A Blind Swordsman's Sword Coffin

Not a ray of sunshine peeked through the gray, gloomy sky. The Hell Rivers seemed like a place that had never known a clear day.

Li Guanqi frowned at the thick yin hell force saturating the environment. Even the lightning power in his body was being subtly suppressed. I’ll need to keep my lightning vital force hidden here.

The surrounding buildings were almost entirely black. They were short and covered in dense webs of strange runes and images. He didn’t know what function the carvings served. They simply seemed like part of the local culture.

The assortment of people walking past him broadened his horizons considerably. Demons were very rare back on the Azure Cloud Continent, but now they were everywhere around him. There were fox demons, bear demons, and many mountain spirits. Any demon race capable of absorbing spirit qi to gain intelligence was present.

Suddenly, something knocked against his heel.

He looked down and saw a fat white radish. Li Guanqi was astonished. “Tsk, even radishes can become spirits here.”

His remark must have annoyed the radish, because strange purple patterns bloomed across its body. Its aura surged until it matched that of a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator.

It grew to half a man’s height, with round, glaring purple eyes. It bared its sharp teeth and yelled, “No, you’re a radish! Everyone in your family is a radish! My name is Peng Luo! Peng Luo! I’m not a radish!”

The people passing by stopped to watch.

Li Guanqi’s mouth twitched. “But you’re still a radish...”

The little spirit was furious. In the blink of an eye, Peng Luo had grown to match Li Guanqi’s height. He was so huge that he blocked Li Guanqi from sight. A dense web of purple patterns covered its rotund body, which glowed purple. Peng Luo’s aura rose to the peak of the early Divine Transformation Realm.

Inwardly, Li Guanqi felt shocked. He’d been wondering why plant-type spirits like Peng Luo would dare to be out in the open. After all, people could catch them and use them for medicine.

He eyed Peng Luo up and down, tutting in amazement.

An old man in a black cloak sitting on the side of the street looked up. “Hey kid, don’t provoke him, or all of us will suffer.”

The warning was clear: Peng Luo was far stronger than he appeared.

Li Guanqi shrugged, activated the Dragon-Elephant Subduing Sutra, and punched Peng Luo in the head.

The street trembled, the sound echoing in all directions. The old man nearly lost his balance, mouth agape beneath his cloak.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone tiles outside his shop.

Peng Luo had sunk into the ground, only his shiny head poking out, with two purple roots sticking up. His eyes had rolled back, and he was already shrinking.

The crowd stood frozen in shock. Many people swallowed hard.

Over the years, many cultivators had tried to catch Peng Luo. However, he was powerful, masterful at sprint techniques, and had very thick skin, so no one had succeeded. Yet a sickly-looking stranger had knocked him out with a single, casual punch.

Humans, ghosts, and demons alike stared at Li Guanqi with a mixture of admiration and greed. A Divine Transformation Realm spirit like Peng Luo could help any regular cultivator at that level advance by a minor realm.

Li Guanqi grabbed Peng Luo and tossed him into the realm within his sword coffin.

He glanced around and smirked. No one tried to attack him. The people in Hell River City were no idiots. After all, he had knocked out the furious Peng Luo with a single punch.

He disappeared down the street, leaving murmurs in his wake.

“That guy was so powerful... That was pure physical strength alone!”

“The people coming to Hell River City are no joke.”

“What was that thing on his back? Maybe it wasn’t a coffin?”

Li Guanqi paid the chatter no mind. He just thought it was very amusing.

He smiled, his mood lifting. I’ll plant Peng Luo on Heavenly Lightning Peak. An entire garden of radishes. Hehe.

As he walked, many people instinctively avoided him. Some of the ghost cultivators even felt fear creep into their hearts upon seeing him. Despite their usual intimidating presence, they couldn’t help but force a polite smile when they encountered Li Guanqi.

Li Guanqi felt a bit exasperated. First, his body held lightning vital force. With every breakthrough, he’d forcibly swallowed heavenly tribulation lightning to refine it further. Second, he carried two types of heavenly fire.

To yin-type entities, he was a walking disaster—a cat among mice.

He looked up at the spatial tears in the sky, estimated the distance, and sped toward the depths of the Hell Rivers region.

A barrier sealed off the ten-thousand-zhang radius around the ancient ruin, preventing anyone from entering. Li Guanqi found a guesthouse just outside the barrier and decided to stay there. Fortunately, spirit stones were a universal currency.

The mold-covered room made him frown, but he didn’t mind such things. He put away the sword coffin and circulated the Yin Hellfire through his body to conceal his aura, then nodded to himself.

This fire really is strange...

The Lightning Dragon Flame possessed incredible yang energy, while the Yin Hellfire sat at the opposite end of the spectrum. Its strangest ability was its capacity to manifest inside another person’s body without physical contact, making it very hard to defend against.

He still didn’t know where Chen Zhi had learned the Nine Heavens Flame-Devouring Technique, but it allowed him to control multiple heavenly fires simultaneously. The fire seeds resided in his nascent soul’s dantian without interfering with each other.

His divine soul had already merged more than halfway with his nascent soul. Once the fusion was complete, forming a primordial soul, he would officially enter the Illusory Refinement Realm.

Li Guanqi left his room, ready for a walk outside.

The Hell Rivers region was a place where humans, demons, and ghosts lived alongside one another, which piqued his interest.

Hmm. I should bring home some souvenirs.