Chapter 50
Chapter 50
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 0
Chapter Title: Heroes Gather to Slay the Demon
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"It's over, it's over. Everything's finished! The True King was far too ruthless!"
Li Jindou was gripped by terror, somewhat losing his temper.
"A place like the Kiln Works—did they really need to seal a demon there?"
He sensed the savage aura emanating from the direction of the Kiln Works. This aura was overwhelmingly powerful, so intense that even someone of his cultivation level felt utter despair.
"Tianqing and Chen Shi are still out playing. This is bad!"
He could barely suppress the porcelainization of his legs, overwhelmed with anxiety as he tried to shift off the bed. With the demon's emergence, all evils would rise in tandem.
In the demon's domain, evils and spirits thrived like fish in water. They wouldn't porcelainize and were no longer confined to the night.
They would gradually awaken, absorbing the strange energies within the demon domain, and begin preying on the living.
Though Li Jindou hadn't read as many books as Li Tianqing, he had far more life experiences. He knew full well how terrifying a demon's emergence could be.
In his lifetime, he had endured three catastrophes caused by demon transformations. A demon-level catastrophe was a city-destroying disaster. An entire city, along with its surrounding territories, would see few survivors!
Each demon transformation claimed over a million lives!
Fortunately, demon-level catastrophes were exceedingly rare. Most were merely spirit-level.
Spirits were far easier to deal with.
For now, the demon domain was still expanding, and the demonization wasn't deep yet. Those affected were typically low-level creatures like birds, beasts, fish, insects, and plants such as crops and vegetables. These would all transform into porcelain forms.
After a day, once the demon domain expanded to about a hundred li, the expansion would halt. At that point, higher beings like humans and livestock would be affected.
They would gradually grow sluggish in their movements, turning fully into porcelain after two days.
By the fourth day, most people would have become porcelain, leaving only the cultivators within this hundred-li radius.
On the seventh day, cultivators who had formed their Divine Embryos would see their embryos porcelainize, followed by their fleshly bodies.
On the eleventh day, Golden Cores would porcelainize.
On the nineteenth day, Nascent Souls.
On the thirtieth day, Primordial Spirits.
Cold sweat poured down Li Jindou's forehead. Even with godmothers protecting each village, they could at most buy ordinary folk and cultivators an extra two days.
"With me and Huangpo Village's godmother, we can hold out thirty-two days at most. After that, I'm done for! Right, the Man of Qianyang Mountain—there's still the Man of Qianyang Mountain!"
His eyes lit up as he hurriedly called out Grandpa Chen Shi's name. But after shouting for a while, no one responded.
Li Jindou immediately used his arms as legs, dragging his porcelainized calves as he crawled out of the west wing. The Chen household was utterly empty—there was no one but him.
"Where are they? Where did everyone go?"
He grew irritable.
"Since no one's home, looks like it's up to me!"
Bracing himself with his hands, head down and feet up, he sped toward the outside.
At Mirror Lake Manor, coffins opened one layer after another. Young Master Xiao emerged from his coffin, looking up in surprise at the sky. It was as if a thin red veil shrouded the heavens, blanketing Qianyang Mountain. From the valley, its end was invisible, but it clearly covered a vast area.
Could it be... a demon-level catastrophe!
His expression shifted slightly. He knew the perils of a demon-level catastrophe all too well.
"A demon sealed by the True King has been released. Who was the idiot responsible?"
His injuries hadn't fully healed, yet he reached out to grasp his longsword. The small Shrike Sword shrank to the size of a hair clasp. Young Master Xiao tied up his hair, inserted the clasp, and headed outward.
Under a demon transformation, everything within a hundred li would perish! For his own life, for the lives of everyone in the hundred-li radius, he had to fight with everything he had!
In Gangzi Village, Granny Sha stared at her rice jar. The rice inside had become heavy and dense—no longer rice, but porcelain rice.
This rice was utterly inedible.
She stepped outside, where the fuzzy white greens she had planted by the wall now gleamed with a porcelain sheen.
The little old lady walked out of the village with hands clasped behind her back. Along the way, villagers cried out in alarm one after another—they had discovered that every household's rice, flour, oil, and grains had all turned to porcelain.
Granny Sha's face darkened as she reached the fields. Everywhere she looked, porcelain stalks covered the ground. A group of field mice from Xinxian stood dazed at the ridges, at a loss.
In the river, a cormorant had caught a fish and tried swallowing it, only to spit it back out from its throat.
That fish was porcelain too.
"With food porcelainized, we can starve for a day, two days, three days. We can still eat poultry or exotic beasts. But once the poultry and beasts porcelainize too, what then?"
Granny Sha's face turned ashen as she muttered lowly,
"Eat people?"
It was almost inevitable!
"Heh heh, after a hundred days of demon transformation, this place will be a hundred times more terrifying than the underworld! But..."
The little old lady straightened up, returned to her house, picked up her Ram's Horn Celestial Spirit Lamp, and headed out. "I may not be able to take on the underworld, but you? I can handle!"
In Fangdian Village, Jin Hongying no longer wore her bright red dress. Instead, she donned plain floral cloth garments, dressed like a simple village girl. All traces of her former heroic flair and seductive allure were gone.
She sat like a villager by Fangdian Village's godmother, basking in the sun with a bowl of rice soup in her hands. There were scant few grains of rice.
These past days, she had hidden in Fangdian Village, secretly recuperating. She had been injured multiple times—first by Young Master Xiao, then by the aura of the ancient monster in Mirror Lake Manor's coffins, and later shaken by Chen Du's voice. None of the injuries were severe individually, but accumulated, they were grave.
The sunlight seemed veiled in red gauze, offering no warmth.
Jin Hongying chewed a grain of rice and spat it out with a "pah pah."
This rice was impossible to chew—like sand in her mouth.
"A demon-level catastrophe... These days I've been hiding in Fangdian Village to recover, and my wounds have healed seventy or eighty percent. I never imagined this would happen. Damn it! If I hadn't been chasing Young Master Xiao, my Divine Machine Battalion could have fought to slay the demon! Regrettably, I was injured by Young Master Xiao."
She stood up and said softly, "When the nest is destroyed, no eggs survive. If we don't eliminate this demon soon, I'll die here too! Thank you, Godmother. If I return alive, I'll offer you incense and tribute!"
She walked outward, laughing as she said, "If I don't come back, Godmother, don't miss your incense and offerings. Because you won't survive either!"
In a demon-level catastrophe, the hundred-li radius becomes a dead zone. Evils rampage unchecked, leaving no trace of humanity.
Neither the living nor spirits can endure.
When Jin Hongying arrived near the Kiln Works, Young Master Xiao was also approaching.
Their gazes met. Though enemies, neither attacked. Instead, they both strode toward the Kiln Works.
"Today, we set aside right and wrong, grudges and enmities, futures and ambitions," Young Master Xiao said.
Jin Hongying eyed the colossal porcelain statue of the Eight-Armed Fighting Mother Bodhisattva towering over the treetops and smiled. "That's only for today. If this lady survives, please return the treasure seal you stole from my Divine Machine Battalion, Senior Xiao. Otherwise, I'll still send you on your way and loot it from your corpse!"
Young Master Xiao replied calmly, "The Western King Jade Seal isn't the Divine Machine Battalion's treasure—it's an imperial heirloom of the Great Ming royal clan."
Jin Hongying sneered. "With the True King absent, the Western King Jade Seal was entrusted to the Divine Machine Battalion for safekeeping! By stealing the seal,"
"you harbor ill intentions. You plan to use the Western King Jade Seal to open the Tomb of the True King! Don't think I don't know your little scheme!"
Young Master Xiao didn't answer.
"No answer means admission!" Jin Hongying barked.
At that moment, footsteps approached. Granny Sha arrived carrying her Ram's Horn Celestial Spirit Lamp and chuckled. "Little lady, you've got guts—and even more fire. With a great foe before us, set aside old grudges for now."
"Well said."
Li Jindou arrived headfirst, feet up, and said gravely, "This isn't about saving the people in the hundred-li radius anymore—it's about saving ourselves! If you're half-hearted even when saving your own skin, you deserve to die!"
Young Master Xiao said, "Saving others is saving oneself. Sacrificing the body is claiming righteousness."
Jin Hongying added, "This demon is still recovering, not at full strength. Only after a hundred days, when it has assimilated all life in the hundred-li radius, will it reach its peak. Now is the best time to slay it!"
The four gathered. Granny Sha's heart sank halfway as she thought, "Four of us, three injured. How are we supposed to fight? Am I the main force? Old Chen didn't come? Without Old Chen, victory will be hard."
Just as the thought crossed her mind, something fell from the sky and shattered on the ground!
It was a porcelain doll—one of Zhao Family Xuan Ying Mansion's Three Elders, named Zhao Cunsi.
Xuan Ying Mansion originally had Four Elders, and Zhao Cunyi was one of them. Unfortunately, Zhao Cunyi went to the Chen household and never returned.
This Zhao Cunsi had formed his Primordial Spirit and was a Soul Transformation Realm expert. Yet he had turned into a doll and died here.
"Boom!"
A jade porcelain emerald demon-subduing pestle smashed down, exploding the Primordial Spirit of another of the Zhao Three Elders, Zhao Cunxiang. The massive pestle, thick as a roof beam, crushed down, smashing Zhao Cunxiang into meat paste.
Among the Zhao Three Elders, Zhao Cunping—former mansion lord of Zhao Family Xuan Ying Mansion—possessed the strongest cultivation. He now soared into the air, unwilling to fight further, and fled openly.
The Zhao Three Elders had stayed behind, realizing no one could survive the demon transformation. To save the Zhao clansmen, they desperately battled the Evil Bodhisattva, hoping to slay it and buy a chance for the others.
But the deaths of the other two shattered his courage, sending him fleeing in panic.
However, he hadn't gone far before a sudden arrow struck him.
The arrow carried his body whistling away into the distance, nailing him to a mountaintop before finally halting.
Young Master Xiao's expression grew solemn. That arrow was fired from a porcelain arrowhead, its power immense enough to pressure even him.
"If it were my peak condition..."
He pursed his lips.
Ahead, petrified human bodies stood like bizarre sculptures, catching their eyes. These were the Embroidered Uniform Guards and Zhao clansmen who hadn't escaped in time when the demon transformation erupted.
Unlike the Ghost God Domain—which turned people into mobile, jumping, talking porcelain dolls—the demon transformation turned them into immobile humanoid porcelain statues.
The colossal Evil Bodhisattva sat amid the mountains and forests, the surrounding Kiln Works nearly leveled.
It was covered in blue-and-white porcelain patterns, crafted by Great Ming master artisans. The blue was vivid, using Su Mali cobalt. Intricate motifs adorned it, including azure dragon designs coiling around its collar and cuffs.
As its head turned, all four faces rotated together, the neck joints emitting sliding porcelain sounds. The four faces' mouths could open and close, eyes blink, eyeballs roll—though somewhat stiffly.
"What sort of horrifying monstrosity did the True King create?" Granny Sha cursed. At her words, the blue-and-white porcelain Evil Bodhisattva whipped its head toward her, its gaze like intersecting lightning. Its eight arms rose, the weapons in its hands glowing with interlacing patterns.
Beneath the Evil Bodhisattva were three porcelain figures over ten feet tall—the Kiln Workers, bustling about.
They grabbed porcelainized Zhao clansmen one by one, tossing them into a kiln cave burning with true fire to melt them down, patching the cracks on the Evil Bodhisattva's body.
"Kill the Kiln Workers first!" Young Master Xiao said.
Granny Sha took the lead, shouting, "Attack!"
She activated the Supreme Eight Trigrams Body Protection Art. Divine light blazed forth as the eight trigrams—Qian, Kun, Gen, Li, Kan, Xun, Zhen—manifested, evolving into heaven, earth, mountain, marsh, fire, water, wind, thunder.
Her Primordial Spirit left her body, standing behind her majestic as an imperial consort, boundless in power. The eight trigrams spun, runes intertwined, unleashing immense might toward the Evil Bodhisattva!
At the same time, she unleashed her Ram's Horn Celestial Spirit Lamp, its light piercing to seek the demon soul hidden within the Evil Bodhisattva!
Young Master Xiao sacrificed his Fine Waist and Shrike Swords. Jin Hongying unleashed her strongest spell. Li Jindou activated his Six Yin Jade Wheel. The three charged the Evil Bodhisattva!
Suddenly, their attacks veered—the swords, spell, and jade wheel all hurtled toward the three Kiln Workers!
Meanwhile, the surviving Embroidered Uniform Guards and Zhao clansmen of Xuan Ying Mansion escorted the porcelainized Zhao Yanlong, galloping madly on horseback. Hooves thundered as they raced at full speed.
The demon domain's edge resembled a pale red curtain, still expanding outward, though far slower than the galloping horses.
Soon, the group reached the domain's edge and leaped outward on horseback.
They crashed into the pale red curtain. It rippled slightly, and the riders vanished one after another.
The next instant, terrified screams echoed from above Qianyang Mountain. Numerous Embroidered Uniform Guards and Zhao clansmen, along with their mounts, plummeted from the sky—smashing onto rocks, cliffs below, some even impaled on trees and left hanging.
The other Zhao clansmen and Embroidered Uniform Guards yanked their reins, not daring to charge the domain edge again. The space at the demon domain's boundary was extraordinarily strange, known as the Demon Domain Corridor.
One appeared to exit the domain upon reaching the edge, only to find themselves back inside the next moment.
Escaping the demon domain was nearly impossible.
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