Chapter 1209: Crisis
Against the red-haired man, Skyfire Sacred Hands felt his vibrancy clamming up. There was no room for resistance. He was a proud man, but against the red-haired man he could only succumb. The pressure exuded by this man was just too great.
He told the red-haired man everything he knew.
"Oh? He’s able to easily remove the plague with a Dao Palace realm cultivation level?"
"Yes, I was unable to do a thing to the evil spirits. The way he easily removed them is inexplicable." Skyfire Sacred Hands did not dare to even breathe more than was necessary.
The red-haired man stroked his chin and pondered. How could a Dao Palace realm warrior eliminate the demonic servants without harming the possessed?
Yi Yun appeared to have some secrets.
"What are you hiding from me?" The red-haired man’s voice suddenly changed. At the same time, Skyfire Sacred Hands felt all the blood circulating through his body freeze. He found it difficult to breathe.
"No...nothing..."
Skyfire Sacred Hands said those words with great difficulty, but then he suddenly felt his dantian rapidly freezing. If this continued on, he would be maimed of his cultivation.
"It’s... it’s a flame... He has a type of... strange flame... He must have used the flame... to burn the evil spirits..."
Skyfire Sacred Hands struggled with all his might to say those words. Finally, he was released by the red-haired man. As he held his neck, Skyfire Sacred Hands took in deep gasps. He was nearly crippled of his cultivation just a moment ago.
"Fire?"
The red-haired man fell into deep thought. He did not know of any flame that could easily burn the demonic servants without harming the dantian of the possessed.
All of this could be ascertained, but only when Yi Yun was captured.
He glanced at Skyfire Sacred Hands and said, "You are of no use to me anymore. I’ll give you two choices. Dedicate your life soul to me, or you die!"
Upon hearing the red-haired man’s words, Skyfire Sacred Hands’s face turned pale. He knew that there was no way he could escape today’s calamity.
As a genius alchemist of the Nine Cauldron Alchemical Sect he had his own pride, so how could he easily give up his life soul?
"Do not think that you will be at a loss by succumbing. In several more years, the 12 Empyrean Heavens will cease to exist, and it will instead be ruled by my race! My race’s power is not something you can imagine. If I weren’t so lacking in manpower, I wouldn’t bother to give you a chance. I do not want to continue with this nonsense. I’m giving you thirty seconds to consider. If you succumb, you will obtain greater strength, allowing you to kill your enemy. Otherwise, you will die now!" The red-haired man said indifferently, causing the corners of Skyfire Sacred Hands’s mouth to twitch.
The 12 Empyrean Heavens would no longer exist? What a joke!
He looked up at the red-haired man. Although this man currently had him seized by terror, Skyfire Sacred Hands sensed that he was only at the Supremacy level. There were still Divine Lords above him, and even mightier existences beyond that. The person in front of him was definitely not capable of wiping out the 12 Empyrean Heavens.
From what he gathered from the red-haired man’s words, the race he belonged to had even more powerful existences. They had been lurking around somewhere without anyone knowing.
Where did they come from? Could it be the Sinkhole?
For some unknown reason, Skyfire Sacred Hands suddenly thought of the evil spirits Yi Yun destroyed. The sudden appearance of the evil spirits, the ancient ruins, as well as the red-haired man’s inquiry about the evil spirits, caused him to make several connections.
"Those evil spirits were reared by your race?" Skyfire Sacred Hands suddenly realized the possibility and asked.
"You are rather smart. Indeed, the demonic servants are members of our race. However, it doesn’t matter if they are destroyed. Although I’m somewhat interested in the Yi Yun you mentioned, I am not worried by him. Our might cannot be obstructed. He is only a special ant to our race."
As the red-haired man spoke, he extended his hand. His fingers spewed black gas, as though he was about to suck away Skyfire Sacred Hands’s soul.
Skyfire Sacred Hands no longer had a choice. His intuition told him that many of the things the red-haired man said were true. If that was the case, then pledging allegiance to the red-haired man was indeed an opportunity for him to become stronger. Furthermore, with his Soaring Serpents Skyfire robbed, him suffering a drop in status in the sect, and the mental demons that still plagued him, he had no future as he was now.
"I... succumb!"
Skyfire Sacred Hands said the words heavily. Each word took all his strength.
...
The days and seasons passed by quickly. Twenty years had passed since Yi Yun first began his seclusion.
The entrance to Yi Yun’s seclusion cavern had been covered in layers of sand. Vegetation grew on top of it and, even if the concealment array had been removed, nothing seemed amiss.
Twenty years was like a snap of a finger to most warriors. However, it was extremely long for Yi Yun. Before this, Yi Yun had only been in a one-time seclusion for eighteen years in the Primordial Empyrean Heaven’s trials.
Yi Yun left the Tian Yuan world in his thirties and spent twenty years with the Luo clan upon arriving in the 12 Empyrean Heavens. Later on, he became a disciple of Felicitous Rain Lord and spent four years manifesting his Dao before heading to the Azure Wood Great World, witnessing the battles between the Divine Lord and the bronze giant. By the time he came to the Sun Burial Sandsea in the Yang God Empyrean Heaven, Yi Yun was about sixty.
After experiencing growth in the Central State Divine Territory and the Myriad Divine Territory, Yi Yun entered seclusion once again, and his cultivation was nearing a hundred years.
During the twenty years of seclusion, Yi Yun expended most of the quasi-sage pills and relics he had. The expenditure rate was terrifying.
Even a large sect like the Nine Cauldron Alchemical Sect would keep quasi-sage level pills as the best pills in their treasury. They would have a scant few sage-level pills, and those would be considered a cornerstone item of the sect, guarded by the sect master or grand elders.
Under such circumstances, a core disciple of the Nine Cauldron Alchemical Sect enjoying a few quasi-sage level pills or relics by a hundred years would be impressive. However, Yi Yun had eaten about eighty pills within twenty years.
Now, there were large amounts of medicinal essence within Yi Yun’s body that had not been refined. However, he did not mind. He ate another quasi-sage Dao Palace Manifestation Pill and began refining it.
Such a consumption rate would be seen as destroying heaven’s treasures to the disciples of other factions. If they obtained a quasi-sage level pill, they might enter seclusion for a decade or two to absorb it clean, without wasting one bit. Even if they did want to eat more, they might not even be able to completely digest them.
However, Yi Yun had the Azure Wood Divine Tree in him that needed to grow. The speed at which he expended pills was not something other geniuses could compare to.
Now, Yi Yun’s Azure Wood Divine Tree had grown to more than two hundred feet. The Azure Wood Divine Tree had already fused with the Nine-treasured Dao Palace, so the two grew together. Every hundred feet the Azure Wood Divine Tree grew, Yi Yun’s Dao Palace would increase another floor, which also meant him breaking through a subrealm of the Dao Palace. Now, Yi Yun was already at the third-floor Dao Palace and was taking his first steps towards the fourth-floor.
However, Yi Yun did not know that during his seclusion, the Myriad Divine Territory and even the entire Yang God Empyrean Heaven was facing a massive crisis.
Three years ago, City Lord Qin had begun sending out many people to secretly search for Yi Yun. However, no one knew where Yi Yun had secluded himself. The Myriad Divine Territory was huge, so searching for one person was like finding a needle in a haystack. There was no way to even begin...