Bai Qian Gu

Next, Ye Xuan behaved even more cautiously.

Xia Lengyue keenly sensed his change.

However, she mistakenly interpreted this change as depression stemming from his inability to leave this place and contact the outside world.

This gave her a sick, twisted sense of satisfaction.

What she wanted was for him to be isolated from the entire world.

What she wanted was for her to be the only person left in his life.

Late one night.

Inside the attic, Ye Xuan was attempting to break through the bottleneck of the ninth level of Qi Condensation.

Before him lay a pile of spirit stone powder that had already turned to ash.

Majestic spiritual energy surged through his body like a roaring river, washing over his meridians again and again.

Suddenly.

A cold aura, carrying a faint, lingering fragrance, appeared behind him without any warning.

Every hair on Ye Xuan's body stood on end in an instant!

He snapped his eyes open and tried to turn his head, only to find that his body was firmly locked in place by an invisible force, unable to move a single muscle!

He did not need to turn around to know who had come.

Xia Lengyue.

She stood behind him as silently as a ghost.

She did not speak.

Ye Xuan remained completely still, even slowing his breathing to the absolute limit, pretending that he was still immersed in his cultivation and had not noticed her arrival.

Time ticked by, minute by minute, second by second.

The time it takes an incense stick to burn.

Two hours.

A full four hours.

Xia Lengyue just stood quietly behind him, greedily staring at his back with a gaze that Ye Xuan could not understand but could clearly feel—a gaze filled with infatuation, madness, sorrow, regret, and a possessiveness so intense it could not be dissolved.

This feeling made Ye Xuan feel as if he had thorns in his back, sitting on pins and needles.

It was not until a touch of pale white appeared on the horizon.

That the heavy, mountain-like gaze slowly disappeared.

She left.

Just as silently as when she had arrived.

The moment the binding force vanished, Ye Xuan collapsed to the ground as if completely drained, gasping heavily for air. Cold sweat had already thoroughly soaked his clothes.

He knew that this woman had gone mad.

Her possessiveness had become so deeply pathological that even just looking at him required this prisoner-monitoring method.

Escape!

He had to escape from here as soon as possible!

This thought roared madly in the bottom of his heart with an unprecedented and even stronger intensity!

Just as Ye Xuan felt he was about to be driven insane by this high-pressure, suffocating life.

An inconspicuous rumor heard from a handyman disciple responsible for transporting supplies up the mountain struck his heart like a clap of thunder.

At the time, he was at the foot of Ziyun Peak, drawing the daily water needed for his attic by a spirit spring open to the public.

This was one of his few moments where he could briefly leave Xia Lengyue's line of sight.

Two outer sect disciples responsible for escorting the supplies were resting against a bluestone, lowering their voices as they conversed mysteriously.

Their faces wore an extremely complex expression, a mix of excitement and fear.

"Senior brother, did you hear? Something huge happened in the north!" a younger-looking disciple said in an exaggerated tone.

"Nonsense, who in the entire Qing Province doesn't know by now?" The older disciple curled his lip, but his eyes also flashed with unconcealable terror. "The Great Yan Dynasty... tsk tsk, the number one mortal dynasty that had stood for one thousand three hundred years, gone just like that!"

"Yeah! Overnight!" The young disciple lowered his voice, as if afraid of being overheard by something. "I heard from a martial uncle who came back from the outside that the entire capital of the Great Yan Dynasty, three million people, evaporated overnight! No, it's even more terrifying than evaporating! The entire city was soaked in blood, and the city walls were covered with air-dried human skins! It's said that not even a single chicken or dog survived! That place has now become a ghost domain!"

"More than just a ghost domain!"

The older disciple added with lingering fear, "The version I heard is even more bizarre! They say a merchant caravan had the guts to take a look from a distance during the day, and they found that the sky over the entire imperial city was shrouded by an unimaginably massive blood banner woven from countless agonizing, wailing souls! Just looking at that thing almost sucked their souls right out!"

"Hiss! That... that's too terrifying! How grand of a scale is this? Exactly what kind of demon did this?!"

"Who else could it be?" The older disciple's voice was pressed even lower at this moment, almost as quiet as a mosquito, yet carrying an ultimate fear from the depths of his soul. "The Limitless Demon Sect!"

"That Limitless Demon Sect... which has been silent for a thousand years, has emerged once again!"

Clang!

The wooden bucket slipped from Ye Xuan's hands and smashed heavily onto the ground. The clear spring water splashed and wet his pant legs.

But he felt nothing.

A chill—colder, more piercing, and more despairing than the last time he learned of the Supreme Forgetfulness Sect being destroyed in the scripture pavilion—shot up his spine and straight to the top of his skull in an instant!

He abruptly raised his head. On that face, which always wore a humble, submissive, and numb expression in front of Xia Lengyue, extreme horror and fear appeared for the very first time!

His complexion lost all its color in a fraction of a second, becoming paler than a dead man!

The Limitless Demon Sect!

How could it be this name?

In the game Severing Ties to Attain the Dao, this name meant an absolute, unquestionable nightmare for Ye Xuan!

Because this so-called Limitless Demon Sect was not a normal sect at all!

And its sect master, the leader of the demonic path, Bai Qiangu, was an unprecedentedly ruthless figure.

That was another monster, a madwoman even more insane and terrifying than Xia Lengyue!

She had returned!

And she had announced her return to the world in a way that best fit her personality—the most flamboyant, the most bloody, and the most undisguised way!

Slaughtering an entire dynasty!

Refining three million living beings into a blood soul banner!

This was her handiwork!

This was her style!

"Gasp... Gasp..."

Ye Xuan leaned against the cold stone wall of the spring, panting heavily.

It was over.

This time, it was truly over.

If Xia Lengyue was merely a yandere with exploding possessiveness and an unstable mental state...

All her actions still revolved around the core of getting him, still retaining a trace of human logic.

Then, Bai Qiangu...

That woman could not even be called human!

In the extreme west of the Eastern Continent, there was a dead land shrouded in black demonic energy that never dispersed year-round.

This place was once the imperial capital of the Great Yan Dynasty, but now it had been reduced to a ghost domain. Among the broken walls and ruins, gleaming white bones could be seen everywhere, and the air was thick with a nauseating stench of blood and rot.

In the center of these ruins hovered a massive palace built from countless skulls—the White Bone Demon Palace.

Deep within the grand hall, eerie green ghost fires danced.

Upon a throne of white bone forged from ten-thousand-year-old corpses, a peerlessly beautiful woman in red lounged indolently.

She was breathtakingly beautiful.

A demonic, soul-stirring beauty.

It was an aggressively striking beauty steeped in the aura of death. Her skin was as pale as paper, her lips as red as blood, and within her narrow, phoenix-like eyes swirled dark vortexes capable of devouring souls.

She was none other than the Empress who had just slaughtered an entire kingdom to announce the return of the Limitless Demon Sect to the world—Bai Qiangu.

"Reporting to the Sect Master!"

A demon cultivator clad in a black robe, exuding the terrifying aura of the Golden Core realm, knelt prostrate beneath the hall. Not daring to even lift his head, his body trembled violently: "The seven great sects of the Eastern Continent have received the news. They are assembling their forces, declaring that they will... crusade against our sect to eradicate demons and defend the righteous path."

"Eradicate demons and defend the righteous path?"

Bai Qiangu chuckled lightly. Her voice was soft and enchanting, penetrating to the bone, yet it made the kneeling demon cultivator feel as though he had plunged into an ice cellar. "Just a bunch of hypocrites. Let them come. My Blood Soul Banner happens to be short a few Body Integration realm main souls."

She casually reached out her slender, jade-like hand, plucking a skull still stained with traces of blood from the void.

Within the eye sockets of the skull, two faint clusters of soul fire still burned, emitting silent wails.

Bai Qiangu gently stroked the skull as if caressing a lover's face, her gaze hazy and fanatical:

"None of that matters..."

"What matters is... him."

She raised her head, her gaze seemingly piercing through the endless void, looking toward the distant east.

"Pass down my orders."

Bai Qiangu's voice suddenly turned cold, carrying an unquestionable imperial majesty:

"All members of the Limitless Demon Sect are to immediately infiltrate the major sects and mortal clans of the Eastern Continent."

"Find a man for me."

"His name is Ye Xuan. Whether he is a mortal, a cultivator, a beggar, or an emperor... as long as he bears this name, as long as he looks like him, bring him back to me!"

The kneeling demon cultivator shuddered and hurriedly kowtowed: "Understood! It's just... Sect Master, what if there are too many people with the exact same name..."

"Then capture them all."

A cruel yet breathtakingly beautiful curve formed at the corner of Bai Qiangu's mouth as she lightly squeezed her fingers.

Crack!

The skull in her hand instantly crumbled into fine powder.

"I will personally identify them... one by one."

She extended the scarlet tip of her tongue and licked the residual bone ash from her fingertips, the infatuation in her eyes morphing into a palpable madness:

"Husband... this time, you will not escape my grasp."

"Even if I have to turn the Eastern Continent upside down, even if I have to kill everyone in this world... I will find you."

"And then... I will chain you to my throne. We will be together for all lifetimes, never to be separated."

Boom!

A terrifying demonic aura erupted from her body, and the entire white bone demon hall trembled violently amidst her maniacal laughter.