Chapter 154: Omen of Disaster

"Commander? Commander?"

Li Dazhuang called out right in front of him, but Xu Wenshan remained in a daze, as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"Hmm?" Xu Wenshan finally snapped back to reality. Unawares, he was already back at the county magistrate's office; he didn't even remember when he had walked back.

"Commander, the celebration banquet is about to start," Li Dazhuang said.

Xu Wenshan nodded. Suddenly feeling an itch on his face, he reached up to scratch it and noticed something amiss, which reminded him that he was still wearing a mask.

After a moment of thought, Xu Wenshan took off the mask and began to undress.

"Um, Commander?" Li Dazhuang asked, looking puzzled.

"Quickly, take off your clothes," Xu Wenshan commanded.

"?"

"My condition isn't very good right now. I need to go back and rest for a while."

"What about the celebration banquet?" Li Dazhuang asked.

"You go in my place," Xu Wenshan said. "Put on the mask. Once you're there, don't speak. Just nod no matter what anyone asks."

Li Dazhuang was extremely nervous. "How can I do that?"

Xu Wenshan patted his shoulder and said, "You can do it. If you can help me with this, you'll take the chief credit for this operation."

After weighing his options carefully, Li Dazhuang said, "I can try."

"Give it your all, don't just try," Xu Wenshan said. "Do not speak. Do not tell anyone about this."

Li Dazhuang nodded heavily.

Watching Li Dazhuang leave, Xu Wenshan bolted the door behind him the moment he was alone in his room.

Once inside, Xu Wenshan let out a long breath. He had barely managed to avoid breaking through in plain sight. Last time, when he broke through from the Bone Forging Stage to the Yin Refining Stage, a mass of chaotic yin qi had leaked from his seven orifices. If he hadn't restrained himself this time and broken through right at the enfeoffment ceremony, he likely would have been executed on the spot by those two Daoist priests.

Xu Wenshan initiated his inner sight. Inside his body, he saw a ball of pitch-black demonic energy swirling, nearly condensing into a single droplet of water. Due to the influence of the spider demon's "dormancy," this droplet of demonic energy lurked behind his viscera, masked by the robust yang energy of his internal organs, making it very difficult to detect.

Previously, Xu Wenshan had harbored a vague worry that if he grew this ball of demonic energy larger through cultivation, the spider demon's dormancy effect might fail. Fortunately, cultivation did not proceed in the direction his intuition expected; instead of growing, the ball of demonic energy shrank. Originally a vaporous mist, it had now transformed into the shape of a single water droplet.

As it happened, Xu Wenshan possessed a purely yin constitution, meaning his body was already heavy with yin qi. Concealing such a seed of demonic energy inside him was merely like a tiny flaw in a bright pearl or a sunspot; it was not easily noticed.

This was the very reason why Xu Wenshan had never cared about cultivation: Why bother cultivating? Even if you succeed, you'll just get exposed and then used by cultivators to farm merits!

Yet, the situation was no longer a matter of whether he wanted to cultivate or not; the arrow was already on the bowstring and had to be released—he was breaking through.

Xu Wenshan felt as though a large zither was placed across his chest, being strummed by ten fingers simultaneously, and his whole body was on the verge of trembling along with it. He hurriedly sat cross-legged on the bed, quietly awaiting the breakthrough while praying that no cultivators would pass by his window at this moment.

Finally, it began.

The strings of the zither across his chest vibrated wildly, ringing out continuously as if being torn apart. He felt as though the bedboards beneath him were shaking as well. Soon, the zither transformed into a drum, and the drum into a cannon; he suspected that to anyone else, he must look as if he were suffering from a violent seizure.

Yet, he felt no pain; on the contrary, it felt deeply gratifying. It was a subtle sensation. Although every vibration caused his bones and muscles to crackle audibly, with each tremor, he felt his cultivation realm loosen by another layer. Previously, he had felt as though he were living inside a shell, with only a faint perception of yin qi, but now that shell was being slowly peeled away. He experienced a deeper contact with the world, much like moving from the surface of the skin into the flesh itself.

At last, with a soft "pop," he broke through, officially advancing to the intermediate Yin Refining stage.

This time, no massive plume of black smoke spewed from his seven orifices. Instead, a flash of black light flickered briefly above his head, piercing straight through the tiled roof before vanishing from sight.

Xu Wenshan heaved a sigh of relief.

He took the time to tidy up the room, erasing any traces of his recent meditation on the bed, and changed into a fresh set of clothes.

For now, it seemed he had safely survived this breakthrough.

However, the moment he stepped outside, he realized things were not so simple: high in the sky, where the sun had previously shone brightly and clear, a spiral-shaped black cloud was now hovering, rotating at a visible speed.

Everyone in the city had emerged from their homes to gaze at the strange phenomenon in the sky. Almost everyone was whispering that this was an ominous omen.

Xu Wenshan's face turned ashen as he stared at the monstrosity in the sky of his own making, feeling that this thing was truly an ominous omen in the truest sense of the word.

...

"There must be trickery in this."

Inside the room, Dan Tengzi muttered to himself.

No one paid him any attention.

There were only two people in the room: Ran Tinglan and himself. This was Ran Tinglan's room, and naturally, she was seizing every available moment to cultivate. Dan Tengzi, however, had habitually wandered into her room to pace back and forth, making so much noise that Ran Tinglan could not focus on her cultivation.

If she hadn't known she couldn't defeat him, Ran Tinglan would have truly wanted to slash him with her sword.

"If you feel there's trickery, why don't you just grab that Hero Zhu and interrogate him?" Ran Tinglan asked impatiently, hoping to dismiss Dan Tengzi with a few words.

"What you're suggesting is entirely unfeasible," Dan Tengzi said. "Both you and I have observed this man. Although his martial prowess far exceeds that of an ordinary mortal, there isn't a shred of unusual aura about him; he is purely and simply a mortal. Furthermore, the Immortal Alliance has strict, absolute orders protecting mortals. Unless he is willing, there is no way for me to test whether he harbors any secret ghosts."

Ran Tinglan asked, "Can't you just use the Heart-Capture Technique?"

Dan Tengzi sneered. "The Heart-Capture Technique is arguably the stupidest spell ever created in history. It yields virtually no benefits while inflicting devastating blows upon the caster. There is no way I would ever use such a foolish spell."

Ran Tinglan was genuinely startled. "Are you saying you've never used the Heart-Capture Technique?"

"Never used it."

"Then you truly are formidable. Just because you think it's foolish, you've discarded such a convenient and useful spell."

"Only a fool would consider this spell useful. Unless I wish to commit suicide, I will never use this spell in my lifetime," Dan Tengzi declared.

Ran Tinglan asked in anguish, "What on earth do you find suspicious about him? You refuse to interrogate the man to find out the truth, yet you love to stand here casting doubt. What if that man simply possesses exceptional talent? What if he possesses a unique, peerless martial art? When all is said and farlo, what on earth do you suspect he is?"

Dan Tengzi paused, then said, "I still suspect he is a demonic cultivator."

Ran Tinglan sneered. "A demonic cultivator, always a demonic cultivator. Since no one has ever seen a demonic cultivator, and there are no records of them, whenever something happens without an explanation, you just pin it on demonic cultivators."

Just as Ran Tinglan's voice trailed off, the shouts of several servants echoed from outside the door: "Bad news! A demonic phenomenon has appeared!"

Ran Tinglan remained indifferent, but Dan Tengzi bolted out the door instantly. Seeing him standing motionless outside for a long while, Ran Tinglan got out of bed and walked out of the room out of sheer curiosity, only to find Dan Tengzi staring fixedly at the sky.

And up in the sky hung an ominous, swirling black cloud.

When she snapped back to her senses, Ran Tinglan found Dan Tengzi gazing at her with burning eyes. "This is definitive proof of a demonic cultivator!"