“A mere Qi Condensation cultivator, and yet he requires such extreme caution?”

Lu Yutian shook his head, a scoff escaping his lips. “Daoist Sanquan has cultivated for centuries, yet his courage has withered to the size of a mustard seed.”

Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Lu Yutian clutched his stomach, suppressing a laugh. In his eyes, Sanquan lacked the arrogance befitting a master. To put it nicely, the man was cautious. To put it bluntly, he was a coward. A man like that would never reach the peak of the Great Dao.

Lost in these haughty thoughts, Lu Yutian arrived before Gu Xiu’s courtyard.

He swept his gaze over the perimeter and sneered. “After all, he is just a Qi Condensation rookie. He knows formations, yet he left them deactivated. It seems Fate has marked you for death today.”

The traces of an array were present, but the spiritual energy was dormant. Perhaps the resident was trying to save spirit stones, or perhaps he trusted the Wanbao Tower guards outside.

It didn’t matter. In Lu Yutian’s eyes, this ‘Feng Bugui’ was practically inviting the reaper in for tea.

Not wasting another second, the Golden Core expert vaulted over the wall, landing silently in the courtyard.

His Divine Sense immediately swept the area. He paused, detecting a presence in the side room. It was the little maid, Xiao He, sound asleep.

“Even the serving girl is a cultivator who just entered Qi Condensation?” Lu Yutian frowned. “The Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion certainly values this loose cultivator.”

He shook his head in disdain. “A cultivator who sleeps the night away instead of training… no wonder she is destined to remain a servant.”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second.

Something feels wrong.

His instincts screamed that the sleeping girl was dangerous, as if a dormant killing array lay coiled around her. But he quickly dismissed the thought. Impossible. Does a maid carry a supreme weapon? It must be an illusion caused by the moonlight.

His target was Feng Bugui. He wouldn’t lower himself to kill a servant unless necessary.

Lu Yutian bypassed the side room and strode into the backyard.

He stopped, a bemused smirk playing on his lips.

The yard was packed with puppets. Densely arranged rows of Iron Pear Wood figures, all tuned to the fifth layer of Qi Condensation, standing like a silent army.

“Is this man an idiot?”

Lu Yutian almost laughed aloud. “These shoddy puppets might serve as cannon fodder on a mortal battlefield, but here? Who does he think he is blocking?”

In front of a true expert, quantity was irrelevant. A thousand ants were still just ants.

“Kindling,” Lu Yutian muttered, stepping past the wooden ranks toward the main house.

He took two steps and stopped. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

He whirled around. The puppets stood frozen, staring blankly ahead.

An illusion? Why did I feel them move?

Lu Yutian narrowed his eyes, his Divine Sense sweeping over the wooden figures. They were lifeless blocks of wood. Relieved, he turned back toward the house.

Wait.

He spun around again, his heart skipping a beat.

The puppets hadn’t moved their bodies. But their eyes.

Every single painted wooden eye was now locked onto him.

The discomfort he felt wasn’t movement; it was the weight of a thousand gazes.

“Damn it, who is playing tricks?”

Enraged by his own momentary fear, Lu Yutian flashed forward and smashed his palm into the nearest puppet.

Bang!

The wooden figure exploded into sawdust. It offered no resistance. It was just a standard Iron Pear Wood combat puppet, utterly devoid of intelligence. Without a puppeteer using Spirit Thread Manipulation, it was garbage.

“Did I imagine it?” Lu Yutian inspected the debris, finding nothing unusual.

“Forget it. This place is eerie. I’ll capture Feng Bugui and leave.”

Suppressing the creeping chill in his spine, he rushed to the door of the main room. His Divine Sense pierced through the wood, illuminating the interior.

He saw a figure sitting cross-legged, back turned to the door.

“Oh? He has reached Foundation Establishment?”

Lu Yutian sensed the fluctuation of a newly formed foundation. “Tsk, tsk. What a pity. Even if you broke through… you are still a dead man walking.”

Confirming there were no traps, a cruel smile twisted Lu Yutian’s face.

The puppets had unnerved him. A Golden Core expert, spooked by wood carvings? It was humiliating.

He would repay that humiliation a thousandfold.

“Let this little cultivator from the Eastern Wastelands taste the horror of the Northern Dark Demon Domain,” he whispered. “Let him see what the Blood Fiend Sect can do.”

He didn’t open the door. Instead, he stood outside, raised his palm, and pressed it gently against the air.

Buzz.

A thick, nauseating stench of copper and rot instantly flooded the room inside. The air grew heavy with chaos and malice. Faintly, the wailing of ten thousand ghosts echoed in the void.

Blood Fiend Ghost Palm.

This technique didn’t just kill; it shattered the mind. It drowned the victim in absolute terror, making their gallbladder burst from fear. To a disciple of the Blood Fiend Sect, blood laced with the flavor of despair was the ultimate delicacy.

Lu Yutian licked his lips. He wanted Feng Bugui to become his meal.

Under his control, the red mist inside the room coalesced into a massive, spectral hand. It drifted toward Gu Xiu, ready to crush him into paste.

Gu Xiu did not move.

“Is the kid stupid? Has he not noticed?” Lu Yutian was annoyed. He wanted screams. He wanted begging.

The silence was insulting.

Then, Lu Yutian froze. “What is happening?”

The giant spectral hand had stopped inches from Gu Xiu’s back.

The ferocious, chaotic energy within the palm suddenly went docile. The screaming ghosts fell silent, as if someone had choked them. The violence evaporated.

“Why has my technique failed?”

Lu Yutian was dumbfounded. He was a Golden Core expert!

He refused to accept it. His hands flew through a series of seals, pouring more power into the room. The Ghost Palm shattered into thousands of individual vengeful spirits, swarming toward Gu Xiu like a plague of locusts.

But as they crossed the three-foot radius around Gu Xiu…

They trembled.

One by one, the vengeful spirits disintegrated into nothingness.

“Impossible! Does he have a treasure that counters evil?”

Lu Yutian’s eyes turned cold. “I underestimated you.”

He reached into his storage ring and pulled out a heavy cloth sack—his Blood Fiend Bag. He loosened the drawstring.

Whoosh!

A dense purple light erupted, flooding the room. The energy was so concentrated it materialized into physical forms—Blood Fiend Ghost Kings, armored and wielding spectral weapons.

“Go!” Lu Yutian commanded. “Tear him apart!”

The Ghost Kings charged, roaring with a bloodlust that could freeze water.

They reached Gu Xiu. They stopped.

They dropped their weapons.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

One by one, the terrifying Ghost Kings fell to their knees. They prostrated themselves before the sitting figure, their heads knocking against the floor in trembling worship.

“This… how is this possible?”

Lu Yutian staggered back, his mind reeling.

“The Blood Fiend Sect cultivates through slaughter. My aura was forged from the blood of three mortal cities! I slaughtered hundreds of thousands to reach this state!”

His voice pitched up in hysteria. “Even a Golden Core cultivator of the same level would be affected by my pressure. Why is it useless against him?”

A terrifying realization struck him like a thunderbolt.

“It’s not that my aura failed,” he whispered, his face draining of color. “It’s that his aura is stronger.”

In the hierarchy of the Blood Fiend, the greater evil devours the lesser evil.

“But… did he slaughter ten cities?”

“Impossible! This is the Eastern Wastelands, not the chaotic Northern Dark! Where would he find ten cities to butcher? How could he possess such a monstrous aura?”

Lu Yutian refused to believe it. He needed to see the truth.

He gritted his teeth, formed his hand into a sword finger, and sliced across his own eyelids.

Slit.

Blood poured down, coating his eyeballs in a crimson film.

Fiend Sight Technique.

This secret art revealed the true nature of killing intent. When he looked at himself, he saw a towering pillar of red light, tinged with purple—the legacy of his three-city massacre. He was proud of that light.

“Show me!” Lu Yutian hissed, looking toward the room. “Show me what you are!”

He looked up.

His breath hitched. He scrambled backward, his boots scraping frantically against the stone pavers.

“No…”

Through the crack in the door, he didn’t see a person.

He saw the abyss.

Pitch-black, ink-like hands were reaching out from the room, grasping at the air.

They were solid. They were hungry.

Lu Yutian watched in horror as the black hands grabbed the red aura radiating from his own body. They were eating it.

His proud slaughter-aura, gathered over decades of sin, was being devoured like a snack. It offered no resistance. It surrendered instantly to the superior predator.

“How… how can such dense Blood Fiend Qi exist?”

Lu Yutian felt a chill that froze his very marrow.

Blood Fiend Qi operates on a simple rule: Big fish eat small fish. It has nothing to do with cultivation base, only the quantity of death one has caused.

A single one of those black hands contained more concentrated death than Lu Yutian’s entire existence.

“Who… is he?”

Lu Yutian gasped for air. A thought formed in his mind, sinking his heart into an icy pit.

Blood Fiend Qi doesn’t appear without cause. It always accompanies a person.

If the hands are here…

Trembling, Lu Yutian forced his gaze upward, toward the figure sitting in the room.

He took one look.

His legs turned to water. The Golden Core expert collapsed onto the dirt, his pupils dilated to the breaking point.