Within the mountain forests, a figure skimmed low over the ground at a moderate pace.
Holding a jade token in his hand, he checked his bearings from time to time.
Luo Chen had already discovered that the environment of the Ninth Peak was truly tortuous and complex.
While the natural scenery appeared pristine, few demonic beasts or wild creatures lived here.
This was likely due to the thunderstorms that erupted from time to time.
In just the few days since entering the mountains, he had already run into two thunderstorms!
Though they were only minor storms, their strikes still posed an immense threat to Foundation Establishment cultivators.
While Luo Chen considered his physique formidable, he had no desire to test himself against such natural thunder and lightning.
If it were only that, it would still be manageable.
However, he found that upon entering the Ninth Peak, extending his spiritual sense was severely suppressed.
With his terrifyingly deep soul foundation, his projected spiritual sense could normally reach over a dozen li.
Yet in this place, it was reduced to a mere seven or eight li—more than halved.
Along with that, the thousand-li range of his voice transmission jade token was curtailed to only three or four hundred li.
It was precisely for this reason that he had been in the mountains for so long without finding Wang Yuan.
However, it was not entirely without reward.
Luo Chen was proficient in the Cleansing Art and could purge foreign auras; over the years, this had made him exceptionally sensitive to all manner of scents and qi.
At several blood-stained spots, he had detected Wang Yuan's lingering aura!
Following these traces, Luo Chen pursued tirelessly.
Yet after making a vast circuit, he discovered that he seemed to be walking in circles.
All for naught.
"What a strange path of movement!"
"Isn't Brother Wang being hunted? Why does his route look more like he's circling the perimeter of the Ninth Peak?"
In reality, it was not strictly confined to the perimeter either.
Several times, Luo Chen had ventured deep into the heart of the mountains.
Yet Wang Yuan's aura would suddenly shift back toward the outside.
Such a situation was almost like...
"Pursuit and counter-pursuit?"
"A brilliant hunter often presents himself as prey. From the look of things, the tables have turned—is Brother Wang actually hunting down the enemies who were pursuing him?"
Luo Chen paused before a massive crater.
On the ground were distinct finger-thick holes.
Blood God Tribulation Finger!
A lethal technique Wang Yuan had developed by taking overt force as the core after comprehending the transformations of vitality and blood, drawing upon the strengths of various schools.
Luo Chen crouched down, his spiritual sense sweeping over the holes, feeling the intensity of Wang Yuan's residual vitality and blood.
Even after many days, the force had not dissipated!
It showed that Wang Yuan was currently in peak condition!
"It must have something to do with that batch of supreme-grade Blood Fiend Pills I gave him."
The Blood Fiend Pill was not merely an elixir used to unblock meridians.
It was a primary cultivation pill used by body cultivators, containing exceptionally dense blood and qi.
In particular, each supreme-grade Blood Fiend Pill crafted by Luo Chen was comparable to the total essence blood of a Qi Refining Great Perfection cultivator!
Back then, before Wang Yuan developed the Blood Fiend Spirit Seizing method, he had once attempted to achieve Foundation Establishment using Blood Fiend Pills.
What he had hoped to rely on was the terrifying vitality described in the Blood Fiend Pill's records.
Even as Luo Chen felt pleased with Wang Yuan's current condition, a deep doubt involuntarily surfaced in his mind.
"According to my tracking, Brother Wang's movements over these past few months have all been within the Ninth Peak."
"In that case, the legend of the Blood Demon circulating outside cannot possibly be him!"
"Then who could it be?"
Just as he wondered, heavy footsteps approached from ahead.
Luo Chen frowned and rose to his feet.
In his line of sight, a cultivator was stumbling forward with dull, vacant eyes.
His gait was uneven, faltering so violently with each step that he nearly collapsed to the ground several times.
In such a state, upon seeing the unharmed Luo Chen, he should have fled by all rights.
After all, whether this stranger was friend or foe could not yet be determined.
Even if it were a friend, one ought to be on guard.
Yet upon seeing Luo Chen, hope blossomed across the man's face.
Reaching out an arm, he called from afar, "Fellow Daoist, save... save me!"
Luo Chen looked at him impassively.
"I can save you, but you must answer a few questions."
"Yes, anything! Chu will give you everything on me! Save me, save me quickly!"
The frantic words tumbled from his mouth.
That single sentence seemed to exhaust all his strength, and with a thud, he collapsed onto the ground.
Luo Chen walked over and looked down at him.
"Are you one of those hunting Wang Yuan?"
"Yes."
"Who is leading you?"
"Ku Chan."
"Who is Ku Chan?"
"I don't know... I'm not a cultivator of the Flame Alliance, just a subordinate of the Sword Sect."
Luo Chen's brow furrowed.
Then he asked again, "The injuries on you?"
"It was Wang Yuan... that devil!"
No sooner had he said this than Cultivator Chu began writhing on the ground.
Amidst his agonizing groans came the faint, sloshing sound of surging water.
"Where is Wang Yuan?"
"Save me, please save me..."
Luo Chen frowned slightly and flicked his wrist, casting a Healing Art.
A hazy azure light descended upon the man.
Yet the moment the azure glow entered his body, a bloodcurdling scream erupted.
"Aaagh!!!"
Luo Chen's pupils contracted, and he shot backward immediately.
Under his watchful gaze, the skin across Cultivator Chu's entire body swelled to the absolute limit.
In the next instant!
*Boom!*
An extremely soft, insidious force abruptly erupted.
The softness instantly turned domineering!
Rocks were ground into powder, and trees were reduced to flying ash.
Within a radius of ten feet, only a downpour of blood filled the air.
Only bloody water—no minced flesh, no bone.
It was as if Cultivator Chu had been nothing more than a giant water skin, his entire vessel filled solely with blood.
Luo Chen's expression shifted drastically.
Was this Wang Yuan's technique?
It was definitely not overt force, nor was it the covert force he had previously shown hints of grasping.
"Could it be neutralizing force?"
Luo Chen could sense that when the cultivator exploded, an internal force within him had expanded to its zenith, embodying two distinct transformations of vitality and blood: the domineering and the insidious!
It had simply lacked anyone to control it.
Otherwise, that shower of blood alone could have been turned into a potent area-of-effect strike capable of threatening mid Foundation Establishment cultivators.
All along, the path of body cultivation Wang Yuan walked had been incomplete.
Even though he drew upon various strengths to offset his shortcomings and integrated many schools, numerous flaws remained.
Especially in combat!
In the beginning, he could only rely on brute physical clashes; the moment an opponent put some distance between them, he was helpless.
Back then, lacking ranged attacks, he had later developed the Blood God Tribulation Finger.
Yet the Blood God Tribulation Finger could only strike in a straight line, devoid of winding variations.
It could not match the effortless adaptability of a cultivator controlling a dharma artifact.
Following the battle at the Qinhua River, the Luotian Association had launched strikes in all directions.
During those battles, Wang Yuan had comprehended another finger technique to remedy that flaw.
It allowed him to steer the trajectory of his force in mid-combat, curving its path.
He named it Immortal Returning to Pengying!
These two techniques were formidable; in a one-on-one duel, cultivators of the same rank found them hard to defend against.
Yet ultimately, both lethal moves were merely refinements of precision.
Though Luo Chen had marvelled at them, he had never thought too highly of them.
Wang Yuan lacked wide-area lethal strikes!
Unlike Luo Chen himself, for whom fighting multiple opponents at once had been routine ever since making his mark in the cultivation world.
Whether in the Battle of Crescent Moon Valley, the Battle of Gaoling Plain, or the Battle of Qinhua River, he had never faced fewer than two experts of the same rank at a time.
What Luo Chen relied on was his mastery of wide-area, highly destructive spells.
Now, it appeared!
Wang Yuan clearly possessed a comparable technique to make up for this deficiency.
Luo Chen slowly approached the place where Cultivator Chu had fallen.
A small crater lay before him, filled with murky, bloody water.
"Brother Wang, how are you going to name this move?"
"So brutally domineering, yet so insidious and vicious... Blood Transforming Demon Finger?"
As Luo Chen sighed in wonder, he prepared to cast the Fireball Art and Cleansing Art to destroy the traces here.
All along the way, he had been wiping out Wang Yuan's lingering aura like this, lest others track him down.
After all, the rumors of the Blood Demon still pointed toward Wang Yuan.
Just as Luo Chen was about to act, an intensely urgent sense of crisis gripped his heart!
Without time to think, pure instinct caused a pair of spiritual qi wings to snap open!
Like a streak of lightning, he skimmed past the pool of blood and darted over a hundred feet away.
Only then did he spin around.
With a grim expression, he stared toward the crater of blood.
There, a masked figure stood, looking at him in surprise.
"What magnificent footwork!"
...
"To think that the genius alchemist renowned across the Jade Cauldron Domain not only commands exquisite fire arts, but also possesses such outstanding movement techniques!"
A raspy, grating voice emerged from the figure's mouth.
It sounded as though someone were rubbing sandpaper inside his throat, grating harshly on the ears.
Listening to this jarring voice, Luo Chen's expression turned somber.
"Fellow Daoist seems to know a great deal about me, yet I do not know your name."
The masked man slowly shook his head. "My name is not worth mentioning. You may simply call me the Blood Demon."
As he spoke, his gaze drifted toward the crater of blood.
From beneath the mask, two eyes gleamed with pleasant surprise.
Opposite him, Luo Chen's expression changed completely.
The rumored Blood Demon prowling the battlefield was indeed not Wang Yuan, but this man before him.
And by some terrible stroke of luck, he had appeared right in front of him.
"Hmph!"
"Hiding your head and tail, concealing your name—why have you come looking for me?"
The Blood Demon did not answer him directly.
Instead, he reached out with a beckoning motion, drawing the large puddle of black blood from the crater into a condensed sphere that hovered in his palm.
After sensing it briefly, he shook his head in regret.
"Fine essence blood from a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator, paired with powerful, pure vitality from a body cultivator. What a pity that their mixture ruined it, leaving it thoroughly foul and tainted."
With a casual flick of his sleeve, the sphere of black blood splashed onto the ground, corroding another pit into the earth.
He looked back at Luo Chen, licking his exposed, thin lips.
"Your physique is quite remarkable! Your cultivation level isn't low either. Surely the condensed essence blood in your body is no inferior to that Wang Yuan's!"
*He wants my essence blood?*
Furious to the point of laughter, Luo Chen sneered, "Such arrogance! I'd love to see what you're truly capable of!"
Even as he spoke, his spiritual qi surged violently, and he slammed a palm against the ground.
The Blood Demon watched with keen interest, murmuring under his breath, "I have heard that the fire arts of Fire Spirit Lord are second to none in Tianlan. I would truly like to see them for myself."
Yet in the next moment, he froze.
From the ground, massive thorny vines burst forth one after another.
Twisting and thrashing like dragons and serpents, their menacing thorns gleamed with an inky sheen—clearly laced with poison.
In an instant, countless vines whipped toward him in an entangling swarm.
"What swift casting, what a powerful wood art!"
The Blood Demon praised. Without any visible movement, a ripple of pinkish light radiated from him.
Before the vines could even draw close, they went limp and slumped downward.
Looking at the feeble vines withering back into individual seeds, the Blood Demon curled his lip. "A fine wood art, but unfortunately its rank is too low—merely Tier One. Even if you activated the Vine Art using Tier Two Thorny Flower seeds, it still... hm?"
"What a cunning junior!"
In his sight, Luo Chen's figure surged forward with fiery red wings; with a single flash and beat, he appeared far in the distance.
From the very beginning, his opponent had possessed no intention of tangling with him.
That broad-area Vine Art had merely been a feint to buy time.
Suppressing his fury, the Blood Demon mounted his flying sword and gave chase.
However, the farther he pursued, the more astonished he became.
Luo Chen's flight speed was absurdly fast.
Even with a cultivation level so far superior to his target's, he found it difficult to catch up; in fact, the gap between them was slowly widening.
"I'll have to use some tricks!"
With a thought, a drop of fresh blood fell onto the flying sword beneath his feet.
In the blink of an eye, his speed surged by thirty percent.
Yet even so, he could barely match the pace of the figure ahead.
"His flight art is exceedingly exquisite. If I obtain it and combine it with my blood escape technique, I fear not even a Golden Core Master could catch me!"
From initially coveting Luo Chen's essence blood, the Blood Demon now set his sights on Luo Chen's flight technique.
"Let's see just how long your spiritual power can last while sustaining such an art!"
A mere sixth layer of Foundation Establishment flying at such extreme speed—in his view, Luo Chen certainly could not maintain it for long.
As he gave chase, his brow suddenly furrowed.
His sword-light trembled, and he forcefully shifted thirty feet aside.
At the spot he had just occupied, dozens of vicious thorny vines were thrashing wildly.
"Replaying old tricks is useless against me!"
"Is that so?"
The Blood Demon was taken aback.
He saw Luo Chen, who had been fleeing ahead, suddenly wheel around and press a palm down with immense force.
From above!
The Blood Demon snapped his head up, only to see a massive mountain that had formed without him realizing, rumbling downward as it descended.
Surrounding rock strata, minerals, soil, and trees tore out of the ground, hurtling upward into the coalescing mountain.
The Earth Mountain Art at Great Perfection!
The Blood Demon remained unhurried. Raising a hand, he sent a length of soft silk ribbon fluttering out.
The seemingly weightless ribbon unfurled in midair, astonishingly bearing up against the crushing pressure of the mountain and holding it at bay.
"What other tricks do you have? Where are your fire arts? Why haven't you used them?"
Luo Chen sneered. "Then keep your eyes wide open!"
Lifting his long sword high, Luo Chen sent scarlet meteors swirling into being one after another, hurtling toward the Blood Demon.
The Blood Demon frowned slightly, forming a one-handed hand seal to send the flying sword beneath his feet streaking toward the flaming meteors.
"A decent trick, but to deal with me... wait!"
His expression shifted slightly as his body began to sink uncontrollably.
A terrifying, titanic weight came rumbling down from overhead.
He looked up: atop the mountain peak, yet another mountain rested—a supreme-grade dharma artifact!
The Earth Mountain Art at Great Perfection combined with the Thousand Layer Peak! With their dual might stacked together, few in the Foundation Establishment realm could withstand it.
It was precisely at this moment that Luo Chen swung his sword across the void, tracing profound, mystical arcs through the air.
Terrifying torrents of spiritual qi surged like raging river currents through his broad meridians, pouring forth in great waves.
A blazing sun materialized directly above the Blood Demon!
"Damn it!"
The Blood Demon barked furiously, all of his previous composure shattering.
His magic treasure flying sword thrust violently upward, shattering the Earth Mountain Art and knocking the Thousand Layer Peak flying.
In the same breath, the red silk ribbon instantly wrapped tightly around him.
The next moment!
*Boom!*
The blazing sun erupted in an instant.
Boundless waves of fire swept out in every direction.
A world-destroying explosion repeatedly detonated with the Blood Demon at its core.
Luo Chen's expression turned fierce.
*Still not enough!*
That red silk ribbon was clearly a defensive magic treasure.
Relying solely on the Blazing Sun Art unleashed through the weapon-channeling technique would not be enough to completely obliterate him.
Yet at the very least, an opening had appeared!
With a thought, the Mystic Fire Sword in his hand tore through the sky, carrying countless flaming meteors as it lunged forward like a meteorite shower.
Right at that moment, the roar of thunder resounded overhead.
Luo Chen's expression flickered. Reaching out to recall his sword, he beat his Lieyun Wings and retreated hundreds of feet.
The very next instant, a bolt of lightning as thick as a water bucket crashed down.
Looking up, a black storm cloud tens of feet wide was churning, with lightning snaking through it in flashing bursts of silvery-white brilliance.
A thunderstorm!
Luo Chen took a deep breath, retrieved the Thousand Layer Peak, and gripped his Mystic Fire Sword, casting a cold glare at his opponent.
"Count yourself lucky!"
With that, his figure blurred and reappeared over a hundred feet away. After a few rapid shifts, he vanished without a trace.
Meanwhile, back where lightning and fire clashed, the red silk ribbon, now stained with patches of scorched black, slowly unfurled.
The Blood Demon was slightly pale, his teeth clenched tightly.
Backing away from the area covered by the thunderstorm, he stared in the direction Luo Chen had vanished.
After a long silence, he spat out several words:
"Count yourself lucky!"
"Next time, don't let yourself fall into my hands!"
Chapter 377