The sky above the Grand Desolate Spirit Forest didn’t simply darken. It tore open like an infected wound.
A high-pitched, ear-splitting scream of shearing air pressure tore through the upper heavens, drowning out the contented chewing and soft grunts of the tens of thousands of wild beasts below. The clear morning sunlight was wildly choked out as a churning vortex of black-and-crimson clouds, spanning thirty miles across, condensed directly over the central volcano bowl. Acid-burning crimson lightning crackled between the storm-heads, each bolt striking the distant mountain ridges with a dull, sickening thud that left the stone weeping black tar.
Every wild beast in the valley instinctively pressed its belly flat against the mud.
The huge iron-rhinos, who had endured catapult fire and starved marches without flinching, were shaking wildly. Their teeth clicked together in uncontrolled panic as an ancient, choking spiritual pressure slammed downward from the clouds like a falling mountain of solid lead.
“What in the hells is that smell?” Tie Shan spat, planting his star-iron hammer into the turf to steady himself as his heavy armor plates began to creak under the sudden sky gravity. “Smells like a thousand slaughterhouses left rotting in the midsummer sun!”
Xiao Hei leaped to the front of the pavilion stairs, his lips peeling back in a ferocious snarl as the silver star-pattern runes along his ribs flared with brilliant lunar fire. His fur stood on end, every instinct warning him that the entity dropping from the heavens was an existence fundamentally different from mortal fighters.
Through the churning crimson vortex, a platform of congealed blood-mist slowly dropped.
Standing atop the floating red cloud was a figure that seemed carved from nightmare. Clad in voluminous, flapping robes stitched together from squares of cured, flayed human skin, Elder Han Gu looked down upon the valley with sunken black glass eyes that burned with rotting green soul-flame. His skin was the color of curdled milk, drawn so tightly across his skeletal cheekbones that his yellowed teeth were permanently bared in a deathly rictus. In his right hand, he clutched a six-foot staff carved from the spinal column of a mountain dragon, topped with a weeping black skull that dripped skin-burning blood onto the cloud below.
He was an Early Nascent Soul grandmaster.
In the eastern training world, an elder of this realm was a living natural disaster, capable of leveling country capitals with a flick of his sleeve and refining entire cities into blood-essence pills.
Yet what drew every eye in the valley was not merely the demonic elder himself, but the huge, terrifying object floating directly beneath his cloud platform.
Suspended by nine massive chains forged from black ghost-iron, each link thick as a temple pillar, hovered the ultimate disaster ancient object of the Blood Sea Demonic Sect: the Nine-Ghost Blood Soul Cauldron.
The vessel was giant.
It stood five hundred feet tall and three hundred feet wide, an ancient three-legged bronze cooking pot of ancient, pre-historic stonework. Its weathered bronze outside was crusted with hundreds of years of blackened, dried soul-scabs and cursed blood-calcifications. Sculpted around its towering rim were nine huge bronze dragon-heads. Their hollow eyes glowed with sickly green soul-fire.
Inside the cavernous bronze belly of the vessel swirled a boiling lake of dark crimson marrow-oil, bubbling and hissing with heat levels exceeding three thousand degrees. Trapped within that boiling red lake were the tormented leftovers of one hundred thousand vengeful wraiths. Fighters, mortals, and ancient spirit beasts slaughtered over three hundred years to feed the cooking pot’s malignant hunger. As the pot swayed in the sky, phantom screams of pure agony echoed from its bronze depths, loud enough to make the ears of every defender bleed.
“WORTHLESS VERMIN!”
Han Gu’s voice roared through the valley like the grinding of tomb doors. The sheer sonic force of his Nascent Soul vocal training shattered the branches of high pine trees and cracked granite boulders along the northern bluffs.
“You miserable mongrels! You mangy dogs and filthy beasts! You dared to ruin this ancestor’s grand ritual?!” Han Gu raised his skeletal staff, his sunken eyes flashing with psychotic fury as he gazed upon the tens of thousands of wild beasts peacefully eating barley mash in the valley meadows. “My one hundred thousand shock-beasts... Turned into docile cattle by porridge?! You dare make a mockery of the Blood Sea Sect’s sacred conquering host?!”
His laughter was a jagged screech that caused several young fox cubs to whimper in terror.
“Since you enjoy eating so much,” Han Gu shrieked, pointing his staff toward the safe hall gates, “I shall refine this entire valley into nourishment! Every tree, every blade of grass, every beast, and every pitiful beastman hiding behind those walls shall be boiled alive in my Nine-Ghost Cauldron! I’ll refine your souls into ten thousand Blood Marrow Pills to elevate my training to the Mid Nascent Soul realm!”
He raised his skeletal hands into the storm.
CLANG-CLANG!
The nine ghost-iron chains began to uncoil. It lowered the five-hundred-foot cooking pot until it hovered just three hundred feet above the central meadow. The blasting heat streaming from the bronze vessel was so intense that the grass directly beneath it turned brown and began to smoke within heartbeats.
On the high terrace, Su Ling’er drew a sharp breath, her hands flying to the silver fox-silk strings at her waist. “Master... That’s a Grade 4 Apex Disaster Ancient object. The historical scrolls say that three hundred years ago, the Blood Sea Sect used that very vessel to boil the entire Azure Cloud City into ash over seven days.”
Xiao Long coiled anxiously around the highest pavilion roof, his golden antlers crackling with azure lightning as he hissed toward the sky. Tie Shan tightened his grip on his hammer, his knuckles turning white under his fur.
Yet at the edge of the stone terrace, a certain blue sphere was bouncing with rhythmic, curious enthusiasm.
Lin Xiao hopped onto the outer stone railing, stretching his elastic body upward so that his two curved white eyes could get a clear, clear view of the five-hundred-foot bronze behemoth hovering in the sky.
“Wow,” Lin Xiao murmured, his voice rippling with genuine, aesthetic wonder. “Now that... That’s a seriously impressive soup kettle.”
Su Ling’er blinked, her delicate ears drooping slightly. “A... A soup kettle, Master?”
“I mean, just look at the bronze work!” Lin Xiao said, tilting his mass to admire the three massive tripod legs that could have crushed a palace hall. “The casting is remarkably thick. It has to be at least four inches of solid ancient star-bronze, with excellent heat spreading. And look at those dragon handles on the rim! You could easily hang a dozen whole wild cattle from each snout to slow-simmer.”
He paused, his crescent eyes narrowing into a slight, critical squint as he inspected the blackened crust coating the bronze rim.
“Though, honestly,” Lin Xiao added with a disapproving click of his fluid surface, “the hygiene is a total disgrace. Look at that burnt grease caked along the edges! When was the last time anyone scrubbed that pot? If you simmer broth in a vessel with that much carbonized char, the entire soup will taste bitter and metal. Any decent chef would have soaked that in vinegar and baking soda for a week before letting it anywhere near food.”
“Host’s gastronomic critique is structurally valid,” the Dao Spirit chimed smoothly in his mind. “However, tracking data indicates the vessel contains 2.4 million liters of boiling Sanguine Corpse Marrow and 100,000 vengeful soul wraiths. Elder Han Gu is currently channeling his Nascent Soul core to invert the vessel and pour the boiling marrow across the volcano bowl in ninety seconds.”
“Pouring dirty broth over my nice clean grass?” Lin Xiao’s tone turned distinctly frosty. “After we just spent the entire morning scrubbing the soot from Xiao Long’s rain? Absolutely not. That’s unacceptable table manners.”
High above, Elder Han Gu looked down from his blood cloud.
He expected to see the valley floor drowning in a sea of weeping, shrieking victims kneeling in the dirt, clawing at their faces as they begged for an instant death before the cooking pot’s maw. In every city he had conquered, kings had thrown down their crowns, grand elders had shattered their own spirit veins in despair, and mothers had smothered their infants rather than let them hear the screams of the Nine-Ghost Cauldron.
Yet when his cold, rotting gaze landed upon the high stone porch, he saw neither weeping nor kneeling.
He saw a single, plump, semi-clear blue jelly ball resting casually on the marble stone railing, bobbing up and down like a melon floating in a tub, staring up at his old family divine treasure with what looked clearly like greedy, evaluating test.
Han Gu’s left eye twitched with violent, impossible to understand rage.
“YOU PATHETIC BLOB OF SPITTLE!” Han Gu shrieked, his voice cracking with hysteria. “DO YOU NOT KNOW FEAR?! DO YOU NOT RECOGNIZE THE VESSEL THAT DROWNED SEVEN SECTS?!”
Lin Xiao gave a friendly, floating wobble. “I recognize that your pot is filthy and your voice is terribly shrill, friend! How about you come down here, have a seat, and let’s discuss your sanitation habits over a nice cup of tea?”