Such magical insects would be troublesome anywhere, but Sima Jiao was different. His spirit fire was the bane of these creatures. As he walked along, a layer of black ash spread beneath his feet—the corpses of any insects that dared approach him had been burned to ashes.

The bridge wasn’t just infested with magical insects but also contained formations—interconnected arrays. With each step, the scenery around him shifted. One wrong step, and what lay before him wouldn’t be the long bridge but another intersecting formation space—a chain of deadly arrays.

Illusions, magical insects, and formations—these three elements alone could stop almost any uninvited guest. Even Liao Tingyan wouldn’t have been able to discover the hidden bridge.

Unfortunately, none of these could stop Sima Jiao. He moved with extreme speed, his tall, black silhouette floating across the bridge like the wind before landing in another mountain area.

As his foot touched the stone steps of the mountain, Sima Jiao’s brow twitched. This place wasn’t like the ordinary small peak he had seen earlier. From the moment he stepped in, he realized that someone had created an artificial space here that wasn’t actually in its original location.

In this narrow space, even the sky differed completely from the outside, colored crimson. The mountain mist carried a faint reddish tint as if stained with the scent of blood.

What exactly had that old thing Master Qianlu, or rather, the Shi clan, hidden here?

Sima Jiao had barely looked around when suddenly a bloody great maw opened beneath his feet. The giant mouth appeared silently, opening and closing in an instant, about to swallow him whole.

*Crack*—the sound came from the giant mouth closing. But the person who should have been bitten down had appeared in mid-air instead.

“A watchdog?” Sima Jiao sneered.

Such a ferocious beast was rare. Just by looking at its size and the murderous aura it emitted, he knew it must have been brought from the Far Northern Abyss. Most such beasts preferred to devour human flesh. No wonder the bloody stench was so strong, keeping such a beast here.

To others, it might be a ferocious beast, but to Sima Jiao, it was merely a watchdog.

The huge, ugly beast revealed its form. It determined that the person before it was an intruder and let out a series of roars. The foul stench from its mouth transformed into black clouds covering the sky.

Sima Jiao stood in the air, raised his hand, and pulled a two-finger-wide, completely black long blade from the void. The blade was straight, three feet long with a two-foot handle, looking somewhat different from ordinary long blades—unnaturally elongated with a sinister quality.

Typically, Sima Jiao killed using only his hands, taking lives with just two slender white fingers. But the beast before him was so ugly and enormous that he was too lazy to use his hands. Besides, Liao Tingyan had recently reminded him not to exert force with his hands. While he could certainly crush the beast’s skull with his fingers, he had to give some face to the person waiting for him at home.

The black blade seemed light in his hand. When he swung it down, the blade’s light resembled lightning with a blinding whiteness.

The beast’s hard back armor split under the blade’s light. Its roar of fury echoed throughout the isolated space. Sima Jiao, wielding the long blade he hadn’t used in ages, cut the ferociously barking watchdog into more than a dozen pieces, with the final stroke smashing its large head.

The beast’s blood was red. Being so large, its blood flowed like a small river, inevitably splashing as it gushed forth. Though Sima Jiao’s blade remained unstained, his robe hem dripped with blood. He glanced at it, slapped the long blade back into the void, and walked toward the mountain enshrouded in a barrier, treading the freshly laid river of blood.

This final barrier was the most troublesome. Even though he had tried to conceal and restrain himself, the commotion he caused had likely already alerted Master Qianlu. But breaking through this barrier would still require some time.

Since that was the case, he wouldn’t bother opening the barrier. Whatever lay inside, he would simply destroy it.

That was Sima Jiao’s matter-of-fact thinking.

“Come… in…”

A weak voice drifted from the mountain. The voice was so ethereal that when carried by the wind, it resembled the rustling of leaves rather than a human voice.

“…come…”

With that voice, the barrier before Sima Jiao dissolved, leaving a gap for him to enter. The deep, dark opening resembled the monstrous maw of a beast luring someone into their death. Having avoided the ferocious beast’s mouth earlier, this time Sima Jiao walked in willingly.

He wasn’t afraid of any traps waiting for him inside. At his level of cultivation, his absolute confidence in himself and complete fearlessness of death meant he would only act as he pleased. Just as Master Qianlu had judged him—arrogant and self-centered.

Inside the mountain barrier, a palace-sized black jade structure shaped like a lotus flower, or perhaps like a blood-condensed flower of Mount Feng, rested in a river of blood.

The blood river was crimson with flecks of broken gold, emanating warmth.

Sima Jiao’s expression darkened. The blood in this river carried the essence of the Sima clan bloodline. He suddenly understood the purpose of those people he had seen penned like livestock at Hundred Phoenix Mountain—so many impure bloodlines. He now knew what they were used for. Most had likely been gathered here.

So much blood, even if impure, contained enough energy to nourish a blood-condensed flower. Perhaps even more than just that.

The murderous aura around Sima Jiao surged just as it had when he first arrived at Hundred Phoenix Mountain. He was eager to destroy this place, to burn the steaming river of blood completely dry.

He crossed the blood river toward the black jade lotus in the center, walking up the smooth stone petals to find a person lying on the stone platform at the lotus’s heart.

The stone platform was concave and filled with blood, which was closer to the pure Sima clan bloodline than the blood in the river outside.

At first glance, Sima Jiao didn’t notice the man lying in the blood-filled stone platform, but rather his split-open chest where a blood-condensed flower grew, and above it, a small flame.

Sima Jiao’s pupils contracted.

It was Mount Feng’s spirit fire—there should only be one such fire in the world. Having merged with the spirit fire, he naturally could sense that this small flame didn’t belong to his spirit fire, though there was a faint connection.

They had managed to grow another spirit fire.

This couldn’t have been accomplished in one or two generations, or even in a few hundred years. They must have been working on this for a very long time.

Finally, Sima Jiao turned his gaze to the man’s face. It was a very familiar face, remarkably similar to his own, though their auras differed. This man’s demeanor appeared more steady.

The man opened his eyes, looked at him, and slowly revealed a smile. “You’ve finally… come. I’ve been… waiting for you…”

Sima Jiao watched him for a while, his expression unchanging, then asked, “Sima Shi?”

Sima Shi was Sima E’s brother and Sima Jiao’s biological father.

This man, who supposedly went mad years ago and committed suicide, was surprisingly still alive.

Sima Shi’s gaze was gentle as he looked at him, the way an elder looks at a younger generation. But Sima Jiao looked at him no differently than he would a stranger.

“E’er… followed my instructions… and merged the spirit fire… with you… You managed to endure… I’m very pleased…” Sima Shi spoke intermittently. “I need to tell… you… some things… Place your hand… on my forehead…”

The Sima clan possessed a special bloodline ability allowing them to communicate through spiritual thoughts.

Sima Jiao understood what he wanted to do. Though he couldn’t hear Sima Shi’s heart voice, he could discern others’ likes and dislikes and sensed that Sima Shi bore him no ill will. After pondering briefly, he placed his hand on Sima Shi’s forehead.

Soon, Sima Jiao’s spiritual thoughts and Sima Shi’s converged in a pure white world, standing face to face.

Sima Shi’s spiritual form was more substantial than his physical body and soul. In this special inheritance space, time was infinitely extended. To the outside world, this might be just the blink of an eye. This ability, passed down through the Sima clan bloodline, was used for elders to impart knowledge to younger generations.

This father and son didn’t act like father and son. Compared to Sima Shi’s identity as “father,” Sima Jiao was more interested in the newly born spirit fire within him.

“Tell me, what’s your story?”

Sima Shi smiled, unbothered by his attitude.

“I am not merely Sima Shi, but also the previous generation’s Sima Yan. Many years ago, as the Sima clan gradually declined, I detected the Shi clan’s ambitions and what they were secretly doing. But as Sima Yan, I didn’t have much time to stop them because I was born with an ailment and had a short lifespan. So I chose to transfer my soul, using special methods to preserve my memories, and was reborn as Sima Shi, deceiving everyone.”

“I’ve been trying to save the Sima clan, but unfortunately… I couldn’t do it.”

Sima Shi sighed. “I discovered that the Shi clan was attempting to cultivate a new spirit fire and that they had secretly collected the blood of many Sima clan descendants. I even infiltrated this blood river black lotus once and saw a Sima clan member being used to cultivate the spirit fire.”

His expression turned cold, finally showing some resemblance to Sima Jiao. “Originally, the Shi clan was our most trusted and loyal servant, but people eventually changed. Because of our clan’s trust, the Shi clan secretly harmed many of our clan members. Quite a few were brought here to cultivate the spirit fire under the pretense of disappearance or death.”

“I devised a plan to merge with Mount Feng’s spirit fire and destroy the Shi clan’s conspiracy. However, the spirit fire was too powerful—I couldn’t merge with it. After trying, I couldn’t bear such immense pain and had to give up, turning to another plan instead.”

Sima Jiao understood. “You pretended to go mad and commit suicide, and sure enough, they brought you here?”

“Yes.” Sima Shi smiled. “I told E’er about merging with the spirit fire. She was an obedient, good child, and she succeeded.”

When Sima Jiao was born, Sima Shi was overjoyed, discovering that this child possessed a rare ancestral bloodline. If he couldn’t withstand the spirit fire, this child certainly could.

What even he didn’t know was that initially, Sima E didn’t want this child to merge with the spirit fire and even wanted to kill him. But later, reaching a dead end with no other choice, she ultimately used her own life to purify the spirit fire, causing the powerful spirit fire to be extinguished and reborn, making it easier for Sima Jiao to merge with it.

Sima Shi continued, “All these years, they didn’t know my consciousness was still active, so they weren’t on guard against me, allowing me to make preparations. I waited for a long time until your success, then controlled a person who came to deliver blood to bring the Hundred Phoenix Mountain matter to your attention.”

Sima Jiao raised an eyebrow.

So that Shi clan member whose soul he had searched had been arranged by Sima Shi.

Sima Shi extended his hand toward him, his eyes blazing. “I knew you would come. When you arrived here, it would be the time for everything to end.”

Sima Jiao laughed. “You’re quite confident.”

Sima Shi’s expression showed the arrogance of the Sima clan. “Naturally. We are the Feng Mountain clan, a long-lived race as enduring as heaven and earth.”

Sima Jiao sneered, “Wake up. The Sima clan is all but dead, with only me left—oh, and half of you.”

Sima Shi shook his head, the fervor in his eyes growing more intense. “What does it matter if only you remain? As long as you live for tens of thousands of years, as long as you don’t die, the Feng Mountain clan will always exist.”

Sima Jiao lacked Sima Shi’s obsession with their racial bloodline. Hearing this, he merely snickered, too lazy to say more.

“They’re coming soon.” Sima Shi closed his eyes briefly. “They don’t know I can control this barrier… Before they arrive, you must devour the spirit fire in my body.”

…

When Master Qianlu hurriedly arrived with his people, he saw Sima Jiao standing outside the mountain barrier, seemingly unable to enter.

Sima Jiao turned to look at him. “You’re slower than I expected.”

This time, Master Qianlu completely shattered his dignified and elegant facade as the immortal sect leader. His expression turned grave as he stared intently at Sima Jiao. “If you stop now, you can still be the sect’s master ancestor. Otherwise, I won’t allow your arrogance to continue.”

Whatever lay behind the barrier was his bottom line.

Sima Jiao replied, “If I don’t stop, what can you do to me… Send another batch of people for me to kill for fun?” As he finished speaking, crimson flames spread beneath his feet.