Chapter 162: Chapter 118: The End_1
Translator: 549690339
“Someone has cursed me in secret!”
Amidst the boundless agonizing pain, Zhou Mingyu finally awoke in horror, realizing the source of his unease. He struggled to prop up his body with difficulty and took out several second-tier talismans from his storage bag, placing them on his forehead and activating them all at once.
Evil Skills, Curse Spell!
Detestable tactics!
As a Foundation Establishment Cultivator who had lived for nearly two hundred years and seen much of the world, he had also heard of such cultivating skills.
Although such means were mostly of the Demon Path and not prevalent in the Cultivation World of Liang Country, he had only heard of them and never came into close contact, let alone knew how to counteract them. He had never eaten pork, but he had seen pigs run; he was aware of a few countermeasures.
The Curse Killing Skill mainly targeted the Divine Soul, and the methods to counteract it were basically threefold: either slay the caster, perform a body-protecting curse-nullifying skill, or rely on one’s own strength to resist head-on.
Zhou Mingyu was neither versed in curse spells nor in possession of curse-nullifying body-protecting skills, and finding his adversary was unrealistic at this juncture.
Therefore, he had no choice but to resist head-on!
The talismans he used were all second-tier Spirit Talismans for stabilizing the Divine Soul and resisting evil demons.
One of them, moreover, was of superior quality and quite valuable!
Zhou Mingyu, enduring the severe pain, activated it to stabilize the defense of his Divine Soul, resisting the curse spell’s attack.
In an instant, he saw the pain lessen and his soul began to recover its cohesion.
Indeed effective!
But Zhou Mingyu still dared not be careless. Propping up his body, he sat back on the lotus platform, closed his eyes, and spurred his divine consciousness to assess his condition.
No sooner had he closed his eyes than darkness surged like a tide, overwhelming his consciousness and making it fuzzy.
In that daze, within the gloom, two figures suddenly appeared like specters.
They were two terrifying and grim Ghost Generals.
One General had a green face with fangs, a ferocious mouth, and a steel fork in hand.
The other General had a red face with a fierce gaze, eyes and eyebrows filled with malice, holding an iron chain across.
Although the two Generals were fiendishly terrifying and embodied Underworld Ghosts, their approach now bore the air of walking the Big Dipper’s steps.
In a moment, they had ominously stepped in front of him.
Zhou Mingyu’s pupils constricted with terror.
Before he could act, he saw the green-faced General step forward and twist his body, hurling his fork.
“Bang!!!”
Though they were second-tier talismans, they could not withstand the refined methods and the special enhancements of the Increase and Decrease Two Generals. With a thrust of his fork, the protective layer shattered instantly, and one of the Spirit Talismans on his forehead ignited, burning to ash and dispersing.
As the Spirit Talisman turned to ash, Zhou Mingyu, sitting on the lotus platform, trembled. Veins bulged between his head and neck, his facial features twisted, large beads of sweat rolled down, soaking his clothes. The scabbed sword wound on his chest also split open in an instant, blood spurting out, a shocking sight to behold.
Pain, pain, pain, indescribably intense and to the marrow!
“Hu!”
Amidst the severe pain, another talisman shattered, spontaneously combusting without fire, the ashes scattering.
Within his sea of consciousness, the red-faced General charged, sweeping his iron chain, breaking the protective talisman’s defense, and hooking onto Zhou Mingyu’s soul essence.
Zhou Mingyu’s pupils constricted, and before he could act, the iron chain tugged, pulling a lacerated piece of flesh from his soul essence’s body.
How could the Divine Soul have flesh and blood?
Zhou Mingyu didn’t know, only feeling he had lost something crucial, overwhelmed by immense pain that made him scream piercingly.
“Ah!!!”
With a scream, Zhou Mingyu toppled from the lotus platform and heavily fell to the ground. His once white hair gradually became gray and lifeless, dry and brittle, even scattering like ash.
Within his physical body, a putrid mix of dingy sweat, crimson blood, and various foul-smelling filth overflowed, the stench unbearable, enough to cause retching.
The heavens could pity him. Before, although his hair was all white, embodying an elderly visage, he still had the vitality of youth within and radiated vibrancy, unlike his current state of total decline, showing the signs of impending doom, at the life-and-death threshold.
How could this happen?
How could this happen!
Lifespan, lifespan…!
In a moment of terrifying enlightenment, Zhou Mingyu realized what he had lost.
Life essence!
Lifespan!
Those two Evil Ghosts had snatched away his life essence, cutting away his lifespan.
“How utterly vicious!!!”
Zhou Mingyu screamed, propping up his body, struggling desperately.
But where was there a path to life for him?
For three months, with painstaking sacrifice and cultivation, devouring thousands of Evil Ghosts, absorbing all essences of Underworld Souls, further empowered by the thunderbolt creation and the vitality of pure Yang, along with skill enhancements and special attributes, the Increase Life and Damage Fate Two Generals had been cultivated. They long surpassed common norms, dreadfully terrifying, and fiercely invincible.
Let alone at the late stages of Foundation Establishment, even at the peak of Foundation Establishment, one might not withstand them.
Zhou Mingyu, as a physical cultivator, had a naturally weaker Divine Soul and no knowledge of Taoist healing skills. Facing the onslaught of the Increase and Decrease Two Generals, he was at a disadvantage within a disadvantage.
Forget the Divine Soul, even his physical body was not at its peak, afflicted with a deep unhealed sword injury.
Internally and externally beleaguered, the Increase and Decrease Generals push him to the brink of death!
In such a state, where was there any path to survival for him?
There was not only no path to survival, but also growing despair.
Both eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, heavily sinking down, his vision twisting and blurring, dim and dark, hardly able to see anything.
In both ears, the drumming buzzed and roared like the cries of ghosts and howls of wolves, plunging his mind into chaos, the world spinning around him, with no ability to hear.
Even his nose and mouth were sealed by an invisible force, unable to exhale or inhale, stuck in between, an indescribable pain.
Moreover, his limbs felt as if a mountain was pressing down, bearing the weight of ten thousand catties, unable to struggle or escape, as if he was being crushed alive.
“Ancestor!”
Perhaps alarmed by the commotion, the middle-aged cultivator who had just left returned posthaste with several others to the house, only to be frozen in shock, appalled by the dreadful state of their family ancestor, unsure of what to do.
“Ancestor!!!”
“How could this happen?”
“Could it be that the sword wound was poisoned?”
“Quick, bring the antidote pills!”
Although they did not know what was happening, the crowd was jolted awake, seeing Zhou Mingyu writhing on the ground in pain, growing increasingly weak; they rushed to administer pills to him.
However, Zhou Mingyu’s veins bulged, his jaws tightly clenched, blood oozing from his mouth, making it impossible to get the pills inside.
“Ancestor!”
“This…”
While the Zhou family members stood helpless,
“Puh!!!”
A muffled sound erupted as Zhou Mingyu’s body convulsed, and he vomited a large spurt of fresh blood. His once robust body visibly withered at a rate visible to the naked eye, as if his flesh and spirit were being hollowed out, leaving only skin adhered to a skeleton.
“Ancestor!!!”
The Zhou family members’ complexion changed drastically, stricken with horror.
Before their shocked cries could finish, they saw two dark streams spewing out from Zhou Mingyu’s body, transforming into two towering, fearsome ghost generals.
Increase Life and Damage Fate!
Gazing at the two ghost generals, the middle-aged cultivator with a Foundation Establishment level of cultivation was the first to react, his pupils contracting, readying to take action.
But…
“Puh!”
The Increase Life General, with his green teeth bared, moved swiftly, twisting his waist, and threw his fork, skewering the man against the wall along with it.
Suddenly, the building ship trembled, spirit light flashed, and the Zhou family members were thrown into panic.
At that moment, a malevolent cloud descended from the sky, and Yin Qi surged like a tide, breaking through the magic artifact defenses and slamming into the building ship.
It was a Daoist with a cold face and a sinister aura.
The Daoist man held a long banner, with surging Yin Qi around his body, and a hundred ghosts wailing as he clashed with the panic-stricken Zhou family cultivators.
In such a condition, moments later…
Numerous spirit lights burst out of the building ship, scattering in all directions, fleeing in alarm.
Inside the building ship, Xu Yang held the Hundred Ghosts Banner at ease, showing no intention of pursuing them.
Eradicating the roots was only necessary for Zhou Mingyu.
As for the rest… he needed them alive!
Only if they lived would the news of “Yin Mountain Taoist” intercepting the Zhou family’s Tower Treasure Ship and killing the family’s elder Zhou Mingyu spread, clearing “Li Jianchen” of suspicion.
He wanted to create distractions for the Green Jade Sect and other forces, diverting attention from the Spirit Land of Dongting Lake.
The Yin Mountain Taoist was indeed a suitable choice, a practitioner of the Demon Path who employed underworld ghosts to assassinate a late-stage Foundation Establishment Loose Cultivator was enough to draw attention.
Moreover, with the deaths of Wang Tianling and Zhou Mingyu, it was certain that the assets of both families would be hard to defend, especially the Qingfeng Mountain market owned by the Zhou family, which would definitely have to be relinquished, sparking a new battle for the Spirit Land.
At that time, the Green Jade Sect would certainly engage in their balancing strategy again, inciting various forces to fight over it, creating a storm of bloodshed.
In such a scenario, would anybody still pay attention to the inconspicuous Dongting Lake and a Li Jianchen whose life was almost spent?
Clearly not!
After this event, he would have at least twenty or thirty years of development time.
At the very least, before Li Jianchen “meets his fate and dies”, it was unlikely that various forces and the Green Jade Sect would bother with Dongting Lake again.
Especially the Green Jade Sect, that was crucial.
The many things he had done were mainly to prepare for this Golden Core level Upper Sect.
As for those Foundation Establishment powers, they were just a side note to deter, ultimately insignificant.
After a short while, a tide of ghosts engulfed the building ship flying boat, morphing into the dark currents and disappearing.
The scene concluded!