Ye Feng said nothing. He looked down as the pool of blood submerged the tops of his feet; in his eyes, the crimson gore seemed like a murky black pool.
He lifted his foot, only to feel as though he were trapped deep in mire, dragging him down and refusing to let him leave.
Ye Feng gave a bitter smile. Taking advantage of the turbulence in his mind, the demon spirit suddenly surged forth!
It transformed into a dark demonic mask covering half of his face!
With a savage countenance, the demon spirit cast its gaze around and saw Ye Feng gripping his longsword, while the vicious aura of Nu Sha permeated the entire ground.
Blood still dripped from the sword's edge, pattering onto the ground. Its eyes flickered with satisfaction before it settled.
Steadying his mind, Ye Feng sneered as he stared at the demon spirit.
"What? Feared I wouldn't kill them?"
The demon spirit's eyes gleamed. "Naturally."
Buzz!
A palm-sized black compass was spat forth from the demon spirit's mouth.
Immediately afterward, demonic energy welled up from the compass, and an eerie black light curtain materialized before them.
Holding the baby boy, Song Zhi'ang stepped into the light curtain. Ye Feng walked expressionlessly toward it.
Deep down, he had already sensed it faintly...
That man was almost here.
He desperately wanted to leave some clues behind, or exchange even a single word with him.
Yet from beginning to end, he dared not act rashly in the slightest...
Even though Song Zhi'ang had revealed some secrets to him, who could say if it was not Lu Tian testing him?
Could Lu Tian be using Song Zhi'ang's identity, manipulating her to probe him intentionally or unintentionally all along?
Even the thing Song Zhi'ang claimed to have left within Nu Sha—Ye Feng doubted whether Lu Tian had arranged it deliberately.
Yet it was also possible that Lu Tian truly did not know about what Song Zhi'ang had left.
And that included the demon spirit!
Was he genuinely suppressing it?
Without absolute certainty, he dared not make contact with Li Guanqi recklessly.
A single careless slip would cost them everything...
Buzz!
In the end, Ye Feng did nothing. He stepped into the light curtain and followed Song Zhi'ang, vanishing on the spot!
The array plate disappeared, and after a ripple distorted the void, not a single trace remained.
Rumble!
Suddenly, rolls of screeching thunder resounded across the heavens, and a white-robed figure teleported into view.
The heavy blanket of clouds across the sky seemed cleaved clean in two by a sharp blade.
Whoosh!
Li Guanqi arrived in the air above the Duan clan estate. Before he even drew close, the pungent stench of blood already filled the air.
Not even the torrential downpour could wash it away.
Li Guanqi's face darkened instantly, and he teleported straight into the Duan clan compound.
Wherever his gaze fell, blood flowed like rivers...
Upon the cyan stone stairs, blood mingled with shredded flesh cascaded down the steps.
Corpses littered the ground in all directions, severed limbs scattered everywhere—a brutality seldom seen in a lifetime!
Li Guanqi closed his eyes, his face pale with rage and agonizing pain etched between his brows.
For he clearly sensed the aura of Ye Feng's Nu Sha...
The wounds across the corpses bore lingering traces of demonic energy and Geng Metal power.
Which meant... in his perception, every person here had been killed by Ye Feng.
Not only killed, but slaughtered to the last soul in an exceedingly cruel manner.
Sweeping his divine sense across the sprawling estate, at least four hundred people had been butchered!
Li Guanqi stood in the heavy rain, fists clenched tight and his body trembling slightly, a turbulent storm of emotions churning in his chest.
He did not even realize his fingernails were digging into his palms as his mind involuntarily pictured a demonized Ye Feng mercilessly torturing and butchering everyone.
From the residual demonic energy, he could sense that Ye Feng's current aura was far stronger than his own—at the late-stage peak.
Originally, Ye Feng had broken through later than him, and even Cao Yan had barely stabilized his cultivation at the early Body Integration Realm.
The peak of the late Body Integration Realm... Recalling how thirty percent of Ye Feng's natal jade slip had been shrouded in demonic energy, Li Guanqi stood frozen in place, keeping his eyes shut for a long time.
Boom!
"Ahhhhh!"
Clenching both fists, Li Guanqi opened his eyes wide with fury, blue veins bulging along his neck as he let out a hoarse, gut-wrenching roar!
That furious cry carried all the anger and indignation within his heart.
And even more... powerlessness and dread.
The thing he dreaded most had come to pass after all...
Ye Feng... had killed.
Right then, numerous nearby cultivators drawn by the scent of blood converged on the area.
Coupled with the significant commotion Li Guanqi had caused when he arrived, many cultivators rushed over in no time, including several powerhouses from the Ancient Clans.
Li Guanqi's eyes flickered; he had naturally sensed the fluctuations of their auras.
Boom!
Dozens of four-foot-long lightning swords shot out from within the Duan clan estate!
The lightning swords hovered merely an inch from the brows of the gathered experts, forcing every single one of them to halt five hundred zhang away!
Buzz!
An unimaginably powerful lightning barrier formed in an instant, cloaking the entire Duan clan estate within.
The demonic energy and Geng Metal sword qi here were extraordinarily concentrated. If outsiders truly entered, someone would definitely recognize that this was Ye Feng's power.
Among them, an old man clad in opulent purple robes narrowed his eyes and spoke in a chilling voice, glaring at the lightning sword hovering before his forehead:
"Which fellow Daoist is here?"
No one answered. There was only the relentless screech of lightning as the domain reinforced itself.
The old man snorted, his turbid eyes fixed on the lightning sword in front of him as he said coldly, "Regardless of who you are, isn't this action... going a bit too far?"
Boom!
Clad in white and gripping the Red Lotus sword in hand, Li Guanqi strode slowly out from the domain, his icy intent to kill blanketing the void.
His purely white eyes struck fear into onlookers like gazing directly into an abyss. Treading on lightning, chaotic sword qi crisscrossed violently around him.
Li Guanqi glared at the old man, his expression gloomy as he said coldly, "Too far? Take one step forward, and I will kill you."
With those words, more than forty lightning swords abruptly expanded in the wind to a hundred zhang in length!
Like a towering wall, the lightning swords plunged into the earth.
Li Guanqi said in a chilling voice, "This is forbidden ground. Trespassers die."
Having spoken, Li Guanqi flashed away before their outraged gazes!
Cold sweat soaked the lead old man's back. The instant he had lifted his foot earlier, he had clearly felt the chilling aura of death engulf him.
Had he not hastily checked his movement, his head would have parted from his shoulders by now.
The assembled experts looked among one another, none daring to utter a word.
The crowd dispersed, and soon a rumor began to spread...
"Who knows how the Duan clan of Sunset Domain provoked the Yanluo Sword Venerable, but that Li Guanqi crossed domains with a single sword and slaughtered their entire clan!"
"What? Truly wiped out their whole family?"
"Tsk, don't believe me? I saw it with my own eyes that day!"
"Through the cracks in the domain barrier, corpses covered the ground! Neither young nor old, male nor female, was spared!"
"Sigh... I've long heard that Li Guanqi of the Great Xia Sword Sect is mercurial and loves nothing more than slaughtering clans. What difference is there between such a cultivator and an evil cultivator?"
News of the massacre spread like wildfire, yet Li Guanqi offered not a single word of defense from beginning to end.
Yet the more he remained silent, the more everyone assumed he was guilty and dared not speak up.
For a time, rumors and slander ran rampant, and many righteous older cultivators began regarding Li Guanqi as no different from an evil cultivator.
To all of this, Li Guanqi turned a deaf ear, acting as though he had heard nothing at all.
Chapter 992