After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Zhou Ran's voice wasn't loud, but it silenced the entire street.

"How dare you act so presumptuously!"

boom.

The weapons in the hands of hundreds of ghost soldiers fell to the ground.

The general's pupils constricted sharply, and he immediately raised the imperial edict bestowed by the Song emperor, attempting to defy the Grand Commander's order.

Zhou Ran didn't even look, and directly unleashed the Taihuang Black Blade.

The blade flashed through the imperial edict, as if slicing through a sheet of paper.

The decree immediately split in two.

The general groaned, spitting out a mouthful of black blood. Several cracks appeared in his armor, and he was forced to his knees by the Grand Commander's order.

Zhou Ran raised her foot and stepped on his chest.

"Go back and tell Emperor Song."

He stared at the general.

"Jiangcheng is my territory."

If you dare to extend your claws again, I'll tear down the plaque of the Third Hall and burn it as firewood.

The general's throat made a gurgling sound, but he couldn't utter a single word.

Zhou Ran raised his hand and flung him away.

But at that moment, the general's body suddenly swelled up in mid-air.

It expanded abnormally fast.

It was as if something inside him had ignited beforehand.

"Bang!"

Flesh and blood exploded, and blood rained down from the sky.

Amidst the rain of blood, a face was pieced together.

Yama, the King of Hell.

Zhou Ran's eyes suddenly turned cold.

"You're not quite dead yet?"

In the bone fragment, Li Zhiyao's voice suddenly rose in pitch.

"Oh no, the gray line beneath Jiangcheng is rising!"

"How many?"

"It's broken 10,000!"

The face of Yama, the King of Hell, only appeared for a moment before shattering into fragments.

But Zhou Ran didn't blink.

He activated his Purple-Gold Demon Eyes to their fullest extent, staring intently at the bloodstains falling downwards.

Each drop of blood contained a tiny gray particle.

It's not blood.

They are fragments of the law.

Things from the virtual world.

The particles, detached from the body, did not fall but instead turned and burrowed into the cracks between the bricks on the ground.

Like a nail.

Like coordinates.

It's like a hand pressing the whole city in from below.

A chill settled in Zhou Ran's eyes.

The ghostly soldiers landed, and their yin energy suppressed the heavenly order of the mortal realm.

Once the Yin soldiers die, the laws of the illusory realm within the blood rain can penetrate into the earth's veins.

The Song emperors did not seize the city.

It's paving the way for Yama's corpse poison.

"That's really cunning."

Zhou Ran cursed under his breath, then looked up and drank.

"Fatty Wang, recruiting."

Qin San, keep an eye on the street corner.

Xiaorou—Don't let a single drop of blood fall to the ground!

"clear!"

Fatty Wang had already rushed out, with the golden Buddha phantom above his head. He raised his hand and swatted away several ghostly soldiers who tried to rush forward in the chaos.

Qin San was even more decisive. He raised his knife and struck the back of the knees of the two Yin soldiers. With a jolt of the back of the knife, the bones shattered on the spot.

With a flick of her sleeve, Xiao Rou unleashed a black tide of Gu worms, which surged toward the blood droplets in mid-air.

She frowned.

"Master, the blood is seeping into the ground."

"I saw it."

Zhou Ran raised his left hand, spread his five fingers, and the golden light of the Grand Commander's Command in his palm suddenly intensified, while his right hand pressed down on the ground at the same time.

"The blood of the Yin soldiers is the nourishment for the earth's veins."

He's redefining things using idealistic principles.

The blood rain, which should have polluted the earth's veins, was forcibly dragged into another rule by him.

As the golden light landed, the yin blood transformed into yin energy, which was then absorbed by the earth's veins and became a supplement to the manor's protective barrier.

The previously swaying protective formation stabilized instantly, as if someone had given it a strong dose of medicine.

Fatty Wang was stunned for a moment.

"You can do that?"

"Can't play."

Zhou Ran's forehead was already beaded with sweat.

"Only I can play like this."

The laws of the illusory realm and the Heavenly Dao of the mortal world clashed within his true essence, testing his fate.

But he couldn't care less.

If this torrent of blood cannot be contained, the more than ten thousand gray lines beneath Jiangcheng will explode instantly.

Old Xu stood at the living room doorway, without moving.

Only then did he see clearly what was in Zhou Ran's eyes.

It's not arrogance.

It is accurate.

"Young friend Zhou".

Old Xu spoke,

"To suppress it, you must use the Penglai Purification Mantra."

You can't last long alone.

"I don't need charity from Penglai."

Zhou Ran didn't even turn his head.

Old Xu stared at him for three breaths, then finally raised his bamboo cane and tapped it on the floor tile.

A pale white light spread out and landed around the manor, effectively stabilizing a section of the erosion from the void.

Zhou Ran didn't say thank you.

That old fox was trying to pick the peaches one minute, and then came to help the next; he wasn't even half as sincere as he seemed.

But he didn't refuse.

Every bit of effort counts, and fewer people die.

The blood rain was quickly suppressed, leaving only a thin layer of black mist on the street.

Zhou Ran's expression, however, did not improve.

On the other end of the bone fragment, Li Zhiyao's voice tightened again.

"The gray line is still rising."

It's not a slow rise, it's a jump.

10,300...

10,600…

Zhou Ran's gaze darkened.

The earth's veins had just stabilized, but the thing underground didn't stop.

This indicates that the blood rain is only on the surface.

Those who actually went down have already gone inside.

"Where's Qingxue?"

"She woke up briefly, then fainted again."

Li Zhiyao paused.

"But she just kept repeating one sentence."

"What did you say?"

"She said... don't let my sister come back."

Zhou Ran paused in his tracks.

Yue Zhao woke up.

It wasn't a full awakening; it was just the remnants of will struggling.

Before he could think it through, the pool of blood that had seeped into the black mist suddenly moved.

A dark red streak seeped out from the cracks in the floor tiles, gathering more and more until it climbed back into the air.

This time, no one's body was used.

The blood mist coalesced into a face.

Clearer.

Closer.

That face, separated by thousands of miles of empty space, slowly grinned at Zhou Ran.

"You thought... I was dead?"

Zhou Ran's eyes turned completely cold.

"If you were truly alive, you wouldn't just have a mouth left."

He raised his hand and pressed down on the Grand Commander's order, his knuckles tightening inch by inch.

"King Yama, that punch you threw was delivered by my own hand."

The things on the ground now are not yours.

"It was the poison you planted before you died."

Bloodface chuckled, and his features began to sink into the ground.

"poison……

That's enough to make Jiangcheng suffer.

As that blood-red face fell, a very faint gray line appeared in Zhou Ran's purple-gold demonic eyes.

He could see it clearly.

Every single droplet of blood scattered across the face was burrowing into the ground, arranging itself in a specific direction, like a net nailed into the earth's veins.

"Brother Ran."

Fatty Wang stood by the door, his face also grim.

"The ground is shaking."

Zhou Ran looked up.

The black rift in the sky above Jiangcheng did not close; instead, it grew wider and wider. Deep within the rift, ghostly soldiers were arrayed in formation.

Emperor Song was determined to drag Jiangcheng into the underworld.

"Old Xu."

Zhou Ran suddenly spoke.

"You just said that Penglai has a Pure Heart Mantra."

"Um?"

"It can be suppressed, but it can't be broken, right?"

Old Xu squinted, knowing what he was about to do.

"Yes. We can only suppress it."

That's enough.

Zhou Ran held up the Grand Commander's Order with his left hand, and the Nascent Soul True Essence image opened the floodgates and poured in.

This supreme decree of the underworld was originally capable of suppressing the ten courts and commanding all ghosts.

He used it to force 30,000 rebels to surrender on the north bank of the River of Oblivion, and now, even across two realms, he can still strangle that black slit in the sky above Jiangcheng.

"You press down the net outside."

Zhou Ran looked at Old Xu.

"I will retrieve this command from underground myself."

Xu Laozhu took a step back.

"Are you going against the laws of the underworld of the Song emperors?"

"The rules he set on my turf."

Zhou Ran's voice was completely flat and without any inflection.

"It doesn't count with me."

The Grand Commander commanded a surge of golden light, which followed the bone fragments and the intermittent communication node between the two worlds, pressing down into the earth beneath the rising sun.

Where the golden light reached, the newly unfolded blood-red web within the earth's veins was illuminated.

Every gray coordinate that was pinned in emerged in the golden light, leaving no place to hide.

Zhou Ran's nascent soul transformed, and a single word was pressed into the middle of the earth's vein.

"Abandoned"

There was no flashing of swords, no imposing presence.

Only the root of that bloody web was completely severed.

Li Zhiyao's voice burst forth from the bone fragment, trembling.

"The gray line... has stopped rising."

"It's stuck at 11,200, and it's dropping."

Zhou Ran closed his eyes briefly, loosening his grip on the knife by half an inch.

But he didn't dare to actually loosen his grip.

The black slit is still there.

Emperor Song has not yet shown his face.

The poison from Yama may have severed the net, but it may not have eradicated the root cause.

From the other end of the bone fragment, Fatty Wang's voice burst in again, more anxious than anyone else.

"Ran-ge!"

"A big one came down from the dark crevice."

Zhou Ran opened her eyes.

From the depths of the rift above Jiangcheng, an aged yet majestic figure slowly emerged.

Emperor Song.

He finally came in person.