As the twilight stained the cliffs of Burial Dragon Abyss blood-red, Lu Qingyang was squatting in a pile of carrion crocodile remains, searching for demon cores, his pant legs covered in foul-smelling mucus.
In the distance, Ye Wuchen, a Disciple of Taiyi Pavilion, cut through the misty miasma with his Sword Qi.
He quickly stuffed a half-broken Formation Plate into his crotch and shouted, "Fellow Daoist Ye's swordplay is exquisite, but unfortunately, the seven-inch scales of this Profound Yin Python were softened by corrosive water long ago—"
Before he finished speaking, the three-zhang long python corpse collapsed with a crash, making the scattered bones on the ground rattle.
When Ye Wuchen retrieved his sword, three feet of green light splashed, and he coldly watched the young man play with the python's fangs: "Fellow Daoist Lu is quite sharp-eyed, even the carrion crocodiles of Nether Abyss must be squeezed for every drop of oil."
The jade pendant at his waist reflected the bulging outline of Lu Qingyang's sleeve pocket, which contained at least seven unpurified demon cores.
"I'm just poor," Lu Qingyang grinned, revealing blood-stained white teeth, and flicked the python fang with his fingertip, producing a metallic clang.
Three months ago, he was hunted down for reselling low-grade Yin Netherwater in the black market and stumbled into Taiyi Pavilion's trial team.
The outer sect steward token hanging from his waist still had the poison from the ghost-faced spider he killed the day before, glowing faintly green in the moonlight.
When Su Li emerged from the rock crevice with her medicine basket, she saw Lu Qingyang using a fire starter to char python tendons.
The anti-poison hairpin in her dark hair flickered, illuminating the fine sweat on the young man's nose like scattered diamonds: "Steward Lu is quite generous; High Grade Profound Yin Python tendons are worth twenty Spirit Stones on the market, burning them will halve their value."
"Fairy Su, what are you saying?" Lu Qingyang flipped his wrist, and the charred python tendon suddenly burst into blue flames, transforming into an immortal binding rope that entangled a pouncing carrion crocodile cub.
"The beasts of Nether Abyss are the most vengeful, leaving some bait is convenient for..." His voice suddenly stopped.
The ground suddenly cracked into a spiderweb of fissures, and nine bronze coffins broke through the earth, with crimson mist seeping from the coffin lid seams.
Before Ye Wuchen's sword formation could fully form, Lu Qingyang had already ghost-like darted behind the coffins.
Three copper coins he flung from his sleeve precisely embedded into the beast heads at the coffin tops, and the bronze rust, upon contact with blood, astonishingly became living things that moved.
When the first coffin exploded, everyone only saw him rolling into the dark river, clutching a half-fragment of a soul-suppressing stele, and still biting a jade cong he had snatched from inside the coffin.
"Qiankun reverses, Nether Abyss opens the way!" Lu Qingyang spat out the jade cong and shouted, the soul-suppressing stele fragment colliding with the qingmu spirit pearl, emitting a faint glow.
The river water instantly solidified into ice steps leading directly underground, and thirty-six paper figures holding soul 引魂 lamps stepped out of the Void Realm, the leader's face clearly that of the Loose Cultivator he had scammed three months ago.
Su Li crushed a detoxification pill and scattered it towards the red mist, but saw Lu Qingyang stepping on the paper figures' shoulders and scrambling downwards.
He ignored the blood blisters burned into the back of his neck by the poisonous mist, as the qingmu spirit pearl spun wildly in his palm: "Fellow Daoist Ye, don't panic, the life gate of this Nine Coffins Soul Locking Formation is at the Kan water position—ouch!"
Before he finished speaking, he was kicked into an ice cave by a paper figure, still tightly clutching half of a bronze coffin lid.
The wall paintings in the underground palace gradually lit up in the phosphorescent light, depicting the ancient secrets of Taiyi Pavilion suppressing the Nether Abyss Devil Head.
Lu Qingyang touched the missing formation eye position on the wall painting and suddenly grinned at the pursuing Ye Wuchen: "Your sect's Ancestral Master is truly elegant; to suppress a Devil Head, they even used Dual Cultivation secret method diagrams as formation patterns..."
"Shut up!" Ye Wuchen's Sword Qi swept down three falling stones, revealing a crystal coffin in the gap of the wall painting.
The female corpse in the coffin was dressed in the robes of Taiyi Pavilion's first-generation Elder, but the demon-subduing pestle stuck in her heart was covered in cracks.
Lu Qingyang's pupils constricted—the patterns on the demon-subduing pestle perfectly matched the incomplete part of the qingmu spirit pearl.
Before Su Li's silver needle could touch the crystal coffin, the entire underground palace suddenly shook violently.
As the female corpse's eyelashes trembled, Lu Qingyang had already pried open a hidden compartment at the bottom of the coffin, grabbing a handful of Dragon blood sand and stuffing it into his qiankun bag: "Fellow Daoist Ye, with your profound family knowledge, you must have recognized this as an Yin and Yang reversal sacrifice formation, right?"
"You knew all along!" Ye Wuchen's Sword Qi struck at Lu Qingyang's feet but was blocked by his bronze coffin lid.
Black water seeped from the cracks in the floor tiles, and countless skeletal arms climbed up.
Lu Qingyang retreated while pulling out the ghost-faced spider silk he had secretly kept from the day before, forming a spiderweb in mid-air to temporarily block the pursuers: "Mr. Lu merely wanted to pick up some scraps, who knew your sect's Ancestral Master's grandmother wanted to resurrect through a corpse..."
Before he finished speaking, the female corpse in the crystal coffin suddenly opened her eyes.
The qingmu spirit pearl in Lu Qingyang's arms flew uncontrollably towards the demon-subduing pestle, and the moment they underwent Fusion, a myriad of green light burst forth.
He painfully looked at the new cracks on the surface of the spirit pearl, then suddenly pulled Su Li's anti-poison hairpin and inserted it into the formation eye: "Fairy, lend me a good luck charm, I'll return you ten golden Phoenix hairpins when we get out!"
Amidst the roaring collapse of the underground palace, Lu Qingyang dragged half a bag of Dragon blood sand and dove into the dark river.
In the turbulent current, he didn't forget to pull off the female corpse's qiankun bracelet, then turned to the pursuing Ye Wuchen and shouted: "Please trouble Fellow Daoist to clean up the aftermath, I'll treat you to some bamboo leaf green mixed with Yin Netherwater another day—"
His voice was drowned out by the enormous falling rocks, with only the faint glow of the qingmu spirit pearl guiding him towards the deeper Ancient Battlefield ruins.