Chapter Sixty-One: Tragic Scene — The Seeds of Strength Have Sprouted

Under the cold, threatening gaze of the Black-hearted Demon, he likewise kicked him down into the deep pit, then leapt in after him. From the bottom of the pit came curses, threats, and anguished screams, the sounds persisting for a long while before gradually fading to silence.

A chilly wind rustled the leaves in the surrounding woods. The sun of the cultivation world was unlike that of Earth—not simply because none could approach it, but even to the naked eye it appeared only the size of a millstone. The golden sunlight slanted from the west, unable to reach every corner of the deep pit.

There, in the shade the sunlight could not reach, Qi—his expression shifting between gloom and uncertainty—changed his clothes and rose directly into the air, heading toward Qidian Village.

At the tranquil, peaceful village gate, villagers were strolling home in small groups after their day’s work, chatting and laughing together. The women of the village waited with honest smiles for their husbands to return.

Such a scene of harmony was now lost. The stillness remained, but it was the stillness of utter lifelessness. Even the chirping of insects and birds had vanished. All that remained were the shattered fragments of the Qidian Village sign and the collapsed remains of buildings.

But Qi, just landing, overlooked all of this—for in his eyes there was only red, a bright, bloody red. The color of scalding blood.

It seemed as if someone had deliberately splashed blood into every corner of the village, painting the whole settlement in a single hue. The heavy stench of blood deepened the darkness on Qi’s already somber face.

He had seen much blood before—on battlefields, even more blood and corpses—but this overwhelming, unbroken sea of crimson still pressed upon his spirit.

After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped into the village, surrounded by the color and scent of blood. There were no bodies strewn about—not even a single corpse in sight. As he ventured deeper, the golden sunlight was blocked by the towering peaks to the west, casting more than half the village into an even deeper gloom.

Step by step, Qi made his way into the heart of the village, hoping against hope to find if Grandpa Qi’s house still stood, though he knew how slim the chance was.

Reaching a broad patch of open ground in the center of the village—a place where the children used to play—he paused.

Qi’s body trembled and he halted, stunned into stillness even against his own will. Reflected in his pupils were mummified corpses, their blood deliberately drained. There were elders, women, men, and children alike.

Among them, he recognized a familiar face: shriveled, twisted, the hollow eye sockets gazing blankly up at a sky gradually swallowed by darkness.

It was as if he were petitioning the heavens with his grievances and resentment. Yet the sky, robbed of light, could not answer him, nor could it answer the hundreds of others around him who stared upward with equally empty eyes, screaming silently at the heavens.

The source of their hatred was revealed in the towering bone spikes, several yards long, upon which small, withered bodies were impaled at the very tips—children, their faces contorted in agony, arms outstretched as if reaching for their parents’ embrace to escape the pain. Yet their parents, skewered below them on the same spikes, mouths open to catch the blood dripping from their children’s flesh, wept tears of blood that were even darker than the wounds on their bodies.

They hated: hated their own helplessness, hated the demons’ cruel slaughter, hated the injustice of the heavens. This mass of resentment from over a hundred souls coalesced into a dense cloud of malevolent energy above their heads. And in the sky above this land, there were more than a dozen such clouds, growing in number; the largest stretched for miles—that was from a nearby great city, with a population of several hundred thousand.

Qi could not even name what he felt. The fate of these people had little to do with him—he was unfamiliar with the villagers and the headman, even feared and disliked by them—yet he felt a profound sorrow. In this cultivation world, where the weak are prey to the strong, disaster could descend without warning at any moment.

Before he had set foot on the battlefields of the cultivation world, he had believed the battlefield to be the most tragic and unpredictable place. There, he had been a king—a legend, a miraculous general.

When he first set foot on the threshold of the cultivation world, he had traveled to a peaceful otherworld. Even when pitted against the monsters and beasts of that alien realm, he had solved every crisis perfectly, with no innocent casualties.

Only now did he truly witness the cruelty of the cultivation world, the selfishness of its cultivators, the wantonness of the demonic path. In this world, everything was an illusion—only strength mattered. Those with power had everything; those without could only prey on the weaker still, for weakness could never resist the strong.

Realizing this truth, for the first time he truly desired power—not the half-hearted, aimless search for purpose of before, but a clear, desperate need: to survive in this world.

It was just as well that the black cat had not come with him, Qi thought.

Drawing a deep breath of the thick, blood-scented air to clear his chaotic thoughts, he exhaled and strode toward the villagers’ corpses. They needed burial—this was the only thing he could do for them now, to let them rest in peace.

But the gathering clouds of resentful energy obstructed his approach. If he moved another step closer, the cloud of resentment above would surely descend to attack, destroying any who dared interfere with their desperate pleas to the heavens.

Though the resentment of a hundred souls was not difficult for Qi to dispel, these clouds were the last will of the villagers; he was reluctant to act against them. After a moment’s thought, he swept his wide sleeves and produced three corpses from the Qi Canon: the Red and Green Demons, and the Black-hearted Demon.

“Spirits wronged and slain, I, on behalf of the heavens, execute these fiends. With the heads of these demons, I honor your souls. May you rest in peace, and enter the cycle of rebirth swiftly.” As his words fell, three great heads soared into the sky, and blood gushed from the corpses, drawing the resentful energy into a vortex. The clouds descended, enveloping the heads and bodies, and from within came hoarse cries, weeping, screams, and the grisly sounds of tearing and chewing.

Qi stepped back and watched in silence. Only after the time it takes for half a stick of incense to burn did the resentment gradually dissipate, taking the three corpses with it. Night fell, and slowly the chirping of insects and birds returned. The moon, large as a lantern, shone down on the blood-soaked village, dispelling the last traces of death.

Qi stepped forward once more to collect the villagers’ bodies, but suddenly turned in surprise towards a corner. There, he saw a building still intact—the ancestral shrine, the place where he had once retrieved the Qi Canon. He had not noticed it before, but now he heard a stifled sound of weeping coming from within.

(One more chapter remains.)