The poorest member of the Imperial Guard, the Empress begged me to embezzle.

Chu Xiu, along with A Nu and Mo Lie, arrived at the stone door of the first floor of the tightly closed inner palace of the underground palace.

It was not yet noon, and the stone gate remained sealed and could not be opened.

A'Nu tilted her little head, looking left and right, and walked to the giant ancient stone statue on the right side of the stone gate. She examined it carefully for a moment with her big eyes, and suddenly her eyes lit up. She waved to Chu Xiu, who was chatting with Mo Lie to the side:

"Brother Chu, come quick!"

Chu Xiu, who was actually not yet thirty, got goosebumps all over when this little girl called him "brother," and reluctantly went to her side:

"what happened?"

"Look at this stone statue... doesn't it look familiar?"

Chu Xiu looked in the direction A Nu pointed and saw a ferocious giant stone statue. Just as she said, the more he looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

"This is... the Blood Demon?"

"That's right!"

Chu Xiu was somewhat surprised. He had already seen the two stone statues standing in front of the stone gate, and thought it was just a quirk of the old owner of the tomb. After scanning them with his divine sense and finding nothing unusual, he stopped paying attention.

Upon closer inspection, the stone statue now appears to be almost identical in appearance to the Blood Demon of the Reincarnation Realm within the Phoenix Emperor's body!

“Brother Chu…” A’Nu suddenly tilted her head and looked at Chu Xiu with a smile, staring at Chu Xiu with a creepy feeling.

"What are you doing……"

"Did you steal something from my Emperor...?"

"Steal? Do you think I'm the kind of person who would do something like that?"

Chu Xiu, without batting an eye, immediately denied it.

"Alright, then my Emperor must have forgotten where he hid that thing..."

"I think this Blood Demon statue might be connected to this tightly closed door. Why don't you take out a drop of Blood Demon Source and inject it into the statue?"

Chu Xiu nodded, pointed his finger at the stone statue, and a drop of Blood Demon Source flew out from his storage space and entered the statue's body.

"Chu Xiu!"

"You still insist you didn't steal it!"

Enraged, A Nu jumped up and stomped hard on Chu Xiu's toes.

Chu Xiu scratched his head awkwardly and stopped A Nu's teasing: "Alright, alright, I'll just return it to your Emperor next time we meet."

A'nu snorted and was about to speak again when a strange spiritual energy fluctuation spread from the stone statue, affecting Chu Xiu, A'nu, and Mo Lie, who were closest to the statue.

"careful!"

Mo Lie flashed forward, shielding Chu Xiu and A Nu behind him.

He had just opened his mouth when a red light suddenly flashed in the eyes of the blood demon statue.

The next second, as the three descended, a black hole suddenly appeared, sucking them all in and then closing tightly, as if they had never existed, leaving only thousands of cultivators in front of the stone gate looking at each other in bewilderment.

The black hole that Chu Xiu and the other two fell into was actually like a bottomless descent tunnel. The three of them free-falled for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn before they could see the faint light coming from below.

"Be careful, we're almost at the bottom!" Chu Xiu warned in time.

Mo Lie reached out and grabbed Chu Xiu and A Nu. Suddenly, two blood-red wings unfurled behind him, and with a powerful downward swipe, he neutralized the gravitational pull of freefall, landing safely on the ground.

The three immediately used their divine senses to scan their surroundings, and only after finding nothing unusual did they feel somewhat relieved.

Anu looked curiously at the blood-red wings on Mo Lie's back, "Grandpa, are you from the Yaksha tribe?"

Chu Xiu then remembered that the Yaksha tribe was divided into several types, and Mo Lie should belong to the flying Yaksha type, which had wings and the ability to fly.

Mo Lie nodded, and looked curiously at A Nu, who looked no more than ten years old: "How do you know about the Yaksha Tribe?"

It's no wonder that Mo Lie would ask this question, because the Yaksha tribe, led by Ye Wujiang, has been living in anonymity in the demon realm for thousands of years.

No one outside had mentioned the Yaksha tribe for a long time, and he was really curious how this young human girl knew about it.

Chu Xiu laughed and said, "Don't let her young appearance fool you, she's probably older than you..."

As soon as Chu Xiu said this, he immediately drew an angry glare from A Nu.

"Chu Xiu, are you looking for death?!"

"I was wrong, I was wrong..."

Chu Xiu quickly begged for mercy and changed the subject: "Let's go, let's chat outside."

The three of them were now inside a safe palace.

Chu Xiu walked outside the palace and saw that the world outside was dark and volcanoes were erupting everywhere he looked.

Feeling the intense heat hitting him, Chu Xiu frowned. This scene was completely different from what Bi Yu had described as the first floor of the inner hall.

The first level of the inner palace that Biyu mentioned was like the boundless wasteland outside the underground palace, not the volcanic area where the three of them were now.

"This shouldn't be the first floor," Chu Xiu murmured.

Anu chimed in, "Could it be that stone statue that's behind this? Did it teleport us to the depths of an unexplored underground palace?"

Chu Xiu nodded, "It should be..."

Mo Lie suddenly spoke up, "Look, you two!"

Chu Xiu and A Nu turned to look outside the hall, and saw that the surface of the lakes formed by lava flowing down from the volcano and collecting in the low-lying areas was surging with waves.

Immediately afterwards, a large number of fiery, charred monsters emerged from beneath the lava lake, roaring like wild beasts whose territory had been invaded, and charged toward the palace where Chu Xiu and his companions were.

These monsters had extremely mixed cultivation levels, ranging from the Void Breaking Realm to the True Transcending Realm. With Chu Xiu's Qi Observation Technique, he could tell the true form of these monsters at a glance that they were Blood Demons!

"It's the Blood Demon! Be careful!"

Chu Xiu warned Mo Lie, who had never fought against a blood demon before, "Don't let these blood demons damage your body, or they will parasitize you in an instant!"

"understand!"

Mo Lie nodded solemnly. He had only heard of such monsters from his own lord; this was the first time he had seen one with his own eyes.

Even though he was a seasoned cultivator at the Great Perfection of the Reincarnation Realm with extensive experience, he had never seen such a scene where there were countless monsters with fiery bodies and ferocious appearances.

Mo Lie couldn't help but complain, "I once fought against the Flame Ant clan, known for their swarm battles, in the Demon Realm. Compared to these Blood Demons, the Flame Ants are quite cute!"

All three possessed the Great Perfection of the Transcendent Realm in their spiritual cultivation. With a single slap, they could annihilate a large number of Fiery Blood Demons.

However, after these blood demons killed off a batch, even more blood demons surged out of the lava lake in the next second.

The three of them fought for a full hour, and the blood demon corpses, smashed into mincemeat, had piled up into small mountains, yet the number of blood demons showed no signs of decreasing.

"This... we can't kill them all!" Mo Lie felt a chill run down his spine.

These blood demons are weak, but their numbers are endless, making them the most disgusting situation.

The sharp-eyed Chu Xiu noticed something amiss at that moment. He stopped attacking and carefully observed the subtle changes in the blood demon corpses:

Each blood demon, upon death, first transforms into a pool of blood, but cannot merge with other blood. Ultimately, it can only revert to its original body and remain on the ground.

During the few breaths that the blood plasma attempts to merge, no blood demon will crawl out of the lava lake again.

"The Blood Demon's fusion and evolution seem to be missing some necessary conditions..."

"Could it be the source of the Blood Demon?"

The reason why the Blood Demon within the Phoenix Emperor was able to fuse and evolve into a Blood Demon with greater cultivation and size was precisely because of the blessing of the Blood Demon Source.

"To kill all these low-level blood demons would probably take thousands or even tens of thousands of years... But if we could make them fuse and evolve into a blood demon of a certain level, perhaps killing just one would be enough to stop the appearance of other low-level blood demons!"

Chu Xiu quickly understood this point and turned to A Nu and Mo Lie, saying:

"These low-level blood demons are endless!"

"Stop fighting, let me try!"