The ice spread with incredible speed, reaching the rotting man's feet in the blink of an eye and racing upward until his entire body was encased in a thick layer of ice.
An ice sculpture of a burly man was thus created. He stood there silently, eyes closed, as if in a deep sleep.
Cold mist drifted continuously from the sculpture, making the surrounding air feel as if it had been frozen solid.
"That's an Evil Spirit on par with a top-tier King-level expert! And he took it out instantly."
"Don't get careless. Evil Spirits aren't as simple as you think."
"What? You think Xiao Cangqing is as useless as Chu He?"
The viewers in the livestream chat erupted in praise, stunned by Xiao Cangqing's dazzling move.
They showered him with all sorts of compliments without reservation.
The Martial Artists at the scene, however, were not as relaxed as the livestream audience.
They stared intently at the ice sculpture, their hearts filled with vigilance and unease.
Most of them had read the files on an Evil Spirit of this level and threat.
When this Evil Spirit first appeared, it had caused a massive stir and wreaked havoc across the Great Jing Empire.
The rotting man had first materialized in a city called Lingdong City.
In just three short days, he had reduced the city's millions of inhabitants to piles of rotting corpses, the stench soaring to the heavens.
All vegetation for hundreds of miles around the city had been completely eroded by the foul odor.
By the time the Great Jing Empire's Martial Artist forces had assembled and reached the city, it had already become a barren wasteland where not a single blade of grass grew.
Although many years had passed since that catastrophic event, many still remembered the terror the rotting man inspired.
They were well aware of how horrifying this Evil Spirit was.
Thus, even after seeing Xiao Cangqing encase it in ice, they didn't dare to relax in the slightest.
Xiao Cangqing's Spiritual Power spread out like invisible tentacles, attaching to the crystal-clear ice sculpture.
His brow furrowed slightly. He could sense a strange and powerful force still stirring beneath the sculpture's frigid shell.
'Clearly, the wide-area freeze from Absolute Zero alone wasn't enough to finish off this powerful Evil Spirit.'
"Frost's Tears!"
Without hesitation, Xiao Cangqing pulled the sword from where it was deeply embedded in the ground.
His figure and the sword's afterimage intertwined, as if man and sword had become one, transforming into a blinding flash of white light.
The white light shot through the air, moving so fast that even the high-precision livestream cameras could barely track its path.
To the people watching the livestream, it was over in the blink of an eye. Xiao Cangqing's figure had already passed from the front of the ice sculpture to the back.
Following Xiao Cangqing's movement, a tiny hole suddenly appeared over the ice sculpture's heart.
The hole looked as if it had been pierced by a sharp weapon, carrying a piercing chill as it ran through the sculpture's entire body.
Next, with the tiny hole as its center, cracks of all sizes, long and thin, began to spread rapidly, covering the entire sculpture like a spiderweb.
Finally, the towering ice sculpture shattered under the spreading cracks, collapsing into a pile of translucent ice shards.
Xiao Cangqing's figure reappeared, a trace of weakness in his eyes.
In order to prove his strength before the entire nation, he had held nothing back, unleashing these two powerful Martial Arts.
After all, this was the first time he had acted under such public scrutiny, and it was of great significance to him.
The toll of these two Martial Arts was immense. Even a top-tier Martial Artist like Xiao Cangqing felt a hint of exhaustion.
Just as he thought it was all over, a sinister voice suddenly drifted up from the scattered ice shards. "Sigh... you think you can kill me like this? How naive."
The voice was low and strange, carrying an indescribable sense of dread.