Blood Covenant, Celestial Changes

The southwest border, the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

In the dense primeval jungle, the air was so humid that you could wring water from it.

Li Miaoyuan leaned against the moss-covered trunk of an ancient tree.

He watched the four people stepping out of the bushes.

Although his spiritual power was nearly exhausted right now, his spiritual senses as an immortal cultivator remained sharp.

These four people were far from ordinary.

Each of them was surrounded by a special, even somewhat dazzling aura of destiny.

While it was not as pure as his own as a high-dimensional immortal cultivator, in the mortal realm, they were absolutely exceedingly rare existences.

"Who are you?"

Li Miaoyuan's voice was hoarse as he stared warily at the burly man in the lead who had just thrown a military dagger.

"Chen Tie. Former commander of the overseas Wolf Fang Mercenary Group."

The burly man wiped the blood and grime off his face with extreme roughness.

"Or, you can call me target number three on Shen Fei's kill list."

Chen Tie walked up to Li Miaoyuan, looking down at him from above.

"I've been in the game overseas for over a decade with tens of thousands of brothers. In Southeast Asia, who doesn't know my name? Customs, police, people from all walks of life, who wouldn't give me some face?"

"Just because I accidentally had a little friction with someone at the docks when I returned to the country and talked back a bit, who knew that scumbag was Shen Fei's subordinate?"

"That scumbag actually mobilized assassins and mercenaries from the dark web and uprooted my entire base!"

"Many of my brothers didn't even have time to touch their guns."

"Over a decade of foundation, wiped out overnight. All gone."

Chen Tie's eyes were filled with an extremely intense hatred.

Beside him, a pale young man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, who looked gentle and refined, let out a cold laugh.

"Who isn't in the same boat?"

"Fang Ziyuan. Unrivaled in both medicine and poison." The young man pushed up his glasses in self-deprecation.

"I merely wanted to establish a foothold in the capital and cured a big shot from a faction hostile to the Shen family. That demon king Shen Fei directly used his capital power to not only shut down all my clinics but also force me to flee the capital like a dog. Several of my female confidantes were driven to jump off buildings by that so-called Queen's Council under his command."

"And me."

A skinny teenager carrying a custom military laptop stepped out of the shadows.

His name was Zero. A super hacker.

"I tried to hack into the Shen Group's overseas accounts to sweep away his money. The result... in less than ten seconds, his god-tier reverse tracking locked onto my physical address. I was almost blown up in my basement by those black-armored death squads, nearly dying a violent death."

The last person.

Wearing a worn-out training uniform, holding a half-broken Tang sword in his hand.

The inheritor of ancient martial arts, Pei Shaotian.

"The Pei family was considered a prominent ancient martial arts family in the capital. When Shen Fei was purging the second branch, my father merely spoke a word of justice, and his legs were broken on the spot by Shen Fei's men. All fifty members of the Pei family were driven out of the capital to wander the streets."

Four people.

Four chosen ones who originally should have had extremely brilliant futures in their respective fields.

For various reasons, they had offended the same man.

Now, they had all been reduced to stray dogs lingering on their last breath in this primeval jungle.

Li Miaoyuan listened to their accounts.

An absurd expression suddenly appeared on his face, which was numb from severe injuries.

He had originally thought that Shen Fei was only targeting immortal cultivators, just to suppress him.

He didn't expect it.

That mortal demon king was actually ruthlessly harvesting all the children of destiny who dared to emerge on a global scale.

"So, you saved me because you saw that I was also being hunted by Shen Fei?" Li Miaoyuan asked coldly.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Chen Tie reached out his callus- and scar-covered hand, firmly grasped Li Miaoyuan's wrist, and pulled him up from the ground.

"We've been hiding in this damn forest for half a month. Shen Fei's hunting net is getting tighter and tighter. Those helicopters flying in the sky, and those black-armored monsters who are completely unafraid of death, are simply a nightmare."

Chen Tie stared into Li Miaoyuan's eyes.

"Although you were dying just now, I can feel that you are different from us. That power in you... is very ancient. Moreover, the pursuers place far more importance on you than on us."

"One person can't beat him."

"But what if the five of us joined forces?"

Chen Tie's words echoed in the silent jungle.

Fang Ziyuan, Zero, and Pei Shaotian all nodded in agreement.

This was their only way out after being pushed to a dead end.

Sticking together to survive.

Li Miaoyuan looked at the four people in front of him.

If it were in the past, as the chief disciple of the Taiyi Dao Sect, he would disdain to associate with these mortals.

But now.

His sect had been destroyed, his master had died a tragic death, and the Heavenly Dao Blood Oath hung over his head like a sharp sword.

He needed power. He needed cannon fodder. He needed all the resources that could help him buy time and find an opportunity to form his Golden Core.

"What do you want to do?" Li Miaoyuan's voice was cold.

"Form an alliance."

Chen Tie pulled a brand-new dagger from his waist.

Very decisively, he slashed a deep, bone-revealing bloody cut across the palm of his left hand.

"If Shen Fei doesn't die, none of us will live. From today on, we are grasshoppers tied to the same rope. We live and die together."

Fang Ziyuan, Zero, and Pei Shaotian did not hesitate.

They stepped forward one after another and cut their palms with the dagger.

Four people, eight bleeding hands, were extended in front of Li Miaoyuan.

Li Miaoyuan looked at the blood.

He took a deep breath.

Slowly, he pierced his index finger with his fingernail.

Five streaks of blood.

They intertwined in the humid jungle air.

Blood dripped onto the rotting leaves under their feet.

There were no tedious rituals.

Only pure killing intent, forged together by despair and hatred.

"The Alliance to Destroy Shen."

Chen Tie spat out these words in a low voice.

...

The Capital.

The Shen family courtyard, underground secret chamber.

Shen Fei sat cross-legged on a white jade bed.

The Dark Gold Heavenly Demon spiritual power in his body was circulating extremely steadily and deeply. With every breath, the surrounding air produced a microscopic sense of collapse.

His half-step Golden Core cultivation base had completely stabilized.

As long as he wanted to, he could forcibly trigger the lightning tribulation at any time and form a true Golden Core.

But he did not do so.

Suddenly.

"Buzz—"

In Shen Fei's mind, the system let out an extremely sharp alarm sound.

Unlike previous notifications when discovering prey.

This alarm.

Carried a rare, solemn undertone.

[Warning!]

[Abnormal convergence of world origin destiny detected on a global scale!]

[Tracking Target: Li Miaoyuan.]

[Tracking Target: Chen Tie.]

[Tracking Target: Fang Ziyuan...]

The system's light screen unfolded before Shen Fei's eyes.

On a massive global destiny heat map.

Deep in the Hundred Thousand Mountains at the southwest border.

Five originally scattered, extremely faint points of destiny light had bizarrely merged together, centered around Li Miaoyuan!

They formed a dazzling, massive pillar of destiny light that even faintly revealed a bloody hue!

And that wasn't all.

With the alliance of these five individuals.

The masterless fortune drifting between heaven and earth seemed to be drawn by some incredibly powerful suction.

Like rivers flowing into the sea, it gathered wildly toward that blood-red pillar of light!

Li Miaoyuan's originally depleted spiritual energy, under the backflow of this massive Heavenly Dao fortune, unexpectedly began to recover at an extremely rapid pace.

Even his stagnant cultivation bottleneck showed a very faint sign of loosening.

"Heavenly Dao intervention, huh."

Shen Fei looked at the wildly jumping data on his system panel.

There was not a trace of surprise in his pitch-black eyes.

Instead, there was a coldness that seemed to say, "Just as I expected."

[Ding!]

[System analysis complete.]

[Confirmed that the macro-will of the Earth's Heavenly Dao has forcibly intervened!]

[Because the host's existence has severely disrupted the operating rules of this world version (slaughtering immortal sects, purging a large number of Children of Fortune).]

[The Heavenly Dao is actively and extremely concentrating the remaining world fortune onto the sole surviving SSSS-grade Child of Fortune (Li Miaoyuan) and his subordinate forces.]

[Attempting to create the Ultimate Child of Destiny to obliterate the host.]

Simply put.

The Heavens had seen enough.

It was taking all the cheats and resources, packaging them up, and ruthlessly stuffing them into Li Miaoyuan.

This was the destiny of a villain.

When you become strong to a certain extent, you no longer face an individual, but the rules of the entire world.

"Young Master."

Outside the secret room.

Ling Shuang's voice came through, tinged with a rare sense of urgency.

"Intelligence from the southwest border."

"The target has disappeared."

Shen Fei stood up.

He walked out of the secret room.

And looked at Ling Shuang, who stood outside the door with tightly knit brows.

"Did Ye Qingyu's light-element perception fail?" Shen Fei asked.

"Yes."

Ling Shuang nodded and handed over an intelligence report.

"Just ten minutes ago. Miss Ye said her perception of Li Miaoyuan was forcibly severed by a massive unknown power that even made her soul tremble. It is as if... a tremendously thick curtain between heaven and earth has veiled that area."

"Longyuan's radar and all our dark web mercenaries lost track of the target at the same time."

"They seem to have vanished into thin air, leaving no information behind whatsoever."

The Heavenly Dao was obscuring the heavenly secrets.

This was an extremely conventional protective measure.

Giving the protagonist time to catch their breath, and space to find fortuitous encounters, level up, and farm gear.

Then, waiting for them to return as kings to seek revenge against the villain.

Shen Fei calmly threw the report onto the table.

"Call the pursuers back."

Ling Shuang froze for a moment.

"Young Master? We are not pursuing them anymore?"

"We will not be able to catch them. The Heavens are helping him hide."

Shen Fei walked into the courtyard.

Looking at the gray sky over the capital.

He knew.

If Li Miaoyuan and his ragtag group of defeated soldiers had fought him individually, he would have crushed them like ants long ago.

But now.

The Heavenly Dao had forcibly stepped in to pick sides, molding them into an Avengers-style alliance.

This group was hiding in the dark.

They were definitely brewing an incredibly insane, highly targeted lethal trap just for him.

But.

So what?

The corners of Shen Fei's mouth slowly curled up.

"Hide a little better."

Shen Fei spoke very softly toward the sky.

"Prepare a little more thoroughly."

"Otherwise."

"Killing you would be way too boring."