[In the Hidden World Village, Ji Wuqing was once again pestering Ji Baiming, demanding to be let out.]
“Dad! It’s been thirty years! An entire generation has had children in that time. Let me out!”
Ji Baiming tossed the latest issue of the Heavenly River Gazette at her face.
“Read it yourself!”
Ji Wuqing felt as though she were looking at a mirror when she read the paper.
The wanted posters for you and Ji Baiming had not appeared in a long time, but Ji Wuqing was still making the front page and headlines.
In the early days, the order had been to capture her alive. Now, it was “dead or alive.”
On that very day, strange black mist began drifting over from the distance.
It covered not only the ground, but the sky as well.
The black mist spread across the heavens and earth without end, soon enveloping the entire Hidden World Village.
At first, the village’s experts assumed it was some kind of phenomenon caused by a cultivator nearby.
A group of big shots continued pretending to be ordinary mortals, putting on exaggerated displays of astonishment.
“Oh my, what is this?”
“Wow, how frightening!”
“It scared me to death!”
After a while, everyone—including you—realized that something was wrong.
The black mist could seep into the body through every opening!
Once inside, it would neutralize the primal energy, divine power, immortal power, and other forms of immortal energy within a cultivator’s body.
The neutralization was not particularly fast.
But if one failed to replenish their energy in time, and all the energy in their body was eventually neutralized, no one dared imagine what the consequences would be.
Just as everyone hesitated over whether to circulate their energy and restore their strength, someone stepped forward and revealed what this thing was.
“It’s contamination!”
You and many others still had question marks floating above your heads.
“Contamination?”
Your eyes turned toward the old man at the entrance of the village. He had a head of white hair and a full white beard so thick that only his eyes could be seen.
No one knew whether he was the ancestor of some faction—or perhaps the Ji family’s Immortal King.
“I once saw a passage about it in an ancient family record. It is said that, in the prehistoric era, this kind of black mist appeared throughout our universe on a massive scale.
“No one knows where the black mist came from, but it has two dangers.
“First, as you are experiencing now, it neutralizes a cultivator’s cultivation and ultimately turns them into an ordinary mortal.
“Second, when mortals come into contact with contamination, they become maddened and corrupted!”
There were many mortals in the Hidden World Village as well.
You all observed them for a while and found that the mortals in the village did not seem to be acting strangely.
The white-bearded old man also noticed this.
“The contamination that appeared today seems to be relatively weak. Its effects on mortals are not obvious.”
The Hidden World Village quickly organized a meeting for cultivators at the Immortal Lord realm and above.
Relying on your relationship with Ji Wuqing, you also took part in the meeting.
An important decision was made.
The Hidden World Village would be temporarily disbanded. Each faction would take back the mortals under its protection. If those mortals later became maddened and corrupted, their respective factions would have the resources to contain them.
If these mortals were left outside, inhumane alien factions might simply slaughter them to deal with the problem.
As for people like Zhang Beihai, who had no faction backing them, every faction extended an invitation. He could go wherever he wished.
Everyone present wore solemn expressions.
No one could say for certain what the appearance of this contamination meant.
Only Ji Wuqing was overjoyed.
“Does this mean I can cultivate now?”
Ji Baiming smiled bitterly.
“You silly girl, the Hidden World Village has been temporarily disbanded. Naturally, the village rules no longer apply.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“Does that mean we don’t have to erase our memories anymore?”
Zhang Beihai nodded.
“There’s no need for that now. If the contamination subsides, we’ll find another place and establish a new village.”
You were quite satisfied.
When all was said and done, you simply disliked having someone tamper with your memories.
The households of the Hidden World Village all returned to their own homes and families.
But you, Ji Wuqing, and Ji Baiming were wanted criminals and could not go home.
The Ji family was still under close surveillance. A large number of Peacekeepers were stationed at the Ji family’s ancestral grounds, conducting strict inspections of everyone entering and leaving each day.
Although the three of you had plenty of methods for disguising your identities, there was always someone a step ahead. The Peace Bureau—and even the Sacred Dragon Society—had numerous ways to break through such disguises.
For the sake of the bigger picture, Ji Baiming chose not to return home.
The three of you wanted criminals could only form a temporary group and wander outside.
Over the years, Ji Wuqing had stopped talking about marrying you.
She felt that, as a top-level wanted criminal, she would only bring trouble to anyone she married.
A few days later, through the Heavenly River Gazette, you learned that the contamination had not appeared only on Vermilion Purple Star.
More than half of the Southern Star Realm had been contaminated!
When floating through the vacuum of space, these things could not be observed at all.
Only after entering a planet would they reveal themselves in the form of this pitch-black fog.
At present, the Sacred Dragon Society’s investigation team had personally set out to investigate the source of the contamination.
Multiple organizations under the Sacred Dragon Society were working with the local powers of various planets to search for a way to eliminate it.
So far, the only method available was to use formations, treasures, and similar items to seal away portions of the contamination.
But what left everyone helpless was that, whether formations or magical artifacts and spirit treasures—
although they could seal away some of the contamination, it would not be long before those formations and objects themselves became contaminated, lost their spirituality, and turned into piles of scrap metal.
In other words, these methods could treat only the symptoms, not the root cause.
To truly resolve the problem, it seemed that the only option was to allow the contamination to be passively neutralized through contact with immortal energy.
But no one knew how much contamination there was, or how long the process would take.
“Even the immortal qi has become thinner.”
Under the heavens filled with black mist, you and the father-daughter pair of Ji Wuqing and Ji Baiming walked along a desolate mountain path.
The contamination was constantly depleting the immortal power within your bodies, forcing you to circulate your energy to counteract it.
But with the immortal qi growing thinner, your strength recovered more slowly.
For now, it was best to avoid using immortal techniques unless absolutely necessary, conserving your power whenever possible.
The good news was that the black mist not only impaired your vision, but also obstructed spiritual perception and other extrasensory abilities.
The moment divine sense was extended, the contamination would neutralize it.
For the three of you wanted criminals, this was undoubtedly good news.
It would be much harder for the Peace Bureau to find you.
But you estimated that, with the contamination affecting more than half of the Southern Star Realm, the Peace Bureau was probably already overwhelmed. They likely had no time to hunt you down.
The Myriad Soul Banner was slung across your back. This was something Old Wan had insisted on—he loved the contamination far too much.
“Oh! Brother, look at this! This pitch-black world is perfect for my image!”
“Have you forgotten that you’re glowing golden right now?”
Before your voice had even faded, the golden light surrounding the Myriad Soul Banner suddenly changed into black smoke.
“When you’re out and about, you glow gold for appearances. But I still prefer my original skin!”
Ji Wuqing tugged at the banner.
“Chen Yi, your spirit treasure is really interesting. Let me play with it!”
Ji Wuqing tugged at the Myriad Soul Banner, making it shriek in panic.
“Woman! Don’t manhandle me! Aah! Don’t kiss me! That was my first kiss!”
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
