Somewhere in the Kilostar Domain, a man in an azure robe met up with an older male dressed in a bright green one. The former held a starmap in hand as he coldly looked at the other. "Qing Ming, is this fake starmap all I'm getting in exchange for handing you guys Jiang Wuxin? Is this what Nonahall meant by making a sincere alliance?"
"A fake? Impossible!" Ghoul King Qing Ming said firmly.
"I've gone to five marked locations and searched all over the place for treasure. There was nothing there," Feng Qingyu said.
"I already told you that the marks are just potential treasure spots. That doesn't guarantee that they're there," Qing Ming said.
"All five though?"
"It's just a matter of chance."
"Show me your starmap then."
"Feel free." Qing Ming took his map out of his spatial ring and said, "While these are copies of the original, the details are replicated exactly the same. The starmap itself isn't complicated. Check if the markings match up."
"For all I know, you could've made this in advance in case someone asked to check it," Feng Qingyu said after verifying that they were indeed the same.
"Brother Feng, if you're going to accuse me of something I can't possibly disprove, this talk is pointless. I'll leave you to be the judge of our sincerity. Didn't you talk to the other two before? We're looking at the big picture, so we won't be stingy with small things like this. What’s the point of antagonizing a peak elite like you over petty treasure?" Qing Ming said respectfully.
"Then, has your side gotten any treasures so far?"
"No. Li Tianming, on the other hand, got more than ten thousand tribulation manna. Laughable, right?"
"What grade were they?"
"Most of them were fifth- to sixth-grade."
"That means the Kilostar Domain does indeed contain treasure."
"We’re certain of that as well."
"So all ten thousand of you can't find a single brat even after scouring the whole place?"
"Xue Yi's in charge of that, so I'm not too well informed on it."
"Since that's the case, I'll help out. I have around three thousand people coming in the next few days, so please tell those standing guard outside to let them in."
"Why are you calling so many to come?" Qing Min said with a troubled look.
"I can't be sure whether this starmap is good for anything, so I can't just blindly go from one spot to another. Meanwhile, you have ten thousand people searching the domain for you. Surely it isn't too much to ask to have three thousand people helping in my search?"
After some consideration, Qing Min said, "Alright. However, don't be so sure that the starmap is useless yet. We're still testing it out ourselves to see if there really are treasures at the marked locations. Li Caiwei also has one. While she hasn't said anything yet, she might've gotten something already."
"Let's hope it's real then!" After saying that, Feng Qingyu left.
Qing Ming narrowed his eyes and a glint flashed across them while he stared at his back. "Hexapath Swordfiend, huh? When you're no longer useful to us, you'll be a goner."
......
The Specter Mountains within the Nonahall Divine Realm looked like a sleeping giant. Cultivators and their beasts were like ants on the giant's body. The sect itself spanned a huge area, allowing for all kinds of lifebound beasts to roam free across varying landscapes.
After the war began, the entire sect's atmosphere had grown tense and fervent. Near the location of the 'eye' of the giant was an endless pit. It wasn't one that led into the Abyssal Battlefield; instead, a black miasma came roiling out from within, filled with the aggrieved cries of pitiful souls.
This was an area forbidden to most normal people. The pit was about three kilometers deep, and there were a few heavenly pattern formations down the sides. At the very end of it was a dark palace, and at the palace's highest point stood a middle-aged man in purple robes who let out a purple aura. The aura seemed to coalesce into many small snakes that crawled around his body. Even his hair seemed to rise and fall in the darkness like lively snakes.
His large, violet eyes stared straight through the dark miasma at a great, bloody cauldron. He jumped off the palace and descended on the cauldron. Within it was a boiling, bloody soup. It was filled with human blood, and stank like it, too. Even more terrifying were the tens of thousands of skeletons within the soup, all of them human! Their skeletons were still intact, which was a sign that they had only just recently died before being tossed into the boiling blood soup.
Somewhere in the bloody pool, something moved. Upon closer inspection, one would be able to see a plain-looking youth. He lay weakly in the bloody cauldron, looking up and floating amidst the corpses, staring at the countless expressions of despair just centimeters away from him.
"Jiang Wuxin," the purple-robed ghoul king said, causing him to look up. "These are the prisoners of war we just got from the Pentaphase Divine Realm."
Jiang Wuxin looked at his surroundings and saw around a hundred thousand people. They weren't cultivators, but innocent civilians from the divine realm.
"This is just the first batch. We’ll have more and more sacrificial offerings for you. Their blood, flesh, and souls will be your nourishment. The blood of the specter within you will absorb the offerings. Using the Blood Cauldron and Blood Tribute Formation, the offerings will become your power! You’ll eventually grow into the strongest weapon of our sect! You’ll possess the power of millions! You will be a god in the truest sense of the word!
"You are the chosen one, understood? Young man, you must utilize this opportunity well. It’s the only way for you to get your revenge. One day, you’ll be able to singlehandedly wipe out the entirety of the Archaion Divine Realm to avenge your loved ones. They are at fault for killing your two beloved wives. Now, you’ve lost everything. You can't let Yin and Yu lie unavenged! They loved you so much! Now is the time for you to pay them back. Jiang Wuxin, you’ll live to kill, and you’ll become the nightmare of those hypocrites. Show everyone that looks down on you what hell looks like. One day, the entire world will kneel and cower before you."
Those words dreamily hung around Jiang Wuxin's ear. They were like a poison that invaded his sea of consciousness through his sense of hearing and stained his soul red. His breathing slowly grew heavier and the four irises in his two eyes turned red as the combined grievance and anger of the hundred thousand people concentrated in his body.
Soon, the Blood Cauldron and Blood Tribute Formation began working in tandem. The young man in the pool of blood howled like a beast in pain. As his cries grew louder, the blood began to boil hotter. When the corpses fused with his body, the ghoul king standing atop the cauldron finally laughed, causing his hair to shift around him like thousands of little snakes. His ear-piercing laughter intermingled with Jiang Wuxin's cries of agony and rose to the high heavens, reaching the ears of everyone in the Specter Mountains.