Cultivating for a hundred lifetimes to ascension

Seeing this scene, a hint of surprise flashed across Zhao Sheng's face.

He knew very well that the five-zhang-tall cloud mist was the edge of the Flowing Cloud Illusion Array.

Some unknown creature had managed to silently pass through the Flowing Cloud Illusion Array, and it looked like it was about to corrode its way into the slope.

Zhao Sheng slapped the ground, and his body suddenly floated out of the depression. In mid-air, his body stretched out with ease, and his feet landed on the slope below.

Crack!

With a light sound, a mass of "blood stain" suddenly fell from above the cloud mist to the ground, not far from Zhao Sheng.

At that moment, Zhao Sheng's pupils constricted as he saw the mass of "blood stain" writhing non-stop like a living thing. Its surface intermittently bulged out in shapes of various creatures such as centipedes, lizards, snakes, and even human heads and faces.

Zhao Sheng felt his stomach churn at the sight and couldn't help but curse, "What in the world is this thing?"

Before the words had finished, the blood stain, as if sensing Zhao Sheng's "human presence," suddenly stretched into a snake-like, eerie creature and rushed towards Zhao Sheng.

"Thunder, come!"

Zhao Sheng shouted, flipping his right hand, and in an instant, a water ball sparkling with electric light appeared in his palm and expanded rapidly to the size of a human head.

"Go!"

Amidst the buzzing electric light, the Water Mine was thrown. After flying out two zhang, it collided head-on with the eerie blood stain.

Boom!

A loud thunderclap exploded, and in an instant, electric light scattered in all directions, accompanied by a sudden, piercing scream.

Soon after, waves of foul odor along with the backdraft of the Gang Wind kept flooding into Zhao Sheng's nostrils.

Ugh!

As Zhao Sheng instinctively covered his mouth and nose, a look of shock suddenly appeared on his face.

Because of the heavy impact of the Water Mine, the mass of blood stain had not died but had shrunk in size by more than half.

After falling to the ground, it quickly shed most of its charred body, and the remaining fist-sized remnant turned into a blood centipede. It bent its body sharply and sprung off the ground, shooting towards Zhao Sheng's face.

Hmph!

Zhao Sheng snorted coldly, spreading his right hand wide and waving it forward. In the blink of an eye, a thick layer of water screen formed in front of him, suddenly blocking his path.

The blood stain thudded into the water screen.

With a thought from Zhao Sheng, the water screen quickly solidified into a large water ball, half the height of a person, trapping the blood stain firmly inside.

In the blink of an eye, the blood stain shifted into hundreds of life forms but failed to break through the barrier of the water ball.

As Zhao Sheng watched the blood stain struggle and shift shapes inside the water ball, he grew very curious.

He wanted to know, was this blood stain a kind of strange creature or a product of some evil demon from the Outer Path?

Zhao Sheng circulated his Spiritual Power to slowly cut the blood stain.

It split from one to two, from two to four, from four to eight...

By the time it was sliced to the thickness of a hair, the remaining blood stain suddenly lost its vitality and collapsed into specks of dirty blood.

Even so, Zhao Sheng was still shocked by its extraordinary tenacity and strange life force.

Zhao Sheng racked his brains but could not recall any such bizarre creatures in the Cultivation World.

"What exactly is it?" Zhao Sheng thought to himself.

On the slope, he was the only one present. Zhao Keru and his son had returned to Taifu Mountain two months ago, leaving him with no one to discuss the matter.

Zhao Sheng collected the dirty blood from the ground into a jade box, planning to go down to Pocket World City to gather information.

Just because he was unaware did not mean that others didn't know the origin of this ghastly thing.

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Sizzle!

Zhao Sheng suddenly looked up, his complexion changing drastically.

"Hm?!"

At this moment, he saw three patches of blood appear in the mist above, the smallest with a diameter less than half a foot, while the largest spanned over ten feet in diameter.

...

A quarter hour later, with a grave expression, Zhao Sheng collected a small clump of bloodstain into the Magic Artifact, the Jade Purifying Bottle, and sealed the neck and body of the bottle with a Sealing Talisman.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Then, Zhao Sheng activated his Spiritual Power and poured it into the Cloud Dispersion Robe. In a flash, a large swath of mist swiftly surged from the robe, quickly surrounding Zhao Sheng, and eventually submerging his figure.

The next moment, the mist rose and merged into the cloud mist above, quickly vanishing without a trace.

Having escaped the Flowing Cloud Illusion Array, Zhao Sheng appeared amidst the Cloud Sea.

He pressed himself against the mountainside, his body concealed within the mist.

Zhao Sheng watched his surroundings with a cautious expression while expanding his Divine Sense to its limits, always attentive to any movement around him.

However, after a quarter hour had passed, the dense fog that occupied most of his field of vision remained as tranquil as before, aside from the occasional roars and cries nearby, Zhao Sheng neither heard nor saw anything out of the ordinary.

Moreover, Zhao Sheng could smell the air filled with the scent of earth and the bitter aroma of grass, yet he detected not a hint of blood. It was as if the bloodstain that had just invaded the slope had never appeared.

Zhao Sheng felt quite perplexed. He looked up at the sky and saw the mountainside riddled with uneven pits and covered with soil, stones, and moss.

After pondering for a moment, a thought occurred to him, and a Concentrating God Talisman appeared between his fingers, transforming into ashes.

Instantly, the aura around Zhao Sheng's body became as subdued as the rocks and soil. Then, the mist began to rise slowly around him, drifting upwards towards the Cloud Sea above along the mountainside.

An hour later, just above the second layer of the Cloud Sea on Heavenly Pillar Mountain, at a height of twenty-three li.

Zhao Sheng carefully hid beneath an overhanging rock on the cliffside, his Divine Sense probing upward.

Above him, around six to seven zhang away on the cliff, lay a corpse with its chest and belly mostly decayed, continuously oozing filthy blood. Beside the corpse, on the ground, lay an Ancient Bronze Flying Sword thrust upside down into the earth.

Near this corpse, there were even more mutilated bodies, some hanging, some prone, scattered among the surrounding rocks, tree branches, and crevices.

But these corpses were not what made Zhao Sheng so cautious.

The reason for his wariness was that the corrupted blood oozing from those corpses wriggled through them like living creatures, almost identical to the bloodstains Zhao Sheng had encountered on the slope.

The only difference was that these "bloodstains" bore an expressionless human face on their surface.

With a closer look, one could recognize that each face matched the features of the nearby corpses exactly.

After silently observing for a while, Zhao Sheng was astonished to find that the corpses were gradually being dissolved and devoured by the bloodstains.

Once the corpses were completely consumed, not only did the volume of the bloodstains significantly increase, but they also actively merged together.

At this time, as if called by some force, the bloodstain quickly transformed into a large blood-colored blanket and began to climb rapidly up the cliffside, soon passing beyond the reach of Zhao Sheng's Divine Sense.

Seeing this, Zhao Sheng hesitated for a moment before curiosity got the better of him.

After releasing two Invisibility Talismans and a Concentrating God Talisman upon himself, he lifted the Small Circulation Talisman Plate and immediately followed the trail.

moments later, anxiety grew within Zhao Sheng's heart, as he noticed that the silent, lifeless journey upwards revealed no signs of life, something highly abnormal.

This was exceedingly strange because Heavenly Pillar Mountain's Yin side was teeming with life, and such stillness would not occur without some major calamity.

Moments later, Zhao Sheng's Divine Sense occasionally picked up the figures of other "bloodstains."

From their trajectories, it seemed as if these bloodstains were all converging towards the same location.

As Zhao Sheng ascended higher, the number of "bloodstains" appearing within his Divine Sense increased.

By this point, Zhao Sheng began to consider retreating.

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