Chapter 138: Demonic Vine Dragon

Outside the Marsh of Flesh and Blood.

Demonic clouds gathered, and demonic light surged.

Xu Zhong manipulated his sword pellet to deploy a sword formation. Within the formation, spiritual energy drifted in a misty haze, with flying swords overlapping layer upon layer from far to near. For a time, no inner demons dared to approach him.

The few companions beside him also displayed their respective methods.

Though months had passed and neither Yun Yong nor Tang Yuan had cultivated to the Truth-Realization realm, their abilities were by no means inferior to ordinary Qi practitioners who had just stepped into that realm.

Among them, Tang Yuan was particularly formidable.

His physical body possessed majestic vitality, with his life-blood energy condensing like a column of smoke behind him. Viewed from afar, it resembled a profound and distant blood-red totem, or an unimaginably gigantic sun that struck terror into the hearts of all demons.

Furthermore, he manifested six other arms through the transformation of his life-blood. These arms grabbed upward and downward, seizing any inner demon they touched and stuffing them directly into his torso, where they were thoroughly refined by his physical furnace.

Inner demons contained an essence similar to the Undying Spiritual Light. By capturing and refining them, one could nourish one's own Undying Spiritual Light.

At this moment, Tang Yuan's physical furnace acted like a massive millstone, grinding down the inner demons delivered by his blood-condensed hands.

Meanwhile, Shiyue simply opened the Book of Life and Death. The approaching inner demons were instantly drawn into the tome. Amidst flashing spiritual lights, the gates of Fengdu could faintly be seen appearing. One by one, the inner demons were sent into Fengdu, passing through the Soul Dissolving Pool to strip away their original souls.

Those souls were quickly dispatched by the soul-reaping emissaries of Fengdu to undergo reincarnation.

"Just how many inner demons are there here?" Xu Zhong muttered involuntarily as he watched the demonic wind whistling past and felt the churning demonic energy within it, unable to shake the feeling that these inner demons were endless, as if they could never be killed completely.

Beneath the firmament before them, one hundred thousand inner demons had gathered, resembling a terrifying plague of locusts.

Living beings were continuously captured by the inner demons from all corners of the Bronze Gorge.

In the hands of these inner demons, those living beings had their flesh and blood relentlessly stripped away, along with their souls and Undying Spiritual Light.

These one hundred thousand inner demons absorbed a portion of the souls and Undying Spiritual Light for themselves, while refining another portion into medicinal pills that they stowed away in their storage bags.

These inner demons also needed to sustain their own undying nature.

There were one hundred thousand of them right here in front of his eyes, and from this point all the way to the Marsh of Flesh and Blood stretched a full mile of territory. Just thinking about the sheer quantity of inner demons made one's scalp tingle.

These inner demons did not merely devour the souls and Undying Spiritual Light of living beings; they also preyed upon one another, fighting to snatch the spiritual pills from each other's storage bags.

It seemed that the Inner Demon King had set a quantitative threshold for every single inner demon, or else they would not have been driven to such madness.

The moment Xu Zhong laid eyes upon them, the inner demons likewise discovered their presence.

In an instant, the one hundred thousand inner demons swarmed forward.

The hundred-foot-long passage was packed to capacity with inner demons.

Xu Zhong and his companions stood shoulder to shoulder, plunged into the heart of a black hurricane.

Inside this black hurricane, countless inner demons opened their mouths to howl, spewing demonic sounds and demonic runes.

Those demonic runes evolved in mid-air into an unimaginably gigantic black bell.

Every time they howled, it triggered the tolling of this black bell.

"Clang!"

The bell rang out.

A wave of soundless ripples swept boundlessly into their Niwan palaces, leaving their human souls dizzy and disoriented, driving their seven physical souls into a state of violent fury. Moreover, strands of demonic energy began to breed within their bodies, intertwining thread by thread until they formed the shape and consciousness of inner demons.

Xu Zhong remained safe and sound.

Inside his Niwan palace manifested thirty-three layers of thunder clouds projected by the Divine Pivot Bixiao Thunder-Suppressing Pagoda.

Amidst the boundless thunder clouds, bolts of divine lightning leaped about. The moment the inner demons tried to manifest themselves, they were instantly struck by the heavenly tribulation and reduced to pale wisps of smoke.

Within his physical body resided the Golden Elixir Dao Tree.

With a slight quiver of its branches, it shook the inner demons straight out of his body.

However, Shiyue, Yun Yong, and Tang Yuan beside him possessed neither a Golden Elixir Dao Tree nor a Divine Pivot Bixiao Thunder-Suppressing Pagoda.

At that very moment, inner demons abruptly sprouted within them. Wisps of demonic energy poured out from their forty-eight thousand pores, condensing behind each of them into the shape of another terrifying, hideous, and ethereally evil version of themselves.

These inner demons drove them to walk outward.

With every step they took, a fraction of the souls and Undying Spiritual Light within their bodies dissipated.

Those souls and Undying Spiritual Light merged into the hurricane, inciting the crazed inner demons to devour them with redoubled fervor.

Witnessing this, Xu Zhong initially intended to deploy his rattle-drum, but ultimately lowered his hand.

"If there were only one or two inner demons, it would be fine. But with so many of them here, if I use this magic treasure, it will only give these inner demons an opening to exploit."

The essence of inner demons was similar to that of souls.

Therefore, the rattle-drum was equally effective against them.

Xu Zhong could not guarantee that his rattle-drum could simultaneously suppress one hundred thousand inner demons. If even one or two inner demons managed to evade it while his companions' human souls were blasted into immobility, those inner demons would seize the opportunity to infiltrate them.

Xu Zhong had no choice but to deal with the external inner demons first.

He opened his mouth and exhaled the True Samadhi Fire.

This True Samadhi Fire extended into a boundless ocean of flames, rolling layer upon layer from near to far as it engulfed and swept toward the other inner demons.

Xu Zhong's True Samadhi Fire rivaled the Realm of All Things Equal.

The moment his True Samadhi Fire emerged, the entire swirling hurricane was scorched into a vortex of fire.

Countless inner demons were ignited and refined under the True Samadhi Fire.

Consequently, silvery-gray medicinal pills rained down onto the ground, producing a continuous clattering sound.

At this moment, the Dragon Sparrow awoke. It exerted telekinetic suction from afar and opened its mouth to swallow, taking tens of thousands of medicinal pills into its belly.

A hazy gray mist surfaced across its body. This mist was saturated with the power of souls and Undying Spiritual Light.

Its body, previously like parched and cracked earth encountering a long-awaited sweet rain, began to heal its soul and Undying Spiritual Light injuries bit by bit.

It glanced at Xu Zhong, then retreated back into his shadow.

"Damn it!" Xu Zhong cursed viciously.

Clearly, the Dragon Sparrow had been awake all along, yet when confronted with such a situation, it had chosen to stand by and watch coldly.

As the inner demons were slaughtered bit by bit, the massive red hurricane gradually weakened and ceased entirely.

The three companions behind him also managed to rein in their stray thoughts, each employing their methods to drive the inner demons out of their bodies.

No sooner had they regained consciousness than they were invaded once more by other inner demons, which seized control of their physical bodies.

These inner demons no longer attempted forced possession; instead, they desperately sought to linger on beneath the ocean of the True Samadhi Fire, thus occupying their physical bodies and hiding away within their acupoints.

Xu Zhong frowned, but he immediately drove the True Samadhi Fire to burn even more fiercely.

The True Samadhi Fire raged fiercely.

Yet the very next moment, Primordial Heavy Water descended from beyond the heavens.

With a downward press of the Primordial Heavy Water, the True Samadhi Fire was compressed to a thin thread before finally being extinguished into nothingness.

Xu Zhong's expression turned grave as he sensed a powerful demonic nature.

The inner demons trapped inside Yun Yong and their companions shrieked in alarm, but the next instant, they exploded within their physical bodies, turning into wisps of demonic energy that were finally scattered by a gentle breeze toward the source of that demonic nature.

Dizzy and stumbling, Yun Yong and the others steadied themselves by grabbing onto Xu Zhong's shoulders.

Yet the next moment, all of them simultaneously felt a terrifying demonic nature awakening.

They gazed into the distance toward the source of the demonic nature.

A vine-dragon spanned across the Marsh of Flesh and Blood, opening its eyes to stare directly at them.

It was the guardian of the Marsh of Flesh and Blood.

Yet at this moment, what surged from its body was an overwhelming, monstrous demonic nature.

It had been corrupted; it had been possessed.