Chapter Ninety-One: Sweeping Across the World

The fusion of worldly intent and vital energy took shape, forming the rudiments of a domain. Even so, with his unimaginably vast reserve of vital energy, he effortlessly withstood the oppressive might of the Ghost King’s domain.

Vital energy blazed with radiance.

It had transformed into a power of brightness, a perfect counter to the darkness.

“The Ten Thousand Ghosts Grand Formation, the Howl of the Yellow Springs!”

The Ghost King drove countless yin spirits to unleash a single roaring cry. It became an unparalleled assault upon the soul, tearing Jiang Ming’s nascent world domain to shreds.

“One Sword Brings Forth Light!”

Jiang Ming paid it no heed. Around his body, thick vital energy had long since become armor, further fused with his blood power, keeping the soul-shaking roar at bay. He reached out and seized, condensing qi into a sword; with a casual sweep, a white flash split the ghostly mist apart, and moonlight poured down as well.

Countless yin spirits were cut down in a single stroke.

Even the Ghost King’s body was sliced open in part.

“This damned power of light!” the Ghost King roared. Opening his maw, he inhaled violently, and the dense ghost mist whirled into his mouth. His aura surged upward at once.

“Underworld King’s Finger!”

A black finger pressed toward Jiang Ming.

It was thick as a pillar piercing the heavens, containing destruction, decay, corrosion, soul-devouring force, and myriad other powers. Combined together, they made the might of this single finger terrifying beyond measure.

The newly restored rudiments of the world domain were pierced through in an instant.

Jiang Ming had already landed on the ground, sword in hand, and thrust forward with sudden force.

“Sword Twelve, Black Hole Point Breaks All Laws!”

Before the tip of the sword, space was torn apart, forming a tiny spatial black hole laden with the power to annihilate all things. When it met the finger, it collapsed and was obliterated on the spot.

The terrifying force transmitted onward, destroying half the Ghost King’s body and shattering his ghostly form.

This sword was one Jiang Ming had derived through comprehending the way of space.

Its offense had reached the extreme.

Nothing could withstand it.

Far off in the darkness, the Ghost King appeared once more, though his aura was clearly much weaker.

“Still hard to kill,” Jiang Ming murmured, frowning.

He could also feel the peculiar nature of this place: darkness, decay, death, withering, ruin, silence, despair, and countless other negative emotions filling the air.

If an ordinary person entered, their vitality would be destroyed in an instant.

Even a martial artist in the Astral Energy Realm would likely not endure long before their will was erased and they became a fool, after which their flesh would corrode and in the end become nourishment for this place.

This had become a land of death.

“Human, who are you?” the Ghost King bellowed. No one knew what divine art he had invoked, but a patch of ghostly light appeared behind him, and countless yin spirits were drawn toward it with wails and cries. His body also began to swell.

It rose to a height of over thirty feet.

Towering from earth to sky, like an ancient giant.

His aura grew even more violent.

“Underworld King’s First Bow Empties Life and Death.”

“Underworld King’s Second Bow Forges Cause and Effect.”

“Underworld King’s Third Bow Buries All Living Beings.”

With both hands joined, the Ghost King bowed three times in succession toward Jiang Ming. In that instant, an indescribable aura descended without warning, eerie and unfathomable, impossible to grasp, and fused directly into Jiang Ming’s body.

“What is this...” Jiang Ming’s heart turned cold. He could feel his life force rapidly draining away, his soul beginning to wither as well.

“Yin-Yang Great Ultimate Suppresses Heaven and Earth!”

In his sea of consciousness, the yin spirit instantly transformed into a dharma form. As the crescent moon and the blazing sun revolved, they formed a dreadful suppressive force that sealed the sea of awareness and ground to dust the strange power that had invaded it.

Rumble...

Jiang Ming also surged with boundless blood power, billowing like the ocean, yet still he could not stop the loss of vitality.

With a shift of thought, the intent of light and darkness suddenly emerged. Black and white, vital energy entwined together like yin and yang, yet entirely unlike them.

This was the power of light and shadow. United, they formed a great barrier; fused with his blood power, they finally suppressed the life force that had been slipping away.

“A curse!”

Jiang Ming’s brows knit tightly.

He had never imagined he would encounter such an uncanny force.

What inheritance had the Ghost King obtained?

The spirits of this world seemed to appear out of nowhere. There was no Ten Levels of Hell, no legends of the Netherworld, and yet they could exist in daylight.

Too strange.

As he thought, Jiang Ming struck the Ghost King with a punch.

“Short-range Fist, Ninefold Mountain!”

All the vast and surging power of his blood fused into this blow. Ninefold Mountain meant nine times the strength, bringing the might of this punch to the very peak of the peak.

To utterly crush the Ghost King, he even infused the intent of light into the strike.

The blazing blood of the flesh, the purifying power of light, and the terrifying force multiplied ninefold made Jiang Ming’s punch ripple the very space itself.

A void passage was blasted open ahead.

The Ghost King’s pupils contracted in horror.

“My Underworld King’s Third Bow didn’t kill him? Impossible. Absolutely impossible!”

Back then, he had personally bowed to death a mighty expert at the Celestial Phenomenon realm. It was that battle that had truly allowed him to lead countless yin spirits and even turn an entire city into a ghostly domain.

And now, not only had he failed to kill this man, he had not even wounded him severely.

But the instant he saw the power of that punch, his face changed in terror. He tried to flee, but it was already too late.

He was smashed to pieces by the blow on the spot, then annihilated.

Not a trace remained.

This time, he was truly dead; Jiang Ming could sense it.

“When dealing with yin spirits, the most effective methods are the most yang and hardest forces: blood power, light, and thunder.”

Thinking this, Jiang Ming suddenly rose into the air and, with another punch, blew apart a second figure lurking in the shadows.

Compared with the one before, this one was far, far weaker.

Clearly a lesser minion.

“Rebuilding the body through cultivation again, I am still only at the second stage. Above the golden bones, the color has faded, becoming jade bones. Jade bones, clear and translucent, are only halfway complete.”

“Immortal muscles and jade bones.”

“Perhaps jade bones are the true limit of tempering sinew and bone.”

Jiang Ming’s vital energy surged forth once more, reaching three hundred meters away, entirely transformed into the attribute of light.

He moved like the wind, purifying the yin spirits as he went.

They could not escape even if they wanted to; Jiang Ming was too fast. At the same time, he considered his own condition.

In the normal sequence of tempering, there were black bones, bronze bones, silver bones, and golden bones; now he was at the jade-bone stage. The farther one went, the harder refinement became.

And the consumption was enormous.

The income of Moonwatch City, even together with the sale of techniques and the like, was not enough for him alone.

Compared to all else, the path of body cultivation was the hardest for him.

It was also the slowest.

It required inch by inch, step by step, rather than any sudden leap; there was no shortcut. Yet the power it brought was genuine and solid.

Even after rebuilding his cultivation, his physical strength had already multiplied more than tenfold.

What would it be like after refining the organs and washing the marrow?

Jiang Ming did not even dare imagine it.

The darkness was swept away, the ghostly mist purified.

The submerged ghost realm finally revealed its face again, though it was already full of holes, everywhere rotting bones, tattered ruin, broken walls, and shattered remains.

There was no sign of living breath.

Jiang Ming did not linger. With a leap, he rode his sword toward another ghost city that had only just been seized. Not long after, that too was purified.

Thus the ghost domain was extinguished.

Even though many yin spirits still existed in the world, they could no longer amount to much.

Jiang Ming did not return to Moonwatch City, but instead rode his sword toward Myriad Demon Mountain.

Tonight, he would wipe out the demons and devils in a single battle.

At the same time, he would complete one achievement: slay a demon king and a ghost king alone.

Once done, he could take his harvest and leave at any time.

For him, that was the most important matter of all. Afterward, he would have no worries behind him; whether to cultivate or to roam as he pleased, he would be free to follow his heart.

It would also create a time gap.

That way, news from this side would not reach Myriad Demon Mountain and put them on guard.

At the stroke of midnight, Jiang Ming arrived.

Myriad Demon Mountain was an enormously vast peak, shrouded in demonic aura and a thick stench of blood. Jiang Ming, however, looked toward another side: a valley where many people lived.

They were all in ragged clothes, their expressions numb.

“Cattle held in captivity for slaughter.”

Jiang Ming understood at once what was happening.

His killing intent grew even stronger, yet he did not rush to act.

Though suspended in the air, he had concealed his aura completely, blending with moonlight and dust, unobtrusive and hard to detect.

Careful sensing revealed a tremendously powerful aura lurking in the palace atop the mountain. That was the demon king.

Only a demon king could reach such a level.

Deep in the mountain range, there was another aura, no weaker in the slightest yet hidden to the extreme.

“Another demon king?”

Jiang Ming’s brows drew together.

Besides those, there were four powerful auras on the front peaks, all inferior to the demon king’s, clearly the strength of great demons.

Looking out over the range, he saw moonlight condensing into strands and falling throughout the mountains. It was being drawn there.

“Most demon power belongs to the yin. The Greater Yin is the source of most pure-yin power, and thus the demon race often cultivates at night, swallowing moonlight to strengthen itself.”

Jiang Ming had long since understood these matters.

Turning his gaze, Jiang Ming’s mouth twitched. Halfway up the mountain, bonfires were blazing, and over them a human being was skewered and being roasted.

Nearby stood steamers.

There were also numb-faced people stirring and frying food before a huge cauldron.

“Emperor Yu deserves to die!”

A nameless fire rose in Jiang Ming’s heart.

“Kill the demon king first!”

His killing intent had never been more intense. With that settled, the longsword dropped from beneath his feet into his hand. One step down became a boundless stride, and in the blink of an eye he was at the palace atop the peak.

“Sword Fifteen, One Sword Becomes a World, Binding All Living Beings!”

This was a sword style evolved from the intent of the world, centered on imprisonment, confinement, entrapment, binding, and suppression.

As the sword light flickered, it seemed to manifest a world of its own, within which all manner of powers converged into binding and suppressive force.

In an instant, the palace collapsed and shattered, revealing the demon king.

He had been lying on a jade bed, with a goat’s head and a human body, and two little sheep curled in his arms. Sensing the terrifying killing intent, his response was by no means slow.

The sheep woman in his embrace burst into a cloud of blood mist. The moment he rose, his body suddenly sank, and for a moment he could not move at all.

He was Yang Dali.

One of the demon race’s demon kings.

“Soul-Extinguishing Thorn, Extinguish the Soul!”

“Sword Sixteen, Lightning Flashing, Slay the Demons and Evil!”

Jiang Ming erupted in full force.

With a flash of light between his brows, an invisible arrow shot straight into Yang Dali’s forehead. It was the Soul-Extinguishing Thorn, a spiritual secret art he had derived.

Simple, yet terrifyingly lethal.

If one could not withstand it, one’s soul would be annihilated outright.

Yang Dali let out a miserable scream, blood gushing from all seven apertures as his aura rapidly weakened.

At that very moment, Jiang Ming’s sword turned and the sword force changed abruptly. Lightning rippled across the blade.

Especially at the tip, where dreadful power that devoured life and birth was condensed, it stabbed directly into Yang Dali’s brow, the point emerging from the back of his head.

Lightning exploded, blasting the skull into fragments.

Even the demonic aura in his body was mostly annihilated.

The demon king, Yang Dali, was dead.

“And as for the rest of you...”

Jiang Ming’s killing intent became tangible, but he did not continue striking. Instead, he drove his sword skyward and raced toward another demon king.

If he was going to kill, he would kill the kings first.

Then he would exterminate them completely, leaving none alive.

At the same time, the system prompt rang in his mind.

The fifth innate talent had arrived.

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