Chapter 1199: Chapter 361: Qi, Qi-ge... What Exactly Is Going On? (6k)

Somewhere in the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain Range!

Here, towering ancient trees blotted out the sky, and dense miasma slowly drifted between the forest.

"Roar—"

A heaven-shaking beast roar suddenly rang out, and a three-zhang-tall Red-Eyed Demon Ape was seen tearing at the corpse of an Iron-Armored Rhinoceros.

Spraying blood kept dyeing its silver-gray hide red.

Suddenly, it lifted its head warily, its scarlet eyes fixed deathly on a certain patch of void, a low, threatening growl rumbling between its fangs.

"Crack!"

Space shattered like a mirror, and a silver-white rift appeared out of thin air.

Violent spatial turbulence swept out, startling the Demon Beasts within a hundred li into lying low.

Especially the nearby flocks of Iron-Winged Azure Eagles, who fled in panic.

Right after, a cyan figure calmly stepped out of the rift. As his robes fluttered, a vast Divine Sense had already swept across the surroundings.

"Looks like I didn’t deviate too much from the route." Zhou Qing took out a map, compared it to several oddly shaped mountain ridges in the distance, and secretly let out a breath of relief.

He might have hitched a ride, but he definitely couldn’t just swagger out from the official exit of the Teleportation Array on the Hidden Dragon Path.

That would be way too high-profile.

He had to at least keep a low profile, so when Zhou Qing confirmed he was about to reach the border Great Wall, he had chosen a nearby spatial node to exit ahead of time.

He just hadn’t expected to fall into the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain Range.

"Just right, I can swing by the Peng Emperor’s Great Demon Mountain territory on the way. Don’t know if Number Six has already left."

Once the thought was set, Zhou Qing’s figure flickered, turning into a streak of cyan light that vanished into the depths of the dense forest.

...

Three days later, at the Ten Thousand Demons Mountain.

When Zhou Qing returned to his old haunt, the sight before his eyes made his pupils contract slightly.

The once towering Ten Thousand Demons Mountain was now a scene of utter devastation.

Mountain ridges had collapsed, ancient trees snapped, and the earth was split by countless ferocious cracks, as if it had been forcibly torn apart by some terrifying power.

Even now, the air was still filled with a bone-piercing chill. Even with Zhou Qing’s cultivation, he could clearly feel the residual Ice Spiritual Power—cold, razor-sharp, as if it could freeze even one’s Divine Soul.

"Looks like Number Six really vented quite a bit." Zhou Qing muttered under his breath, quickening his pace toward the core region.

Not long after, the Black Feather Peak where the Peng Emperor had once entrenched himself came into view.

This mountain, which had once pierced straight into the clouds, had been completely leveled. The Cave Mansion at the summit was reduced to ruins, and the broken walls and shattered stones were covered in a thick layer of ice crystals, reflecting a blinding cold light under the sun.

Thinking back to when he and Second Uncle and Xuanyuan Shuo had racked their brains to sneak into this place, it felt like yesterday.

"That Five-Colored Array Disc is gone. Xuanyuan Shuo must’ve moved it in advance."

Zhou Qing remembered that when he had used the Corpse-Touching Sticker on Master Situ, the man’s third dying wish had been for someone to help him snatch back the Five-Colored Array Disc.

He had spent over three hundred years slowly extracting that thing from some ruin. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Later, when they divided the spoils, Second Uncle took that half-dead Ten Thousand Year Blood Ginseng, while Xuanyuan Shuo claimed the Five-Colored Array Disc for himself.

However, in order to maintain stability along the border, he had not taken the disc away, but left it here as a deterrent.

Faint human voices drifted over from the distance.

Zhou Qing swept out his Divine Sense and found border-armored soldiers of the Human Race, moving in groups of three to five through the ruins, searching for leftovers to pick up.

"The Peng Emperor has long been dead. How did Shen Hanyi determine it was him who did it?" Zhou Qing wondered.

But soon, a guess surfaced in his heart—the Old Ape!

As the Peng Emperor’s military adviser, this transformed Old Demon King held an exalted position, and core Demon Beasts like Profound Swan and Blazing Heaven Falcon were also deeply trusted.

Regarding Situ Jiuyao’s corpse, they were definitely in the know, perhaps even participants.

Shen Hanyi had come here seeking vengeance; unable to find the Peng Emperor, she would naturally Soul Search his trusted followers.

From their memories, of course she could confirm the true culprit.

"Wait a second..." Zhou Qing suddenly realized something, his gaze sharpening.

Strictly speaking, aside from Xuanyuan Shuo and Second Uncle, almost no one knew of the Peng Emperor’s death.

Back when Xuanyuan Shuo asked for his help and Shen Yunzhou tailed him, the latter had only seen him disguise himself as the Peng Emperor and negotiate with the other Demon Emperors.

As for the power structure here, Shen Yunzhou didn’t understand it well, and Zhou Qing hadn’t really explained.

In other words, with Shen Hanyi unable to find the Peng Emperor, the actual culprit, she was probably still wandering around this region.

"Forget it. With her cultivation, she can practically walk sideways along the Human Race border. When I run into her, I’ll just tell her the truth."

Zhou Qing quickly made up his mind.

If not for the Corpse-Touching Sticker letting him experience the scene of Master Situ teaching Shen Hanyi and Yan Sen, who would have known he came from a Level 5 Cultivation Country?

After that, Zhou Qing headed straight for the border Great Wall.

...

About two days later, Zhou Qing’s figure suddenly came to a halt atop a mountain peak, his green robe snapping in the biting wind.

He lifted his eyes and looked into the distance. At the edge of his vision, that towering black Great Wall coiled across the vast earth like a slumbering dragon.

The wall itself was built entirely of black profound-iron rock, its surface covered in mottled blade and sword marks and dried bloodstains.

Above the wall, seven mountain-sized meteorites floated in the air, arranged in the pattern of the Big Dipper.

Each meteorite was engraved with obscure, ancient runes, emanating a suffocating sense of oppression.

Purple-gold chains coiled between them like living things, and on those chains hung tens of millions of Demon Race heads, gently knocking against each other in the north wind with a chilling "click-click" sound.

The four-colored Spiritual Light of the Seven Stars Demon-Binding Array flowed over the surface of the wall, weaving together into an indestructible barrier.