Chapter 145: The Enraged Black Prison

"Friend Heiyu, am I right? This world has completely changed beyond recognition; it is no longer the way you remember it," said Daoist Bingyan by the riverside in the Mist Sea Realm outside the Divine Medicine Mountain, looking at the towering, two-meter-tall figure clad in black robes beside him.

"Heh, such massive changes in the world are indeed astonishing," Heiyu said, recalling the sights he had witnessed along the way. Beneath his hood, his expression remained unreadable, neither sorrowful nor joyful. "By the way, further ahead should be the grand protective array of your Divine Medicine Mountain, shouldn't your primary soul and true form come out to meet me? That way we can discuss our countermeasures together."

*There is no longer any primary soul or true form; if I hadn't said it like that, you would have swallowed me whole by now,* Bingyan thought to himself derisively, though his face showed no trace of abnormality as he smiled and said, "It's not that I'm intentionally delaying things; to be honest with you, my primary soul is currently inside the array coordinating everything. Our plan is for my primary soul to find a way to control the protective array, while you and I go and eliminate our enemies—a two-pronged approach."

Heiyu shook his head firmly and replied, "That won't do, will it? Without seeing the true form of your primary soul, I truly feel uneasy in my heart. After all, you and I are old friends of many years; how can I proceed without knowing the extent of your injuries? Perhaps I might even be able to heal the injuries of your primary soul."

"The primary soul's injuries are already of no consequence. Once the plan is executed, it will be extremely easy for you to meet the primary soul. We had better—"

Before Bingyan could finish, Heiyu's tone turned icy cold: "What? Do you intend to order this True Person around? You make endless excuses; could it be you harbor ulterior motives?"

As he spoke, a powerful spiritual pressure converged into a single thread, crushing down toward Bingyan. With the vast disparity in their strengths, Bingyan's legs went weak, and he collapsed to the ground, hastily shouting, "Fine! I will take you to see the primary soul right away!"

"That's more like it!" Heiyu withdrew his spiritual pressure. He did not want to cause too much of a commotion and alert the target prematurely; giving this split spirit a small lesson was enough.

Bingyan picked himself up from the ground, looking quite battered with an unsightly expression, and said with utmost reluctance, "Friend Heiyu, please follow me."

The two quickly arrived near the stone wall at the entrance of the protective array. It was currently noon, and the entrance was wide open, except that both sides were densely packed with guards from the Zhuge family, a group of whom were hauling supplies inside.

"Heaven helps me! We can slip inside using an illusionary technique; how could these mortals possibly notice?"

Bingyan sneered, cast an invisibility spell, and with a flash, swaggered right through the entrance. Unable to stop him, Heiyu pondered for a moment and followed him inside as well.

Not long after the two entered, the entrance closed once again, and the guards and disciples had not the slightest inkling that anyone had drifted past them.

Once inside the Divine Medicine Mountain, Heiyu followed Bingyan step for step without leaving his side. The two safely reached the Canghai Hall and revealed their figures.

Facing the empty room, Bingyan smiled brightly. "Friend Heiyu, I will go and call the primary soul out to meet you right now."

With that, he walked straight ahead toward the divine statue, reaching out as if to touch something. At that moment, Heiyu's voice sounded from behind: "Wait!"

Bingyan paused as Heiyu released his divine sense to scan the divine statue thoroughly, yet found nothing out of the ordinary.

"Friend, you truly are cautious. Why don't you open the mechanism yourself? Just lift the blue lamp on the left side of the incense altar upwards," Bingyan smiled and said.

Heiyu nodded, took a step forward, but then stopped and smiled instead, "You do it, Friend. I will just watch from the side."

Bingyan's smile vanished, and with a helpless expression, he stepped forward and grasped the blue lamp on the left side of the incense altar. Behind him, Heiyu tightened his grip on his inner focus.

A sudden smile bloomed on Bingyan's lips as he fiercely pressed the blue lamp downward!

Clang! Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

The stone slab beneath Bingyan instantly revealed a dark opening that swallowed him whole before immediately snapping shut. At the same time, three long spears suddenly burst out from the abdomen of the divine statue in front, fiercely stabbing toward Heiyu!

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. At such a short distance, the spears struck Heiyu's chest, only to be bounced off with the sound of striking metal and stone. Heiyu's demonic corpse body was indeed clad in copper skin and iron bones, impervious to swords and spears!

He had been played after all!

Heiyu was furious. Despite all his caution, he had still been tricked by Bingyan. He resolved to dig three feet into the ground to unearth him and rip out his heart to eat!

Before he could act, however, the giant divine statue before him emitted another series of mechanical whirring sounds before shattering completely, sending debris scattering in all directions. The entire Canghai Hall shook violently. As it turned out, the interior of this divine statue was crafted using mortal mechanical arts, which Heiyu's divine sense—intent only on scanning for defensive barriers—had failed to detect, causing him to fall for Bingyan's trap. This entire Divine Medicine Mountain had been built by Bingyan; no one in the world was more familiar with it than he was.

Feeling the vibrations transmitted from overhead, Bingyan, who had already plunged deep into the earth, smiled smugly and looked at a cavern before him glowing with specks of azure light.

"Fight, go ahead and fight! When I came here last time, that person clearly displayed the phenomenon of breaking through to the Foundation Establishment stage; they must still be consolidating their cultivation. Meanwhile, Heiyu is a mid-Foundation Establishment corpse cultivator. When the two of them fight, whoever wins or loses will suffer severe damage to their vitality. At that time, I will detonate the entire protective array—if worse comes to worst, nobody gets anything!"

As it turned out, Bingyan had sneaked in once before a few days prior.

Meanwhile, the Heiyu above ground had already plunged into a state of blind fury.

The entire Canghai Hall collapsed amidst the explosion. With such a massive commotion, even if the members of the Zhuge family were deaf, they would have noticed. By the time Heiyu burst out from the ruins, he was met by hundreds of Zhuge family guards and former disciples of the Divine Medicine Mountain.

"Haha! Before I find that damned bastard, let this True Person eat you all first! Use your flesh and blood to increase my cultivation!" Heiyu laughed out of extreme anger. Suppressed for hundreds of years, he could finally no longer control his body's instinctive hunger and thirst for the flesh and blood of the living, and he roared aloud.

Roar!

He ripped apart the black robe on his body, revealing his true form beneath. His frame was withered and emaciated, as though a layer of black leather were stretched tightly over bare bones. He was all skin and bones, and the nails on his hands and feet were an inch long and incomparably sharp. Looking at his face, it was pitch-black with blood-red eyes, and in place of a nose were two dark holes, as if his nasal ridge had been sliced off. Most terrifying of all were his two pearly-white fangs that jutted out from his mouth all the way down to his chin. The moment this spine-chilling appearance was revealed, the surrounding people were terrified beyond measure, scrambling over one another to retreat.

This was clearly a ghost or monster of legend!

"Thinking of leaving?"

Heiyu sneered coldly, slapped his chest, and spat out a ball of pitch-black mist from his mouth. In the blink of an eye, it expanded, billowing in all directions and engulfing the crowd completely.

All sorts of screams rang out within the black fog, earth-shattering and fiercely shrill, interspersed with Heiyu's frantic laughter.

"What is going on here!"

By the time Zhuge Qian and the Zhuge Ancestor arrived with the elders and reinforcements, they saw the black fog rapidly contracting and receding, quickly being sucked back into Heiyu's body. Looking around him, the crowd had vanished, leaving behind only piles of clothing and white bones on the ground, without a single shred of flesh or hair remaining!

"This is the feeling! Exquisitely delicious! This True Person needs more blood and sustenance!"

At this moment, Heiyu stretched out his slender, crimson tongue to lick his lips. His physique appeared much fuller than before, with muscles bulging across his body and a layer of hard armor growing on the surface. His aura had surged by several notches compared to before. He abruptly opened his eyes, his blood-red pupils staring at the newly arrived crowd—these were merely his food.

Such a gaze was terrifying, resembling that of a serial killer who, having been locked away for a long time and tasted murder once again, had his mind blinded by slaughter, completely immersed in the ecstasy of the kill, desiring only to keep on killing to grow ever stronger.

Except for masters with profound cultivation and unyielding willpower, anyone else pinned by this greedy gaze instantly felt their hair stand on end and their entire body run cold, harboring an instinctive urge to flee as far away as possible. Even the masters could merely stand rigidly in place with difficulty, their palms slick with sweat.

"A monstrosity! A damned monstrosity! Blast him to pieces for this old man!"

The sole high-level expert present, the ancestor of the Zhuge family, was the first to react. He immediately stimulated a white protective aura to shield his entire body and roared out an order.

His shout snapped the well-trained elite forces of the Zhuge family at the periphery back to their senses. Without hesitation, they aimed the rocket launchers on their shoulders at the monster in the center and simultaneously pulled the triggers.

Five streaks of fire flew in from various directions, slamming fiercely into the towering figure of Heiyu and erupting into a massive ball of fire with tremendous momentum, prompting the onlookers to cheer in an effort to dispel the terror in their hearts.

Suddenly, the Zhuge Ancestor's expression shifted, and he shouted, "Quiet! Everyone fall back and keep blasting him!"

Complying with the order, the crowd widened the encirclement, each finding cover as the second wave of rocket-propelled grenades surged forward, triggering an even larger explosion. The area occupied by the monster had been blasted into a deep crater, with flames soaring into the sky and heat radiating outward, fluttering everyone's hair.

Bang!

A violent gale suddenly erupted from the midst of the flames, scattering all the fire and dust to reveal the scene within.

"So this is the weaponry of today's mortals? Quite formidable. Not bad, truly not bad!"

Heiyu climbed out of the crater. Though he could not be said to be completely unscathed, as various parts of his body were marred by wounds of all sizes, he paid them no mind. He reached out to smear the black blood flowing from his chest, brought it to his mouth to suck upon, and after displaying an intoxicated expression, suddenly turned murderous: "However, that is the extent of it. It is time for me, Daoist Heiyu, to roam the world!"

He had previously endured the rocket attacks deliberately just to test their power. Now, with his aura fully unleashed, the violent spiritual pressure belonging to a Foundation Establishment corpse cultivator soared straight into the clouds!