Once the lightning tribulation cleared, Venerable Calamity was left on the brink of death, charred black all over and scarcely distinguishable from a corpse.
"Damn it! You're only in the Body Integration stage, so how could you run into a tribulation this powerful?!"
Vice Cult Master Shi did not answer, thinking to himself: *It's a tribulation worth a billion spirit stones—how could it not be powerful?*
Having already weathered a lightning tribulation once before, Vice Cult Master Shi had come fully prepared.
Charred and still as a sculpture, he suddenly emitted a faint cracking sound. His blackened skin split open, and he tore it away, emerging completely renewed.
"An entry-level cicada sloughing technique?" Venerable Calamity recognized the method.
Vice Cult Master Shi merely spared him a sidelong glance without a word, swallowing a medicinal pill in a display that left Venerable Calamity burning with envy.
An entry-level cicada sloughing technique could only clean up his body; the vitality and dharmic power depleted by the tribulation still required pills to restore.
Venerable Calamity wanted to snatch the pills, but his physical condition had deteriorated to rock bottom. That he could even twitch was proof of his solid foundation, let alone trying to rob someone.
Refining the medicinal efficacy of the pill, Vice Cult Master Shi sneered at Venerable Calamity.
"It took everything I had to turn over a new leaf and build an honest career, only for you ancient bastards to tear it all down! Falling into my hands—consider yourself damned unlucky!"
Abandoning all dignity and high-level mystical arts, Vice Cult Master Shi threw himself forward, raining punches and kicks upon Venerable Calamity to vent the rage burning in his chest.
"You absolute bastard! That's for cutting off my fortune!"
"Did you really think modern cultivators were pushovers?!"
"If I don't beat you until your own mother can't recognize you, my surname isn't Shi!"
Venerable Calamity was battered black and blue until not a single unbroken bone remained in his body, his groin receiving especially tender care.
With a flick of his right wrist, Vice Cult Master Shi brought out an iron chain as thick as an arm, bound Venerable Calamity tight as a drum, hoisted him over his shoulder like a slaughtered pig, and turned to leave.
"N-no, I can't let him take me!" Venerable Calamity could tell this Vice Cult Master Shi was a ruthless brute. Going with him meant certain death!
He had to run!
Biting his tongue, he spat out a mouthful of blood essence. His body dissolved into green smoke, slipped out of the chains, ripped open a spatial fissure, and vanished.
"Burning his lifespan!" Vice Cult Master Shi's eyes narrowed. He hadn't expected Venerable Calamity to be so merciless toward himself. His chains could lock both flesh and soul; in Venerable Calamity's wretched state, escaping was impossible without burning several thousand years of lifespan.
"Ruthless bastard. Burning through that much, how many years do you even have left?"
Faced with such an escape method, Vice Cult Master Shi was powerless to pursue. "Forget it. A runner's a runner. I'll just find some other ancient cultivator to settle the score."
***
Venerable Calamity was still fleeing for his life. After this ordeal, gaining any advantage in the struggle of the Golden Age was going to be an uphill battle.
*My train of thought was flawed! Earlier, I tried hiding out in the middle of nowhere, which was why I ran into that lunatic undergoing a lightning tribulation. This time, I'm hiding in a city!*
Promptly shifting tactics, he sped toward the nearest settlement.
"Dayan Commandery. What a splendid name! The great wild geese fly south, rising anew from the ashes—it suits my situation perfectly!"
To be safe, he swept Dayan Commandery with his divine sense.
"A bustling city, and the commandery governor is only at the Soul Formation stage. A prime spot to lie low!"
Venerable Calamity smiled faintly. A thriving metropolis paired with a weak governor—it was practically tailor-made for him!
Heaven was on his side!
After burning his lifespan, his cultivation had plummeted again, sinking to early Body Integration, barely hanging on to the realm by a thread.
Because the Void Refining stage possessed a unique nature, slipping from the Body Integration stage meant bypassing Void Refining entirely and dropping straight down to Soul Formation.
"Fortune truly favors me after all!"
Slipping quietly into Dayan Commandery, he pondered where would make the ideal hideout to recover his cultivation.
*I can regain my strength by devouring human vitality. The process is best done completely undisturbed, somewhere thick with the aura of death!*
An ingenious location struck him.
"The jail!"
Prisoners in a jail were completely devoid of human rights; even if something happened to them, nobody would care in the slightest.
Transforming into thick smoke, he slithered into the commandery jail.
The moment he entered, the bickering of two men reached his ears.
"I already told you, that isn't how that law is applied! Has your brain gone soft?"
"Bullshit! I'm the one who drafted that law in the first place—how would I not know how to apply it?!"
"Just because you drafted it means you understand it? I raised Yun Zhi from childhood, and even I don't know how strong she is right now!"
"What kind of dogshit logic is that?!"
"Your logic is the dogshit one!"
Daoist Buyu and the Minister of Justice were locked in a furious spat, the minister's former scholarly poise entirely stripped away by raw exasperation.
"Hold on a second," Daoist Buyu said, raising a hand as he noticed something amiss.
"Who's there?!"
"What a heavy stench of blood!" The Minister of Justice was genuinely taken aback. He had overseen the execution of countless ruthless criminals, but not one of them carried a reek of blood as potent as Venerable Calamity's.
Demonic cultivators feared the righteous path and thus employed secret arts to mask their bloody stench, but Venerable Calamity had no such awareness. Back in the Dayu Era, the amount of blood reeking from one's hands was a trifling matter—often, it was even worn as a badge of honor.
"Heheh, to think you two juniors could actually detect this venerable one. You have some skill. In that case, become my nourishment!" Venerable Calamity assumed he had simply let his aura slip through a moment of carelessness. A trivial detail—he had plenty of ways to subjugate two convicts!
He might not be able to deal with that monster outside, but could he really fail against two prisoners locked in a cell?
A sinister, terrifying light flashed into existence. Malicious energy coiled through the cramped space, generating a gravitational pull like a black hole, while silent screams echoed through the air as if welling up from an endless abyss.
"Become this venerable one's slaves!"
The Minister of Justice struck without hesitation. An invisible golden hand swept forward and dispersed the thick smoke with a single backhand slap. Venerable Calamity crashed to the floor and rolled, the eerie light, malicious energy, and silent shrieks instantly snuffed out.
"What kind of garbage dares flaunt such cheap tricks before this minister?"
Venerable Calamity sprawled on the ground, his mind completely blank.
*How... how did I just get floored?!*
"A demonic cultivator! Seize him!" Daoist Buyu made his move. His sword heart thumped, unleashing thousands of streams of sword qi that surged in a vast, unbroken torrent, flooding the entire chamber.
Venerable Calamity couldn't even tear open space to flee!
Daoist Buyu was an expert at running away, which meant he knew precisely how to shut down anyone else trying to do the same.
It was only because Yun Zhi had intervened that he had ended up locked away; anyone else wouldn't have stood a chance of containing him.
Venerable Calamity: "..."
For a long time, Venerable Calamity could not utter a word. He didn't even know what expression to make to convey his feelings.
*What is going on here?! Why are there people this terrifying locked inside a jail cell?!*
*They're even stronger than that lunatic undergoing the tribulation earlier!*
*There aren't even any restrictive seals on this cell! What the hell are you two doing sitting in here? Are you treating this dungeon like a summer resort because it stays cool in the heat and warm in the cold?!*
"Just who is this guy?" The Minister of Justice muttered. He had never seen anyone so eager to throw their life away.
"Who knows? Definitely nothing good," Daoist Buyu said excitedly. "Probably some country-bumpkin ancient cultivator who got beat half to death and crawled into a jail cell to lick his wounds! Tie him up first! Catching him counts as a major contribution—we can get our sentences reduced!"
A prisoner sitting in a cell, and merit falls straight from the heavens!
Hearing Daoist Buyu's words, the Minister of Justice grew excited as well.
Yun Zhi had been tailing Venerable Calamity the entire time. Witnessing this scene, she let out a faint sigh. Counting on Venerable Calamity to lead her back to his old nest was completely out of the question now.
There was no helping it; Venerable Calamity's luck was simply too appalling. First he ran into the old horse and took two hooves to the face; then he was dragged into Vice Cult Master Shi's lightning tribulation; and after all that, he dove headfirst into the Dayan Commandery jail housing her master and the Minister of Justice, captured clean by two peak Body Integration experts. Surviving this entire sequence was an astonishing feat of sheer hardiness.
Even Yun Zhi had never witnessed someone quite this unlucky.
*Better take him back for a thorough interrogation under torture.*
Manifesting inside the cell, she spoke softly, "Master, Lord Minister, it has been a while."
Chapter 370