Inside one of Zheng Xingfan's legs was a hazy redness, a stark contrast to the normal color of his skin.
The redness quickly reached his lower abdomen, then forked. One red line continued upwards from his abdomen.
The other path, a blurry, shaking red flame beneath a layer of human skin, traveled downwards along Zheng Xingfan's other thigh...
Zheng Xingfan wished for a swift death, but his wish could not be granted. Even fainting was an impossibility.
He knew the other party must have used some method on him to prevent him from passing out, forcing him to endure this immense pain at every moment.
Eventually, Zheng Xingfan didn't even know if he was truly unconscious or in some hellish illusion.
As long as his Golden Core remained intact, he would not die immediately.
In fact, the whole process wasn't very slow. In less than thirty breaths, Zheng Xingfan's face was frozen in a specific, contorted angle, and his body no longer trembled.
His five facial features were five black holes, from which wisps of green smoke emerged. His whole body lay on its side, his skin completely red. He was now a large, human-shaped lantern.
Only in the area of his Dantian's Purple Mansion was there still a faint flicker of a flame.
Only then did Li Yan wave his hand. A soybean-sized, pale yellow pellet broke through the abdomen and was caught by him.
Li Yan remained squatting, staring at the thing in his hand like a demon admiring a favorite doll. It was a pale yellow Golden Core.
At this moment, there were still some flames flickering on the Golden Core. A pained and blurry face, that of Zheng Xingfan, was faintly visible on its surface.
He saw Li Yan and, in his weakness, forced a smile, begging for mercy.
"Th-this Fellow Daoist, I meant no disrespect to Vener... Venerable Wan... as long as you..." As he spoke intermittently, a hint of venomous hatred flashed deep within his eyes and was gone.
But Li Yan, holding the Golden Core, merely glanced at it a few times, as if he hadn't heard Zheng Xingfan's words at all.
As he slowly stood up, Spirit Power surged from his hand. With a soft "pop" and a tiny, almost inaudible scream in the cave, the Golden Core in Li Yan's hand turned to dust.
With the shattering of the Golden Core, Zheng Xingfan completely vanished from this world.
Then Li Yan glanced around. This seemingly casual action made the woman pretending to be unconscious in the distance panic.
She held her breath tightly. She didn't know where this man came from or why he had suddenly appeared here.
But from his simple sentence earlier, this person seemed to deeply despise cultivators who had sided with the Demon Clan.
'Could it be that his sect was implicated or destroyed during the search for the "Realm-Breaking Pearl," which is why he is being so ruthless to us...'
A guess formed in the woman's mind, and her heart began to pound like a drum. She grew more anxious. Why, at a time like this, was her heart beating so loudly? That demon would surely follow the sound and come for her.
It wasn't that the woman had never seen cultivators who enjoyed torturing and killing. She had even seen many whose methods were several times more vicious than the man in gray before her. Yet, this man in gray filled her with boundless dread.
Not only were his poisoning methods first-class, but he also had a sadistic tendency when killing. His heart was as cold as ice. He had used a method on Zheng Xingfan that was countless times more malicious than "lighting a sky lantern." (TN: A method of execution where a person is burned alive.)
He had destroyed Zheng Xingfan's physical body, bit by bit, right before her eyes. At the same time, he seemed completely indifferent to the Golden Core of others.
Logically, evil cultivators like him were usually very keen on refining Golden Cores into medicinal pills. Yet, the man in gray hadn't even been willing to listen to the terms Zheng Xingfan offered before making him disappear from this world entirely.
Anyone knew that when one's life was in another's hands, especially a Golden Core cultivator, their wealth would be substantial.
And mid-to-high-level cultivators often didn't carry all their wealth with them; they would find a secret place to hide it.
Facing death, Zheng Xingfan would certainly have revealed the location of his hidden treasures, willing to pay any price to save his life.
In that case, the man in gray could have made a fortune. But he had killed Zheng Xingfan so unhesitatingly, with such decisiveness and ruthlessness.
Whenever the woman thought that those same methods would soon be used on her, her lower abdomen began to swell, followed by a warm sensation from below. She was literally scared witless.
This made her both ashamed and flustered, nearly causing her to faint directly. With her level of cultivation, she had never thought she would have such an embarrassing day.
For a moment, she didn't even dare to clamp her legs together, afraid of making the slightest sound and attracting the other's attention.
In truth, the woman knew in her heart that, faced with someone who had no desire to communicate, she was unlikely to escape.
As the man in gray's gaze swept across the cave, he immediately spotted the two storage pouches next to the clothes. With a beckoning gesture, the two pouches flew into his hands.
Seeing the man in gray seem interested in her and Zheng Xingfan's storage pouches, the woman couldn't help but curse inwardly.
'Since you know to take people's storage pouches, why didn't you listen to the conditions Zheng Xingfan offered to save his life? Even a pig could figure out which is more important!'
She only dared to curse in her heart. This man was a lunatic. The woman only hoped he would leave quickly and get far, far away from here.
Li Yan picked up Zheng Xingfan's storage pouch. A trace of Zheng Xingfan's Divine Sense still lingered on it, but for a dead person, even a Mid-stage Golden Core, breaking the Divine Sense restriction was like breaking something without a root.
What's more, Li Yan's own Divine Sense was comparable to a Golden Core cultivator's. He opened the other's storage pouch almost effortlessly.
With a surge of Spirit Power from his hand and a clattering sound, a large pile of items appeared on the ground.
Seeing the man in gray effortlessly open Zheng Xingfan's storage pouch, the woman, having lost her cultivation, couldn't detect his realm. But at this moment, she was certain that this person must be a Golden Core cultivator or higher.
On the ground was a pile of spirit stones, medicinal pills, a magical treasure, and numerous talismans and spirit treasures.
The man in gray looked at them, then reached out and picked up the magical treasure. It was a pair of pale golden walnuts. After picking them up, he held them between two fingers and examined them repeatedly.
The man in gray didn't try to activate the pale golden walnuts with Spirit Power. After looking at them for a short while, he casually put them into the storage pouch at his waist.
Then he rummaged through the spirit stones, pills, and talismans on the ground, finally taking out a dozen or so jade slips. He then picked them up one by one and pressed them to his forehead.
The woman knew what the man in gray was doing. He must be very interested in that pale golden magical treasure and was likely looking for the corresponding activation manual.
After searching for a while, the man in gray didn't seem to find the corresponding jade slip. This meant that if he wanted to use the pale golden walnuts, he would have to spend some time studying them.
The woman saw the man in gray toss the jade slips aside one by one with dissatisfaction, looking somewhat annoyed.
Finally, the man in gray's gaze locked onto the woman's storage pouch. The woman sighed inwardly, knowing that the two magical treasures she cherished were likely lost.
This man in gray was very strange. He seemed uninterested in pills, spirit stones, and talismans, only liking completed magical treasures.
The woman herself didn't realize that while worrying for her life, she was also concerned about her storage pouch. This was probably a common ailment among cultivators.
Some stubborn cultivators, in moments of crisis, would rather give up their lives than let their cultivation resources be taken by others.
Just as the man in gray was about to pick up her storage pouch, his movement suddenly paused. He stopped what he was doing, then whipped his head around to look at the cave entrance.
Then, like a phantom in the dark night, the man in gray flashed to the entrance. At this moment, even the woman lying on the ground could hear the sound of something piercing through the air outside the cave, rapidly approaching.
The woman couldn't help but feel a surge of joyous surprise.
'Could it be that the surrounding scouts have noticed something is wrong here?'
But she dared not let her breathing quicken, afraid that the other party would kill her to silence her first.
As for who was coming and what kind of scene it would be when they saw her in her current state, the woman believed that as long as they weren't as unreasonable as the man in gray before her, she could handle it all.
The moment the man in gray reached the cave entrance, a sudden change occurred. A tube-like, glittering object suddenly stabbed in.
The man in gray reacted quickly. Sensing danger, he dodged to the side, and the object passed by, almost brushing his ear.
Even though the woman had lost all her Spirit Power, she could still see that it looked like the sharp beak of some demonic beast.
After dodging, the man in gray slapped a palm toward the beak. The demonic beast, having failed its sneak attack, was also agile.
With a soft "swish," the beak had already retracted. How could the man in gray let it go? As the opponent retreated, his body surged with black qi, and he had already flashed out in pursuit, not even bothering with the woman in the cave.
Then, several blasts of wind intertwined outside the cave, but only for an instant. A sound of something streaking through the air flew into the distance. Immediately, the woman heard two more streaks of sound in hot pursuit.
'It's not the scouts from the mountain below, nor the other two Golden Core cultivators. Damn it!'
Seeing that the exchange was extremely brief, without a single word spoken, and that the attacker had fled immediately after a failed strike, it was clear they were afraid of alerting the people around.
The woman began to regret that the place she and Zheng Xingfan had chosen was a bit too remote.
Especially since, with their ill intentions, they had each told their subordinates that this area was under their personal patrol, temporarily turning it into a forbidden zone.
The mountain peak was instantly plunged back into dead silence. The exchange between the two sides had lasted less than two breaths before one fled and the other gave chase.
In the cave, the woman on the ground waited for more than a dozen breaths but still heard nothing. She was both happy and afraid. Happy because a glimmer of hope had been ignited.
Afraid that the man in gray would return, or that the person fighting him was no benevolent soul either. If either side came back, her chances of survival were unpredictable.
'Could they be pursuers from the battlefield up ahead, so the newcomers didn't know there was someone else in the cave?'
'Perhaps in their chase of the man in gray, they had already determined he had no companions, which is why they overlooked the situation inside the cave.'
'If I heard correctly, it should have been one person and one beast that came just now. In that case, if their strengths are similar, it's no wonder the man in gray couldn't win in a direct confrontation.'
As for why the pursuer, even if they were from the demonic cultivator's side, didn't call for reinforcements, the woman wasn't suspicious at all.
Back when she was chasing Su Hong, she also didn't want others to get involved, wanting to monopolize whatever the other party had.
On the contrary, if that person's goal was indeed something like that, knowing of her existence would only increase her chances of being silenced and killed.
The woman thought about these things, but unfortunately, after being poisoned, she couldn't even use her Divine Sense. Everything had to be discerned through her senses, followed by analysis in her mind.
After another while, just as the woman was growing more and more anxious, afraid that the unknown, deadly poison would act up and claim her life just as she had found hope...