In the mountain forest, Li Muyang darted through at lightning speed.
Wherever the Tunneling Light passed, the foxes in the mountains behind relentlessly pursued.
The plan between him and Yu Chan was simple. Once the siblings split up, they started executing it.
Li Muyang stepped on Tunneling Light, swiftly flying and attracting countless Ghost Foxes to hunt him down.
Those Ghost Foxes howled ferociously, chasing Li Muyang without respite.
Li Muyang occasionally glanced back, noticing the vast swarm of Ghost Foxes blanketing the mountains, roughly estimated to be in the tens of thousands.
“… The Ghost Moon Fox sure takes good care of you all, doesn’t it?”
Li Muyang muttered with a sigh.
He and Yu Chan, both natives of Jiuyuan City, had grown up there without ever knowing that so many foxes roamed the nearby mountains.
To conceal this group of foxes’ presence, the Ghost Moon Fox must have expended tremendous effort.
However, under Li Muyang’s frenzied assaults now, the foxes were dying miserably throughout the mountains.
Under the Destruction Wheel’s power, not even their corpses could remain. They’d be entirely swallowed and absorbed.
They roared defiantly, determined to reclaim the Abyssal Artifact, showing no fear of death.
But as more foxes fell, Li Muyang began to understand their malevolent plan.
—Every Ghost Fox killed would lay a particular sinister curse upon him.
Initially, the curse was subtle, but as more foxes perished, Li Muyang sharpened his awareness of his mana’s deterioration and the stiffness spreading through his body.
The curse inflicted by the Ghost Foxes resembled the Heavenly Person Five Decays that once destroyed the Mortal World.
Yet, compared to the ancient curse from ten thousand years ago, the foxes’ spell was faster and more precise.
Repeatedly stacking their curse onto Li Muyang, it quickly began to take effect.
Li Muyang’s Tunneling Light speed started to slow.
Perceiving this, he narrowed his eyes.
“Fortunately, this is just a physical body. Even if it’s ruined, it’s no matter.”
As the foxes relentlessly pursued, eager to use their curse to wear Li Muyang down…
Li Muyang was also intentionally stalling for time.
In the mountain region encircling Jiuyuan City, Li Muyang dashed across nearly all the peaks within a hundred-mile radius of the city without pause.
From dawn till nightfall, he finally caught sight of fireworks rising into the night sky.
This was the signal from Yu Chan, indicating the Netherworld Secret Realm’s entrance had opened.
Breathing a long sigh of relief upon seeing the signal, Li Muyang ceased entangling with the foxes.
He summoned the Startling Swan Immortal Sword, its sword light carving a wide path instantly through the forest.
Li Muyang broke free from the foxes’ encirclement and pursuit, heading toward the direction of the fireworks.
A quarter of an hour later, he arrived before Yu Chan.
In the valley ahead, Yu Chan had opened a rotating void gateway and was fiercely maintaining it.
“Brother!”
Yu Chan called out. Li Muyang immediately drove his Tunneling Light straight into the gateway.
As he plunged through the entrance, he also pulled Yu Chan inside.
With the siblings entering the Secret Realm, the void gateway behind them slowly closed. In its final moments, over a dozen screeching Ghost Foxes roared their way in.
Yu Chan was about to act, but Li Muyang stopped her, taking action himself instead.
“These Ghost Foxes cannot be killed. Killing them will curse you.”
The accumulated curses swarming Li Muyang were already overwhelming—no burden could weigh him down further.
Effortlessly exterminating the dozen foxes that chased them in, Li Muyang turned his gaze to the Netherworld Secret Realm ahead.
The world was enveloped in dim mist, making distant scenes impossible to discern.
Yet, compared to the last visit, the drifting white mist now had transformed into a dim, blood-red hue.
Amidst the crimson fog, this already sinister, eerie realm seemed even more malicious and unnerving.
“Can you sense your mother’s exact location?”
Li Muyang stared into the red haze as he asked.
Yu Chan looked bewildered and shook her head, indicating she didn’t know.
This wasn’t unexpected, as Yu Chan had never known her origins. The Ghost Moon Fox had wiped out nearly every trace of herself to integrate Yu Chan into the Human Realm.
Together, the siblings could only venture deeper into the mist for exploration.
Soon, they discovered traces left by Qing Yang Society’s Demon Cultivators.
Amid piles of scattered rocks ahead were signs of battles between cultivators, with lingering traces of mana within the mist.
Venturing further, they stumbled upon a dazed, wandering corpse of a cultivator.
The deceased was a Purple Mansion Realm Demon Cultivator of Qing Yang Society, now solitary and lifeless in the mist, his body aimlessly drifting through the Netherworld Secret Realm.
As Li Muyang approached, the wandering corpse abruptly erupted in madness, roaring as it lunged toward him.
“… Corpse transformation occurs for bodies perished in the Netherworld?”
Li Muyang wasn’t surprised; he had grown too familiar with the true Peaceful Realms.
Witnessing the corpse’s movements, he had already guessed at the possibility of transformation.
When the corpse rampaged toward him, Li Muyang promptly activated the Destruction Wheel, eliminating it.
Continuing onward, the siblings soon encountered more bodies.
Corpse after corpse lay strewn amidst the mist, dazed and wandering.
Some in Spirit Travel Realm, others in Purple Mansion Realm.
Qing Yang Society’s top Demon Cultivators had seemingly all been deployed.
“From the looks of it, were they hunting the Ghost Moon Fox all the way here?”
Li Muyang frowned as he observed the chase marks stretching deeper into the mist.
Did Chou Yuyan manage to drive a ghost deity to such a desperate state?
Even having lost Yan Xiaoru’s vital combat prowess, Chou Yuyan alone pressured the Ghost Moon Fox out… That madwoman, hateful and crazed as she was, truly lived up to being Little Wild Grass’s sole disciple.
A thousand years ago, perhaps this deranged woman was a peerless genius too.
Li Muyang inhaled deeply, continuing the chase through the mist.
They pursued the trail relentlessly, their purpose unwavering.
The further they went, the more stark the battlefield marks appeared, indicating increasingly brutal confrontations.
Eventually, after tallying all the bodies along the way, they concluded that every top-ranking force of Qing Yang Society had perished within this blood-colored fog.
Finally, even the corpse of the True Immortal named “Elder Tianxin,” once controlled and refined by Chou Yuyan, appeared in the mist.
Li Muyang was faintly shocked: “The True Immortal’s body was destroyed?”
The intensity of this battle was beyond imagination!
Within the crimson mist, the True Immortal’s corpse had been blasted apart, leaving most of the torso above the abdomen obliterated, with faint remnants of flesh attaching two arms.
Those scraps of flesh maintained the arms’ upright posture.
The two arms hung slack alongside the body, the left hand holding a brush, and the right gripping a scroll.
From afar, it seemed unscathed, casually wandering.
The scent of blood in the air grew stronger, both from the Demon Cultivators and the Ghost Moon Fox.
As the daughter of the fox, Yu Chan had a keen sense for her mother’s blood scent.
“… My mother’s injuries are worsening!”
