The moment he said that, the children trembled. Some of them were awake.
The nauseating stench of the pit wafted through the air, along with the insects that burrowed into the bodies of some of the children.
As a centipede crawled across a child's face, the boy gritted his teeth hard, summoning all his courage to scream out, "Demon! You are a demon! Curse you and everything you do! You will never succeed, you filth—" Before he could finish his sentence, Zhang Yu had already hoisted him up by the throat.
"You talk too much," he said, severing the boy's tongue with the sickle from the youth's own basket.
Blood splattered, and a horrific shriek erupted from the child as he convulsed violently. His eyes rolled back, and he was drenched in a cold sweat. Feeling his life force ebbing away with the mounting blood loss, he lost consciousness.
Zhang Yu stared at him for a moment before deciding to slit his throat to silence him permanently.
The children who were awake watched, frozen in their places. Their mouths hung open, and their hearts raced as if the drums of death were beating. Their body temperatures spiked rapidly, and sweat poured from them.
It felt as though the Grim Reaper himself was approaching. That was how every child Zhang Yu turned toward felt.
He approached another child, whose eyes brimmed with terror and tears. He grabbed the boy's mouth and squeezed, then gripped his tongue and pulled brutally until his throat tore. Not satisfied, he raised the sickle and slit his throat before finally tossing him aside.
Blood erupted from the previous child's mouth, spraying onto Zhang Yu and his face. This only added to the horror, combined with the smell of blood mixed with the rot inside the pit.
He approached each child one by one, slitting their throats, leaving them unable to do anything but wait for death with patience and terror...
Now, he stood in the center. He took out glass bottles and began drawing channels on the ground.
The lines he drew were chaotic, with no real defined pattern, except that they all converged toward a single bottle in the center.
"Let's start with the first," Zhang Yu said calmly. He approached one of the children—a girl.
She was unconscious, having fainted from sheer terror after wetting herself, mucus trailing from her nose and mixing with her tears.
Griping the sickle, he stabbed into her chest, ripping it open until her heart, which was nearly bursting, was exposed. Zhang Yu grabbed it and pulled violently, causing the girl to erupt like a fountain of blood.
The heart gave its final few beats in Zhang Yu's hand as he made a deep incision in it, letting the blood flow toward a bottle. Once the bottle was full, he squeezed the heart dry and tossed it away.
The terror was gone; the fear had vanished. All the children were unconscious, as if they had surrendered and offered their bodies willingly.
Zhang Yu smiled and began extracting the heart blood of every child present. When he finished, twelve bottles filled with the heart blood of these children stood before him.
"Only two bottles left," he said, as his hand stabbed into his own chest!
His blood vessels and nerves screamed, sending a horrific sensation of pain to Zhang Yu's brain. However, he chose to ignore it. To him, physical pain was a luxury.
As he grasped his own heart, he made a cut and filled the thirteenth bottle. After a while, he finished, his eyes bloodshot and his body trembling with shock. But thanks to his miraculous healing ability, the wound closed quickly, as if nothing had happened.
He returned to the channels and poured the bottles of the children's heart blood one by one, placing the final empty bottle in the center where all the channels converged.
He waited patiently until the last bottle was half-filled with blood that leaned toward black. It no longer looked like blood, but rather a revolting liquid. Zhang Yu picked up the bottle and sniffed it; it was disgusting, a mix of the pit's rot, the earth, and gore.
He poured half a bottle of his own heart blood into the final bottle, making it a mixture of the children's blood and his own.
"The decisive step," he thought.
He sat on the ground at the center of the channels. He drank a few drops of the blood mixture; as soon as it entered his mouth, it boiled. Zhang Yu trapped the blood vapor inside him and swallowed. On its way to his stomach, the vapor tainted everything it touched.
"The first step is complete."
He drew some blood and painted patterns onto his body. All the patterns pointed toward a word he had written on his sternum, ending near it without touching it.
"Manifest!" Zhang Yu's thoughts screamed.
Slowly, the blood inside the bottle vibrated. In fact, even the blood splattered from the children's corpses and the remaining blood from his own heart rose in the form of droplets.
The droplets converged slowly, trembling, then gathered upon the patterns. After moving toward the sternum area, the mixed blood vibrated violently, then struck the word drawn on his chest with force.
This caused Zhang Yu's own blood and the drawn patterns to boil. Blood rose slowly from his body, enveloping him.
Zhang Yu lost consciousness.
With a nearly imperceptible lightness, a very small rock vibrated.
"Interesting," a faint voice emerged from it. Without any commotion, it darted toward the blood bubble enveloping Zhang Yu.
"The sky burned and was torn asunder. A thousand pieces of the void were split."
"Who is it that divides the world, who is it that illuminates the universe?"
"The hand of death reached high, pierced, then stabbed."
"The lands melted, the core of life shattered."
Zhang Yu, appearing as a small child, was trembling. There was no shelter, no life, no earth, no sky. Just a small, shivering child, so terrified he had lost the will to live. He did not move; he made no sound; his eyes were wide open.
Suddenly, against his will, his head jerked up. In that same moment, the child Zhang Yu's eyes contracted. Blood vessels spread and burst!
What he saw was the sky on fire. It was split into exactly a thousand pieces, and through the largest gap, a hand stabbed into the earth.
It wasn't a metaphor—the sky was literally burning. The flames were not ordinary; they were transparent, producing the heat of ten suns.
There was no smell; in fact, he couldn't breathe. The ground beneath him was molten, lava boiling and erupting in blasts that shot toward the cracks in the sky, attempting to melt the hands.
He floated above the magma, unaffected by it.
His ears were bleeding; he had lost his hearing from the start. The sound of the sky burning was not something ordinary words could describe, nor something a child could endure.
In that moment, piercing through his deafened ears, came the sounds of agony—cries for help, curses, and torture.
His trembling intensified. He wanted to speak, but the words stopped at his lungs, not even daring to rise to his throat.
What he saw next was on another level.
Very quietly, from within the earth's magma, a figure rose slowly. His features were blurred, as was his form, but he was certainly a human male. From his actions, he seemed indifferent. He yawned as he casually moved his hand upward.
The world went out! There was no sound, no image, no smell, nothing. Just a force that pulled the world into nothingness.
Then, with a snapping sound, it exploded again!
This time, it was a natural world—beautiful, even. Its sky was bright, and the ground was grassy and fragrant. That figure vanished.
Suddenly, the color of the world changed. It became crimson. Like water droplets sliding down glass, blood slid from the sky to the earth like rivers from above.
Zhang Yu's vision was no longer normal; it was filled with red mist and a sharp scent. Before his eyes, in a majestic sight, all living beings rose toward the sky, including him.
He rose from the ground slowly until he passed the clouds and the boundaries of the sky, only to be stunned by the sight of a figure. It was very blurry, yet it felt hauntingly familiar.
Every nerve in his body screamed when he caught a glimpse of the figure's gaze. It was frigid—in fact, the figure looked annoyed by boredom.
Beneath him, trillions of living beings gathered. He lowered his finger, and they contracted into themselves and exploded!
Zhang Yu was no exception. He felt his body compressing; his eyeballs popped and exploded. He became a single mass of flesh, which later exploded to become a sphere of his own blood, bone, and meat.
There was no pain; he only felt that the permission for his existence had been revoked.
Afterward, he heard the same voice from the beginning:
"Nine Holiness, he did not and will not reach. Far, far away, was his thought."
"The universes did not desire him, so they crushed him, and he did not dare."
"A thousand hands and a thousand swords, one step to cleave existence."
Silence fell.
In the pit, the blood sphere that enveloped Zhang Yu had evaporated, leaving behind a skeleton with some flesh remaining on it. However, the flesh quickly multiplied, covering the bones and rebuilding his body.
With a powerful throb, blood began to flow through him once more. After some time, Zhang Yu woke up.
"That was wonderful. This formation is very successful at extracting soul memories. Moreover, it requires no energy! It is energy itself. Of course, it wouldn't work unless I was the one who crafted it."
"The will of the body has been dissipated, and it has been purified of its impurities. Now, I can proceed with my cultivation without obstacles!"
Zhang Yu was happy, while a small random rock crumbled into dust. He didn't notice it, but an aura transferred from it to somewhere else.
"Terrifying!"
"Whatever he did, it is by no means ordinary."
"But he is extremely weak now. It doesn't matter."
"Let's see... I won't do anything against him now, so I hope you accept my gift to you, haha," a voice muttered.
With a leap, Zhang Yu moved outside. Without looking back, he quickened his pace and moved through the forest.
"It's time to head to the Ming Wu Sect!"
"It's far, so I'll have to pass through several cities first. During that time, I will establish my cultivation."
Zhang Yu was light as he crossed the trees and stepped on the grass. When he grew hungry, he hunted and ate. He continued his routine, and the moon and sun continued to trade places until half a month had passed.
Night fell gently this time, with a slight cool breeze. The air moved the leaves of the trees and caressed the hair of the seated Zhang Yu.
Zhang Yu felt the coolness on his face, opened his eyes, and exhaled. His eyes pulsed with indifference as red air escaped his mouth.
"My techniques are suitable for this body now. All that remains is to merge the energy center."
"Let's start with the lower heart; it's perfectly suited to my condition."
As soon as he said that, the air around Zhang Yu transformed and floated around him in rings. Bit by bit, the air grew denser and turned crimson. This was because Zhang Yu's blood was seeping from his pores and evaporating.
"It's a pity that one cannot merge their energy center alone without sacrificing something. An energy center cannot be merged without an 'event.' But that is a matter for self-taught cultivators; I can use an external event to merge it, and that is all," Zhang Yu thought, as the air around him became like a bloody mist.
"Once the energy center is merged, blood—or any medium related to the cultivation technique—will become the foundation. Some techniques make a person's flesh or bones the medium; they have their advantages, but they don't suit me."
"After that, sensing and absorbing energy will be instantaneous."
"None of this matters right now. I must reach the first drop!"
The air became extremely heavy, a deep, dark red. That was when the bloody mist exploded, heading back toward his pores. It clung to his body; his skin turned red, cracked, and his blood flowed out as he replaced it with the mist, which rushed in as soon as the blood exited.
The process was painful, but Zhang Yu's facial expression did not change.
When all the bloody mist had entered, Zhang Yu flexed his muscles and squeezed his body. This caused the mist inside him to swirl, increasing the chances of it colliding with the energy heart.
Time passed slowly until the sun had completely set. Then, laughter could be heard in one area of the forest.
"The first drop!" a young man shouted, draped in various scattered entrails and pieces of flesh. It looked as if his flesh had exploded from within.
The air constantly tried to push the sickening stench away, so the smell of iron and rot spread around Zhang Yu's area.
Now, Zhang Yu felt complete control over his body. He felt something constantly entering his body and condensing. The feeling was overwhelming, as if he were soaked on an extremely cold night.
Immediately, the first drop dissolved into his energy heart. His body shook, and the bloody mist transformed and condensed rapidly, heading for his energy heart, which accelerated the process.
After a while, he had a drop again.
Only then did Zhang Yu breathe a sigh of relief. The scent entered his nose—the smell of the cool breeze mixed with rust and something like aged wood.
Zhang Yu didn't care; instead, he looked at a wolf in front of him. It was hungry, looking crazily at the flesh scattered around Zhang Yu.
Zhang Yu's look was different—it wasn't cold. "You want the meat? Go on, take it." Zhang Yu grabbed a piece and threw it. Before it hit the ground, the wolf had lunged forward and taken it in its mouth.
Zhang Yu leaned on his knees after he had fully healed and stood up. He looked at the wolf eating eagerly, then slowly... until it finished.
"Finished? I hope it was a wonderful meal!" Zhang Yu said warmly. Then he suddenly clenched his fist. "Since I fed you from my flesh, it's time for you to feed me from yours!"
The wolf's eyes rolled back, and it shivered. Its body convulsed as if someone were striking it from the inside. With increasing fluctuations, its blood and flesh tissues burned; its body was squeezed and compressed until it was completely crushed.
Before it died completely, it let out a weak howl, seemingly trying to plead with Zhang Yu.
It happened just as Zhang Yu closed his fist. "It is foolish to eat something that contains my blood, my poor dear wolf." He exhaled and stepped toward the wolf. "I consumed the drop I just produced, huh..."