Chapter 359: Golden Blood Essence Fig

A wild, manic grin carved its way across Shen Yu’s face.

He didn’t just walk into danger; he tore through it like an apex calamity.

Pushing off the severed root with explosive force, the gnarled wood behind him shattered into splinters.

His black-robed silhouette shot forward through the corrosive, purple-crimson smog like a streak of pitch-black lightning.

The mire beneath was a death trap of boiling sludge and hidden abysses, but to Shen Yu, the massive, petrified mangrove trees were merely stepping stones.

He vaulted from one towering branch to the next, his boots striking the petrified bark with rhythmic, concussive cracks.

The sheer velocity of his advance parted the suffocating fog, dragging a howling tailwind of baleful Qi in his wake.

Hiss! Screeech!

Sensing the violent trespasser, the murky waters below churned violently.

Dozens of swamp predators lunged from the sludge, hulking, six-eyed Marsh Toads spitting streams of corrosive acid, coiled Blood Vipers launching like arrows, and barbed Rot-Leaches aiming for his blind spots.

Ni Tian let out a low, arrogant laugh that rumbled like thunder through the rotting swamp.

"Ignorant maggots! Know your place beneath my feet!"

He leaned entirely into the intoxicating ruthlessness of his persona, relishing the unbridled arrogance that came with the identity of Ni Tian.

He didn’t bother slowing his stride by a single microsecond.

As a massive, spiked toad lunged toward his midsection with gaping, venomous jaws, he didn’t even reach for a weapon.

Snapping his lead foot forward mid-air, he channeled the violent qi straight into his heel.

CRUNCH!

His boot caved the beast’s reinforced skull inward like a dry gourd, using the monster’s shattered carcass as mid-air footing to propel himself twenty yards higher onto the canopy of a colossal obsidian willow.

Acid sprayed through the air, burning away at the bark, but the pitch-black miasma cloaking Shen Yu dissolved the venom before it could even brush his hems.

Three Blood Vipers shot from the branches ahead, attempting to ambush him in a synchronized strike.

With a flick of his wrist, Shen Yu’s fingers warped into the Nine Abyssal Soul-Rending Claw. He slashed outward with barehanded ferocity.

Five crescent blades of suffocating black death Qi cleaved through the fog, bisecting the three serpents in mid-air.

Before the severed halves could splash into the mire, his claws flashed in a blur, effortlessly gouging out their venom cores and tossing them into his spatial ring without missing a single breath.

The baleful pressure of the marsh, thick enough to suffocate ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators, only served to fuel his internal furnace.

With every violent strike and every explosive leap across the petrified canopy, his meridians greedily swallowed the ambient slaughter intent, tempering his flesh and marrow to a higher, darker sheen.

Vaulting onto the crown of the tallest petrified mangrove at the edge of the mire, Shen Yu landed with absolute, sovereign stillness.

He lifted his blood-red eyes, looking past the parting mist toward a wide, rocky clearing a mile ahead.

The sounds of desperate shouting, clashing swords, and defensive barriers groaning under siege echoed clearly through the humid air.

Uncorking his wine gourd with his thumb, Shen Yu took a deep, burning gulp, letting the rich liquor spill down his chin before tossing the gourd back to his waist.

"Let us see what little sheep have delivered themselves to my butcher’s block," he snarled, a vicious, bloodthirsty sneer stretching across his handsome, corrupted features as he blurred downward toward the battle.

The clearing at the edge of the marsh was a chaotic, blood-soaked slaughterhouse.

Seven disciples from the orthodox Azure Cloud Sect from the Glacial Moon Empire were desperately defending a narrow rock plateau, their backs pressed against a jagged obsidian cliff.

Their turquoise sect robes were torn and drenched in gore, their breathing ragged and frantic.

Surrounding them was a frenzied swarm of Blood-Armor Carapace Scorpions, beasts the size of warhorses, clad in thick, crimson exoskeletons with barbed stingers dripping a dark, paralyzing poison.

At the center of the plateau, protected within a trembling azure formation barrier, stood an isolated stone altar.

Hovering above it was a radiant, fist-sized crimson fruit laced with gold veins, a Golden Blood Essence Fig, an ancient treasure capable of cleansing impurities from the marrow and directly elevating a cultivator’s physical foundation.

"Hold the array! Brother Zhou is almost done securing the spirit seal!" an older disciple roared, spitting a mouthful of blood as his sword chipped against the carapace of a charging beast.

"Senior Brother, the barrier won’t last another breath! There are too many of them!" a young female disciple cried out in despair, her sword hand trembling violently under the relentless battering.

CRACK—!

The azure light barrier shattered like brittle glass under a coordinated strike from three massive scorpion stingers.

Despair flashed in the eyes of every Azure Cloud disciple.

Just as the razor-sharp stingers plunged down to impale the defenseless cultivators, the suffocating pressure in the air plummeted to an icy, absolute zero.

BOOM!

A terrifying silhouette dropped from the canopy like a wrathful meteor, slamming directly onto the lead scorpion with earth-shattering kinetic force.

The beast’s reinforced, iron-like carapace pulverized into fine red paste under the impact, the shockwave blasting the surrounding scorpions back like dry leaves.

The Azure Cloud disciples were thrown to their knees by the concussive burst of Qi.

Coughing through the settling dust, they looked up with lingering hope, expecting a savior from an allied righteous faction.

Instead, their blood ran cold.

Standing atop the pulverized remains of the beast was a tall, imposing figure clad in pitch-black robes.

Dark, suffocating miasma swirled around his frame like a shroud of living death, and from beneath his untamed hair, a pair of abyssal, blood-red eyes stared down at them with sovereign disdain.

"A-A demonic cultivator?!" the leading disciple stammered, terror instantly gripping his throat as he scrambled backward.

Shen Yu didn’t even grant the terrified scions a second glance. His crimson eyes were locked hungrily onto the Golden Blood Essence Fig pulsating upon the altar.

"Trash fighting over divine marrow," Shen Yu sneered, his voice laced with mocking, arrogant amusement that sent shivers down their spines.

SKREEE!

Enraged by the sudden intruder, five massive scorpions lunged simultaneously at his back, their venomous tails whistling through the air with lethal velocity.

Shen Yu didn’t turn around. With an indifferent flick of his sleeve, five beams of concentrated, pitch-black death Qi from his Finger shot backward like guided arrows.

PSTT! PSTT! PSTT! PSTT! PSTT!

The beams punched cleanly through the armored heads of all five beasts, their massive bodies going instantly rigid before collapsing lifelessly to the stone floor.

Walking forward at a leisurely pace, Shen Yu approached the stone altar, completely ignoring the trembling disciples who dared not breathe a single breath.

"You have three breaths to leave my sight," Shen Yu whispered, his tone as smooth and cold as a drawn blade, "before I decide that your blood would make a fine fertilizer for my path."

The atmosphere turned so cold and heavy that even the surrounding swamp miasma seemed to freeze in mid-air.

The Azure Cloud disciples trembled, their knuckles turning white as they gripped their chipped swords.

To their left lay the mangled carcasses of five early stage Tier 2 beasts, slain with mere flicks of a finger, to their right stood a demonic monster whose killing intent alone felt like an executioner’s blade pressed against their throats.

"Senior Brother... what do we do?" the young female disciple whimpered, her voice cracking as tears of pure terror welled in her eyes.

"The fruit..."

The lead disciple, his chest heaving with frantic, shallow breaths, stared at Shen Yu’s unyielding, black-clad back.

Greed, resentment, and righteous indignation flashed through his mind for a fraction of a second.

They had shed blood, burned their life essence, and lost two junior brothers just to break the beast perimeter for that Golden Blood Essence Fig.

Yet, when Shen Yu slightly tilted his head, his glowing, crimson iris catching the dim swamp light with an aura of bottomless slaughter, every ounce of defiance in the disciple’s soul shattered instantly.

"One," Shen Yu murmured, his hand casually reaching toward the hovering divine fruit.

"We yield! We are leaving!" the senior disciple shouted in a panic, violently pulling his junior sister backward.

"Withdraw! Fall back immediately!"

The remaining Azure Cloud scions didn’t dare hesitate.

Stumbling over shattered stone and scorpion limbs, they scrambled into the dense mist, fleeing toward the outer perimeter of the marsh as fast as their trembling legs could carry them, completely abandoning the treasure.

Shen Yu didn’t spare them a second glance.

To him, slaughtering ants that knew their place was a waste of breath.

His fingers closed around the Golden Blood Essence Fig.

The moment his skin grazed the fruit, a scorching, pure vitality pulsed violently against his palm, releasing a rich, metallic fragrance into the humid air.

The intricate golden veins running across the crimson flesh hummed with ancient blood essence.

This fruit was one of the core spiritual ingredients required to concoct the foundational pill for the Asura Blood-Forging Sutra.

While consuming the pill wouldn’t trigger an instantaneous breakthrough to the first milestone on its own, its potent, unrefined blood vitality was more than enough to bridge the gap and drastically accelerate his physical tempering.

-x-

A/N:

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