Blood Contract

The harsh words Wei Yuan had spouted were more than even he could stomach, let alone Xu Youyi, who had always been proud and short-tempered. Without a second word, she shot a thin jet of water straight at him. Fine as a strand of hair, it punched with effortless ease through the protective shield Wei Yuan had erected using five times his Dao power, bored a three-finger-deep puncture into his dharma physique, and only then dispersed once its immortal power was spent. With this single strike, Xu Youyi had used one part immortal power to shatter seven parts of Wei Yuan's Dao power, giving a full display of what it truly meant to possess immortal-grade subtlety. Even if Wei Yuan had matched her in strength, in a drawn-out duel of attrition, tying seven of him together would scarcely equal her endurance. The moment he realized this, Wei Yuan abandoned all notion of matching Dao arts against her. He promptly summoned the vitality of the Sinister Sun Heavenly Pillar and moved to slam it into the ground right in front of her! Xu Youyi took fright and moved to flee into the distance, but forced herself to a halt. Her expression was exceedingly dark. Biting her lower lip, she stared coldly at Wei Yuan. Truth be told, an immortal in a fit of rage was quite a sight to behold. The two glared wide-eyed at each other for a long while before Xu Youyi squeezed out a few words through snow-white teeth and vermilion lips: "Madman!" Wei Yuan chuckled. "Not mad enough yet, but I'll keep working on it!" In that clash just now, had the Heavenly Pillar vitality touched the earth, it would have taken root in this realm. A slight misstep could have brought ruin upon the entire world. By the understanding of the outside world, this had been nothing more than a minor border skirmish where Xu Youyi fired a single shot, only for Wei Yuan to instantly launch his entire nuclear arsenal—intent not merely on mutual destruction, but on dragging the whole world into the grave with them. And so, though Xu Youyi gnashed her teeth against her lip in fury, she could only say in helpless exasperation, "So what do you want? Do you intend to annihilate Eastern Jin?" Wei Yuan replied, "Senior is likely asking the wrong person about how this will unfold. You ought to ask the two Immortal Ancestors of the Bao and Xiao families instead." Xu Youyi grasped his meaning at once. "Fine, I will go see them." With that, she turned and departed without the slightest hesitation. Only Wei Yuan knew she was not being decisive, but was terrified that lingering a moment longer would entangle her in the karma of the Sinister Sun Heavenly Pillar. The instant Xu Youyi stepped into the void, a glint of tricolored immortal light flickered in Wei Yuan's eyes, and he caught a vague glimpse of several wisps of black qi coiled around her. *Just as I thought...* Wei Yuan nodded inwardly. Xu Youyi was constantly refining longevity immortal pills for others; how could she possibly escape karmic retribution and celestial condemnation? Wei Yuan had presented longevity medicine to the King of Jin a few times, merely extending the life of a low-realm cultivator by less than a century in total, yet even that had saddled him with a wisp of karmic debt. To say nothing of Xu Youyi, whose immortal pills casually added three to five hundred years of life. That was why Xu Youyi feared karmic cause and effect above all else. Her style was to flee the moment a strike failed to land, and in any confrontation, she would withdraw as soon as she claimed the slightest advantage. In Wei Yuan's many dealings with her, it had always been all thunder and no rain—she would flare up in rage only to do practically nothing at all. Having sent Xu Youyi away, Wei Yuan turned his thoughts briefly to Xiaoyu and Bao Yun. Those two had actually acted on their own initiative and dispatched troops without him knowing what they were after. At this moment, even Wei Yuan felt a flicker of suspicion. Yet he immediately recalled how Bao Yun had once called out, "Let's elope!" and grabbed his hand to run off, and how Xiaoyu had been the first to arrive when Qingming was in dire peril. Wei Yuan sighed softly, banishing every trace of suspicion. At his current standing, suspicions of one sort or another were bound to arise. Only now did Wei Yuan understand why the monarchs in the history books ended up committing so many absurdities in their later years. Returning to the secret realm, Wei Yuan went down into the prison Lu Changhe had built with his own hands. The cavernous prison was completely deserted; even the faintest footstep stirred rolling layers of echoes. Not that the prison was truly silent—strange noises would erupt at intervals from places unknown, reverberating again and again. Vast and bleakly cold, the prison was blanketed in dust, yet there were no cobwebs, roaches, or rats—there was not a shred of vitality here. Even standing in this place, Wei Yuan could feel his life force slowly draining away, to say nothing of ordinary cultivators. Insects and vermin had no chance of surviving here at all. From the depths of the prison came the faint sound of sobbing. Wei Yuan walked deeper into the prison until he reached a cell. Inside, Xu Huaixuan sat against the wall, her eyes rimmed with red, clearly having just wept. The prison built by Lu Changhe could leech vitality, leaving even Scenery Command cultivators feeling weak. It magnified despair and every manner of negative emotion while severing all connection to the outside world. Here, prisoners lost all sense of time, unable to tell how much had passed, and would soon break down. When all was said and done, Xu Huaixuan was merely a minor cultivator who had just ascended to the Dharma Idol realm. She had been the center of attention at her advancement ceremony, basking in the eyes of her clan and the tribute of their karmic luck. With their karmic luck, she had successfully undergone metamorphosis, transforming her dharma idol from a serpent into a jiao—a leap to the heavens in a single bound! With a natural divine beast like the white jiao as her dharma idol, her odds of ascending to immortality soared, and the clan viewed her as their undisputed hope. Yet at the most radiant moment of her life, Wei Yuan descended from the sky... And then came this damp, dark prison, which concealed who knew how many sinister horrors. The prison had clearly been built specifically for cultivators. In the short time she had been held here, she had already seen at least three or four vengeful spirits, each harboring resentment that surged to the heavens, unable to close their eyes in death. With nowhere to go, they could only wander the prison, bound here for eternity. The thought that she might share their fate, coupled with the horrific humiliations she might suffer before dying—humiliations suffered not just by her body, but by her dharma idol and sea of consciousness as well... Every time her thoughts went there, she regretted reading so many storybooks. What was worse, those books all seemed to have leaked out from Qingming... At the thought, tears welled up again. Then she looked up suddenly and saw Wei Yuan standing by the cell, watching her in silence. Ashamed and furious, Xu Huaixuan snapped, "Why are you so despicable? Why are you peeping at me like this?" Wei Yuan neither answered nor moved. Xu Huaixuan vaguely sensed the corner of his mouth curving upward. Her mind instinctively leapt to the unspeakable things described in those novels, and she immediately crossed her arms over her chest, shrinking back on instinct. The moment she made the move, she cursed herself inwardly. Sure enough, Wei Yuan's gaze shifted over to what she was trying so hard to cover. His smirk deepened, and he remarked, "There's nothing there anyway. No need to hide it." It took Xu Huaixuan a second to register the insult, whereupon a flush rushed to her cheeks, leaving her mortified and incandescent with rage. Seeing her like this, Wei Yuan had the measure of her. "Swear a blood oath of eternal submission, and you may continue your cultivation. What is more, I will supply you with sufficient resources to walk further along the immortal path. I don't have much time to waste. You need only answer yes or no." Xu Huaixuan turned deathly pale. Curled into a ball, she began to tremble slightly. Under Wei Yuan's piercing gaze, she said in a shaking voice, "...Just kill me." Wei Yuan paused. Feeling she was already on the verge of breaking down and that he might have been a bit too impatient, he softened his tone and said, "@#$%..." A moment later, Xu Huaixuan said, "Just kill me..." An hour later: "Just kill me..." Three hours later... Wei Yuan finally realized that she was simply terrified, but she would never actually break down. She kept trembling, weeping, and repeating the exact same phrase over and over—a strange, alternate brand of greeting death with composure. At this moment, Wei Yuan finally began to re-evaluate his talent for brainwashing—no, persuading—others, discovering it might not be quite as formidable as he had imagined. Yet after wasting his breath for so long, Wei Yuan had at least determined one thing: she was willing to sacrifice everything for her clan. And so, the next moment, she was brought before the three Scenery Command elders of the Xu family. Wei Yuan lifted one Scenery Command elder's arm and said to Xu Huaixuan, "If you refuse to submit, I'll sever this arm of his and feed it to the chicken!" "Why feed it to a chicken?" Xu Huaixuan asked instinctively. The moment the words left her mouth, she realized she had missed the point. Before she could figure out what to say, an orange wheel several zhang across suddenly appeared before them! Then an indignant voice rang out: "What's wrong with a chicken?! Are chickens only fit to eat grain?!" She jumped in fright, only then realizing that the giant disc was an eye! What was more, it hovered between the illusory and the real; while not even a Scenery Command cultivator could break out of this cell, this eye could come and go as it pleased. This was an immortal—no, an immortal chicken! Wei Yuan asked once more, "Do you agree or not?" Xu Huaixuan wept, "Stop forcing me! Just kill me, won't you?" The elder suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream as his arm was ripped off at the elbow. Wei Yuan tossed the arm into the air, where a colossal beak materialized from nothingness and swallowed it whole! The massive orange eye flashed with satisfaction. "Delightful! Thirty years of cultivation in a single bite! Little girl, you must hold out! Don't listen to a word this fellow says! When this seat finishes devouring this man and takes another step forward, there will be benefits in it for you!" Without hesitation, Wei Yuan grabbed the rest of the elder's upper arm. Terrified and furious, the elder dared not remain stubborn any longer. He could sense that the moment his forearm was swallowed by the immortal chicken, all karmic ties had been completely severed and his cultivation in that limb erased; restoring it would take nearly a century of arduous cultivation. He now understood that stubbornness would only lead to death and the dissolution of his Dao. He pleaded for mercy while cursing Xu Huaixuan at the top of his lungs. From the side, Xu Shiqi suddenly interjected, "As an elder of the First Branch, how can your spine be softer than a junior's? Death is just death, what is there to fear?" The elder snapped furiously, "If anyone's going to die, go die yourself! I still have more than six hundred years of lifespan! Now that the Immortal Ancestor has fallen, the rest of your branches have been itching to steal our First Branch's position, haven't you?!" Then, before Xu Shiqi could reply, the elder dropped to his knees before Wei Yuan with a thud. "I surrender! Xu Shiqi fears not death—go feed him to the chicken!" Two elders from the First Branch had been captured; once one gave in, the other surrendered as well. Wei Yuan then hoisted Xu Huaixuan up and said to Xu Shiqi, "If you don't surrender, I will feed her to the chicken! And for the next century, your Xu family will have no successor." Xu Shiqi wore a tormented expression. After some haggling, he agreed to serve Qingming for a hundred years in exchange for Xu Huaixuan's safety, swearing a binding oath. Having settled the three elders, Wei Yuan said to Xu Huaixuan, "I won't kill you, but if you refuse to submit, I will return to your Xu family and capture three more elders to feed to the chicken. If three aren't enough, I'll bring three more. If there are no Scenery Command elders left, Dharma Idol elders will do. In short, I'll keep feeding them until you surrender! If you don't yield, every one of them will die because of you. You killed them! You are the murderer!" The immortal chicken was thrilled, crowing, "Don't give in! Fight him to the bitter end!" "No, I didn't hurt them, I'm not a murderer..." Xu Huaixuan wept bitterly. Wei Yuan had not expected this method to work so well; the villains in storybooks truly were on to something. He produced the blood contract he had prepared beforehand and handed it to Xu Huaixuan. Xu Shiqi swept his divine sense over the terms of the contract. His expression unchanged, he secretly transmitted via divine sense: *This blood contract has a loophole. The moment you ascend to immortality, it can be broken!* Xu Huaixuan's eyes instantly lit up; hope blossomed anew. Yet she realized at once that showing her reaction might ruin everything. Fortunately, when she stole a glance at Wei Yuan, he appeared not to have noticed anything amiss, still waiting patiently. She hurried to force a drop of essence blood from between her brows, dipped her finger in it, and signed the blood contract. Wei Yuan stowed the contract away with satisfaction. Seeing her nervous look, he sneered inwardly. That loophole was one he had left deliberately; afraid Xu Huaixuan would miss it, he had even made sure Xu Shiqi could examine the document. Sure enough, both of them had fallen into the trap without realizing it. Having put away the blood contract, Wei Yuan kept them imprisoned separately and exited the cell. Outside, he saw the immortal chicken squatting like a small hill, its plumage exceptionally radiant today! Shaking its feathers in a showy display, the immortal chicken said, "Well? Pretty, isn't it? Let me tell you, yesterday I ate a bug that popped up out of nowhere. Highly nourishing! Really brought out the color!" Wei Yuan grew curious. "What kind of bug could be so effective? Do you know where it came from?" The immortal chicken flapped a wing. "How would I know? I opened my eyes and it was right by my beak. Looked delicious, so I wasn't shy about gulping it down. Guess it was fated to meet this calamity." Wei Yuan found that plausible and thought no more of it. After exchanging a few more words, the immortal chicken returned to its nest of its own accord. ... Meanwhile, in a dark, hidden realm, grotesque and terrifying consciousnesses stirred one after another, converging around an even vaster awareness. From the darkness rose an eerie voice: "Since the Young Master ascended to the upper realm, there has been no word of him. I fear he has met with misfortune."