Crisis!

The Hundred Flowers Restaurant. Located on the west side of Hanshui City, the Hundred Flowers Restaurant was a major establishment ranked among the top twenty in the city. It was most famous for brewing its Hundred Flowers Wine from over one hundred and fifty varieties of seasonal fresh flowers; because the seasons varied, the flavor of the wine differed with every season. Qiu Jin'an stepped into the restaurant. The establishment was packed to the brim and bustling with noise loud enough to blow the roof off. The waiters spun around like little tops, constantly rushing back and forth between the dining hall and the kitchen. Only after a great deal of effort did Qiu Jin'an manage to find an empty seat in a corner. "Pardon me, is this seat taken?" Seated across from him was a diner with a belly as round as a barrel, eating with utter relish, his forehead beaded with sweat. The diner looked up at Qiu Jin'an. Seeing an unfamiliar face, he said, "No one's sitting there. Have a seat." "Who would've thought? It isn't even mealtime yet, and there are already so many people eating," Qiu Jin'an chatted with the diner while waiting for a waiter to come over. The diner was not a man of many words; focused entirely on his food, he answered Qiu Jin'an only in absentminded murmurs. A waiter brought over a menu. Qiu Jin'an casually flipped through it and handed it back. "A bowl of white rice, five plates of your specialty dishes, five plates of your most expensive dishes, and a pot of hundred-year-aged Hundred Flowers Wine." "Right away! Please wait a moment, honored guest." Qiu Jin'an did not have to wait long. A bowl of white rice and ten delicacies with exquisite color, aroma, and taste were laid out across the table, alongside a pot of mellow, fragrant hundred-year Hundred Flowers Wine, making the diner opposite him drool with envy. "Honored guest, if there's nothing else, I shall take my leave." Just as the waiter turned to attend to other guests, Qiu Jin'an called out, "Waiter, I'm a living person. How could I eat food meant for the dead?" The waiter looked utterly bewildered, having no idea what Qiu Jin'an meant. Qiu Jin'an snapped his fingers. Faint cracking sounds rang out in quick succession, like footsteps treading on freshly frozen ice, shattering the surface to reveal the true face of the lake beneath. Looking back at the dining hall, where was there any bustling restaurant or lively crowd? The customers sat with their heads lowered, each with a one-meter-tall miniature figure straddling their neck, dancing and gesticulating wildly. The fat diner across from Qiu Jin'an had an exaggeratedly swollen belly, his entire body resembling a massive sphere. The waiter was gaunt as firewood and frail as a reed, looking as though a single gust of wind could blow him away. What sat before Qiu Jin'an were no delicacies at all, but writhing maggots and raw meat crawling across the plates. Only the white rice remained unchanged, except that three chopsticks were stuck upright in the center of the bowl. Qiu Jin'an's smile widened. "Two ghost kings—a swollen ghost and a starved ghost—along with a bunch of petty underlings. You really thought a lineup like this could deal with me?" The fat diner and the waiter dropped their pretense, eerily twisted smiles spreading across their faces. A miniature figure silently mounted Qiu Jin'an's neck... ... The Corpse Driving Sect. Four cultivators in archaic garb appeared together before the sect gates. Ignoring the disciples on alert, they wasted no time splitting up and rushing toward four different locations across the Yin Corpse Mountain Range. *Boom—* *Boom—* *Boom—* *Boom—* Fierce battles erupted simultaneously in all four places. "Damn it, that bastard Huang Ming secretly ferreted out our positions!" Elder Gai flew into a towering rage. Before they could even begin searching their own sect, the enemy had launched an assault right at their doorstep. The four Corpse Driving Sect elders were caught off guard, but their reactions were swift, and they immediately summoned their living corpses. One of the archaic cultivators sneered, "Hah! A sect that merely stumbled upon our legacy by chance actually dares to stand against us?" "You're from the Shaman Corpse Sect!" Seeing their attire and hearing those words, Elder Gai's pupils contracted. The Corpse Driving Sect had originated from a stroke of fortune. Their founding ancestor had accidentally stumbled into a secret realm, survived three fatal crises, and obtained a legacy: a complete corpse-driving art. That legacy had come from a sect of the Great Yu Dynasty known as the Shaman Corpse Sect. According to Great Xia's classification, the Shaman Corpse Sect was ranked as a super-grade sect, overseen by a Tribulation Transcendence cultivator. The Shaman Corpse Sect had been destroyed in the campaigns during Great Xia's founding era, leaving behind only a single legacy, which was ultimately found by the Corpse Driving Sect's founder. The archaic cultivator rubbed his ring. One dust-laden living corpse after another broke through their seals, reeking of decay and death as they crossed more than one hundred thousand years of history to wage war against their successors. Four, eight, sixteen, twenty... A full twenty living corpses appeared, encircling Elder Gai and the others! "Then let us elders see how much skill you juniors have actually learned!" ... A towering, majestic figure stood in the sky above Hanshui City, directly above the provincial governor's manor. The man moved with the stride of a tiger and the poise of a dragon, resembling a born emperor, every gesture exuding overwhelming dominance and tyranny. His presence was so immense that everyone in Hanshui City could not help but gaze upward, seized by an inexplicable terror as they beheld the sun-rivaling figure. "After preparing for so long, the plan was leaked after all. Huang Ming and Meng Tian, those two good-for-nothing fools!" Killing intent flared in the emperor-like figure's eyes. Had he not lost all contact with the two of them, he would never have revealed himself early. Later—if only it had been slightly later, once the conditions to activate the grand array were fulfilled—the plan would have been seamless. "No matter. There are no flawless plans in this world. "Venerable Calamity failed and fell in Qingzhou, supposedly captured by an expert who appeared out of nowhere. "I have already investigated Hanshui City over these past days. There is no one in this city who poses a threat to me. "Just to be safe, I hereby establish a [Rule]: [Within one day, no information may leave Hanshui City]." Adding a time limit made the enforcement of the rule even stronger. Lu Yang looked up at the emperor-like figure floating in the sky, feeling a massive headache coming on. The moment the Immortal Fairy gave him a warning, he had tried to call out to Eldest Senior Sister. Unfortunately, he was still a step too late. With a rule established over the area by the imperial figure, Imitation Fist could not borrow power from Eldest Senior Sister, which meant she had no way of learning what was happening here. "Logically speaking, shouldn't Tribulation Transcendence cultivators be exceedingly rare? Why do we run into one everywhere we go? The provincial governor even said this place was the safest, so why do I feel like it's the most dangerous?" "Maybe it's because my status as the Young Cult Master is so high that they're all rushing to see me." "Hey, since you're already the Young Cult Master, shouldn't I get a position in the Heavenly Court Cult too?" "How about you be the Young Cult Master's lackey?" "Get lost." Sensing the Tribulation Transcendence aura radiating from the sky, the old horse wondered if it was time to retire. Meng Jingzhou's father had asked it to act as Meng Jingzhou's Dao Protector. It had thought the task would be simple enough and agreed readily. Thinking back, it had started by pulling Yun Zhi to the Dao Seeking Sect, then went on to resurrecting the Immortal Fairy at the Yanjiang Branch, encountering an ancient Tribulation Transcendence cultivator in Qingzhou, and now encountering yet another ancient Tribulation Transcendence cultivator in Huangzhou. It felt it had vastly overestimated its capabilities. Man Gu had always possessed immense confidence in Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou; with his two senior brothers present, nothing could possibly go wrong, so he remained exceptionally calm. Zhao Po was the most panicked of the four. In the morning, he had run into True Monarch Meng Tian, a Great Yu Body Integration cultivator, and by the afternoon, he was facing a Great Yu Tribulation Transcendence cultivator. What kind of luck was this? He felt as though his luck had been terribly rotten lately. Just when had it started going downhill?