Dead.

  Liu Xing was dead. His body was sliced into tiny dice, each piece as small as a tooth cut in half. His brain was cut into hundreds of parts; his torso, his organs were likewise cut into dozens of pieces. His arms, his legs, everything about him was diced. Blood erupted from each and every piece. Even his eyes were not spared, and his world, once filled with bright red, suddenly went black. The coldness and the blackness felt distant, as if he were a man wrapped in a blanket, already dozing off and about to enter a deep sleep. Liu Xing could not think. How could he, when his brain was in pieces? But deep in his heart, his soul was crying. If his brain had been intact, the cry he would have let out would have been deafening, sorrowful, and haunting. He was, after all, a failure.

  Fail.

  A Failure.

  One who had squandered his second chance to live, even though he had a cheat item that could have propelled his power to the highest extent. The giant river of red threads passed him a moment later, and his cutted body was finally falling from the sky. While some parts fell faster than others, overall, they were falling at the same time, right toward where Ye Xuanming was standing.

  From high above, it looked as if the red threads were spreading like a fan. Then, they spread even further, like water spilling everywhere. Coincidentally, the main mountain on the island was in the way, and the red threads cut and pierced it into tiny pieces. A low rumbling sound emerged, and when the threads emerged from the other side, the mountain began to crumble like a pile of sand eroded at its base. And then, as if the red threads were an angry beast, they began to spread further. From the sky, it was as if the island was blanketed by numerous red veins. The birds, the foxes, and all the animals on the island tried to flee, but the red threads diced them into pieces. The city was not spared either.

  The threads raged for only a minute, but the devastation they wrought was apocalyptic. The mountain was unstable and crumbling, and not a single tree or animal on it remained intact. The ground was upturned and filled with blood from the remains of spirit beasts, animals, humans, and even Liu Xing.

  Liu Xing's remains were now floating behind Ye Xuanming. The man had undone his transformation, making him look like a normal human with pale skin, crimson eyes, and curly hair. Liu Xing's remains looked nothing like Liu Xing. Instead, they were small cubes of meat, all dyed red, with blood floating between the chunks. Ye Xuanming was walking with both hands behind his back. A long stone blade hovered behind Liu Xing’s remains, as did his invisible gun, which had not returned to his consciousness. Both weapons fell into Ye Xuanming’s hand, and he was interested enough in them that he did not hurriedly put them into his spatial ring. Liu Xing's spatial bag received no such treatment and was already secured inside his ring.

  Soon, he arrived at a small clearing where the grass—while flooded with blood—was intact. Across from Ye Xuanming was a conglomeration of people consisting of two groups. One was the demonic cultivators, and the other was the people Liu Xing had tried to protect. The demonic cultivators were in front of the group, and all of them but Hua Beifeng knelt with their foreheads touching the ground. Only Hua Beifeng knelt on one knee, but even so, he bowed his head deep, and his eyes were shadowed by fear.

  The people lying behind these demonic cultivators were in various states. Some had their eyes glazed over, as if their minds had already broken, while others looked at Ye Xuanming as if he were death itself. Some, like Qing Yuan and Fang Ruxue, focused their gaze on the cubes of meat floating behind Ye Xuanming, and their eyes widened with fear and disbelief.

  Ye Xuanming's demonstration had certainly left a deep impression on the people across from him. Those with their foreheads to the ground would make sure that what happened on this island spread far and wide. Ye Xuanming would surely regain the full influence of his sect, and not even his son or the rat could dislodge him from his position now.

  "My demonstration is not over," Ye Xuanming stopped walking and said to the kneeling disciples in front of him. The show to demonstrate his prowess was over, but he still had room to make sure that people would worship the ground where he stood.

  He willed the remains of Liu Xing to float in front of him, making sure everyone focused their eyes on them.

  "The people I have sacrificed to advance my power are countless," he began. "If their remains were piled here, they would be as high as a mountain. However, in recent years, I have immersed myself in the pursuit of knowledge. That is why you have rarely seen me, and I have let others handle the sect's affairs. However, it seems that some treacherous people decided to undermine my influence. It's expected, really. We're demonic cultivators, after all. Our advancement as individuals is the most important thing to us. I, too, think the same, and I encourage you all to do the same. However, you forgot something important. Power is everything, and those who have power dictate the world."

  As he finished speaking, Ye Xuanming raised both his hands, and the cubes of meat that were Liu Xing began to pulse with red light. The chunks of meat, as well as the blood, then began to rearrange themselves until, after several moments, they loosely resembled the shape of a human. The Patriarch cycled the qi inside his body with an ungodly amount of combinations and patterns that would surely have given Liu Xing a headache if he had seen it. As the Patriarch began to focus his intent on activating his technique, the light that encased the chunks of meat pulsed even brighter, as if they were gemstones made from flesh and blood. The amount of qi and the aura leaking out of him as he cycled this energy was so vast that it pressed down hard on the people around him, enough to make the demonic cultivators, Hua Beifeng, and all who were conscious enough to do so break out in a sweat. For the mortals, what they sensed was akin to the sky itself falling and crushing them. It was a heavy, painful pressure, even though it was just a small side effect of the technique the Patriarch was performing.

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  A moment later, Ye Xuanming activated his technique. The chunks of meat, the blood, the bones, the veins, the organs, the intestines, and all parts of Liu Xing began to grow red tendrils, like worms. They began to latch onto each other as if they were trying to eat one another. Though it certainly looked that way, the chunks of meat were beginning to merge, and the blood and tendrils began filling the gaps between them.

  Upon seeing this, the demonic cultivators widened their eyes, and one could not help but whisper, "Is this… what I think it is?"

  As demonic cultivators, they understood death better than most. After all, the number of people these disciples had killed was enough to make a small hill of corpses. They knew how to extract qi and vitality, and even how to refine humans into pills. They knew enough to realize that what Ye Xuanming was doing was something that even the greatest healers would claim was impossible.

  "Indeed," Ye Xuanming nodded. "I have gotten my hands on an inheritance from a distant era in the past, a world before Immortals existed."

  The chunks of meat that were Liu Xing began to fuse together. Veins connected and snapped into place, and bones merged. In truth, while Liu Xing's body looked as if it was being reverted to its initial state, anyone who knew him would have realized that his body's proportions were slightly different. The shape of the muscles was not quite the same. Wounds that had not fully healed were no longer there, replaced by unblemished skin that looked natural yet would have felt foreign to Liu Xing. What Ye Xuanming was doing was not reverting Liu Xing, but rather using his body parts as a base and filling in the blanks. Even the qi paths inside his body were slightly different than before, though of course Ye Xuanming fixed them. After all, he was demonstrating his prowess, and it would not do for the subject of this little show to come back damaged.

  "Regenerating body parts is the easiest thing in the process," a demonic cultivator decided to voice his opinion. "The true challenge will be his soul. Once it leaves, it won't come back, even if the body is intact."

  The Patriarch looked at the man who had just spoken, and his lips curved slightly into a condescending smile. "Indeed. That is common knowledge. I believe most of you agree with his assessment?"

  The demonic cultivators nodded. They knew how impossible such a thing was.

  "Then witness this," the Patriarch said. Liu Xing's body—now fully intact, with no missing limbs, the organs placed in their correct positions, blood flowing inside his veins, and hair having grown from his scalp—was suddenly surrounded by a golden light. The light was warm and pleasant, as if it were a gift bestowed from the heavens themselves. Several demonic cultivators gaped at this display. How could something like this be created by a demonic cultivator similar to them?

  For a moment, the golden light surrounded Liu Xing. It turned his skin a healthy color, his heart began to beat again and circulate blood throughout his body, his lungs began to contract and expand, and his stomach began to growl as if he were hungry. The Ethereal Pearl that had been inside him had been destroyed, as had his Thunderstrike Gauntlets. However, the pendant he had gotten from the mummy at the bottom of the lake was still intact, and Ye Xuanming decided to let it circle his neck, as if to demonstrate his fine control over the process.

  Soon, the golden light vanished. And like Ye Xuanhan after his own severed neck had reconnected, Liu Xing suddenly gasped. He inhaled greedily, sucking air into his lungs as if he were afraid he would never breathe again. His eyes were wide open, and emotions swirled inside him, but confusion trumped them all.

  Liu Xing, a dead man, had been revived by his opponent. His body was intact, his cultivation remained at the second stage of the Core Splitting realm, and his consciousness was likewise intact. There was no pain whatsoever in his body, and he began to touch his face and head, checking whether he was truly whole, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare.

  The demonic cultivators who witnessed this pressed their foreheads harder into the ground. Their eyes were wide, their bodies trembled, and their hearts beat so fast inside their chests they thought they would burst. Mixed emotions filled them. After all, what they had just witnessed was a miracle. Reviving another person was an unbelievably useful and powerful ability, but no one here was actually thinking about reviving others. Instead, they all asked the same question in their hearts. If Ye Xuanming could revive other people, did that mean he could revive himself? The answer was possibly yes. And would that mean he was an Immortal? Of course, he could not be compared to the true Immortals, whose power was unfathomable. It was laughable to compare a Sun Refining realm cultivator with those who had broken through from the White Sun realm into the next stage. However, one key factor of their being was their endlessness, and if they could mimic that key factor…

  "You want to learn this technique?" Ye Xuanming asked.

  At that, a resounding, unified "Yes!" reverberated through the air.

  "Good," he nodded. "Coincidentally, there are several open Elder positions in my sect. You can fill them. But there's a test." He pointed down at Liu Xing, who was still confused and checking himself over. "My stance on him has not changed. His punishment is death. Whoever kills him will become an Elder and learn my secret."

  At that, the demonic cultivators looked at Liu Xing as if they were wolves and he was a lamb.

  "Make it as painful as possible," Ye Xuanming said with a small, sadistic smile.

  Which was fitting. This was a man who revived a person just to order him killed again.

  keep the lights on.