But no matter how furious Tie Dong was, he only managed to utter those three words.
Suddenly, after the speck of cold starlight disappeared into it, the storage pouch at the waist of the woman in the green gauze seemed to squirm.
Immediately after, a speck of deep blue appeared in the beautiful eyes of the still-dazed Fairy Red Candle. This speck of deep blue instantly magnified, immediately filling her entire field of vision.
Beyond that deep blue, there was no other color, no other sound...
In the sky, the three Nascent Soul cultivators from Windy Cool Mountain seemed to have anticipated this reaction.
Taking advantage of the moment when Tie Dong's eyes were about to crack with rage and the other two Demonic Generals' faces had drastically changed, in just an instant, the Divine Senses of the three had already rapidly retracted towards Windy Cool Mountain.
Xiao Yaoyuan's phantasm flickered, and the severed arm that had been thrown out flew back to his body. His Divine Sense turned into an invisible substance and retreated like a tide.
In the eyes of the three Demonic Generals, Tie Dong's roar still echoed in their ears as a ball of deep blue light flashed from the waist of the woman in the green gauze.
It bathed the still-dazed face of Fairy Red Candle in an azure glow. The entire voluptuous, water-like body of the woman in the green gauze was torn into countless fragments.
Next, Fairy Red Candle, in her stupor, exploded into a shower of blood that shot out in all directions. But this shower of blood, before it could spread and fall, was burned clean by an even greater force, not a single drop remaining.
The deep blue light, with the two of them at its center, spread out in an instant, covering the entire valley and even further beyond...
For a moment, the valley was like an exquisite, translucent, hallucinatory space. But it was only for an instant. The valley floor and the surrounding mountains bucked.
It was as if they had been lifted several dozen feet into the air and then slammed back down onto the earth.
Only then did a world-destroying, deafening roar sound out.
If one were watching from the side, the image and the sound would be completely out of sync. The image seemed to have passed for a long time before the sound reached the ears.
In truth, all of this was completed within a single breath.
And within that breath, only one slender figure from the entire valley shot up into the sky.
In her hands, a pair of crescent moon handguard sabers unleashed waves of blade wind, shredding the surging qi waves that followed her ascent. She flew a full ten thousand feet high before stopping.
The figure was the true body of the female cultivator Mu. Tie Dong and the other Demonic General were only present as Divine Senses, their perception even more sensitive. The first moment they felt the irresistible force, their Divine Senses had already rapidly withdrawn.
Although the female cultivator Mu reacted quickly, she was still affected. The force from below was something that even she felt terror and fear towards.
At this moment, a thousand zhang high, her originally exquisite demonic armor had several long cracks on its lower half, revealing large patches of skin.
The exposed skin on her long legs was not fair and round like an ordinary woman's, but smooth as black, supple silk. Her toned skin had fine, vertical muscle lines.
These lines sculpted her legs to be exceptionally rounded, appearing even more slender and astonishingly elastic.
...
Li Yan felt the earth beneath him shake violently, and then the mountain he was on seemed to jump into the air twice.
Amidst the shaking, some parts of the cloud-piercing summit collapsed with a roar.
A dense rain of stones, carrying rocks of all sizes, came crashing down towards Li Yan below. Li Yan knew that now was the time to flee for his life.
Because the surrounding night was already woven with lights of all colors, shooting up into the sky, appearing exceptionally dazzling in the darkness.
It was the traitorous cultivators on the outer perimeter, taking advantage of the fact that the shockwave had not yet reached them, to flee this place at the first opportunity.
The Divine Sense battle of the six Nascent Soul cultivators moments ago, and the sudden, drastic change in the valley two hundred li away, had already thrown this entire area into a panic.
Li Yan immediately made a decisive move. Using the cover of the stone rain, he immediately sped away into the distance. At this moment, cultivators were fleeing in every direction. No one paid any attention to them; they just wanted to get as far away as possible.
The "rumbling" sound continued for nearly half an incense stick's time, radiating outwards for nearly five hundred li with the nameless valley as its center.
As this force spread outwards, it was only after several hundred li that the number of collapsing mountain peaks and trees gradually decreased.
...
The nameless valley, now destroyed beyond recognition, had become a bottomless black hole. In the center was a deep, bottomless crater, from which gray smoke was billowing out.
The surrounding mountains had become a stretch of low, rubble-strewn barren hills. The green vegetation was reduced to scattered green dots here and there.
Countless towering ancient trees had been destroyed into fine wooden splinters, deeply embedded in the piles of rubble, like a place that had been covered by a myriad of arrows, appearing as ferocious as a monster covered in sharp spines in the dark night.
For half an incense stick's time, the female cultivator Mu stood high in the sky, silently watching the scene below. The altar below had disappeared. That was a formation she had personally arranged, one that could withstand a blow from an Initial-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.
But when breached from within, it appeared so fragile. That huge black hole, like a giant mouth, seemed to be mocking her silently.
The crescent moon handguard sabers on her slender arms would flash with a bright light from time to time, like the surging anger in her heart.
She seemed not to see the damage to her exquisite armor and her exposed skin. Her delicate features were incomparably grim.
The moment she had soared into the air, before the "BOOM" of the explosion sounded, that place had already ceased to exist. The "Heaven-Shaking Thunders," the fifty demonic cultivators, and all the human cultivators had been turned to dust in the deep blue ethereal light in an instant.
"What a powerful magical treasure. Its power was concentrated at one point. Otherwise, if it had exploded evenly, at least a five-hundred-li radius would have been simultaneously turned into nothingness."
The female cultivator Mu squeezed a sentence out from between her silver teeth.
Then her gaze swept back and forth over the bottomless black hole again. The result was that truly nothing was left. "What a cunning scheme from the other side. They hid this magical treasure on a cultivator through poisoning. Did you calculate that I would definitely save her?"
The female cultivator Mu muttered to herself, then raised her eyes and looked towards Windy Cool Mountain.
...
Several thousand li away from here, Tie Dong's Divine Sense had already returned to his body. He shot up from his cross-legged position with a "huo" sound, his face extremely grim. Gradually, his head of silver hair began to glow, strand by strand.
"Eight 'Heaven-Shaking Thunder' magical treasures, uprooted! What a brilliant calculation. From the poisoning of that bitch, to the clash of Divine Senses, and then forcefully activating the high-power magical treasure to destroy the valley, one link after another."
"Hmm? No, wait..."
Tie Dong's expression suddenly changed. He remembered where that cheap woman in the green gauze had come from, and the mountain range that Windy Cool Mountain had seemed to be protecting, intentionally or unintentionally.
"There was someone else hiding there. Everything that happened before was not just to suddenly activate the hidden high-power magical treasure. There was another meaning: to protect someone."
"There must have been one or several people there carrying out this mission. They administered the poison, placed the magical treasure, and set up a chain of stratagems. Damn it..."
Tie Dong, unlike the female cultivator Mu whose energy was focused on the valley, would still pay attention to that direction from time to time.
He was afraid that a Nascent Soul cultivator from Windy Cool Mountain would go over and forcefully destroy the "Heaven-Shaking Thunders."
As for cultivators below the Nascent Soul realm, even if he discovered some of their scouts, he wouldn't pay them any mind. With the female cultivator Mu stationed there, any riff-raff who went over would just be seeking death.
But now, it seemed they had fallen for the scheme of those insignificant cultivators.
Thinking of this, Tie Dong's powerful Divine Sense already swept towards the mountain range where Li Yan had been staying.
This action of his was so sudden that he didn't even have time to inform the other Demonic General who had just been fighting with their Divine Senses at his side, let alone notify the female cultivator Mu.
At this time, less than ten breaths had passed since the explosion. It was the most chaotic moment. Any cultivator who could still fly on their qi had already desperately streaked across the night sky, creating dazzling long rainbows as they fled outwards.
At this time, no one dared to go towards the nameless valley to investigate. They all believed that everything that had just happened was the result of a great battle between several Nascent Soul cultivators' Divine Senses. Whoever went over would be courting death.
And the originator of this disaster—Li Yan—was also mixed in with this crowd, rapidly flying away into the distance, his body flowing with a black glow.
There were quite a few cultivators here who primarily cultivated water-attribute arts. Water-attribute could be divided into blue, black, and pale white colors.
These cultivators had blue, black, or other colored lights protecting their bodies. Li Yan's black spiritual light was not considered eye-catching, let alone deliberately using the cover of night.
As he flew, Li Yan did not choose to head straight northwest. Instead, he chose the same direction as many others, heading southeast, where the main army of the Demon Clan was stationed.
Li Yan didn't even dare to probe in the direction of the nameless valley with his Divine Sense. He wanted to blend in with the crowd and would do nothing to attract attention.
'I wonder if the explosion just now destroyed the Demon Clan's magical treasure there!'
Earlier, after he had clearly identified the identity of the woman in the green gauze and overheard her conversation with Zheng Xingfan, a thought had suddenly occurred to him.
Because he remembered the extremely special appearance of the "Annihilation Exquisite," which was almost identical to a deep blue water-attribute spirit stone. He immediately came up with a plan that didn't require him to take the risk himself.
The fact that the two dared to have their tryst in the cave naturally meant that this place was rarely scanned by the Divine Sense of Nascent Soul cultivators. This gave him an extra layer of security for his actions.
Through their conversation, Li Yan knew that for the time being, there should only be one Nascent Soul-level Demonic General present. In that case, if a Golden Core cultivator was poisoned and on the verge of death, they would naturally only seek help from this Nascent Soul-level Demonic General to save their life. This gave Li Yan the possibility of "borrowing a hen to lay an egg."
And so, the plan quietly took shape.
He quietly snuck into the cave and, while the two were in the throes of ecstasy, silently introduced the potent poison into their bodies.
Then, Li Yan chose Zheng Xingfan as the entry point to break the other's psychological defenses. He believed that the woman in the green gauze was more seductive and had a greater chance of getting a Demonic General to act.
He just hadn't expected there to be a female Demonic General in the nameless valley, which was completely different from his original plan. But fortunately, "Fairy Red Candle" got involved in the later events.
But Li Yan knew none of this.
In front of the woman in the green gauze, he had tortured and killed Zheng Xingfan with extremely cruel methods.
As expected, the fear in the woman's heart had reached its peak, and her desire to escape Li Yan and survive grew even stronger.
After killing one person, Li Yan had pretended to be interested in his storage pouch. Then, naturally, he had poured out all the contents of Zheng Xingfan's storage pouch.
Subsequently, he had pretended to be interested only in magical treasures, ignoring things like talismans and spirit stones. In front of the woman who had lost her Divine Sense, Li Yan had easily mixed the "Annihilation Exquisite" in with Zheng Xingfan's spirit stones.
However, this method still had a significant chance of failure and was uncontrollable.
For example, if the woman, in her panic, had fled without taking anything, the plan would have ended before it even began.
Also, later on the flying magical treasure, the woman was constantly taking out spirit stones to replenish her Spirit Power. If she had taken out that particular "spirit stone," she would have immediately discovered something was wrong.
But Li Yan wasn't too worried about this point. Because the "Annihilation Exquisite" could not be detected by Divine Sense, it was basically impossible for the woman to draw it out with her Divine Sense.
Taking a huge step back, even if she had gotten her hands on the "Annihilation Exquisite," without being able to detect it with her Divine Sense, but being able to see it with her eyes, she would most likely think it was an unknown magical treasure of Zheng Xingfan's and might even cherish it and carry it with her.