Chapter 87: The Rouge Dragon Girl, Flayed and Drawn

For thousands of years, Fuxi Mountain had always been shrouded in immortal mists, but at this moment, it finally cloaked itself in a terrifying shadow. A ferocious and savage aura from the Dragon Clan blotted out the sky and veiled the sun, so thick that even moonlight could not pierce through.

The tens of thousands of creatures on Fuxi Mountain trembled under this horrifying aura. This overwhelmingly domineering presence had surpassed the limits of their imagination. All life within thousands of miles was madly plundered, gales howled fiercely, and the pavilions and towers of the immortal mountain creaked and groaned on the verge of collapse.

Countless immortals and demons across the Three Realms jolted awake from their slumber, racing toward the Fuxi Mountains in an instant.

The most glamorous woman of the Phoenix Clan lately donned a dazzling long skirt of golden feathers. Her brilliant wings unfurled in the wind as she rose slightly alarmed. “This aura…”

“It’s the Dragon Clan.”

Beside her stood a man in a moon-white robe, hands clasped behind his back, a drop of deep blue Merman’s Tear adorning his forehead. Flowing clouds lingered at his side.

The man’s eyes darkened slightly. “Pure-blooded Dragons haven’t appeared for tens of thousands of years. Who would have thought that a Demon Serpent could now rank among the Dragon Clan—and moreover, a Dragon that has fallen to the demonic path.”

Even the current Demon Venerable was merely a Tiger Clan Luwu. Now, the emergence of a true Dragon fully corrupted by the demonic path—who knew what troubles it would bring to the Three Realms?

“Seeing is believing. Let’s go take a look first.” The Phoenix nodded slightly, a sudden surge of battle intent rising in her heart. Her golden wings transformed into a streak of flowing light, shooting straight into the clouds.

At the peak of the immortal mountain, countless arrays shattered and intertwined chaotically. Spiritual energy clashed with demonic qi in disarray. At the center of the arrays lay a scene of devastation, yet the epicenter where terrifying demonic qi gathered was eerily quiet.

So quiet that only the drip of blood falling to the ground could be heard.

The Dragon Clan’s hand rummaged through the ruined chest cavity, while the person she had pierced through the heart seemed to have lost all strength, allowing her to manipulate it like a puppet. Only the blood dripped faster in the wind.

After a long while, that once slender hand withdrew from the Medical Immortal’s chest. At that moment, the silent Medical Immortal suddenly raised her hand with great difficulty.

As expected—

Yaoluo had anticipated it. A trace of cold mockery flashed in her eyes. Her five fingers clawed out the heart and slammed down viciously with her palm.

She thought Shi Qingyi meant to struggle in her final moments or drag her down with her. Countless strands of demonic qi gathered in her palm, showing no mercy as she shattered the person’s century of cultivation with one strike.

However, unexpectedly, the raised hand held no killing intent at all. It simply embraced her plainly.

At the same time, the Dragon Clan’s full-force strike had already reached her chest.

Warm breath brushed the Dragon Clan’s neck. She seemed to want to say something, her lips parting several times, only managing a sigh-like whisper of two words: “A Luo…”

It was too late. As soon as she uttered those words, the lethal palm struck her ruined chest. Warm blood sprayed onto the Dragon Clan’s ear, and the person clinging tightly to her in her final moments plummeted downward.

The spiritual power supporting the Medical Immortal had completely dispersed. Under the Dragon Clan’s full strike, she fell like a white bird with broken wings, plummeting uncontrollably at terrifying speed. Vast swaths of blood sprayed in the wind, forming a thick blood mist in the air.

Right until the end, her hand remained outstretched, as if desperately trying to grasp someone.

The vast sky was left with only the battered Dragon Clan.

Howling gales whipped her dark robes. The Dragon Clan looked utterly wretched—wounds torn ragged across her body, ink-black hair disheveled, her single hand hovering in midair.

Countless drops of blood slowly dripped from her hand.

—It was a still-beating heart.

The grand array, now reduced to mere wisps of power, struggled to operate. The moment the heart was extracted, glistening strands of spiritual energy wrapped around it, converting it into pure spiritual power that poured into the Demon Clan’s body.

The wind atop the mountain howled fiercely. The once cruel and ferocious Demon Clan lowered her head to her empty palm, and the manic ferocity on her face finally cracked.

“How… how could this…”

She stared at her palm in disbelief, nearly terror-stricken. The mask of hatred that had burned to kill her shattered inch by inch.

Her hand trembled at first subtly, then more violently, shaking so badly it frightened even her.

The Dragon Clan suddenly looked down. At the center of the array lay the white-clad Medical Immortal, blood slowly seeping from her back, trickling across the surface of the lake formed by condensed spiritual power.

She still wore her pristine white robes, unstained by dust, save for the massive hole in her chest, bloodied and spreading, soaking her ever-immaculate white garments.

Beside her wailed the Leopard, the gravely wounded beast dragging itself toward her on all fours, each step leaving a glaring trail of blood.

“Shi Qingyi!”

The Dragon Clan could no longer hold on. She plummeted sharply, one hand lightning-fast clamping the woman’s throat, the other shoving out a palm. The Leopard couldn’t even resist before it smashed into the stone wall and spat blood.

Her hand gripped the vital pulse point where breath and blood flowed—heart excepted—even immortals were no exception. Squeezing her neck just a fraction harder would end her life.

The Medical Immortal’s neck was slender and delicate, once pulsing with vigorous life, but now it was deathly still, devoid of any vitality.

“How could this… how could it be…”

After gripping her throat, the Dragon Clan’s hand suddenly released. Madness filled her eyes. She first stared incredulously at her own hand, then tremblingly extended a fingertip to probe the hole in her chest and her neck, inch by inch, meticulously searching.

But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing—no heartbeat, no breath, nothing!

“How could there be… nothing!” The massive Dragon Clan phantom over Fuxi Mountain collapsed in that instant. Nearly deranged, she pressed her ear to the still-bleeding cavity, desperate to hear something.

“Shi Qingyi, where is your heart?!!”

How could there be none? Impossible!

Three years ago, she had dug out her own heart. She should have had two hearts. Why? Why didn’t she? Why!

The Dragon Clan’s roar echoed across all of Fuxi Mountain. A single dragon cry ruptured eardrums and shook primordial spirits of countless demons within the immortal mountain, destabilizing their bodies. Immortals and demons thousands of miles away paled.

By the time the Phoenix arrived on flapping wings, Fuxi Mountain was reduced to rubble. A black shadow burst from the immortal mountain’s barrier at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye—the barrier once reinforced by the Medical Immortal for countless demons shattered into countless motes of light.

“You—”

An immortal gritted his teeth to intercept, but before he could finish, his body exploded into a cloud of blood mist. A Ninth Heaven Immortal turned to mist in an instant, without anyone seeing how she struck.

“You beast, how dare you!” The moon-white-robed man frowned involuntarily. As his rebuke fell, a streak of pitch-black demonic qi lunged from behind. Just as it neared his heart, a flash of golden feathers swept in from the side, barely blocking the strike for him.

The demonic qi halted abruptly for a moment. The Phoenix whipped her head around, pupils contracting.

It was a woman in tattered dark robes, eyes blazing with savage ferocity and mad ruthlessness that instilled fear. She cradled a blood-soaked woman in her arms.

In that one glance, that split-second hesitation, the demonic qi vanished utterly from the world. Only a thick, terrifying stench of blood and suffocating dread lingered over everyone.

This was the one and only Dragon in heaven and earth—the sole one since antiquity to fall to the demonic path.

The Phoenix’s ornate golden gown billowed in the long wind. Fuxi Mountain still lingered in dissipating smoke.

Sou Yue, the divine beast eternally guarding the Yaoxiang Grass with cultivation nearing god-beast level, let out a shrill cry from the mountaintop, resounding across the wilds.

The dissipating demonic qi pointed straight toward the Demon Clan. The Phoenix’s elegant brows furrowed as she exhaled turbid air. “It seems the Demon Clan is in for major upheaval next.”

—Perhaps not just the Demon Clan, but the entire Three Realms.

She was right. In the following month, the Demon Clan underwent earth-shattering changes. Yaoluo, the Demon Dragon whose power rivaled the Demon Venerable’s and had vanished for three years, returned. With skyrocketing cultivation, she sought to borrow Yanmo Palace for her cultivation, but the Demon Venerable refused.

Later circulated a fragmented image: A woman in ink-black robes placed a white-clad woman within a barrier. Upon hearing the Demon Venerable’s response, she seemed to pause, then cracked a smile after a long moment.

A demonic spear coalesced slowly in her hand. She suddenly lifted her gaze, eyes brimming with horrifying bloodlust. “Then, no need—”

No need for your permission. I’ll take it myself, with my own hands.

In that short month, the Demon Clan was turned upside down. Blood flowed over every inch of the demon palace grounds. Demon Dragon Yaoluo slaughtered all who obstructed her, ascending to the Demon Venerable throne atop mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

Before her absolute crushing strength, the entire Demon Clan fell deathly silent.

Wound-ridden, she trod countless bones to the end of Yanmo Palace and pushed open the tightly shut doors.

Legend held that the Demon Clan’s Yanmo Palace and the Immortal Realm’s Ninefold Hall gathered the world’s spiritual essence, capable of reviving the dead and regrowing flesh on bone.

It was the place richest in spiritual qi under heaven.

—

The entire Demon Clan was uncannily quiet—an object lesson bought with countless blood.

The new Demon Venerable was capricious, slaying at whim. Any sound reaching her ears could spell death.

In the heart of the layered palaces, the dark-robed, ink-haired woman undid the clothes of the one in the Ice Coffin.

Piece by piece, she stripped away the remaining white garments, exposing the massive hollow cavity at her chest.

Yaoluo tilted her head slightly, pressing her ear to the chest, listening intently. The grand hall was utterly silent, quiet enough to instill fear.

No sound. Not the slightest sound.

The Demon Venerable seemed to think of something, her lips twitching suddenly before curling into a cold sneer.

“So, you really have no heart…”

At her heart, forever missing a fresh, beating organ.

Her icy fingers trembled ceaselessly as they caressed the cavity, her tone laced with faint madness and hazy tenderness. “But you always lied to me. Are you lying to me this time too?”

“Look at you, lying there, unable to do anything. Guess what I’ll do to you?”

Her slender, cold fingers trailed downward inch by inch. The final layer of clothing on the lifeless body shattered into fragments, revealing that glistening, radiant form.

Her skin was naturally fair, like snow. The Demon Venerable pressed her blood-red lips to the pale corner of her mouth, calling her name in a chilling yet affectionate murmur.

“Qing Yi, won’t you really open your eyes and look?”