Rustle, rustle, rustle!

Fourteen blood-red banners snapped and billowed, blotting out the sky and the sun — like the primordial chaos before heaven and earth had first separated, dim and all-encompassing, sealing the entire heavens within.

The two Supreme Elders of Yao Guang Sacred Ground lunged left and right, yet could not break out of this blood-drenched domain.

The banners blazed and unfurled, each of them a hundred zhang tall. Every time they shook, they fired off sword-beams in every direction — impervious to all things, their sharpness blotting out the sun itself.

“Jiang Yi — your cultivation has reached such a level that only divine source can be of use to you. Plundering our source zone on such a massive scale serves no real purpose.”

One of Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s Supreme Elders had barely finished speaking when a razor-sharp sword-beam lit up the heavens — like a bolt of lightning slashing across the sky — and sliced off an entire corner of his sleeve in an instant.

“You…” His expression darkened.

“I can exchange source ore for what I need.” Jiang Yi’s voice was calm. He sat at ease upon his lion-like mount, both hands moving slowly through the air.

The fourteen blood-red banners surged like a flooding river, shaking violently, rapidly shifting position.

Jiang Yi’s two hands seemed to hold an infinite and mysterious power. His movements were unhurried, yet the terrifying pressure that radiated from them sent a chill through the heart — resonating in tandem with the fourteen banners.

Boom!

The void erupted. It was as if an enormous millstone were rolling thunderously across the high sky. The two Supreme Elders of Yao Guang Sacred Ground both changed color.

Powerful as they were, they were like blades of grass in a raging sea — swaying helplessly in the sky, unable to stabilize themselves whatsoever.

The fourteen blood-red banners shook with tremendous violence, ringing like steel, possessed of incomparable power — enough to tear the heavens apart, a sight of towering magnificence.

“The Eight Divine Brute Force!” The two Supreme Elders of Yao Guang Sacred Ground were deeply shaken.

Jiang Yi’s movements grew slower and slower — but the energy he radiated grew more and more terrifying.

His hands held a demonic quality. The heavens trembled because of him; the void collapsed over and over. Under the sway of this power, the fourteen banners were like fourteen blood-drenched gods of war, their might flooding the heavens.

Boom!

One Supreme Elder of Yao Guang Sacred Ground was caught off guard — a banner struck directly and shattered half the garments from his body. His face turned a grim shade of iron, and his body shuddered violently.

“To think you’ve cultivated the Jiang Family’s Eight Divine Brute Force to this level…”

This had exceeded both of Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s Supreme Elders’ expectations entirely.

The Eight Divine Brute Force was the supreme divine power of weapon control — it possessed a demonic quality. Once cultivated to its zenith, there was virtually nothing it could not break, no force it could not overcome.

This supreme secret art was the pinnacle ability of the Jiang Family’s ancient scripture — just as the Ji Family’s Void Great Hand Seal was the peak secret art of their own ancient scripture. Each was the crowning ability of their respective lineage.

Jiang Yi’s hands grew slower and slower, until they were nearly suspended motionless in the air — and that made them even more terrifying, as though eight divine gods were truly exerting brute force.

This stretch of sky became like a swamp, or like the magnetic field of a great demon — causing the movements of Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s two Supreme Elders to grow slower and slower, until they were on the verge of being completely bound in place.

And the fourteen banners blazed with tidal torrents of blood-flame, pressing the two of them ever closer together, the space between them shrinking with every passing moment.

Boom!

At the instant Jiang Yi’s hands were nearly completely still, he abruptly gave both hands a sharp, violent shake.

The space ahead immediately collapsed. The fourteen banners shuddered in unison. The Eight Divine Brute Force was transmitted outward — like ten thousand surging waves, savage and unmatched — directly sending the two Supreme Elders flying.

“You…”

Both of Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s Supreme Elders had blood trickling from the corners of their mouths. Their expressions showed undisguised shock.

“The Eight Divine Brute Force is indeed fearsome — it fully deserves to be called a supreme secret art. But if this is the full extent of your skill, I fear you cannot kill us. You’d better think about saving your own life!”

Both of them wore cold expressions, their voices low and heavy. Being sent coughing up blood by Jiang Yi’s strike was something they could not remain calm about.

“Kill you? Come and try your luck!” Jiang Yi sat unmoved atop his mount, both hands beginning to move once more.

At the same time, the two Supreme Elders of Yao Guang Sacred Ground took action — one producing a purple-gold gourd, the other a bronze bell. Both were suspended above their respective heads, and ray after ray of auspicious radiance fell like curtains, like parasol-like canopies enshrouding them.

The sword-beams shaken out by the fourteen banners were dazzling and brilliant — but at this moment, they could not draw near. They could not reach the two men within.

The three mighty figures clashed, and the heavens erupted into turmoil — as though the Milky Way were pouring downward, a magnificent splendor, a flood of destructive energy engulfing everything in that place.

The ground below was affected, yet one banner stood planted in the soil, towering a hundred zhang, blood-light circling endlessly, enshrouding the several thousand ordinary people within — and not one of them was harmed.

“The Eight Divine Brute Force…” Ye Fan gazed up at the sky, murmuring to himself. He recalled certain passages from the Shiji · Fengshan Shu:

“Of the Eight Gods, the first is the Lord of Heaven, worshipped at Tianqi. The second is the Lord of Earth — for heaven favors the Yin, the altar must be on the slope below a great mountain and above a small one, called the ‘Zhi.’ The third is the Lord of War…”

Before long, the sound of savage beasts shrieking rose — dozens of riders came thundering back. Jiang Yi’s subordinates had returned laden with spoils, having plundered a great quantity of source ore.

Boom!

Jiang Yi activated the Eight Divine Brute Force, both hands delivering a sudden violent blast through the void, sending the two Supreme Elders tumbling back.

“Move out!”

He and the riders soared into the sky. The fourteen blood-red banners held the two Supreme Elders at bay, giving them no opportunity to give chase.

On the ground, four banners that had been planted there pulled free one after another and departed.

At last, the remaining fourteen blood-red banners too blazed with blood-light that blotted out the sun, pierced the heavens, and vanished from sight.

The two Supreme Elders gave chase, unwilling to let them escape. At the same moment, battle cries rang out from the far horizon — reinforcements from Yao Guang Sacred Ground had arrived.

Surrounding the Ancient Primordial Mine, the hundred thousand li in every direction had been divided among the various Sacred Grounds of Eastern Desolation. Yao Guang Sacred Ground held several source zones in this region, each one guarded by powerful experts.

Yet Jiang Yi had come prepared. He struck and retreated at once, opening a domain gate, disappearing without a trace.

In the end, Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s Supreme Elders returned empty-handed, their faces grim and ugly.

Ye Fan clicked his tongue inwardly. The Thirteen Great Outlaw Chiefs were outrageously brazen — they actually dared to rob even a Sacred Ground.

In truth, the origins of the Thirteen Great Outlaw Chiefs were each far from ordinary. Among them were powerful individuals who had broken with Sacred Grounds, great experts who had wandered from the Central Region to this place, and mighty figures who had fled here from the Northern Desert.

This storm passed quickly. The several thousand newly arrived ordinary people were split apart and distributed across various locations throughout the source zone.

Though they had only just arrived, it was difficult to feel any sense of novelty. The source zone, covered by its dao markings, looked no different from the world outside — bleakness was the eternal and unchanging keynote.

Low stone houses, reddish-brown rock and earth, mining zone after mining zone — no life, no vitality.

In the distance, the source diggers moved with blank, expressionless faces, mechanically toiling away, going in and out of the mine shafts, hauling out one block of earth and rock after another.

They were nearly numb, showing no reaction whatsoever to the arrival of newcomers — like people who had lost their souls.

Many hearts grew uneasy. Was this a vision of their own future? Monotonous labor, day after day of repetition, becoming the walking dead…

Three days passed, and Ye Fan had learned a great deal.

Day-to-day mining was not particularly bad — it only demanded physical labor. But the moment something sinister occurred deep in a mine shaft, the danger became extreme. Not just ordinary people — even powerful cultivators could find it difficult to come out alive.

Few people lasted ten years. Those who returned to the Southern Region with large sums of gold coins were extraordinarily rare.

Ye Fan frowned. Dao markings were layered densely throughout the area, sealing it off from the outside world. Only at specific times could anyone leave. Escaping would require considerable thought and planning.

But he was not in a hurry. This place was, in truth, a genuine treasure land. Source stones were buried beneath the ground — if he could acquire some, using them to cultivate would certainly yield twice the results with half the effort.

Within this region, the only thing he was wary of was the Sacred Maiden of Yao Guang. If Yao Xi were to come here, things would be very bad indeed.

At the thought of the breast garment in his possession, he suddenly broke into a smile.

He reflected that even if the illustrious Sacred Maiden of Yao Guang came to the Northern Region, she surely would not enter a mining zone thick with dust and grit. She certainly had other, more important matters to attend to.

Ye Fan broke his own bones deliberately, enduring the pain to realign them — many parts of his body had fused out of position and needed to be properly set.

“Damn it to hell — this is going to kill me.” Deep in the night, with all quiet around him, Ye Fan grimaced and hissed through his teeth as he corrected every bone back into its proper place. He sweated through the agony.

After several rounds of reassignment, the people around him kept changing. He was not particularly worried about drawing others’ notice. Over those few days, he had been smearing gray earth across his face to avoid any risk of being recognized.

More days passed, and another round of work distribution came. By then, he was fully at ease — there was no need to worry about any change in his appearance raising others’ suspicions.

At last, Ye Fan was assigned to the Fifteenth Mining Zone.

All these days, he had been learning about source ore from the other workers, laboring above ground at the shaft opening.

Source ore was exceedingly precious — and extraordinarily scarce.

When sinking a mine shaft, the first task was to identify a vein. Each vein corresponded to a single mine shaft.

Even in this region, source ore was not inexhaustible. A relatively small source mine — a single vein — might yield only a few jin of source, and a lean mine might produce only a few liang.

A large source mine might yield a fang or more of source — an astonishing quantity, but such rich veins were rarely encountered.

“No wonder that old woman Ji Hui thought giving me a fist-sized piece of source was sufficient to repay the favor I’d done the Ji Family.”

Source ore was a rare treasure. A fist-sized piece was enough to raise a cultivator at the Divine Bridge realm by an entire level.

At that time, he himself had been at the Divine Bridge realm.

But for someone like Ye Fan, whose constitution was a bottomless pit, a fist-sized piece of source was nowhere near enough to break through a single level.

This was not a disadvantage — because while the amount of life essence he required was greater than others, his divine power was also far more abundant than an ordinary person’s. Cultivators of the same level could rarely match him.

Moreover, he could absorb source ore without interruption and convert it for his own use, with no limitation whatsoever.

An ordinary cultivator at the Divine Bridge realm, despite being capable of advancing a level with a fist-sized piece of source, could not absorb it all at once. They had to draw it in slowly, over a very long time, before it could be fully refined into the body.

If a mountain of source ore were placed before Ye Fan, he could refine it continuously without pause. Ordinary cultivators could not do the same — they could only take it in gradually, burning with envy but helpless to do otherwise.

Of course, refining rare materials from heaven and earth was only viable in the early stages of cultivation. Once a cultivator reached the Third Secret Realm, it became very difficult to rely on external objects any longer. At that point, one had to comprehend the Dao.

After reaching the Third Secret Realm, only by comprehending the Dao could cultivation advance. There were few other shortcuts.

The Fifteenth Mining Zone was a vast and boundless stretch of land. The reddish-brown earth and rock were extremely hard and difficult to excavate.

In this area, more than a dozen mine shafts had already been sunk. The amount of source was relatively modest — each shaft yielding only about one jin.

A single vein producing only one jin was indeed on the lean side — yet the source harvested was crystalline and translucent, with few impurities and very high quality.

Furthermore, the Fifteenth Mining Zone was enormous and had only just begun to be excavated. It was far too soon to conclude that no great veins lay hidden beneath.

On the twentieth day, having learned enough, Ye Fan was finally assigned below ground and began his first session of source excavation.

“Amitabha, boundless heavenly sovereign — let me dig up some source ore and refine it all clean for you.”

Suddenly — Ye Fan had only just descended into the mine shaft when shouts of alarm rang out from above.

Upon hearing such cries, the experienced source diggers scrambled up the shaft walls for their lives, fleeing in terror.

“Damn it all — first day digging source, and I’ve already run into something sinister?!”

Ye Fan’s bones had long since been fully reset. His physical body was matchless. Nimble as a gibbon, he was the first to burst out of the mine shaft.

“Something’s gone wrong in that mine shaft over there — it’s possessed!”

“There’s something inauspicious in that vein. Everyone who went in is dead. Even one of Yao Guang Sacred Ground’s senior cultivators — very powerful — didn’t even make a sound before dying inside!”

Just ahead, from the neighboring mine shaft, a sinister and malevolent aura was radiating outward, as if some entity was about to burst free from within.

Seeing this, Ye Fan immediately sprinted away, withdrawing at full speed. He had an ill premonition — this was not a place to linger.

Around the entrance of that mine shaft, many people had already collapsed. Corpses were scattered everywhere.

The Fifteenth Mining Zone erupted into chaos. The source diggers were overwhelmed with panic.

Running several li out, Ye Fan finally stopped and observed from a distance.