As far as the eye could see across the Plain of Divine Demise, the land was vast and verdant. Yet under the night fog, the endless forest formed a brooding, pitch-black expanse stretching without limit, stripped of its daytime lush green.
The trees swayed and leaves rustled as faint green mist drifted and enveloped Qin Ming, making him feel as though he were lifting off the ground, floating forward.
Moving through the forest, his body was nimble and immersed in Yimu qi, brimming with vitality. With each step onto the blades of grass, he crossed great distances in a single stride, as though borne aloft by the green haze.
*Yimu qi has such wonderful utility too,* Qin Ming thought, pleasantly surprised. Not only did it conserve his strength, but the faint green light enshrouding him acted like a spiritual medicine entering his body, slowly purifying his flesh and nourishing his spirit, qi, and vitality.
In this vast natural environment, his steps were fleet, as if he were traveling while harnessing the very essence of vegetation. His hair fluttered freely, giving him the air of a banished immortal walking through the night.
In the ink-black night sky, several streaks of crimson lightning tore past, trailing fiery streamers as though threatening to crash against the earth.
"Is a downpour coming?" Qin Ming looked up. In the distance, dark clouds churned, making the already dim plain appear ever more boundless and pitch-black.
Several human figures entered his sight. Qin Ming recognized three among them who, just like the monsters, had treated him as prey and hunted him down.
Wreathed in green mist, he shifted direction and stepped lightly over the blades of grass, gliding like an ethereal forest spirit and silently blending into the surroundings.
None of the five noticed him right away as they hurried along.
Only when he closed in within two meters did one of them whip around in shock. In frantic haste, the man thrust his gleaming spear forward.
With a sweep of his right hand carrying green radiance, Qin Ming reduced the fine-iron spearhead to shattered iron with his bare hand amidst metallic clangs, sending the scraps clattering to the ground.
"It's you!"
The group paled in terror. The dying youth whom demons had hunted under a bounty was now saturated with the fresh scent of vegetation, possessing a force so overwhelmingly formidable that it chilled their hearts.
"Who organized you to hunt me down?" Qin Ming asked.
A young woman spoke up, "Brother, don't misunderstand! We heard demons were fighting over a silver heart and wanted to snatch it from them. We never expected to run into you."
A middle-aged man nodded. "Indeed, brother, we never intended to target you! It was purely a coincidence. We even wanted to help at first, but you misunderstood and ran off immediately."
Qin Ming's expression remained cold. What was the point of such excuses? Even they felt their words were too flimsy and weak, and they had already tightened their grips on their weapons.
He threw a punch. All the nearby Yimu essence surged forth, driving his fist light past its normal limits. With a boom, the man holding the broken spear exploded along with his weapon.
"Brother, we're all humans! You... you can't do this!" the woman screamed, yet the shining silver saber in her hand slashed out abruptly.
Qin Ming struck with a palm. Her silver saber shattered into seven or eight pieces, and as a green palm light flashed across, her head flew off, leaving a headless corpse to collapse to the ground.
In a flash, the remaining three who had rushed in to surround him were also severely injured, lying on the ground coughing up blood continuously.
"Brother, spare us! We shouldn't have been greedy and joined those demons to surround and kill you!" a young man begged.
Qin Ming resonated with their spirits, confirming that it truly had stemmed from greed. Yet he showed no mercy. The Yimu essence beneath his feet surged, shattering them into pieces.
"Scared the life out of me! He looks ethereal and almost immortal, but when he fights, he's more terrifying than a demon!" a green finch muttered to itself, pondering how to report back.
*Thwack!*
It burst apart, its blood-stained green feathers drifting down through the night sky. Qin Ming stowed his bow and continued on his way.
Deep in the night sky, a massive white peacock hovered. A small bird arrived from afar and reported, "This mission is far too dangerous! We've already lost more than a dozen brothers. We don't want to continue anymore, and we won't be responsible for watching this territory. This isn't work for birds!"
The Plain of Divine Demise was no longer so chaotic; most of the aged demons had already returned to their respective territories. Only a small handful still roamed, and their cultivation was far from shallow—all were formidable figures.
Qin Ming immediately spotted the massive one-eyed black elephant. It swung its coarse, pitch-black trunk, smashing large swathes of trees to splinters and trampling boulder after boulder that barred its way.
It was furious. Its right eye had been blinded by a jade iron arrow, leaving its remaining eye icy and venomous. The old elephant had grown irritable and exceedingly dangerous, craving revenge.
Beside it was another creature of comparable size, also possessing two snow-white tusks and bulging with dense muscles. Incredibly robust, it was a boar demon.
"Hm? I smell him!" An elephant's sense of smell was sharper than a hound's, and the black elephant detected Qin Ming approaching. Of course, this was because Qin Ming had made no deliberate effort to hide, intending to use it as a true test of his skills.
"The same fat heads, big ears, broad snouts, and fangs. Apart from the length of your snouts, you two look practically identical. Truly a pair of pig-headed brothers!"
With just a single remark from Qin Ming, the expressions of both behemoths turned cold.
With a thunderous crash, the black wild boar bolted. Shaking the earth and mountains, sending sand and rocks flying, its charge possessed tremendous momentum, shattering many trees in its wake. However, it had not charged toward Qin Ming—it had spun around and fled into the depths of the night.
"This has nothing to do with me!" it left behind only this sentence, carrying two short blades ground from boar tusks as it crashed into the forest and vanished completely.
Qin Ming paused. *It just ran away like that?*
The black elephant was infuriated. A brother like that was worse than none, utterly unreliable when it counted. Then it grew wary as well, for it truly sensed that the Yimu essence enveloping the youth was terrifyingly dense, making it shudder.
At this moment, wrapped in green mist, Qin Ming seemed ready to ascend on radiant clouds, light and airy as he drifted on the wind, closing in on it at extreme speed.
The black elephant gnashed its teeth. Since they had crossed paths and there was no way to resolve this peacefully, it could only stake everything! It let out a trumpet that shook the wilderness, and the nearby vegetation disintegrated under the massive sound wave. It swung its trunk, stomped the earth to rubble, and charged wildly, sending violent tremors through the ground.
In terms of racial talent, its raw strength vastly exceeded Qin Ming's. After all, such a colossus, having evolved to a relatively high tier, possessed peerless brute force.
However, once a human cultivated heavenly light force to a certain realm, they could face giant beasts without fear—just like a nail facing hard wood.
Qin Ming dodged its charge. Wreathed in green radiance, he flashed to the giant elephant's flank. Driving his right fist out, the Yimu essence transformed into a blazing light that erupted alongside his strike.
The black elephant wailed in agony. Staggering around, it nearly collapsed to the ground. A bloody hole had appeared on its left ribs, and gruesome bloody cracks spread outward in all directions from it.
"Where is my jade iron arrow?" Qin Ming asked.
The black elephant was both terrified and furious, feeling intensely aggrieved. In the eyes of this human youth, it was far less important than a single arrow. With a squelch, Qin Ming swung his jade iron blade and sheared away half of the black elephant's trunk, leaving it looking even more pig-headed. "Ah..." The black elephant flapped its ears, shaking free a jade iron arrow in a gesture of submission, and then turned to flee.
Qin Ming intercepted it, forcing the old elephant into a desperate struggle for its life.
In the end, Qin Ming leaped into the air, unleashing a brilliant blade light. Putting all his might into a single slash, he sent a massive black elephant head tumbling to the ground.
The colossal carcass crashed down, blood gushing like a spring.
Qin Ming felt compassion for the kind, the elderly, the weak, and the disabled, but toward an old demon that had nearly hunted him to death, how could he let things slide just because it lowered its head once? Decapitation was only fitting. A foe that could bring peace of mind and be remembered fondly was, naturally, a dead one.
Qin Ming traveled silently. Capturing several wolf creatures, he learned from their mouths where the Black Peng and the Fire Qilin Lion were currently located. Blood-colored lightning interwove across the sky, and a fine drizzle began to fall.
Amidst the rain and mist, under the flashes of lightning, Qin Ming spotted a tall, demon-god-like figure roaming the plain ahead, clutching a bone blade.
It was none other than that ferocious mountain ape. With little lifespan remaining, it had lingered all this time hoping to secure a share of the silver blood to advance its offspring.
Standing over a dozen meters tall, its dense pelt was illuminated by the flashes of lightning in the rainy night, making it appear ferocious and menacing.
It saw Qin Ming approaching. Though it sensed danger, it bared its teeth in a grin. It belonged to the most dangerous class of elderly creatures; having little time left to live, it feared death least of all.
When it had hunted Qin Ming before, he had narrowly escaped being trampled under its giant feet several times, battered and humiliated. Now, without a single word, he answered only with an earth-shattering blade slash.
In terms of raw strength alone, his current stage was inferior to the mountain ape—a gap born of their species. However, his heavenly light force was not necessarily weaker than the force arts of Rulai, the Six Imperials, or Qingtian.
At the very least, he had caught up in the realm of the Newborn!
Even if mutants from the ancestral courts of those grand lineages possessed "the single sheet of true transmission" to practice against at this stage, they still could not fuse so many force arts. The fierce blade light severed the veil of rain, as though drawing down lightning to strike the mountain ape.
Truth be told, the mountain ape was terrifying. Swinging its eight-meter-long bone blade, it cleaved the ground multiple times, directly splitting earth and stone and obliterating the terrain. Trees and hard stone alike exploded; its destructive power was staggering, threatening to lay waste to the entire mountain forest.
In the rainy night, lightning flashed and thunder rolled.
Qin Ming wielded the wind-thunder force, electric arcs dancing across his entire body while wind force surged beneath his feet. His speed was vastly greater than before his seventh renewal, easily rivaling species renowned for their swiftness.
He circled the mountain ape as he attacked, his blade flashing relentlessly to tear through the night.
He carved wound after wound across the mountain ape's body, its blood spilling continuously alongside the falling rain.
The mountain ape was far stronger than the black elephant, a veritable old demon that had cultivated to the absolute peak of ordinary mountain apes. Its bone blade swept across the night, dispersing the dense curtain of rain as it chopped repeatedly toward the youth's darting figure.
Finally, Qin Ming leaped upward like a bolt of lightning, tearing through the murky rain to reach more than ten meters in the air, his body bathed in green radiance.
The Yimu essence of the entire forest was mobilized for his use. As though treading upon empty air, brilliant blade light illuminated the sky, falling violently upon the mountain ape's head. The awe-inspiring heavenly light force erupted, cleaving its skull clean in two!
The mountain ape's split face looked exceptionally grotesque, its fur drenched in blood. Releasing its grip on the bone blade, it crashed backward onto the earth with a thunderous roar, sending a tremor through the entire forest.
Qin Ming drifted down to land atop a massive tree crown. Green mist flowed, and vibrant vitality swiftly seeped into his flesh, nourishing his spirit, qi, and vitality. Beneath the dark clouds, standing on the treetop, he looked serene and detached, having already restored the energy he had just expended.
*If the Yimu Scripture is already this extraordinary, what must the world-abiding scripture be like?* Qin Ming mused with yearning.
The Yimu Scripture was merely a foundational portion split off from the world-abiding scripture, yet it was already considered a top-tier wondrous art... How astonishing must the complete secret canon be!
Qin Ming dropped to the ground and walked alone across the Plain of Divine Demise. He continuously slew demons, cutting straight through anyone who dared stand in his way! He struck down scores of lesser demons and several old demons as well, shaking this region of the Plain of Divine Demise.
By now, he had ascended a grand mountain, arriving at the Black Peng's dao sanctuary.
Purging demons along the way, he left behind countless corpses and trails of blood across the earth behind him.
Dark clouds cloaked the entire great plain. The rain poured heavier, accompanied by flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder that periodically lit up the sky above this imposing mountain, illuminating the grounds.
This dao sanctuary occupied an open, expansive terrain with numerous magnificent structures, spacious enough for the ten-meter-long Black Peng to enter and move about freely.
At this moment, it stood atop the mountain. Though rain fell all around, none could touch it; dark light steamed from its entire body, appearing to warp the surrounding space in a terrifying display.
On the other side, the bloody hole on the Fire Qilin Lion's forehead had vanished, its injury long since healed.
They stared at the youth ascending the mountain, cold killing intent flowing in the eyes of both demons. "Roar!"
A pride of blood lions roared, charging toward Qin Ming, only to be cleaved in half one by one with a single stroke of his blade, their corpses and blood tumbling across the mountain terrain.
Two of the exceptionally robust blood lions among them had already reached the Outer Sage level, yet they still could not withstand Qin Ming's blade light.
Meanwhile, birds of prey swooped down from the night sky in an ambush, only for Qin Ming to swing his blade repeatedly, detonating more than a dozen of them—all servants of the Black Peng.
"Eldest Brother, Second Brother, he truly has transformed. His cultivation is unfathomable," the Old Donkey's voice trembled slightly. This time, it was dressed in a scholar's robe.
"It's nothing special, entirely manageable!" the Fire Qilin Lion spoke.
Its scales clattered and blazed with scarlet radiance like an intense blaze burning the night sky, instantly vaporizing the increasingly heavy rainfall. Its demonic qi surged tempestuously, shaking the mountain peak.
It struck without warning, a massive paw erupting with blinding scarlet light as it swiped toward the youth walking forward.
Qin Ming raised his palm in kind. In an instant, every plant and tree across the entire mountain rustled in resonance with him. Boundless green light surged alongside rich vitality, seemingly lifting him off his feet as if he were about to float into midair!
He blasted a palm forward.
Instantly, the vegetation across the entire mountain seemed to roar along with him. As green mist and glorious light surged, a colossal green palm print condensed before his hand, hurtling forward in unison!
Chapter 146