Chương 50: Two Steps From Death (1/3)

Thinking of weapons, he briefly looked up at the dark, ash-choked sky. Heavy clouds churned overhead, their bellies pregnant with freezing rain and lit from within by distant flashes of storm-light. Ash from the burned-out array still drifted in lazy spirals, settling like gray snow on his blood-crusted shoulders.

If only I had access to modern firearms, he mused, and chuckled—a low, humorless sound that died quickly in the oppressive silence of the village. A high-caliber anti-materiel rifle would make dealing with these flying-sword Daoists significantly easier.

He imagined it. The satisfying weight of a Barrett M82 in his hands. The mechanical precision of the bolt. The thunder-crack report echoing across these mist-choked valleys. It would be beautiful… blasting those arrogant cultivators and those demonic beasts. One shot, one kill. No Qi barriers, no mystical sword arts—just physics, trajectory, and a thumb-sized tungsten round traveling at twenty-eight hundred feet per second.

But he quickly shook off the thought, rainwater dripping from the brim of his bamboo hat in steady rivulets.

A bullet is just a piece of slow-moving lead. Without Qi to empower it, conventional firearms would be inferior in this world. Pure, unadulterated mass and speed are the only universal constants.

The cold reality settled over him like the freezing rain. In a realm where Foundation Establishment cultivators could manifest protective barriers capable of deflecting siege weaponry, and Core Formation elders could shatter mountainsides with a palm strike, gunpowder was a child's toy. The laws here didn't bend to ballistics—they bent to will, spirit, and accumulated power.

Back to the task.

Next, he ripped a long, dark section from the dead physician's robe, the sodden fabric tearing with a wet, fibrous sound. The cloth was still warm in places, body heat not yet fully leached away by the storm. He wrapped the bleeding, grotesque limb tightly, methodically folding the heavy fabric over and under in overlapping layers until it resembled a large, macabre rucksack. Dark fluids immediately began seeping through the outer layer, spreading in irregular patches like inkblots on parchment.

He slung it diagonally across his broad back, the coarse cloth biting into his shoulder as he adjusted the weight. The limb was dense—easily thirty jin of solid demonic muscle, bone, and scale—and it settled against his spine with a dull, meaty pressure that would have buckled a mortal's knees.

His objective here was complete. It was time to return.

But then he froze, one boot already angled toward the swamp road.

Right.

The bodies.

His jaw tightened fractionally, the only outward sign of irritation at his own oversight.

…

Returning to the swamp road, Shi Yan looked down at the six butchered disciples and the dead Elder. Rain continued to hammer the scene, turning the pooled blood into thin, spreading rivulets that snaked between exposed tree roots and vanished into the acidic mud. The corpses lay where they'd fallen—limbs akimbo, faces locked in expressions of shock and pain, their pristine white robes now soaked translucent and clinging to lifeless flesh.

Need to clean this up first.

He couldn't just leave a pile of elite Cloud-Mirror cultivators lying on a main arterial route with clinical, single-thrust sword wounds through their hearts and throats. The kills were too clean. Too professional. Each strike had been delivered with surgical precision—no hesitation cuts, no defensive wounds, no signs of prolonged struggle. Any sect investigator worth their salt would recognize the work of a trained killer within seconds.

The sect Elders weren't fools.

High-tier cultivators possessed Life Slips or Soul Jades residing in their sect's ancestral halls—thin slivers of spiritually-bonded jade that resonated with the cultivator's life force. The moment Shi Yan killed these people, their jade slips shattered miles away, fracturing along invisible fault lines and crumbling into dust before the eyes of whatever unfortunate disciple was on watch duty.

The Cloud-Mirror Sect already knew they were dead, and they would absolutely dispatch tracking units to this exact coordinate by dawn. Elite disciples didn't simply vanish without immediate, overwhelming response.

If they find evidence of a close-quarters human assassin, they will lock down the entire city and put a bounty on the head of every unaffiliated rogue operative in the region.

That disrupts my hunting grounds.

His pale eyes swept the kill zone once more, cataloging angles, blood spatter patterns, body positions. Everything here screamed ambush by skilled combatant. Unacceptable.

For the next thirty minutes, he hauled the Cloud-Mirror Sect cultivators off the stone path, dragging them deep into the murky, acidic bog. He gripped each corpse by the collar or belt, their dead weight leaving deep furrows in the mud as he pulled them one by one through tangled undergrowth and knee-deep stagnant water. Mosquitoes swarmed in frenzied clouds around the fresh blood. The smell of rot and sulfur intensified the deeper he moved into the swamp, mixing with the coppery-sweet stench of opened bodies.

He scattered their bodies near the massive, severed remains of the Tier-1 Peak Demonic Panther he had killed earlier in the fight. The beast's corpse was a monument to violence—ten feet of corded muscle and midnight-black fur, its belly split open from sternum to pelvis, entrails steaming faintly in the cold rain. Flies had already begun to gather despite the weather, their droning hum a low, persistent note beneath the patter of rain on water.

He did not draw his sword or search for a utility blade to alter the bodies.

Who knows? A competent investigator using Qi-enhanced vision would easily spot the microscopic, smooth abrasions left by forged steel. If I use a knife to mimic a claw, the tool marks will expose the deception instantly.

Cultivators at Golden Core and above could channel spiritual sight through their meridians, enhancing their perception to levels that bordered on the supernatural. They could read the story written in torn flesh—angle of entry, force applied, whether the weapon was single or double-edged. A knife dragged through meat to fake claw marks would leave compression striations entirely inconsistent with keratin tearing through tissue.

Instead, Shi Yan walked over to the panther carcass, his boots squelching through blood-soaked earth. Grabbing the beast's stiff, muscular foreleg—the limb was as thick as a grown man's torso—he used his 55-Might to physically manipulate the massive, razor-sharp claws. Rigor mortis had already begun to set in, and he had to wrench the joints with deliberate force, cartilage popping wetly as he forced the limb into position.

He dragged the heavy keratin claws directly through his precise, fatal sword thrusts on the disciples' bodies, feeling the resistance as hooked talons caught on bone and tore through muscle fiber. Blood welled fresh from the disrupted wounds, mixing with rainwater and running in pink streams down pale skin.

He violently wrenched the beast's paw sideways, using the native biology to tear the flesh open and expand his surgically clean cuts into ragged, jagged ravines of torn muscle. Skin split with wet, tearing sounds. Ribs cracked under the lateral pressure. What had been a single, neat puncture became a gaping crater of shredded tissue, edges rough and uneven—exactly the kind of catastrophic damage a frenzied predator would inflict.

He paused, looking at the beast's ornate steel collar. The metal was etched with flowing script—binding runes that glowed faintly even in death, pulsing with residual spiritual energy. Intricate formations spiraled around the circumference, marking this creature as a bonded war-mount, not a wild beast. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Right… This was the Elder's bonded mount. The sect will know that. Why would a loyal beast slaughter its own masters?

The bond between cultivator and spirit beast was sacred in this world—forged through blood oaths and soul-tethering ceremonies that took years to establish. A mount turning on its master was virtually unheard of. The spiritual contract itself contained fail-safes that would render the beast catatonic before allowing it to harm its bonded partner.

Shi Yan glanced back toward the village, remembering the thick, corrosive green fog of the blood ritual. The miasma had rolled across the swamp in choking waves, thick enough to taste—bitter and metallic, like licking a corroded bronze bell.

Hmm? Perhaps… Demonic Qi deviation.

The sect knows this marsh is a cursed zone.

And it was. Generations of desperate blood rituals, hastily-buried corpses, and accumulated resentment had turned this entire region into a spiritual dead zone. Even mortal villagers knew better than to venture deep into the fog after sunset. Qi cultivators who lingered too long reported hallucinations, qi deviation symptoms, and in extreme cases, full demonic corruption of their meridians.

I will stage it so it appears the immense Yin-Qi from the hostile array corrupted the beast's core.

It went feral, turned on the junior disciples in the fog, and the Elder suffered fatal wounds while putting down his own frenzied mount. Mutual destruction.

Hmm, he nodded faintly, rain streaming down the hard angles of his face as he snapped a junior disciple's femur under his heavy boot to simulate sheer crush-force trauma. The bone gave way with a muffled crunch, splintering into compound fractures that pressed white shards through torn flesh.

Beast claws leave highly specific, erratic striations and deposit organic trace residue deep inside the tissue. The evidence will fool anyone examining the corpse.

Keratin fragments, beast saliva, fur fibers—all would be present in the wounds now, driven deep by the genuine biology of the creature. A sect investigator would find exactly what they expected: material proof of a demonic beast attack, corroborated by environmental factors and witness testimony about the toxic array.

By the time the sect's tracking teams locate this site tomorrow morning, the swamp's natural acid rot and the local scavenger insects will have ruined whatever spiritual karmic traces are left.

Already, he could see pale grubs wriggling in the exposed viscera, drawn by the scent of death. Carrion beetles clicked and scuttled through the undergrowth. By dawn, the bodies would be unrecognizable—bloated, discolored, half-consumed by the marsh's voracious ecosystem.

The official sect report will rule it a tragedy caused by a demonic environmental hazard.

He could already picture the report being filed in some dusty administrative hall: "Seven disciples lost to unforeseen Yin-Qi corruption during authorized patrol. Recommendation: increase minimum cultivation requirement for marsh assignments to Foundation Establishment, Middle Stage."

Satisfied with the flawlessly sanitized kill zone, Shi Yan moved up the road, his boots leaving deep prints in the mud that the rain immediately began to erase. He located a sturdy sect carriage horse tied to a cypress tree a half-mile away—likely left behind by the disciples before they entered the deep swamp. The animal was a fine specimen: tall, well-muscled, with a glossy chestnut coat that spoke of careful grooming and expensive feed.

Its tack was high-quality leather worked with silver fittings, the kind of equipment that cost more than a mortal family earned in five years.

But as he approached the beast, the horse whinnied in panic, pulling tightly against its tether with enough force to strip bark from the cypress trunk. Its eyes rolled white, nostrils flaring as it smelled the overwhelming stench of predator blood, sweat, and death radiating off Shi Yan's body. Foam gathered at the corners of its mouth. Its hooves churned the mud, muscles bunching as it tried desperately to bolt.

"Shh," he tried to calm it down, raising one hand slowly, but then realized something as he looked down at his ruined clothes.

Right. There is a checkpoint.

If I ride up to the checkpoint soaked in fresh blood, carrying a demonic arm… that's just a stupid provocation.

No amount of false spiritual signature would explain why a supposedly injured cultivator was drenched head-to-toe in enough blood to fill a bathtub. The gate guards might be poorly-trained, but they weren't blind.

So he tied the horse securely to a thicker branch, looping the reins twice and testing the knot with a sharp tug. The animal continued to shy away from him, breath coming in sharp, frightened snorts. He stripped off his heavily bloodstained dark tunic entirely—the fabric was stiff with dried blood in some places, still wet and clinging in others—and buried the ruined garment deep in the acidic mud, using a broken branch to push it down until the black cloth disappeared entirely beneath the surface.

The marsh would dissolve it within a week, breaking down the fibers into unrecognizable sludge.

He walked down to the edge of the bog, his bare torso exposed to the freezing rain. His pale skin was crisscrossed with old scars—bullet wounds, knife cuts, shrapnel gouges from his previous life—faint white lines that no amount of System reconstruction could fully erase. Ignoring the freezing temperatures, he waded waist-deep into the dark, sulfur-laced water. The cold hit him like a physical blow, stealing his breath for a fraction of a second before his enhanced physiology adjusted.

The water was thick, viscous, with an oily quality that clung to skin.

The swamp water here was naturally acidic—highly dangerous for mortals to drink, capable of causing chemical burns and organ failure within hours—but absolutely perfect for breaking down organic traces, blood proteins, and residual Qi. The sulfur content was high enough that he could taste it in the back of his throat, acrid and bitter.

He found a deposit of coarse, abrasive grave ash and sulfur-rich mud along the bank—likely residue from funeral pyres conducted by desperate villagers decades ago. Using it like soap, he aggressively scrubbed his pale skin, scouring away the dried blood and sweat. The mixture was rough, almost sandpaper-like, and left his skin raw and reddened. He worked methodically: arms first, then chest and back, then face and neck.

His fingernails scraped away crusted blood from beneath his jawline, dislodged flakes from behind his ears.

The freezing water turned pink, then dark, around him, washing the sins of the night away in spreading clouds of diluted crimson that the current carried downstream.

Once he was thoroughly scrubbed—skin stinging, fingers numb—Shi Yan waded out, shivering slightly in the freezing rain. Water streamed off his body in sheets. He was currently stripped down to nothing but his soaked trousers and heavy boots, both still caked with mud but at least no longer visibly blood-soaked.

Then, he walked over to the sect's carriage horse tied to the cypress tree. The animal flinched as he approached, but with the blood-smell reduced, it merely stamped nervously rather than trying to tear itself free. The elite disciples naturally wouldn't have waded into a filthy bog wearing their heavy riding gear—they'd have stripped down to their inner robes, storing their outer garments in the saddlebags for retrieval after the mission.

Shi Yan methodically rifled through the deep leather saddlebags slung over the horse's back, his cold fingers working the brass buckles open with practiced efficiency. The bags were packed with standard travel supplies: wrapped rations of dried spirit beast jerky, a waterskin filled with purified mountain spring water, flint and steel, a small jade compass that still hummed faintly with residual Qi.

He bypassed the mundane horse feed—sacks of expensive oats mixed with spirit herbs—and immediately found what he needed: a heavy, dark, waxed-canvas riding cloak, likely used by the disciples to conceal their pristine white sect robes during their covert operation. The fabric was thick and waterproof, treated with some kind of oil that gave it a faintly metallic smell.

Perfect, Shi Yan thought, shaking out the heavy waterproof fabric. Water droplets scattered like thrown dice.

He strapped the heavy, tarp-wrapped demonic arm tightly to his back, adjusting the makeshift straps until the weight distributed evenly across his shoulders. The bulk was impossible to fully conceal, but wrapped as it was, it could pass for a large pack of salvaged goods—the kind of thing a desperate rogue cultivator might haul back from a dangerous excursion. He draped the oversized waxed-canvas cloak entirely over his torso, pulling it closed and fastening the brass clasps at his throat.

It dropped low enough to perfectly conceal his dense, muscular physique, the hilt of the new silver sword at his hip, and the terrifying, bulky payload strapped to his spine. The hood was deep enough to shadow his face, and the hem fell nearly to his knees.

He checked the seven stolen elite spatial pouches—each one a small silk bag embroidered with glowing formations, worth a small fortune on their own—placing them deep in an inner watertight pocket sewn into the cloak's lining. His fingers brushed against the cool jade surface of one pouch, feeling the faint hum of folded space contained within. Hundreds of spirit stones. Rare pills. Weapon talismans. Enough wealth to buy a mansion in the inner city.

Finally, he closed his eyes and mentally accessed his System. The familiar interface flickered to life behind his eyelids—cold blue text against an infinite black void.

The checkpoint guards watched me leave the city yesterday disguised with an Early Tier-1 Cinder-Blood aura. Shi Yan's eyes flashed with a cold, indifferent glint as he reviewed the tactical considerations.

If I return completely unchanged after a night in a high-danger zone, it might draw subtle scrutiny. Cultivators entering the marsh generally only survive if they find an opportunity to advance.

Statistics didn't lie. Of the rogue cultivators who ventured into cursed zones, seventy percent died within the first six hours. Of the survivors, nearly all reported some form of breakthrough—a minor realm advancement, a sudden insight, a fortuitous treasure discovery. Returning empty-handed and stagnant would mark him as either extraordinarily lucky or extraordinarily suspicious.

Let's adjust the baseline…

Previously, at level 1, this technique could not change how high or low his cultivation appeared. It could only project Early Tier 1, which was also the main reason those idiots had dared pick a fight with him at the pavilion—they'd assumed he was a weak, barely-established Cinder-Blood cultivator ripe for extortion.

But now… Dial the [Phantom-Ash Veil] to Tier-1, Late Stage.

Instantly, his internal physiology shifted. Because the System had aggressively reverse-engineered the immortal Artifact to run on his Dao-less body, it didn't use Qi to cast the illusion—there was no spiritual energy to manipulate. Instead, it hijacked his cardiovascular system directly, rewriting autonomic responses at a cellular level.

Shi Yan felt his heart rate deliberately slow from sixty beats per minute down to forty-five—the kind of deep, meditative rhythm associated with cultivators in deep consolidation after a breakthrough. The capillaries near the surface of his skin constricted, drastically lowering his overwhelming kinetic heat signature that any decent spiritual sense would detect as abnormally powerful.

The absolute, heavy void of his true 55 Physique—the crushing pressure of pure physical might that made the air feel thicker in his presence—was instantly masked, replaced by a highly specific, controlled thermal output. His body temperature dropped by two degrees. The micro-tremors in his muscles that betrayed coiled strength smoothed out into the faint weakness of recent exhaustion.

He opened his eyes. The physical "tells" of the Marrow-Rot realm—the stage where a cultivator's bone marrow is actively being burned away and replaced by tainted energy—began to manifest outwardly, painted across his features by the System's flawless mimicry.

His already pale skin took on a slightly ashen, sickly hue, the color of old parchment left too long in damp conditions. The shadows beneath his emotionless eyes deepened, bruise-dark and pronounced, making his gaze look sunken and hollow—simulating the grueling physical toll of a recent, painful breakthrough. His lips took on a faintly blue tinge, as if circulation was compromised.

Even his breathing became shallower, more labored, the kind of respiratory pattern seen in cultivators whose bodies were still adjusting to elevated energy levels.

Perfect.

He looked exactly like a rogue cultivator who'd stumbled into a fortuitous encounter, pushed through a bottleneck under life-threatening pressure, and was now barely holding himself together on the ride home. Wounded, weakened, but ultimately successful—the kind of story gate guards heard a dozen times a week.

Shi Yan untied the horse, the animal finally calm enough to tolerate his proximity now that the blood-reek was mostly gone. He didn't bother using a saddle—his legs were long enough and his balance good enough that the extra equipment would only slow him down. He simply vaulted himself bareback onto the beast with a single fluid motion, his right hand tangling in the coarse mane while his left clutched the reins securely.

The horse shifted beneath him, adjusting to his weight, then settled with a resigned snort. It was well-trained enough not to fight a competent rider.

Time to collect my pay.

With a light kick to the animal's flanks—just enough pressure to communicate intent—he directed the horse out of the swamp, riding steadily back toward the towering, demonic silhouettes of Skycloud City.