White Bone Demon Trail

Chapter 82: The Beginning of Understanding the Five Turbidities
This was the first time he had used the Puppet God Technique, and it seemed quite powerful, managing to subdue this renowned Xuanmen disciple so easily.

The numerous puppets in this technique all come from the bone carvings he usually makes from white bones. When Bai Wuxiang activates the great technique with the Vengeful Spirit Pearl, these bone carvings, which are no bigger than the palm of a hand, will transform into either a powerful puppet that is ten feet tall, or a beautiful and charming female puppet, or various other human figures.

The most powerful aspect of this technique is not the puppets themselves, but rather the ability to connect them with one's mind to form a network of nodes, similar to a magic array. Then, by harnessing the power of heaven and earth, the array can suppress people and all other magics.

Those who enter the formation will have their magical power suppressed, just like an ordinary mortal being killed by the puppets.

If Bai Wuxiang were willing to relinquish enough resentment, he could even suppress a master at the Yuanzhen realm to the Huayuan realm.

He took out the treasure mirror, gazing at the purple lightning sealed within, and a trace of his own demonic thoughts.

This purple lightning was undoubtedly a divine power from a master above the Yuanzhen realm. It was only because he touched some sealed memories while probing Xiao Qianli's primordial spirit that he was struck by such heavenly lightning in an instant.

It seems that Xiao Qianli must have a great secret. Bai Wuxiang had this feeling when he first met her.

After all, this was the first time Bai Wuxiang had ever seen someone who cultivated both Dao and Demonic arts.

In Xiao Qianli's memory, her entire family was killed by demons, leaving only her and her younger brother to survive. During their journey to seek immortality, her brother was kidnapped and disappeared without a trace.

Later, when she was twelve years old, she became a disciple of the immortal Xiao Jingzhi at Sanqing Mountain and was taught the Xuanmen mental techniques.

As for the demonic body within her body, according to what Xiao Jingzhi said in her memory, it was a demonic entity arising from her excessive desire to kill.

The cultivation technique she practiced was a secret method that no one else in the entire Sanqing Mountain practiced. It was called the "Mysterious Demon True Technique" and was created seven hundred years ago by a master in Sanqing Mountain who had fallen into the demonic path.

Xiao Qianli has been cultivating for sixty years, and her demonic body has long reached the Yuanzhen realm. However, for some reason, her own realm has remained at the Dahua Yuan realm for ten years without breaking through to the Yuanzhen realm.

Speaking of cultivation, Bai Wuxiang's understanding of the memories of these four Xuanmen disciples has become much clearer after he stole them.

Below the Yuanzhen realm, all living beings have their own Dao realm, but as long as one cultivates Yuanzhen, one transcends the mortal flesh and bones, and even if one loses the physical body, the primordial spirit can live on alone.

Above the Yuanzhen realm, there are three other realms: Dingshen, Aoqiao, and Guidao.

These three realms are the three realms of the Tao, which place greater emphasis on comprehending the mysteries of the mind and nature, and understanding the various phenomena of the Tao, thus cultivating the mind and shaping the Tao.

In Xiao Qianli's memory, the Returning to the Dao Realm is also the realm of ascension to immortality, and the Supreme Elders of Sanqing Mountain are in this realm.

However, instead of ascending to the heavens to join the ranks of immortals, he remained in the mortal realm.

The several Supreme Elders of Sanqing Mountain do not usually appear in person. Instead, they travel through the void in their primordial spirits, sometimes transforming into ordinary mortals to experience the myriad aspects of human life, sometimes traveling to the Three Mountains and Five Peaks to meet friends and enjoy tea, and sometimes transforming into mortal beasts to comprehend nature, living a truly carefree and unrestrained life.

Bai Wuxiang was recalling their memories when, unexpectedly, the treasure mirror beside him flashed and shone with golden light.

However, Xiao Qianli, sensing the treasure mirror, was determined to take it back.

Bai Wuxiang frowned. If this woman were to attack the mountain, even if he managed to capture her using the advantage of his cave, he would likely still offend the experts of Sanqing Mountain.

If that's the case, then let's just drag it out.

His mind stirred, and his figure began to blur. Countless overlapping low laughs echoed from the dark cave walls, the sounds of demons and monsters reverberating endlessly.

A man with dark shadows around his eyes stepped out from behind Bai Wuxiang. He smiled, picked up the treasure mirror from the stone platform, bent down, placed his hand on Bai Wuxiang's shoulder, and whispered with a chuckle in his ear:

"Rest assured, I will not fail you."

After saying this, the man took a step back and disappeared.

Meanwhile, Xiao Qianli, who was a hundred miles away, sensed that the treasure mirror had suddenly changed direction and was heading north. Without hesitation, she turned around and chased after it.

Bai Wuxiang slowly opened his eyes in the cave, summoned a piece of white bone from Skull Mountain, and recorded all the memories he had gained.

Bai Wuxiang is no longer the ignorant little demon from a remote village. He has figured out why it was these few cultivators who have not reached the Yuanzhen realm who came to capture him.

We are now facing the Five Turbid Calamities, which occur once every thousand years!
In this defiled and evil world, hell is now empty. Demons and monsters have turned the human realm into a living hell.

The term "Five Turbidities" is a name given by Buddhist masters. Every thousand years, the world accumulates immeasurable turbidity. When the turbidity accumulates to the point of enveloping the entire human world, the Five Turbidities Kalpa begins.

This turbid energy is the energy of killing, resentment, death, blood, and ghosts.

Once the five turbidities are cleared, all paths will be cut off from the human realm.

If a master at the Yuanzhen realm were to enter the mortal world at this time, he would inevitably be affected by the five turbidities entering his body, and it would be difficult to guarantee that his physical body would remain pure and untainted.

At best, it shortens one's lifespan and hinders one's path to enlightenment; at worst, it leads to calamity and the dissipation of one's life, preventing one from entering the cycle of reincarnation.

Even cultivators below the Yuanzhen level will have their cultivation path affected by entering the world.

However, this time of the Five Turbid Tribulations in the mortal realm is also an excellent opportunity for cultivators to break through the greatest barrier of Yuanzhen.

By drawing tribulation into the body, one can comprehend the cycle of life and death, yin and yang, and achieve the primordial immortal body.

Of course, failure means certain death.

This has led many Xuanmen cultivators to be increasingly hesitant to enter the Fifth Tribulation World. However, at this time, demons and ghosts roam freely. If they are not restrained, they will eventually dominate the world and give birth to supreme demons.

The Demon Sect and the Monster Cave among the Three Mountains and Six Caves were established over thousands of years by taking advantage of the situation.

To prevent this situation from happening again, the Xuanmen sect spread its teachings to the mortal realm, giving rise to demon hunters.

Although most demon hunters do not cultivate magic power, their accumulated experience over lifetimes, along with the support of magical artifacts and other external aids, still give them a great deal of means to restrain demons below the Yuanzhen realm.

And now, another calamity of the five defilements has descended upon the world!

Bai Wuxiang pondered for a long time. Since the master of Sanqing Mountain knew that he was a demon god and must know his every move, why didn't he take action to kill him himself?

Although the Five Turbid Tribulations cause irreversible damage to cultivators, they have no effect on true immortals in the Returning to the Dao Realm.

Unless... they don't want to subdue themselves so easily, or they can't...

Each time the Five Turbid Calamities descend, human dynasties will perish and new dynasties will be born.

Can the new life force of the transition between old and new dynasties truly dispel the five turbidities in the entire world?

Bai Wuxiang's eyes were faintly white. He looked at the cold pool below him and muttered to himself, "The world is like a pool, and the five turbidities are like ink. When ink enters a deep pool, the pool will only become clear if the ink gathers."

The great demons that emerged from the Three Mountains and Six Caves were mostly formed from the convergence of the five elements during each of the Five Turbid Calamities.

Then I... this skeleton demon, can devour the energy of ghosts and transform resentful killing intent; once, mountains were piled high with skeletons...

It seems to be the best container for collecting the five turbid energies in the eyes of those wise people!

In the icy pool, ink reflected Bai Wuxiang's face. Amidst the eerie, dark pool, the water was a deep, dark green. He smiled and said, "It seems I won't be personally suppressed by those powerful deities for the time being. Perhaps the birth of this little white bone spirit is what they truly desire."

However, they never expected that their own skeleton, which should have become a demon and a vessel for the five turbid energies, would give rise to a formless demon god.

The demons in the three mountains and six caves are no wonder they all stray from the center of the human world. Whether these mountain caves are the lair of demons or the prisons that imprison them remains unknown.

After three years in the dark, sunless coffin, I could no longer endure it. If, after cultivating to the utmost, I were still imprisoned in a cage, wouldn't my entire life's cultivation have been wasted?

A wisp of black energy appeared in Bai Wuxiang's eyes. He sneered in his heart, "No matter who it is, even if it is the high and mighty gods in the heavens or those immortals with unparalleled cultivation, I will never let you imprison me again."

He wanted to visit the ancestors in the Three Mountains and Six Caves, for the human race believed that history served as a mirror to understand rise and fall.

The supreme demons in the Three Mountains and Six Caves are the history he wants to observe.

Bai Wuxiang absolutely refused to become a prisoner in a cage again!

As for how to get to the Three Mountains and Six Caves, that's easy.

With a thought, he turned the phantom carrying the treasure mirror northward. It makes perfect sense that if you can't defeat a single demon, you'd seek refuge in a great demon's cave.

Even if those experts know that the phantom is merely a manifestation of their own demonic thoughts, what if they were to give this treasure to the great demons?
As long as those masters don't personally intervene, I have countless methods at my disposal.

Besides, the mysteries surrounding Xiao Qianli also unsettled him, and he hoped that he could try to find out some answers in the great demon's prison.

However, he need not trouble himself to think about these things.

The Phantom's demonic consciousness is different from other demonic consciousnesses. It is empowered by a wisp of his divine soul and possesses its own intelligence. He will find a way to accomplish these things.

As for his true self, he only needed to calm down and cultivate in seclusion.

I hope to elevate my cultivation level to the Perfect Realm as soon as possible, and then break through to the Primordial True Realm.

Once he breaks through to the Yuanzhen realm, he will be able to devour all the turbid energy of the world and increase his cultivation.

He is a formless demon god, and even if he devours many, he will not be restrained by righteous yang energy like those great demons of the past.

In the dead of winter, the Wanxiang Mountain was extremely cold and gloomy. Wisps of yin energy gathered and merged into Bai Wuxiang's body in the cave.

Having absorbed the death energy of hundreds of people, he has now refined 123 of the 206 bones in his body. According to the Xuanmen's realm, he is now at the mid-stage of the Transformation Realm and will soon reach the late stage.

If it were an ordinary demon, it would take at least a hundred or even several hundred years to accumulate demonic power from the moment it first gained sentience.

His cultivation level is already three points higher than that of human cultivators.

However, he was not destined to be just an ordinary little demon. If he hadn't gone to great lengths to capture these people and probe their memories, he would probably still be ignorant and confused. In the future, he would be dragged along by the great calamity, devour the five turbid energies of the human world, and then be suppressed and sealed in a remote place by a group of powerful figures, never to be released for eternity!
……

Shenzhou, Linhe County, outside the mountains and forests.

A snake demon who has cultivated for a hundred years is hiding in a cave, using an underground hot spring inside the cave to avoid hibernation.

This demon can now transform into human form and bewitch people. He has bewitched several people in a village at the foot of the mountain, causing them to capture many women and send them to him.

For a yin-type demon like him, a woman's yin blood is the most nourishing.

In a village at the foot of the mountain, an old woman with a hunched back, carrying a bamboo basket, went out into the snowy, cold weather, looking dazed.

Someone in the village called out, "Aunt Li, where are you going in this heavy snow?"

“I…I’m going to find my daughter.”

Wearing a thin, old shirt, with her messy hair already streaked with snow, Aunt Li walked stiffly toward the edge of the village.

The villagers were all talking about it, saying that Granny Li had gone mad, that her daughter had been captured by the snake demon for several days and had probably been eaten clean long ago.

But no one would say these words aloud. They watched the figure gradually disappear into the distance, only hoping that Aunt Li would not come back, so that her few acres of land could be divided among them next spring.

Amidst the raging wind and snow, no one, human or animal, could be seen anywhere.

Amidst the blanket of white snow, an old woman carrying a bamboo basket limped towards her field.

She said to a raised mound of earth, "Grandpa, I have no choice but to do this to save my granddaughter. I hope you won't blame me."

As she spoke, she took out a small shovel from the bamboo basket and began digging in the soil with her withered fingers, the gray mud seemingly soiling the snow-white farmland.

Half an hour later, the old woman's body was a little frozen, but she still did not give up and kept digging at the mound until she dug out a piece of bone.

Overjoyed, she took it out of the hole, blew the dirt off it, and rubbed the piece of hand bone on the coarse cloth of her yellow shirt.

Grandma Li had intended to end her life, since rumors had circulated a few days ago that her only granddaughter had been captured by a snake demon, so she had no desire to live anymore.

But then she suddenly remembered that half a month ago, when she went to town to sell cloth, she was resting outside a teahouse when she heard a storyteller inside say that several hundred miles away, there was a great immortal named Wuxiang, whose followers had established the Wuxiang Sect and were spreading its doctrines everywhere.

It is said that as long as one uses bones as an image, burns incense and holds a sacrifice, and pleads with the spirit of the spirit, one can invite the formless god to appear and grant one's wish.

I've heard that this formless god will kill anyone, whether they're a corrupt official or a wicked person. So, presumably, he can kill demons too!

She dug up her husband's bones, stood in front of the grave, took three incense sticks from the bamboo basket, lit them with a tinderbox, and placed them in front of the skeleton.

A wisp of smoke rose into the vast sky. On the snow-covered field, an old woman knelt devoutly and prayed, "God of No Form, I beg you, please save my poor granddaughter. If you are willing to show your power, I am willing to serve you like a slave even after I die!"

I beg you, God of No Form…

Her prayers gradually faded, drifting away into the surrounding wind and snow.

The old woman finally succumbed to the cold and fainted.

The three incense sticks in front of her were also blown out by the wind and snow, leaving only a last wisp of smoke.

"Whoo~"

Suddenly, the white bones shattered, a dark shadow appeared, and the surrounding wind and snow fell silent.

Phantom stood in front of the old woman, sensed the direction, and realized that he had been chased by Xiao Qianli for over a hundred miles. Seeing that the other party was about to use the Demon God technique to kill him again, he used his spiritual communication technique to sense the white bone medium here.

Looking at the lifeless old woman on the ground, he said softly:

"Rest assured, the formless god has heard your prayer."

(End of this chapter)