Corpse Core

As the Primordial Concentric Rings tightened, the blue shark writhed in agonizing pain. Yet the moment it received Qin Sang's promise, it seemed to forget the torment entirely. It stared fixedly at him, its fierce eyes reflecting disbelief mingled with burgeoning hope. With a flick of its massive tail, the blue shark darted off in pursuit of the direction Qin Sang had pointed. Qin Sang glanced left and right, then activated his secret talisman and Sword Qi Thunderclap. His escaping light flickered several times before vanishing into the distance ahead. After flying several li, he caught sight of the two-headed hou galloping across the surface of the water. Though its front leg was injured, with the aid of its wind wings it could still sprint across the sea. Given this two-headed hou's cultivation, it could project at most six phantom images. Each was virtually indistinguishable from the original and retained a fraction of the true body's power. Without actually clashing with them, the naked eye could never tell them apart. If it set its mind on escaping, it was almost impossible for any pursuer to pin it down. Qin Sang counted himself lucky that he had heavily wounded the two-headed hou first; otherwise, he would have lost its trail long ago. Hearing the disturbance behind it, both of the hou's heads twisted back—one to the left, one to the right—glaring viciously at Qin Sang. Its vertical pupils flared with sudden brilliance, shooting forth two beams of azure light that transformed into twin clusters of gloomy, gale-force wind blades. Pincer-bound, they converged upon Qin Sang in a concentrated barrage. "This one is real!" Qin Sang's eyes narrowed. Facing the onslaught of wind blades, he felt sharp pricks of pain across his skin. Such fierce might could never belong to an illusion; this was undeniably the two-headed hou's true body. To Qin Sang's pleasant surprise, he noticed that after employing its shadow-splitting divine ability this time, the hou's aura had weakened yet again. His strategy was finally bearing fruit. During this nightlong chase, it wasn't as though Qin Sang had lacked the chance to cut the beast off. If he had spared no expense in driving his secret talisman and Sword Qi Thunderclap, the hou's current speed would have fallen short of his own. Yet he had refrained from doing so, choosing instead to trail a set distance behind it. He didn't press too closely, letting the beast believe escape remained within reach, while never giving it a moment's respite. Under Qin Sang's relentless harassment, the severely injured hou had been forced several times to overdraw its vitality and expend its divine abilities to fend off danger. Now, it had nearly reached the end of its rope. As the wind blades bore down on him, Qin Sang remained composed. *Whoosh!* The sword radiance swirling around Qin Sang flashed and disappeared. Rumbles of thunder reverberated. The next instant, the ebony sword materialized right before the incoming wind blades. With a flash of sword shadows, an additional arc of sword light split off, flying left and right to intercept the two clusters of blades. At the same time, Qin Sang threw back his head and let out a long whistle, commanding the blue shark and the Flying Yaksha to rush over at once. The timing was ripe. It was time to pull in the net! Still, the two-headed hou was an entity of the mid Demon Core stage after all. A counterattack born of sheer desperation was bound to be extraordinarily lethal, leaving Qin Sang slightly lacking in confidence. What was more, his objective was not to kill the two-headed hou, but to capture it alive. At that moment, the Flying Yaksha had just engaged one of the hou's phantom images. Hearing Qin Sang's whistle, it cleaved the illusion apart with a single palm strike and turned to depart. The blue shark, having just spotted another phantom, hesitated briefly upon hearing the call before likewise choosing to turn back. *Boom!* The wind blades and the spirit sword collided, blasting apart into countless azure fragments as the blades gradually crumbled. The ebony sword trembled, letting out a resonant sword hum as it broke free from the storm of blades. Its radiance flashed, streaking back before Qin Sang. From the looks of it, Qin Sang held a slight upper hand. To his surprise, after unleashing the wind blades, the two-headed hou did not resume its flight. Instead, it spun around and fixed its gaze on him, fierce light glittering in its vertical pupils. Lowering its heads slightly, it bared its fangs and let out low, menacing growls. Qin Sang's heart tightened, knowing that the hou was likely preparing to make a desperate, last-ditch stand. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the hou's figure blurred. Two phantom images detached from its body, then abruptly vanished. *Not good!* Qin Sang thought, instantly rocketing backward. The next moment, all three two-headed hou lunged simultaneously at the spot where Qin Sang had just been standing. Had he reacted a fraction of a second later, he would have been torn to shreds. Having missed its mark, the two-headed hou showed no intention of letting up. Its wind wings quivered slightly and both shattered, transforming into a sky-blotting tempest of wind blades while the true body and its phantoms lunged once more. Unfortunately for the beast, the blue shark and the Flying Yaksha had already arrived in succession. Qin Sang dodged the wind blades with ease, pinpointed the hou's phantoms, and commanded the blue shark and the Flying Yaksha to tear them apart. Then, the three of them converged in a pincer attack against the two-headed hou. Having failed in its final gambit, the two-headed hou was further depleted, having even lost its wind wings. Surrounded, it could no longer attend to every threat, parrying erratically as its situation grew increasingly dire. Frantic with desperation, the two-headed hou spared no expense in burning through its foundational essence to launch several more counterattacks, only for Qin Sang to neutralize each of them with ease. In the end, plunged into despair, the two-headed hou threw its heads back and let out a sorrowful wail. The maw of one head opened wide, disgorging a streak of azure haze. Wrapped within the azure haze was a small, round sphere. A demon core! The haze glowed with poignant beauty as the demon core trembled violently, an extraordinarily potent aura radiating from the mist. The two-headed hou was actually going to detonate its demon core! Faced with this spectacle, Qin Sang showed not the slightest trace of panic. With a wave of his hand, three streaks of eerie light shot forth. With rapid whooshes, they planted themselves around the hou, instantly expanding into three massive ghost banners that snapped fiercely in the wind and waves. Over the past fifteen years, Qin Sang's life had been utterly monotonous, consisting only of hunting demons and cultivating. Bent on steering clear of the turmoil between the two races, he had not returned all these years. Instead, relying on the warning function of the Primordial Concentric Rings, he had ventured deeper and deeper into the Demon Sea. For fifteen whole years, he had not crossed paths with a single fellow cultivator. Enduring such solitude was no hardship for someone resolute on the path of cultivation. While cultivating, he had been constantly pondering. Before the next opening of the Hall of Seven Killings, breaking through to the mid Core Formation stage should pose no issue, but advancing further to the late stage was simply out of the question. Without being able to break through to the next realm, continued cultivation after reaching the mid Core Formation stage would yield negligible gains. How could he rapidly bolster his strength to prepare for his future venture into the Hall of Seven Killings? The two most obvious avenues were to concurrently cultivate physical body refinement, or to cultivate the origin soul and strengthen his spiritual sense. Among Qin Sang's past spoils of war, he had been fortunate enough to acquire similar techniques, but they were all mediocre. Their efficacy was debatable at best, and even the secret arts stored within Shaohua Mountain's Pagoda Peak had little to offer a Core Formation stage cultivator. Originally, had it not been for Dongyang Bo's scheming, Qin Sang would have returned to the sect to form his core smoothly. He would then have gained access to Shaohua Mountain's most closely guarded collections, where he certainly would not have lacked such techniques. Methods for cultivating spiritual sense and body refinement were rare to begin with, and top-tier arts were exceedingly scarce. Unwilling to join another sect and submit to its constraints, Qin Sang's chances of obtaining such techniques were slimmer still. Turning the matter over in his mind, Qin Sang had no choice but to look elsewhere. For instance, the corpse core. After achieving Core Formation, Qin Sang had always kept the corpse core as a reserve. Whenever his true essence ran dry, unsealing the corpse core granted him far greater endurance than other cultivators of the same realm. Yet Qin Sang felt that using such a hard-won corpse core purely in this manner was a reckless waste of a precious gift. It ought to serve a far greater purpose to truly justify the grueling pains he had taken to acquire it.