Meanwhile, far to the west of the province, beneath the surface of the earth, a narrow purple streak suddenly pierced through layers of rock before descending into a hidden cavern.
The purple light flickered violently, its radiance already considerably weaker than before, and when it finally touched the ground, a figure stumbled out from within it.
He Jinfeng.
The zombie cultivator took only two steps before his body suddenly gave way, his knees striking the stone floor with a heavy thud as his entire body trembled.
A moment later, he collapsed completely.
His breathing was ragged, his corpse-like skin covered in cracks, and his right arm had been completely destroyed from the shoulder down. The flesh around the wound was blackened and twisted, with traces of terrifying power still remaining within it, continuously destroying what little remained of the damaged flesh.
"Senior..."
He Jinfeng gritted his teeth.
The memory of that palm descending from the sky flashed through his mind, causing fury to surge through his heart.
Yet compared with an ordinary cultivator, He Jinfeng's pain was considerably weaker.
His body had long since ceased to function like that of a living human.
After transforming himself into a zombie and cultivating his own corpse body, many of the sensations that would have caused an ordinary person to scream in agony had become dull and distant. His nerves were far less sensitive, his perception of physical pain greatly reduced, allowing him to remain conscious even after suffering injuries that would have crippled an ordinary cultivator.
The pain gradually faded.
He Jinfeng slowly lifted his remaining left hand.
A faint humming sound came from the storage ring on his finger.
His expression changed slightly.
He immediately poured his divine sense into it.
Deep within the storage ring, concealed beneath several layers of objects, was a strange finger bone.
The finger was almost entirely wrapped in yellowed rune-seal paper, layer after layer of ancient seals covering its surface. Even so, the seals could not completely suppress the strange energy contained within the bone.
The finger trembled faintly.
Hum—
Hum—
Each vibration was accompanied by a trace of pure demonic energy leaking from the sealed bone.
He Jinfeng stared at it for several breaths before withdrawing his divine sense.
His expression gradually became complicated.
This finger bone was one of the greatest secrets of his life.
It was also one of the greatest reasons an ordinary slave like him had been able to rise to his current position.
He Jinfeng had not been born into a cultivation family.
He had not possessed extraordinary spiritual roots, nor had he been a genius from some ancient clan.
He had once been nothing more than a slave.
Years ago, when he was still working in a mine controlled by a mortal dynasty, he had discovered the strange stone by accident.
It had been buried extremely deep beneath the earth, surrounded by ordinary rocks, and nobody had noticed anything unusual about it.
When He Jinfeng struck the stone with his mining tool, the rock shattered.
Inside was a finger.
At first, the finger had been completely covered by ancient seals.
He did not know what it was, nor did he understand the meaning of the runes covering it, but the moment his blood touched the finger, something changed.
The sealed finger began to absorb blood.
At first, He Jinfeng thought it was merely some strange treasure.
Then he discovered that the more blood it absorbed, the stronger his body became.
That discovery changed his life.
As a slave, he had no cultivation resources, no inheritance and no master willing to guide him, but the finger bone gave him another path.
He began secretly experimenting.
The blood of ordinary people could nourish the finger, but the blood of cultivators was far more effective.
Eventually, he learned how to use sacrifices to extract even greater amounts of blood essence, allowing the mysterious finger to strengthen his physical body while simultaneously releasing traces of demonic energy.
The more seals he managed to understand, the more terrifying the energy that emerged from the finger became.
It was not the chaotic demonic energy found in ordinary demonic techniques.
It was pure.
Ancient.
And terrifyingly profound.
That was when He Jinfeng understood that the finger bone was no ordinary demonic treasure.
It contained an inheritance far beyond anything he had encountered.
He eventually came into contact with the Seven Star Palace.
To the outside world, the Seven Star Palace was a righteous sect, a powerful cultivation force that had produced numerous geniuses and maintained an upright reputation throughout the Eastern Region.
Its publicly known core disciples were regarded as future Golden Core cultivators, each one possessing extraordinary talent and receiving enormous resources from the sect.
But that was merely the identity the Seven Star Palace presented to the outside world.
The truth was completely different.
The Seven Star Palace was a demonic sect.
It had hidden itself beneath the appearance of a righteous sect for countless years, because a demonic sect of such strength could never openly exist within the Eastern Region. If its true identity were exposed, countless righteous sects, cultivation families and other major powers would join forces to destroy it.
Therefore, everything the Seven Star Palace displayed to the outside world was a carefully constructed disguise.
Even its publicly recognised core disciples were partly a ruse, names and identities deliberately placed before the eyes of outsiders to conceal the true core of the organisation.
The real Seven Star Palace had seven true core disciples.
Seven people.
Seven carefully selected inheritors.
Each of them had been given a specific mission, and each cultivated a high-grade demonic inheritance powerful enough to make cultivators of the same realm tremble.
He Jinfeng was one of those seven.
Among the Seven Star Palace's true core disciples, every single one was considered a Golden Core seed.
The sect did not simply call them core disciples because of their status.
It was because the Seven Star Palace had enough confidence to believe that each of them would eventually step into the Golden Core Realm.
And He Jinfeng had earned that position through his own terrifying path.
The demonic techniques cultivated by ordinary demonic cultivators outside the Seven Star Palace were fundamentally different from the true-grade demonic methods possessed by the sect.
The distinction was not merely a difference in power.
It was a difference in foundation.
Many of the demonic techniques circulating outside were incomplete inheritances, crude methods pieced together from fragments of ancient scriptures or techniques that deliberately sacrificed stability for rapid advancement. Their cultivators often needed enormous quantities of blood essence, souls or other forms of life force, and the more they cultivated, the more obvious their abnormalities became.
Qi deviation was common.
Heart demons were common.
Their cultivation was unstable, their minds gradually twisted by the methods they practised, and many could not even reach Golden Core before destroying themselves.
True-grade demonic methods were different.
They did not require endless slaughter merely to advance.
They possessed methods of refinement, transformation and purification that allowed the cultivator to obtain demonic power without constantly exposing themselves through indiscriminate killing. Their cultivation foundations were far more stable, and they were considerably less susceptible to qi deviation.
Even their resistance to heart demons was much greater.
Most importantly, true-grade demonic inheritances possessed a complete path.
Golden Core was not the limit.
Nascent Soul was possible.
Higher realms were possible as well.
This was why the true inheritors of the Seven Star Palace were so terrifying.
They were not walking along the same broken road as the ordinary demonic cultivators scattered throughout the Eastern Region.
They possessed complete inheritances.
He Jinfeng's inheritance was one of them.
After obtaining the finger bone, he had eventually entered the Seven Star Palace, and the mysterious power contained within the bone had allowed his cultivation to advance at an astonishing rate.
But as his understanding deepened, he also realised that simply using the finger bone as a treasure would never allow him to fully exploit its potential.
The finger itself was too mysterious.
It had existed for an unknown number of years.
Even the ancient runes sealing it were beyond his current comprehension.
He therefore chose another path.
Zombie refining.
Rather than refining corpses into Dao Soldiers as ordinary zombie cultivators did, He Jinfeng used himself as the foundation.
He transformed his own body into a zombie.
He cultivated his corpse body as though it were a magical treasure, constantly tempering it with Yin energy and demonic energy, hoping that one day his physical body would become strong enough to refine the mysterious finger bone itself.
If he succeeded, he might finally uncover the true secret hidden within it.
But today, that carefully cultivated corpse body had nearly been destroyed.
He Jinfeng slowly looked down at his empty right shoulder.
His remaining hand tightened into a fist.
Fury once again surged through his heart.
That palm.
That terrifying palm.
He had escaped using one of his greatest trump cards, a Rank 4 Thousand-Mile Talisman.
The talisman was extraordinarily precious.
Even within the Seven Star Palace, Rank 4 talismans were not something that could be casually wasted.
It was precisely because he possessed this talisman that he had dared to accept the mission to kill Guardian Zhao.
He knew Guardian Zhao had recently broken through to Astral Gang.
He knew the market possessed a powerful defensive formation.
He also knew that the Seven Star Palace's plans required them to eliminate Guardian Zhao before he could establish himself firmly within the southern region.
Normally, He Jinfeng would never have dared to take such a risk.
But with the Rank 4 Thousand-Mile Talisman in his possession, he believed that even if something went wrong, he could escape.
He had been right.
He had escaped.
But the result was far worse than he had imagined.
Even after activating the Rank 4 Thousand-Mile Talisman, that terrifying palm had still reached him.
If he had been a little slower, he would have died.
He Jinfeng's expression slowly became ugly.
"A Golden Core cultivator..."
His voice was low.
There was no other explanation.
A cultivator who could injure him through the power of a Rank 4 Thousand-Mile Talisman was definitely not someone he could provoke.
Even if the opponent was merely an early-stage Golden Core cultivator, the difference between them was already like heaven and earth.
He Jinfeng's teeth clenched.
His eyes burned with hatred.
"Golden Core..."
He stared at the empty space where his right arm had once been, his hatred gradually becoming colder.
He could not fight that person now.
He understood this clearly.
But that did not mean he would forget.
He had survived from the lowest position possible, from a slave who could be beaten or killed at any moment, to one of the Seven Star Palace's true core disciples.
He had crawled through countless dangers to reach this point.
He had killed.
He had endured.
He had swallowed humiliation.
He had even transformed his own body into something no longer completely human.
He had survived all of it.
He would survive this as well.
And one day, he would make that person pay.
He Jinfeng slowly raised his head, his remaining eye filled with cold hatred.
"Senior..."
His voice became a low growl.
"I will remember you."
He took a deep breath, then slowly sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor.
The finger bone inside his storage ring hummed again.
He Jinfeng's gaze shifted towards it.
The rune seals wrapped around the finger trembled faintly, and for a brief moment, an ancient demonic aura leaked through the cracks between them.
A strange smile appeared on He Jinfeng's face.
"One day..."
"I will refine even you."