Dragon Canon

Chapter 121: Blood Curse

A bundle of blood qi invaded Wei Yuan’s sea of consciousness and transformed into a massive ghost beast. When it opened its eyes, it was immediately greeted by the sight of a boundless expanse.

Flabbergasted, the ghost beast wasn’t sure what to do at first. However, a Great Warlock’s blood curse possessed a certain level of sentience. After circling around the area a couple times, it eventually locked onto the spot boasting the thickest fortune and pounced toward the moon!

Shadows stirred, and the head of a three-eyed bird emerged from the moon. It then opened one eye and gave the ghost beast a cold, unfeeling look. Terrified, the ghost beast immediately turned tail and escaped Wei Yuan’s sea consciousness. Tracing a karmic bond, it ran like hell and eventually plunged head first into a doll.

All of a sudden, an onslaught of dizziness and disgust overcame Wei Yuan. It was accompanied by a sense of emptiness and weakness that gripped his whole body as well. Two streams of warm liquid flowed out of his nostrils without warning, and he wiped it with his hand. When he looked, he discovered that it was pungent, dark green blood!

Sudden realization struck him, and he immediately pulled out a cloth doll from his shirt. Its once cheerful face was now contorted in agony as black blood began oozing out of its eyes! When Wei Yuan tightened his grip a little, wounds immediately burst open all across the doll. Not only that, black blood seeped out of the wounds and stung his hand with excruciating pain. He hurriedly threw the doll to the ground.

This was the blood curse of a Great Warlock!

He was lucky that the doll had taken away a portion of the damage. Otherwise, there was a not insignificant chance that he might have perished then and there. A Great Warlock’s blood curse was notoriously powerful. Even with the Power of the Realm to protect him, the enemy had sacrificed hundreds of human lives to amplify its power. Without the doll to share the burden, Wei Yuan knew he had little chance of survival.

Wei Yuan was mistaken, however. He was the one who had taken away a portion of the doll’s damage, not the other way around. He would have been in the same state even if he didn’t have the doll with him.

Wei Yuan could not help but feel a little dizzy after taking a blood curse. As he rested, images of human cultivators toppling left and right kept invading his vision. Behind the platform, hundreds of humans had been beheaded to amplify the blood curse, not even spared the dignity of dying with their faces shown. When Wei Yuan looked around for his riders and found no one, he abruptly recalled that everyone had already fallen in battle.

A cavalry charge such as this one was generally suicide. They knew from the moment they spurred their horses forward that they would die.

Suddenly, Wei Yuan was gripped by an indescribable rage. He wiped away the dirty blood on his face, dismounted, and took off running toward the platform!

There were still over a thousand elite fighters and bodyguards surrounding the platform. These fighters were dressed differently from the average fighter as well. Covered in rusted chains, they were the Great Warlock’s elite guards. Further back, a three thousand-strong rearguard was still standing by and ready to join the battle at any moment. Meanwhile, the only force Wei Yuan had was himself.

Chains rattling, over a hundred elite guards stepped forward to meet Wei Yuan. Only their eyes were exposed on the outside, cold and devoid of all emotion. They glinted with a dull light resembling that of an animal or a puppet.

Wei Yuan did not say a word. Empowered by the Power of the Realm, his spear cut down the Great Warlock’s elite guards one after another like a dragon. Everything within a zhang of him died quickly and unquestionably.

Countless elite guards and the surviving armored fighters swarmed Wei Yuan like a tidal wave of iron and ash. At the center, the young man slowly but determinedly pushed against the tide, leaving only a trail of bodies in his wake.

At first, the Warlocks and Shaman nobles on the platform were laughing at Wei Yuan’s defiance. They all thought that the human with mundane cultivation must have gone mad from desperation, for who in their right mind would think to challenge a Great Warlock? It wasn’t like he was the first to attempt this, but those humans had all shown up with a large army, and they had all failed in the very end.

However, their laughter gradually died over time. Before they knew it, the human had pushed a few dozen zhang into the encircling ranks. He looked just as fearless and tireless as when the battle had engaged, mechanically and silently reaping all Shaman lives around him. As he drew nearer, the Warlock and Shaman nobles began sensing a faint yet overwhelming presence from him. It was as if an endless inferno was brewing within that ordinary-seeming frame, ready to erupt like a volcano capable of obliterating an entire corner of the world at first notice!

Inside the Palace of Absolute Beginning, Pei Tinghai was sitting alone and observing a game. The black and white pieces were setting themselves on the board and engaging one another in fierce combat.

It was at this moment sudden intuition gripped him. He knew immediately that the boy had used his divine thought. Moments later, a cloud of bluish qi appeared above his head and rained lightly, the droplets fusing into his immortal body upon contact.

Pei Tinghai wore a surprised expression as he looked up at the bluish cloud. He murmured to himself, “What a worldly reward this is! It’s probably from an Avatar with many years of accumulation. How did the boy kill them? And who did the Xu Clan lose?”

He was aware that his divine thought was only potent enough to severely injure an Avatar as a matter of course. It was nowhere enough to actually kill one. Even assuming that the enemy Avatar had been cut in half and taking Wei Yuan’s prodigious strength into account, he still should not be able to prevent them from escaping. Was the boy hiding a trick or two, or was he just simply lucky? Or maybe he received the aid of a powerful helper?

Pei Tinghai pondered deeply, but did not think to uncover the truth using an immortal spell. The Shattered Realm was frail from all the wars that had been fought within its domain, and attempting to investigate it with an immortal spell would trigger all sorts of unpredictable consequences. Besides that, each spell had to be cast with a huge price.

Pei Tinghai eventually cracked a smile and shook his head wryly. “It’s good news, so what does it matter if I learn it earlier or later? Patience, me.”

The battle ensuing on the board had reached its most intense point, but he no longer had the heart to watch. He picked up his fishing rod and prepared to cast his line into the human world.

However, the exercise didn’t last long. All of a sudden, the Immortal Lord furrowed his brow and felt a small itch crawling up his hands. When he got up and washed his hands at the basin, the water suddenly turned a deep green color, and his hands became covered in black blood and pus!

A sneer escaped Pei Tinghai’s mouth. “Who is this fool who decided to curse this immortal?”

Threads of blood rose out of the pus and blood covering his hands and reached into the void. Pei Tinghai followed the trail and slipped his hands into the void where the bloody threads had disappeared to, seemingly grasping for something. When he discovered it, he abruptly ripped it to two!

With that done, he casually withdrew his hands from the void and washed his hands clean. Then, he wiped them using a snow white towel.

It was at this moment understanding suddenly dawned upon Pei Tinghai, and a smile sprung to his lips. He scoffed, “That little rascal. He sure knows how to use me to the fullest!”

At the Swelling Water God Palace, the Great Warlock on the platform suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream and collapsed to the floor. Clutching his head with both hands, he kept screaming in pain while rolling back and forth. The massive Avatar of a terrifying snake appeared above his head, but for some reason, it had been ripped in half. The upper body and the lower body were trying to reconnect with each other, but it could not be done no matter how hard they tried!

Wei Yuan’s eyes lit up. The immortal’s backlash had arrived just in time!

The sudden flash of opportunity caused Wei Yuan to withdraw from the ice cold state born from absolute fury. He knew from the beginning that a simple curse backlash would not be enough to kill a Great Warlock completely. That was why he had prepared something else.

Wei Yuan focused inward and sank into his sea of consciousness. Using what he had learned during his Techniques Theory classes, he quickly identified the traces of a curse and manifested it. A trail of dark red and blackish green immediately appeared into view, one end vanishing into the void.

Wei Yuan tracked the trail with his perception and instantly arrived at its origin—the Great Warlock’s sea of consciousness. At the moment, the Great Warlock was suffering from an immortal-level backlash. His Avatar had been torn apart, and his mental defenses had been completely destroyed. It would not be inaccurate to say that he was completely defenseless right now. That said, his sea of consciousness was overflowing with pools of blood, endless black qi, and countless insects. Just looking at it was enough to send chills up Wei Yuan’s spine. He did not dare to enter it as a matter of course.

With a thought, Wei Yuan lifted a gray ball of wind[1] with his perception. After throwing it into the Great Warlock’s sea of consciousness from afar, he turned tail and ran like hell!

The situation was far from hopeless. Now wasn’t the time to fight the enemy to head on to the death. That was why Wei Yuan had switched his mental state from rage mode to life-saving mode instantly. While his perception was escaping with all its might, he did not forget to shield himself with fortune. Better safe than sorry.

He had just turned around when an unbelievably painful and maddened scream erupted from behind him. Countless racks appeared all across the Great Warlock’s sea of consciousness while blood and ink black qi sprayed everywhere like fountains. From a distance, it looked like a water bag with holes all over it. The situation was only worse inside his sea of consciousness where countless insects were reduced to dust instantly!

Wei Yuan’s vision darkened, the shockwave nearly knocking him out on the spot. Thankfully, one of his fortunes disappeared, and he managed to retain his consciousness. Wei Yuan then escaped back to his sea of consciousness at full speed.

The second he reached his sea of consciousness, Wei Yuan heard another scream and saw the second massive fortune he had applied to himself disappearing rapidly. Although it didn’t vanish completely, it was reduced to an ordinary wisp of fortune.

On the platform, the Great Warlock was convulsing uncontrollably while screaming at the top of his lungs. Swarms of insects kept flying out of his clothes only to hit the floor and die as soon as they emerged. In the sky, the giant snake Avatar could not even be bothered to reconnect its severed body anymore. Both of its body parts were now writhing and rolling back and forth as cracks appeared all over its skin.

The Great Warlock reached out for Wei Yuan hoping to take the human to the grave with him, but the young man suddenly manifested dozens of flaming immortal swords and threw them everywhere like they were free. At the same time, he flashed in and out of existence until he was at least a hundred zhang away from the Great Warlock. His determination to escape was not inferior to his earlier resolve to fight to the death in the slightest.

The Great Warlock wasn’t expecting such speed and decisiveness from Wei Yuan. One last roar of defiance later, the giant snake Avatar crumbled into dust, and the Great Warlock’s head slowly hit the floor. He would never move again.

His death was well deserved. After all, he had basically been attacked by two different Immortal Lords. The moment the Great Warlock died, the hundreds of guards standing guard on the platform suddenly collapsed as well. They had died without so much as a peep. It was because the Great Warlock had molded their bodies and primordial spirits into his. If he died, then they would die as well.

Wei Yuan stopped running and summoned a ring of flaming immortal swords around himself. From afar, it looked like the legendary Fire Lotus Immortal Array and was very impressive. He then raised his spear into the air and roared, “The Great Warlock is dead! Brothers, charge!”

Wei Yuan would proceed to roar the same line two more times. The first time he shouted, he was speaking the bureaucratic language of Great Tang. The second and third time he shouted the same phrase, he used the Shamanic language he had just picked up after arriving in the western region. He even imbued his second and third shout with Dao energy to ensure that everyone on the battlefield spanning tens of li of land would be able to hear him.

Greatly emboldened by the declaration, every surviving human cultivator leaped out of the trenches and fought back with everything they had. On the other hand, the Shamans’ morale had plummeted all the way to the bottom. The platform where the Great Warlock once stood began to tilt sideways as the slaves pushing it tried to turn around and flee. However, since they were chained to the cart, their flight immediately threw the platform off balance.

On the platform, the generals, the Shaman nobles, and the Warlocks were running away as well. Some chose to jump off the platform, and some took to the skies. Some even snatched a venom lizard from their subordinate before fleeing. In fact, the Shamans still had a rearguard of three thousand, rested and fully intact. However, the Great Warlock had died, and the Shaman nobles and Warlocks who were supposed to lead them were escaping as well. Naturally, they saw no reason to linger any longer.

On a related note, the Shamans’ rearguard was composed of the Shaman nobles and Warlocks’ relatives. They were the best-equipped soldiers in the entire army, and their job was to reap merits and harvest sacrifices if a battle was going smoothly. If not, then they were also the quickest to run away.

Grabbing a spear and leaping a horse, Wei Yuan surrounded himself in a ring of thirty six immortal swords that formed the image of a magnificent fire lotus. Then, he charged straight toward the Shamans’ rearguard.

Seeing that the reaper was coming after them himself, whatever courage was left in the rearguard’s fled their bodies completely. They scattered in every direction, fleeing into the marshes and dense forests.

In the rear, Xu Wenwu boiled with passion as he burst out of his hiding place and pounced toward a mystic artifact long saber that was lying on the ground. He grabbed it and yanked at it with all his might—but it wouldn’t budge. He gave it another pull, but still nothing happened.

Xu Wenwu let out a long, deep sigh. It wasn’t his fault that the saber was afraid to fight.

The Shamans’ army was routed, and Wei Yuan pursued them relentlessly. Whenever a group dared to gather, he would bring down a jade hill on top of their heads. He hunted them all night long and chased them for at least a few hundred li. He didn’t stop until dawn broke on the horizon.

Throughout the pursuit, Wei Yuan had surrounded himself with a hundred immortal swords at least. His aura was through the heavens to put it mildly. However, the immortal swords had actually achieved little of note. It was the jade hill that had slain most of his enemies.

After this battle, every Shaman in the region would know Wei Yuan as a formidable warrior who wielded a hundred immortal swords. They would definitely devise methods to counter them; most likely casting a curse that sealed immortal swords. But by the time they had completed their research and made their preparations, they would discover that Wei Yuan had already switched to another immortal foundation[2].

1. For those who don’t remember—I sure as hell didn’t even though I’m the translator—remember in Chapter 112 where Wei Yuan used his Dao Foundation to compress the gray silhouette—an Immortal Lord’s divine thought—into a ball? This is what it is. ☜

2. It’s cauldron time! ☜