In the night sky, the colossal silhouette shrouded in immortal mist stared ahead. He sensed that across the divide, a divine being was likewise gazing back, fixing him with a cold, merciless stare.
Above the pitch-black clouds, they watched each other across the distance. Mysterious Dao rhythms intersected across the vault of heaven, followed by a thunderous boom as a terrifying roar tore through the realm beyond.
Down below, in the Plain of Divine Demise, the ferocious battle raged on, dyeing the vast flats in blood.
Qin Ming fought across territorial boundaries, his white robe stained red. Even the unceasing heavenly light force rippling around his body could not fully shield him from the splashing demon blood. In fact, he was bleeding from wounds of his own.
On this chaotic battlefield, fortunes shifted in an instant, and all manner of unforeseen crises could erupt at any moment.
Just moments ago, a grievously wounded fourth-realm demon had barreled into this sector, rampaging recklessly. The mountain-shaking hammer it wielded truly possessed the might to shatter cliffs.
Formidable though Qin Ming was, he had been sent flying upon their initial clash, blood seeping from the corners of his mouth.
Fortunately, he had already broken through into the third realm; had he encountered such a peril before that, death would have been certain.
The great demon's face had contorted in utter shock. How could a white-robed human youth an entire realm below him be this terrifyingly strong? With a strike so fierce, even a young Ape Demon King should have been blown to pieces!
The demon had already suffered catastrophic wounds earlier. Feigning death on the fourth battlefield, it had seized an opportunity to slip over to this sector, intending to smother the human race's peerless talents in the cradle.
Never had it expected to suffer such a violent jolt the moment it arrived.
What followed stunned it even further. As it lunged at the youth in a series of violent clashes, the dense web of fractures all over its body split open once more, leaving it drenched in gore.
Facing an opponent of a higher tier and wounded for the first time in this battle, Qin Ming instantly turned solemn. He threw everything he had into the fray, his spirit field waves expanding as killing intent surged skyward.
Evidently, the fourth-realm demon had already reached the end of its strength. It bore nine horrific wounds that had nearly torn its body asunder; otherwise, it would never have fled its original battlefield out of cowardice. It had sought to slaughter the human race's future patriarchs here, only to kick an iron plate.
In the end... its body burst apart!
Qin Ming flicked the demon blood from his mutton-fat jade iron saber and plunged back into the fray.
Having cut his way across vast stretches of land, even someone with a foundation as robust as his felt utterly exhausted amid this life-and-death struggle. Wounds began to accumulate, and his white robe turned entirely crimson.
No being could remain unscathed on a battlefield where two civilizations collided on such a scale. Every creature was fighting tooth and nail, staking their very lives.
Yet Qin Ming's eyes shone brighter and brighter. He had grown exhausted, and he had suffered injuries, but as he refined wondrous blood while fighting, he quickly recovered.
He could distinctly feel his cultivation rising, strand by strand.
Without question, this kind of bloody struggle—hovering constantly on the brink of life and death—forced him to temper and absorb medicinal potency to the absolute maximum. Such remarkable efficiency was simply unattainable under normal circumstances.
The healing medicines and elixirs he had seized from Helian Zhaoyu remained set aside for now.
Whenever Qin Ming was injured or weary, he extracted the essence from wondrous blood right on the battlefield.
Even so, he understood that trying to advance a step further on the battlefield in the short term would be extraordinarily difficult, perhaps outright impossible. After all, on the Newborn path, each step was a heavenly chasm; the brutal reality lay plainly before him.
Lately, he had been studying the *Overlord's Posthumous Writings*.
Even someone as brilliantly gifted as the Overlord had only begun to accelerate drastically in cultivation speed after stepping into the third realm, and that was merely relative to other practitioners of the Newborn path.
For a genius of the Newborn path in the second realm, advancing past each minor threshold took a decade. Upon reaching the third realm, the difficulty doubled; surmounting a single sub-stage readily required twenty years.
The Overlord's writings detailed harnessing the grand momentum of heaven and earth—relying on external "heavenly fields" and "earthly fields" to stimulate the transformation of one's own spirit field, thereby drastically boosting cultivation efficiency.
For instance, the Overlord used wind, rain, thunder, and lightning from nature against his foes, and borrowed the energy of mountains, rivers, and secret realms to nourish the human spirit field.
One could say that with his peerless natural gifts, he had managed to compress the time needed to break through each sub-stage from twenty years down to six or seven.
*The spirit field realm spans from the initial phase to the intermediate phase, then to the late phase, before reaching perfection to make a bid for the fourth realm. Even for the Overlord, that still took about twenty years in total.*
Qin Ming advanced, bathed in demon blood. Contemplating such a time span, he frowned slightly, overwhelmed with emotion. The Newborn path was truly arduous; even that counted as remarkably swift.
And once one reached the fourth realm, the time required to break through would likely double yet again.
When the Overlord became an unmatched grandmaster, he was already over a hundred years old. At that age, he could still be considered in his prime—practically a "youth" among practitioners.
Even compared against the outer realm and the esoteric sect, while that speed could not be called top-tier, it was by no means slow. It was precisely why, after the bloody conflict between the Overlord and Cao Qianqiu's disciples, he had immediately drawn the terrifying gaze of Old Cao.
The bottlenecks of the immortal path mainly showed their severity after the fourth and fifth realms; even so, normal advancement on that path was certainly faster than on the Newborn path.
*Frankly speaking, with my extraordinary natural gifts, if I borrow the Overlord's methods, I might be able to cut that time by more than half again. Does that mean breaking through to the intermediate spirit field realm would take three years? If I push myself even harder, could I compress it to a year or two?*
Qin Ming sighed. He wanted to be faster.
Yet on the Newborn path, every step was a heavenly chasm, fraught with immense difficulty.
*Throughout history, whenever a great war erupted, a select few always rose at astonishing speed. Right now, this is that chance!* His eyes sparkled once more.
He could clearly sense his cultivation progressing.
Back then, he had raided the Six Imperials ancestral court's wondrous blood garden for days on end, yet he had only obtained eight varieties of medicine.
Today, after only brief skirmishes, he had already harvested seven kinds of precious medicine.
Slaughtering one's way through thousands of troops was fraught with mortal peril, but it also concealed immense opportunity!
Qin Ming soon refined another strain of wondrous blood, and the results were exceptional. Every clash helped him temper the medicine, spurring his body to absorb the strange substances.
*Straddling the line of life and death, honing body and soul, aided by rare medicines—cultivation speed can increase dramatically.*
He did not expect a single bloody battle to equal years of bitter cultivation, but as long as it provided a boost and he could feel himself continuously growing stronger, that was enough.
Charging back and forth across different territories, Qin Ming eventually fought his way back, worried that demons might have invaded the sector under his charge.
He quickly discovered his worries had been unfounded. The demon host avoided that area like the plague, completely unwilling to draw near.
After all, he had charged back and forth, returning multiple times and slaying four heavenly demon seeds. Who would still dare rush in to die?
Moreover, the Thunder King Bird had achieved its breakthrough naturally. Spurred by the intense battle, its secret arts reached completion, and the accumulated auspicious beast blood took full effect, allowing it to advance into the fourth realm today.
Afterward, Qin Ming completely let loose. Leaving the Thunder King Bird to guard the post, he gave free rein to his impulses and plunged toward distant sectors—hunting for wondrous blood, harvesting precious herbs, and refining them as he fought.
By the end, his white robe was entirely crimson. He was soaked in blood from head to toe, even his hair dripping wet.
In that moment, he truly seemed to have become that terrifying, upright Ape Demon King. Every demon that laid eyes upon him thought the same.
Qin Ming set off in earnest toward distant battlegrounds, seeking to reinforce old acquaintances.
In a certain sector, Li Qingxu was utterly stunned. "What did you say? Qin Ming broke through to the third realm even before me, stepped into the immortal path domain, and even went to Huai'an Town to duel with swords and slay a heavenly demon seed there?!"
He zoned out for a brief moment. His rival had not only caught up in realm, but had even overtaken him!
Shortly after, he threw himself into frenzied combat, brandishing a bamboo staff to sweep through the nearby demons.
"Today, I, Li Qingxu, have advanced to the third realm to slay demons and exterminate fiends! Do any heavenly demon seeds dare face me?!" Li Qingxu roared as he fought within the mist of blood.
Not long after, he was staggering, pouring blue liquid into his mouth.
He had lost count of how many flasks of potion he had guzzled; without them, he would have collapsed from sheer exhaustion long ago.
He was far from the only one. Anyone who stood out would be besieged, and prolonged battle was impossible without life-saving spirit medicines.
Li Qingxu got his wish, encountering a heavenly demon seed and engaging in a ferocious duel.
In the end, he burst into loud laughter, his face deathly pale. A blow had nearly cleaved him diagonally across the shoulder; his intestines spilled across the ground, and his internal organs threatened to fall out.
Yet the shimmering purple bamboo staff in his hand had pierced straight through the demon youth's forehead, shattering the skull and spilling a considerable amount of white curds.
"Haha! Worth it! I finally killed a seed!" He fell backward onto the ground. So many had gossiped and mocked him behind his back, but today he had vindicated himself.
Evidently, he had resorted to a suicidal tactic, bringing mutual destruction, and was now on the brink of death himself.
Even though he had suffered multiple humiliating defeats in the past, the Li clan still valued him greatly. A retinue had accompanied him into battle, and though they were nearly wiped out, three survivors staggered over, pieced his broken body together, and rapidly dragged him away.
A middle-aged man's voice trembled. "Disaster... Even if he survives, he's likely crippled. His mental field has collapsed, and his organs are mangled."
"Doesn't matter. Today felt magnificent! I finally had a thoroughly satisfying fight!" Li Qingxu smiled, spitting mouthfuls of blood as he spoke.
"What about the contingency Patriarch Cao left you?" the Li clan members asked urgently.
"Dissipated..." Li Qingxu closed his eyes.
Qin Ming fought his way forward, advancing with great difficulty toward the distant sectors. Ordinarily, a distance of one or two hundred li would have been nothing to him.
Had he used spirit wandering, he could have arrived in the blink of an eye.
Now, however, every li he gained cost him showers of demon blood. Some stretches were desolate, while others teemed with demon ranks that he had to drill straight through.
He encountered no more heavenly demon seeds, but he harvested two more varieties of wondrous blood from other creatures.
Perhaps such an opportunity would never come again. From the start of the battle until now, Qin Ming had already collected nine varieties of precious medicine—a truly staggering haul.
Halfway along the road, he sensed a commotion far in the distance, accompanied by violent energy fluctuations. Then battle cries shook the heavens from that direction as several old monsters in the late fourth realm charged over.
Qin Ming realized something major must have occurred.
"Immortal seed Su Shiyun has fallen in battle!" Not long after, word filtered back from ahead.
"What?!" Even Qin Ming was greatly shocked. She was no ordinary figure. Like Cui Chonghe, Su Shiyun had attained enlightenment at the tender age of three or four and had entered the Fangwai Immortal Land very early on, recognized as one of the premier seeds.
In the past, when Qin Ming took the airship to Kunling, he had met seven disciples of the immortal path and esoteric sect—including Su Shiyun and Xue Yunzheng—who had been granted special privilege to harvest celestial spirit items in the heavenly medicine gardens.
For an immortal seed of her stature to perish in this battle showed just how brutal the conflict truly was.
"An old late-fourth-realm demon concealed its tracks and snuffed out that peerless talent!" someone shouted in furious outrage, revealing the truth.
Otherwise, this immortal seed would never have perished; her performance had been extraordinarily brilliant.
That sector erupted into absolute fury. Several elderly human masters went mad with rage, charging across the lines to take vengeance on the demons.
"Jiang Ran was the first to appear and retrieve Su Shiyun's remains."
"Is there even a glimmer of hope to revive her?"
"It should be hopeless."
...
Qin Ming concentrated his spirit to the utmost, pressing forward through the slaughter with vigilant caution to avoid being ambushed by some old demon leaping from hiding.
"Kill!"
Dissatisfied with his slow pace whenever he hit a dense cluster of demons, he bounded high into the air, practically walking across the void as he stepped directly on their heads to advance.
Shielded by his spirit field, he left a trail of collapsing, shattered skulls beneath his feet.
This method of travel drew far too much attention. After trampling countless demons to death, a spear radiating biting chill suddenly thrust at him from the flank, swift as lightning.
Qin Ming had run into an old fourth-realm demon. Fortunately, it was another figure that had suffered severe wounds earlier and was only in the early fourth realm. Thus, even though ambushed, Qin Ming handled it with composure.
Beneath the old demon's incredulous and despairing gaze, Qin Ming cleaved it straight down the middle.
Abandoning such high-profile movement, Qin Ming descended back to the ground, advancing while hacking through foes step by step.
This approach had its perks: it allowed him to discover more wondrous medicines. By the time he was fifty li from Taihe Town, Qin Ming had gathered a grand total of twelve precious medicines!
On any ordinary day, such a harvest would have been utterly unimaginable.
Along the arduous trek, Qin Ming refined most of the wondrous blood. The continuous, brutal combat drained his stamina and spirit, vastly accelerating the assimilation process.
Naturally, this was not enough to trigger a breakthrough, but his cultivation was unquestionably progressing.
If one were to quantify it by mapping the nine Newborn stages of the first realm onto the early, middle, and late phases of the spirit realm, the early phase clearly corresponded to the first three Newborn stages.
Qin Ming estimated that from the baseline of his breakthrough into the third realm, he had already reached the first layer of the spirit field.
Farther along the path, the concentration of demons surged dramatically. Clearly, the area ahead was no ordinary battlefield; the fighting there was exceptionally grim.
As time passed, Qin Ming finished refining all twelve kinds of wondrous blood, bringing him close to the second layer of the spirit field.
This aligned with his past experience. After all, when he had gathered eight varieties of wondrous blood at the world's edge, it had only granted him a single Newborn transformation.
The foundation-thickening benefits of such blood medicines suffered diminishing returns with each use, so achieving this much was already quite impressive.
Most importantly, he had just acquired three more types of wondrous blood. If he could gather a few more and refine them all, he would inevitably reach the second layer of the spirit field.
*If I maintain this speed and momentum, wouldn't I be able to break through to the intermediate spirit field realm very soon?* Even Qin Ming was astonished by the prospect.
After breaking it down into granular increments, he saw clear hope for rapid advancement. As long as he kept harvesting medicines and extracting their essence on the battlefield, he stood an excellent chance of reaching his goal!
*Indeed, those who survive a hundred battles inevitably rise with ferocious speed. And this is only a single great war.*
Existing in such a tumultuous era was perilous, but it was fraught with boundless opportunities.
As he drew near Huai'an Town, Qin Ming noticed the density of demons multiply several times over. A chaotic melee was taking place here, both sides locked in a desperate struggle to the death.
There was no need to guess why: immortal seeds, heavenly demon seeds, and divine seeds had lingered in this sector, turning it into a pivotal battlefield.
Over the final few li, demons appeared in organized squads, waves of reinforcements rushing in from afar.
A bird demon spotted him and immediately led a flock of vicious avians diving down to butcher him.
Qin Ming unleashed a slaughter, reaping an abundant harvest within this small perimeter: a piece of golden tiger bone, a segment of translucent rhinoceros horn, and the silver blood of a bird demon—three wondrous medicines claimed in one stroke.
*This...* Qin Ming's eyes lit up. If he could slay several of the heavenly demon seeds in Huai'an Town, he would certainly reach the second layer of the spirit field, perhaps even bordering the third.
If so, he would truly be right on the verge of the intermediate spirit field realm!
He felt that breaking his progress down into clear milestones was wonderful; having a visible goal gave him immense motivation.
What did it mean to sustain war through war? This was it! He was living the very definition.
Qin Ming carved his way through this area, but rather than rushing immediately to the town center, he sprinted toward Taihe Town to locate Ning Siqi.
Among the friends he cared about, Ning Siqi was the weakest and the most vulnerable to misfortune.
Although Qin Ming had nearly wiped out the threat to Taihe Town during his spirit wandering—eradicating a heavenly demon seed and its subordinates in one fell swoop—he still feared unexpected accidents.
Ultimately, Qin Ming found Ning Siqi inside the town. Fortunately, no disaster had befallen him.
Ning Siqi bore several bloody punctures across his body, inflicted when a demon bird exploded into a frenzy, detonating its plumage and severely wounding him, even tearing a laceration near his heart.
Since he had survived, such injuries were of little consequence.
Upon arriving, Qin Ming produced auspicious beast blood for him to treat his wounds, hoping it would allow him to undergo a nirvanic breakthrough.
Back in Kunling, Qin Ming had sent someone to deliver auspicious beast blood to Ning Siqi, but the latter had politely declined, clearly worried Qin Ming would not have enough for himself.
In truth, Qin Ming had obtained multiple portions—more than enough.
Ning Siqi was filthy with gore. Normally a fastidious neat freak, he had long since cast aside all pretenses of cleanliness. Recently, he had taken to drinking raw deer blood, eating half-cooked demon beast flesh, and collapsing into sleep wherever he could find a spot, wrapped in a tattered pelt.
"Take it, quickly!" Qin Ming shoved it directly into his hands.
"Mountain Lord, I have stood by Lord Ning through thick and thin, and I was wounded too—nearly died!" Yuque was surprisingly here as well, one wing splinted and bound in bandages.
It gazed longingly at him, its gem-like eyes darting back and forth.
Ning Siqi remarked, "After you left, it indeed flew straight back to me from Huai'an Town."
"Here, take it!" How could Qin Ming not see through Yuque's little scheme? Given its tiny frame, how much auspicious beast blood could it possibly drink?
"Mountain Lord above, please accept this sparrow's humble kowtow! Your grace in giving me new life will never be forgotten!" The moment it bowed its head, its bandaged wing began trembling dramatically.
"Cut the theatrics. Both of you need quiet recuperation," Qin Ming said before quickly inquiring about the situation here.
As expected, the demon host was wildly congregating toward Huai'an Town.
Qin Ming rose to his feet. "Rest and tend to your wounds. I'm going to Huai'an Town to take a look."
Moving with blistering speed, he dashed across open ground, entered the demon-dense zone once more, and drilled straight through their ranks.
He had learned just how grave the situation had become: several heavenly demon seeds, divine seeds, and immortal seeds combined had already fallen, driving both sides in that sector into an utter blood frenzy.
Qin Ming's arrival triggered a wave of hushed exclamations among the humans in Huai'an Town.
After all, he had struck here earlier; in his spirit wandering state, he had defeated a demon sword immortal and slain the heavenly demon seed named Yu Lian.
The young woman transformed from the purple lightning beast possessed a lithe, graceful figure and waist-length hair, extraordinarily striking. Yet right now, her eyes brimmed with tears. Her cousin had arrived to reinforce the area and nearly perished; currently, he lay immobile, severely wounded with dozens of broken bones.
Faced with formidable foes, she held no grudge against Qin Ming. With teary eyes, she asked, "Qin Ming, can you kill those demons?"
Qin Ming replied, "All I can say is that I will do my utmost to slay the enemy. I will give it a try!"
Shortly after, he spotted the four-tusked white elephant in a truly miserable state—it had only a single tusk remaining, having lost all capacity to fight, and lay there unconscious.
What shocked Qin Ming most was that Xue Yunzheng of the Fangwai Calamity Land had fallen, dragging his opponent down with him in mutual destruction.
Su Shiyun and Xue Yunzheng were both peerless talents highly valued by the outer realm, yet both had withered one after the other. The clash between these two camps was terrifying indeed.
A grievously wounded elder spoke up. "In this war, either one side will be utterly routed to a tragic end, or both sides will prove evenly matched. Judging by current signs, the latter seems more likely. Right now, we must do everything in our power to slay the enemy's heavenly demon seeds. That equates to cutting down the demons' future grandmasters in advance—some of those heavenly demon seeds might even become patriarch-level beings."
Within Huai'an Town, the atmosphere hung suffocatingly heavy. The successive fall of exceptional seeds left a knot of sorrow in everyone's chest.
Qin Ming asked, "Aren't the casualties roughly equal? Why is morale so much higher on the demons' side?"
The elder sighed. "It seems even more formidable heavenly demon seeds arrived over there not long ago."
Qin Ming's heart twitched. Could this be the consequence of his earlier intervention here? Fortunately, he had come in person; had he provoked powerful foes only to stay away, wouldn't he have harmed everyone here?
Just then, a scout reported that two powerful reinforcements had indeed arrived on the enemy side. It was said that after the demon sword immortal Wei Jian was defeated by Qin Ming, he had immediately dispatched a messenger bird to summon reinforcements.
Because the patriarch-level clash had erupted so abruptly, the summoned demon sword immortals, Tong and Zhu Jianhao, had been delayed on the road by continuous skirmishes, arriving only slightly ahead of Qin Ming.
"Just in time!" Qin Ming declared, striding toward the front line of the battlefield.
At this moment, Luo Jingxiao was leading his troops in a desperate, bloody struggle, already badly wounded.
Most critically, the newly arrived demons, Tong and Zhu Jianhao, had joined forces to help the severely injured Wei Jian reconcentrate the sword intent origin within his body. Now, all three demon sword immortals appeared together.
"Haha..." The heavenly demon seed dueling Luo Jingxiao burst into triumphant laughter. Their side would now command an absolute advantage.
"If you don't wish to suffer, all of you may take your own lives!" Tong spoke with a frigid voice. He appeared as a youth with wings on his back—a demon sword immortal capable of dominating the skies.
His true form was a ferocious raptor clad in bronze plumage, an extraordinarily fierce bird of prey.
"Has that upright ape demon who wandered here in spirit arrived? I came specifically to claim his head," Zhu Jianhao said, sword qi swirling about him, radiant sword light cloaking his entire frame.
His true form was a mutated silver porcupine; the snow-white quills bristling over his body were all his sharp swords. In a life-or-death struggle, he could unleash ten thousand swords at once.
As for Wei Jian, who had invited them, his true form was a ferocious giant hedgehog.
Tong, Zhu Jianhao, and Wei Jian strode forward side by side. Demon sword immortals were peerless in close, violent combat; the invisible sword qi radiating from them exerted an immense pressure.
Wei Jian trailed several paces behind to show respect to Tong and Zhu Jianhao, both of whom were noticeably stronger than him.
Luo Jingxiao's heart sank continuously.
"Brother Luo, step back and rest," Qin Ming's voice rang out as he arrived.
Luo Jingxiao whipped his head around. Seeing it was him, a strange wave of relief washed over his heart. Though the two had clashed in the past, he fully recognized Qin Ming's combat prowess.
"Who are you?" Tong demanded.
"I am the one you seek. My true body has arrived," Qin Ming answered calmly.
Zhu Jianhao laughed loudly. "You offended demon sword immortals, yet you still dare show your face?"
"It saves us the trouble of hunting you—we'll take your head right here!" Tong nodded.
Qin Ming surveyed them. Both the demon sword immortal Wei Jian and the heavenly demon seed who had just been fighting Luo Jingxiao bore bloody wounds.
He had already verified that both demons contained wondrous blood medicine, as faint, refreshing fragrances wafted from their bodies.
Qin Ming stared at Tong and Zhu Jianhao as though appraising rare, priceless treasures, nodding repeatedly. He sensed mysterious divine rings and Dao rhythms encircling them—both were exceptionally extraordinary and could likely be harvested for medicine as well.
He muttered to himself, "Four extraordinary wondrous medicines, combined with what I've gathered along the way... If I refine them all, breaking through to the intermediate third realm won't be far off!"
"What are you babbling about?" Wei Jian snapped.
"Praising you as remarkable talents—no, remarkable demon talents," Qin Ming replied. "Fine demons, every one of you. Fine medicine!"
Chapter 331