In the tumultuous Blood Lake, Li Hao’s clothes had dissolved entirely, leaving him naked.
The Heaven and Earth Space within the Qiankun Jade Belt was exposed at a corner, like a breach allowing the bloody water to ripple inside.
“What, what place is this?”
The Crimson Blood Vine Demon King extended a blood-colored tendril, shocked as it probed the outside situation, getting splashed by blood waves, it immediately let out a pained shriek.
“It hurts!”
“It seems my power has been sealed, I can’t fly up.”
The Crimson Blood Vine Demon tried to fly out of the Heaven and Earth Space but was panic-stricken to discover it couldn’t mobilize its internal energy.
Seeing Li Hao, with his arm raised high above the lake, the arm already tattered, exposing muscles and bones, the Demon King paused, as if it had a realization.
“Are we, going to die?”
It asked softly, with a trembling voice.
Li Hao, hearing its words, hadn’t expected that a demon would be his companion at his life’s end.
He felt a pang in his heart and looked around, but it was pitch black, the rock walls nowhere to be seen.
The falling flesh plunged into the lake, agitating the water, pushing his body around on the surface, with no sense of the distance to the rock walls.
“I’ll try to see if I can find the rock wall,” Li Hao said, kicking hard and swinging his arm, swimming straight in one direction.
But along the way, large chunks of flesh fell, and the waves they raised pushed him back where he had started.
The Demon Saint’s body, apparently only held together by a force, now that it was gone, disintegrated into rotting meat, collapsing and dissolving, submerging in the stench of the Blood Lake.
“Be careful,” cried the Crimson Blood Vine Demon King urgently.
Li Hao saw a chunk of falling flesh hurtling down towards him and swam fast to the side, but his shoulder was still grazed, plunging his body deep into the Blood Lake.
A suffocating sensation overwhelmed him, Li Hao clutched the Qiankun Jade Belt desperately swimming towards the surface.
When he surfaced, most of his flesh had been dislodged and corroded away, leaving but a few strands of flesh clinging to white bones, a terrifying sight.
Li Hao raised his bony arm, seeing the Qiankun Jade Belt held by five skeletal fingers, with gaps far too large to stem the flood of blood, the belt thoroughly drenched and severely corroded.
“I didn’t expect, to bring you to such a deadly place,” Li Hao slowly calmed down as he faced impending death, looking up at the far-off sky, the massive Qiu Tian Dao, now small as a sesame seed in his vision, occupying a minuscule portion of his sight.
He gazed blankly at the empty sky of the secret realm, where even clouds were absent, speaking to himself:
“The world outside, there’s beauty in it too, pity you will never get the chance to see it.”
“Ouch… it hurts so much.”
The Crimson Blood Vine Demon King’s tendrils again crept out from the Qiankun Jade Belt’s space, despite its cries of pain, it wrapped around Li Hao’s arm:
“You eat me, we’re going to die anyway, if you eat me, you might last a bit longer.”
Li Hao was momentarily shocked, “You want me to eat you?”
“Don’t you want to? You were worried I’d panic and self-destruct, right?”
The Crimson Blood Vine Demon King’s tendrils crept onto Li Hao’s skull and cheekbones, like a pair of gentle hands, tenderly and carefully cradling Li Hao’s skeletal face:
“At this point, we’re both going to die. If it’s my fate to be consumed, I choose it to be by you…”
“Why?”
The Demon King did not reply but instead, its tendrils bloomed with blood light, voluntarily pouring into Li Hao’s skull.
“Because we made a pinky promise before…”
“I won’t abandon you, so if I die before you, it’s you who have left me behind, not breaking my promise…”
It murmured softly, its voice fading, its body emerging from the Qiankun Jade Belt’s space, transforming into a serpent-like beacon of blood light, drilling into Li Hao’s head.
Li Hao was not the one eating; instead, the Demon King was willingly sacrificing itself into Li Hao’s body as a blood meal.
When it had seen the youth’s corroded body, yet still holding the Qiankun Jade Belt high, it knew it had chosen the right person.
Li Hao was stunned, floating listlessly on the Blood Lake.
He had promised it before, to lead it out of the wasteland, biting it once a day as ‘interest.’
Back then, it had treasured its body, guarding it jealously.
Now, before the youth could fulfill his promise, the demon had offered everything to him.
It was just a demon Li Hao had never taken to heart.
Li Hao thought of the tendril that had quietly bound around his pinkie, his eyes suddenly reddening.
His skull was engulfed in the blood light, tremendous Blood Qi surged into his body, nourishing his bones.
The flesh that was once as solid as a Divine Weapon, with the enrichment of this vast Blood Qi, seemed to break through a certain bottleneck.
At that moment, the erosion of the Bone Lake on his skeleton seemed to slow down, and Li Hao could feel deep, profound strength in the blood water.
He paused, quickly activated the Soul Sacrifice True Demon Skill, drawing in the deep powerful blood strength from the water.
Before he couldn’t absorb it, but now it seemed he had crossed some threshold, he could barely process the Blood Qi strength of the Saint Realm!