489 Demon Spirits

In the 16th year of rule under Emperor Zhao Ming, there was a great war in the Jade Capital. Sages fell from power and Inner Demons appeared in the realm.

From then onwards, the entire Da Qian was thrown into chaos. The Imperial Court was brought down and the entire period was known as 'The Chaos of Demons'. Even the calendars named the period of time as the 'Year of the Demon'.

"Demons are appearing in Tianhe County? Demon Spirits are feeding on humans and more than 10,000 humans have already been infected. It's already spreading to the neighbouring counties already?"

Within a carriage, Fang Yuan slowly read a letter in his hands and remained silent.

Dream masters fell from power in just a single night and even lost the ability to enter the Dream Realm. Their usual mode of communication was destroyed and they could only make use of the most basic modes of communication.

Even this letter was obtained from the local authorities and was already rather outdated.

"Also... the royal family of Da Qian has been killed entirely. Is the Imperial Court already dead?"

Fang Yuan felt like laughing.

Sage Shang Hou was a scheming person and was able to deceive the 5 sages into believing that the Imperial Court was at its weakest. He was even almost successful in becoming victorious.

Unfortunately, none of them had expected that the Demonic Heart Realm would harvest the dream dao from Da Qian, resulting in losses for both sides. Furthermore, the dream masters of Da Qian had suffered the risk of being wiped from the realm.

The ineffectiveness of the Spiritual Will Steel Seal and the death of Shang Hou meant that the Imperial Court would have no one else to rely on. Therefore, it was not surprising that they were not able to fend off the attacks from the angered True Divines and True Elementals.

"If we were to keep Shang Hou alive, things would be different. He is a sage and with time, he will surely be able to change his profession to become a True Elemental or even something else more powerful..."

Fang Yuan rubbed the Mountain River Pearl and remained silent.

The removal of the dream dao resulted in a devastating outcome for the dream masters. However, this world had much more potential compared to the others and with time, people would surely be able to accomplish much with other daos.

Unfortunately, this was all that was lacking!

Unless these people were to train in isolation like The Ancient One, most of them would surely need to take some time to adapt. Of course, these sages already had a headstart and might even be able to completely change their profession in a short span of a hundred days to become a powerful being of another kind.

Even so, dream masters no longer belonged to this world.

"The 3 sages of the allied forces will at most become 3 True Elementals and the remaining dream masters might cultivate in other professions to preserve their own combat power. However, this will only ensure the existence of dream masters. There would surely be a great number of casualties after all of these!"

Fang Yuan sighed. He entered the Mountain River Pearl with his spiritual will, looking to scan Shang Hou's corpse.

"If there is any hope, it will be on this person's body!"

When Fang Yuan was on the battlefield, why did he target Shang Hou first even though his nemesis, Li Qingmian was right in front of him?

This was because Shang Hou was a powerful magical clone of a person from the Demonic Heart Realm! He had to have other daos which made use of dream elemental force!

Fang Yuan did not know how powerful his special ability was then and assumed that the dream dao was over. He even thought of changing his profession!

With the foundations as a 7th Tier Illusionary Divine dream master, Fang Yuan would surely be able to quickly restore his cultivation with another dao that involved dream elemental force.

Therefore, his first target was Shang Hou and he knew that he had to kill Shang Hou!

Why did he not leave a hint of Shang Hou's soul to grill it for answers?

Fang Yuan wanted to mind his own business. Why would he pit himself against a monster from the Demonic Heart Realm? He didn't want to risk his own life!

He would rather kill Shang Hou and reap treasures off him, even if there might possibly be nothing for him to reap. At least, this option was the safer one.

"If there is nothing on Shang Hou's corpse, I shall then pay a visit to the secret treasury of the royal family one day... Unfortunately, by then, I would have been too exhausted to continue anything. Considering that the Imperial Court is destroyed and the royal family is killed, it is likely that the treasures have already been stolen..."

Fang Yuan rubbed his forehead but did not feel regretful.

After all, this was his final plan only if everything went wrong.

Now that he had realised that still had his foundations as a dream master and could likely restore his cultivation, it was still better to continue on the dream dao.

"Mmm?"

After a short while, Fang Yuan's eyebrows twitched. With the wave of his hands, there were a few more objects in his carriage.

There were jade pendants, hairpins and a few rings. All of these items had mysterious spiritual auras coming from them.

Even if Shang Hou were to have any protective magical equipment with him, they would all be destroyed by the attacks which had killed him. All of these leftovers were merely supportive treasures which would be able to assist him.

"Is this the... Ten Thousand Year Soul Jade?!"

Fang Yuan held the yellow jade in his hands and seemed to be filled with emotions. "With this jade, I can nourish my soul. Jades the size of a grain of rice is enough for dream masters to fight over and now, I have gotten my hands on such a big piece. He is indeed the Great Ancestor of Da Qian."

After a thorough inspection, Fang Yuan realised that there was nothing wrong about it. After all, such jades could not be carved on or imprinted on by one's spiritual will for it would be rendered useless.

In jubilation, Fang Yuan quickly wore the jade on himself and in that instant, he could feel a soothing sensation in his consciousness.

"This is indeed a great treasure!"

After examining a few other treasures, Fang Yuan realised that something was wrong with the hairpin.

"This hairpin is carved from Soul Resting Wood and there are no arrays or spiritual wills on it. However, the carvings on top..."

The hairpin was a dark purple and there were gold streaks on it. Similarly, there was no spiritual force coming from it.

However, Fang Yuan quickly activated his Fiery Golden Eyes and magnified the golden streaks. They were word carvings carved by hand and it was a majestic piece of work.

If not for the fact that Fang Yuan had his Fiery Golden Eyes, even powerful beings would not be able to detect anything in it.

"These words... what do they mean?"

After another round of close examination, Fang Yuan exclaimed.

For Shang Hou to protect such information with these means would mean that these pieces of information were extremely important. Unfortunately, Fang Yuan could not understand a single word on the hairpin.

These golden words had a weird appearance and each character had many strokes. In fact, the words appeared 3-dimensional and after a long time, Fang Yuan started to feel a little dizzy.

"Could this be the language of Demonic Heart! Words of the Demonic Heart Realm?"

Fang Yuan was utterly speechless. He quickly scanned across a few other objects, classified them and kept them for the future.

"Master!"

Extreme Darkness sounded shocked. "There is a large group of refugees ahead!"

"Mmm?!"

Fang Yuan pulled the curtains apart and saw waves of people flooded around, as though he was flowing through a river. With a straight face, these people seemed to be in a great shock.

"The disaster of the Inner Demons!"

With a sigh, he gazed towards Extreme Darkness and realised that she was extremely fortunate.

Since Fang Yuan could not understand the language of the Demonic Heart, if he were to discover any new techniques, he would surely test them on her.

After all, this girl was the magical clone of Extreme Darkness. Now that her true physical body was dead, she would unknowingly inherit the fate energy of Extreme Darkness and her future would be limitless.

But for now, she had just narrowly missed a disaster.

"The county city ahead is plagued with Demon Spirits. Quickly run for your lives!"

Extreme Darkness blocked the path of an old man which then impatiently cautioned her of the dangers ahead with a look of fear.

The group of refugees gathered around the carriage and a few of them were martial artists equipped with weapons. They seemed hostile.

"The opening of the Bone Door had not only brought in a lot of dream elemental force, it had also brought in the Demon Spirits from the Demonic Heart Realm!"

Fang Yuan seemed to know what was happening ahead.

The Demon Spirits of the Demonic Heart Realm would feed on sentient beings and be extremely hardy. They also had the ability to split into many physical entities.

Even if Shang Hou would not admit, it would be the truth that these Demon Spirits were the foundation of the Demonic Heart Realm!

This would mean that the powerful beings of the Demonic Hear Realm might have evolved from these Demon Spirits.

Now that the Demon Spirits were released into Da Qian, it was akin to fishes being released into the water. Riding on the fact that Da Qian was already in chaos, the spread of this epidemic would be accelerated.

'To think about it, the destruction of the Imperial Court and the loss of order in society and even the uprising of power for Wu Yue and Zhang Jin were due to the fact that dream masters were powerful. Now that dream masters had fallen, everything that came with them would be destroyed... Armies would be destroyed and life would be slowly wiped out. This is the uprising of the Demon Spirits. If they are allowed to evolve from a few powerful beings, they would really cause chaos in Da Qian.'

Fang Yuan sighed and knew what the world would become in the near future. "Is this doomsday?"

If dream masters were still around, even if they were weakened, the sages would be able to lead the societies into a period of peace.

However, now that there were no sages and even powerful beings were all either dead or severely injured, the realm had minimal resistance against such foreign attacks. The future was uncertain.

"Let's go!"

Fang Yuan waved his hands.

"Wait a minute! Leave the carriage and the lady behind!"

The surrounding martial artists could no longer hold back. With a shout, they approached Fang Yuan. "Otherwise... Beware of my knife!"

"Really..."

Fang Yuan was speechless. Looking at the elegant but helpless Extreme Darkness, he held his forehead in confusion. "No... I must quickly improve her cultivation. Otherwise, I would really tire out by doing everything myself?"

In reality, Fang Yuan only had himself to blame for all these. If he had allowed Extreme Darkness to keep some of her own powers, she would not have ended up so helpless.

"Tell me! How would you like to die?"

With a solemn look, Fang Yuan gazed at the martial artist.

Suddenly, Fang Yuan could feel a vibration which made his expression change.

"Kid, watch your words!"

The martial artist hollered and suddenly, he froze in the air as he held on to his own throat.

"Boss? Are you okay?"

A martial artist rushed up to investigate what was going wrong.

"Whoosh!"

With a glow of blood, few of their heads started to roll on the ground.

"Hehe!"

This martial artist opened his mouth wide, revealing two tentacle-like arms. With a sticky green fluid around its tentacles, it started to sweep around.

"Demon!"

"He is possessed by the demons!"

The refugees became unsettled and quickly fled in all directions.

"Burp!"

The tentacles started to stretch outwards, about 20 feet long before revealing a sharp tongue within it. With that, it swallowed the corpses on the ground whole.

"Whoosh!"

A small weird-looking egg emerged from the tentacles and it appeared to be looking for a place to hide.

"The disaster of the Demon Spirits!"

Fang Yuan witnessed the entire scene and became vexed.