Ninety-one: Basically complete.

The alley had suddenly fallen silent.

The stone golems were, after all, only magical constructs; without Huang Gui’s command, they could do nothing but stand motionless.

Huang Gui lay prostrate on the ground, trembling violently from head to foot. A vast, icy fear had swept through its entire body, leaving it unable to move.

Who was this boy? Why did he inspire such terror?

Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been astonished by this. But now, crushed by absolute compulsion, it lacked even the awareness to wonder.

Jiang Feng walked slowly up to it and asked, “How long have you been here?”

Huang Gui’s teeth chattered. “S-seven years.”

Jiang Feng went on, “Oh? And what were you here for?”

Huang Gui’s voice broke off abruptly.

Jiang Feng stopped in front of it and gave it a light kick. “Speak.”

Its words came in jerks. “The Great Wasteland is harsh. We, we need to enter the Nine Heavens Continent...”

“Who asked you what the demons are after? Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Our lord is studying the demon abyss. We, we are going to enter the Nine Heavens directly...”

Its body trembled even more violently, as though a will were crushing down upon it, forbidding it from revealing the truth. But Jiang Feng’s own will overrode it by far, forcibly dragging the words out.

“You’ve been hiding here for seven years just for this? How far has it progressed?”

Huang Gui shuddered. “B-basically... basically complete!”

It suddenly let out a shriek. After those four words, its chest exploded with a thunderous boom, and a streak of blood, mixed with fragments of its core, shot straight toward Jiang Feng’s face!

Jiang Feng casually extended a hand and caught the blood arrow.

Golden light flowed beneath his skin, swiftly swallowing the blood arrow into itself.

With the core shattered, Huang Gui could of course not live. Its eyes rolled back, and it crashed to the ground.

Someone had tampered with its core in advance; once any secret was involved, it would self-destruct at once.

Jiang Feng frowned. “Basically complete?”

After a moment’s thought, he turned to Hua Su behind him.

A thread of golden light swept through his pupils, and he saw clearly that the three remaining primal veins within Hua Su’s body had all withered away, while cracks covered the Heart of Bright Insight.

Jiang Feng had just barely stopped his self-detonation, but the battle had already exhausted every trace of his luminous power. Hua Su had now become a cripple; even if he awoke, he would spend the rest of his life bedridden, unable even to care for himself.

Jiang Feng drew a deep breath. He stepped up to Huang Gui, reached out, and drove his hand into its chest.

Golden light gathered between Jiang Feng’s fingers, growing denser, brighter, and more intense.

Golden blood-vitality now floated to the surface of Jiang Feng’s skin, greedily devouring Huang Gui’s flesh and rapidly turning the enormous demon into an empty shell.

The golden blood-vitality grew thicker and stronger by the moment.

At the region of Jiang Feng’s heart, the Mystic Heaven Cube began to turn at a frenzied speed.

Its tiny blocks shifted ceaselessly, while streams of numbers flashed across its surface.

Such calculations naturally consumed an enormous amount of luminous power.

The luminous power in Jiang Feng’s primal veins was quickly drained away, then the luminous power in his blood.

Before long, even that was exhausted, and the Mystic Heaven Cube began to draw upon the power of the golden blood-vitality itself!

Thread by thread, the golden blood-vitality passed through the vessels beneath the Heart of Heaven Seed, reversed its course into the primal veins, and then entered the Mystic Heaven Cube.

Its energy was stronger than luminous power, and the cube’s operation accelerated even further.

Jiang Feng continuously absorbed Huang Gui’s flesh and transformed it into golden blood-vitality, which in turn fed the Mystic Heaven Cube.

One data chain after another emerged, gathering around the cube like linked bands of runes.

Jiang Feng was wholly absorbed, sparing nothing.

After a long while, the last trace of Huang Gui’s flesh was drained dry. The Mystic Heaven Cube stopped running, and a new line of data appeared!

Jiang Feng cast aside Huang Gui’s shriveled remains and hurried to Hua Su’s side.

He extended a finger, and a drop of golden blood formed at the tip, slowly condensing before dripping into Hua Su’s body.

The golden blood-vitality merged directly into Hua Su’s Heart of Bright Insight, and the cracks on the seed’s surface began to mend at once. Then Jiang Feng transformed the energy he had infused into luminous power.

Entirely focused, he guided that faint stream of luminous power with all his might, directing the primal veins within Hua Su’s body so that they began to move.

Fortunately, his luminous power seemed to possess some peculiar force; with only the slightest guidance, Hua Su’s primal veins would obey.

No one knew how much time passed before the cracks on the Heart of Bright Insight vanished completely. It began to rise and fall slowly, automatically drawing in a trace of luminous power from the air.

That little bit of luminous power became a source, and Jiang Feng guided it as it entered through the primal veins, traveling and flowing in a fixed direction until a cycle slowly took shape.

This work was clearly no easy task. Jiang Feng’s face grew paler and paler, sweat poured down his temples, and his clothes were soaked through.

A new circulation gradually formed, and luminous power began to flow through it on its own, faster and faster, freer and freer.

At last the work was done. Jiang Feng let out a breath of relief, but his vision suddenly went black, and he toppled forward onto Hua Su.

At the very moment he lost consciousness, a crisp sound rang out in the air, as though something had cracked.

Then sunlight spilled in, and the alley began to brighten.

A little girl of five or six was peering timidly into the alley mouth. For some reason, no matter how hard she tried before, she had not been able to see a thing.

But now the veil before her eyes had been shattered, and she could finally make out what was inside.

She screamed, “Big brother! Sir! Ah!”

She did not run in. Instead, she turned and shouted toward the street, “Someone come! There’s a ghost here!”

“What ghost?” a voice answered. Her plump mother stuck her head out from the second floor. “You little brat, where’s the water I sent you for?”

The little girl cried, “The well is broken, and someone’s dead! Mother, come quickly!”

Heavy footsteps thudded down from above, and the fat woman cursed, “What dead, what alive? You little bitch, stop spouting nonsense!”

She reached the alley mouth, looked inside, and immediately drew in a sharp breath.

At once, her lazy expression changed completely. Her eyes flashed, her back straightened, and in an instant she became sharp and alert.

She took a long breath, then shouted like thunder over the entire street, “Everyone! Come quickly, there’s a demon abyss here!”

Before her eyes, deep in the alley, where the well had been, a black whirlpool was slowly turning and taking shape.

Thick black miasma billowed from it, growing denser and denser. It spread wildly in all directions, like countless arms reaching out, greedily grasping at everything around it.

Not far from the demon abyss, two black puppets stood stiff and expressionless. A moment later, they absorbed the demonic energy and seemed to come to life, as if about to advance.

Ahead of them lay a mangled demon corpse, and only two more steps beyond that were two human beings!

At that moment, two middle-aged men who looked exactly alike flashed to the fat woman’s side and asked urgently, “What happened?”

Then they saw the scene before them and both showed shocked expressions.

The fat woman decided instantly. “Enough chatter. Save the people first!”

The two middle-aged men answered in unison, and the three of them rushed into the alley together.

The two stone golems somehow received a command from nowhere. Their bodies sank, they took on an attacking stance, stepped over Huang Gui’s corpse, and charged toward Hua Su and Jiang Feng lying on the ground.

Just as they were about to trample them, a shadow flickered and the two people on the ground vanished. Then the golems jolted and were sent flying at once.

At that critical instant, the fat woman seized the master and disciple, one in each hand. The two middle-aged twins, one on the left and one on the right, smashed into the two stone golems and knocked them aside.

They did not linger in battle. The moment they struck, they retreated, swiftly returning to the alley mouth.

By then, dozens of people had already gathered there. They wore ragged clothes and looked like the poor who lived in this place. Yet each one moved with brisk precision, eyes bright with sharp light. At a glance, it was obvious they were all martial cultivators of no low rank.

In one voice they asked, “What happened? Isn’t this the work of an assassin?”

The fat woman said decisively, “It’s the demons! They’ve opened a demon abyss here!”

After just a few hurried words, the two stone puppets charged out together.

“How bold, to dare set up a demon abyss here!”

“You fools, a demon abyss right under your noses, and you never noticed it!”

“...Enough. First kill these two bastards, then think of a way!”

Before the words had even faded, more than ten people struck at once, and the two stone golems were instantly smashed to pieces.

The fat woman lifted the two people as lightly as if they weighed nothing, frowning as she gazed into the depths of the alley. “We can’t handle this ourselves. Report it to the prefecture at once!”

...

When Jiang Feng awoke, only Ye Xiao was once again beside him.

His eyes opened and closed as he carefully examined the condition within his body.

He was exactly as he had been on the morning of the twenty-sixth, when he had gone to the Secret Pavilion.

One chain, two apertures; his primal veins and the luminous power in his body were completely full; the golden bloodline lay dormant at the base of the primal veins, while a wisp of blood-vitality moved through his blood.

The only difference was that the Mystic Heaven Cube was resting and had stopped running. Before that, it had been steadily absorbing luminous power, calculating Hua Su’s primal vein condition, trying to prolong time so as to rebuild for him a new and correct luminous-power circulation.

Now that task had been completed.

This proved that everything Jiang Feng had experienced before was entirely real.

He asked, “How many days has it been?”

Ye Xiao had been keeping watch at his pillow and answered, “Three days and three nights.”

Jiang Feng turned his head on the pillow and calculated by the angle of daylight. Three days meant it was now around the hour of the Dragon on the morning of June thirtieth.

“What’s all the noise outside?”

“Twelve demon abysses have appeared inside and outside the city. Everything’s in chaos.”

What?!

Jiang Feng sat bolt upright in bed, staring at Ye Xiao in disbelief.

Twelve demon abysses?