Chapter 142: Nine Nether

Yilezi was a Taoist Priest, a Taoist Priest who practiced Dao Arts.

The sect he belonged to was a faction called the Nine Nether Sect. This sect first appeared and existed during the chaotic warring period of various states one thousand five hundred years ago. At that time, after the Central Plains experienced the division of Western Wei, the entire imperial court crumbled. Vassal states stood side by side, and every day there was constant war and slaughter, making it akin to the Mortal Realm’s hell.

This was a time when people’s hearts were most easily swayed, and it was also a period when various evil sects and demonic cults emerged endlessly.

The so-called Nine Nether Sect was a heretical cult that grew amidst this warfare, located in the Southwest of the Central Plains, a region where shamanic and divination culture was highly developed at the time.

Its first-generation leader was a great shaman from the Southwest region named Jing Zeyue. Legend said that Jing Zeyue was born with vertical pupils and possessed innate knowledge. By his teens, he had already mastered the shamanic arts passed down since ancient times in the Southwest region, proclaiming himself the Witch King.

Of course, the so-called shamanic arts were merely another name for Dao Arts used by the local mountain people. However, because the mountain people of the Southwest Central Plains lived year-round within the eight-thousand-mile mountain ranges, constantly threatened by various poisonous insects and fierce beasts, the methods and philosophies of shamanic arts cultivation here were completely different from the Dao Arts of the Central Plains Region.

And the Witch King Jing Zeyue’s talent and cultivation in shamanic arts, or rather Dao Arts, were indeed unfathomable.

It was said that back then, he observed the celestial phenomena at night and used shamanic divination arts to deduce that although the world remained turbulent, the true dragon of the Central Plains had already emerged. The various tribes and states of the Southwest, such as Miao, Long, and Yue, were about to face a bloody disaster. So, he united the great shamans of the various tribes at the time and established the Nine Nether Sect, attempting to use shamanic arts to oppose the true dragon.

Relying on Jing Zeyue’s cultivation in shamanic arts and his local prestige, he quickly swayed a large number of ignorant common men and women in the area. The influence of the Nine Nether Sect soon swept across the entire Southwest, and even the chiefs of various minority tribes and the rulers of small states revered him as a deity.

Through the fear and awe brought by shamanic arts, Witch King Jing Zeyue became the true, unchallenged ruler of the entire Southwest.

A few years later, the true dragon he prophesied indeed came to pass. The peerless overlord who founded the three-hundred-year foundation of Eastern Wei, known as the Xi Emperor, emerged spectacularly, and his forces quickly swept across the entire Central Plains.

But when they attacked into the great mountains of the Southwest, they found that Jing Zeyue had long since disappeared into the vast mountains along with the followers and wealth of the Nine Nether Sect. In the end, they could only massacre the various small states and minority tribes of the Southwest, effectively carving out a new territory for Eastern Wei.

No one knew where they went, and no one knew their final fate. But clearly, the Witch King’s purpose in establishing the Nine Nether Sect was not to oppose the Xi Emperor. His true intentions and plans, however, were lost to history, unknown to anyone.

Nevertheless, the heretical nature of the Nine Nether Sect could be glimpsed somewhat when the Central Plains army swept through the Southwest.

The core philosophy of the Nine Nether Sect’s shamanic arts, or rather the shamanic arts mastered by Jing Zeyue, believed that human negative emotions like anger, resentment, and fear were the best sources of power, and the human body was the medium for the human soul and power.

Through various unimaginably cruel torments using insects, swords, ice, fire, etc., a person’s negative emotions could be stimulated. When a person was filled with negative feelings like malice, hatred, and loathing, absorbing their flesh and blood allowed one to inherit the power stimulated within them and absorb their tortured soul from the body.

This was further divided into three schools: soul absorption using beasts, soul absorption using humans, and soul absorption using insects.

This was actually another application method regarding the Life Grove and some principles of the world. However, due to environmental and cultural factors, the Nine Nether Sect’s shamanic arts appeared extremely cruel and brutal.

For example, the Yellow Spring Moth that Yilezi cultivated involved skinning a living person alive, imprisoning them in an iron box, and then using a secret method to drive insects into the box to bite the victim. The more tragic and sorrowful the victim’s life story was before, the higher the success rate of cultivating the Yellow Spring Moth.

Therefore, cultivators often selected those who were born disabled or had tragic life stories, or even deliberately created and tormented unfortunate people beforehand, using them as materials to cultivate the Yellow Spring Moth.

The longer the victim endured inside the iron box, the more powerful the matured Yellow Spring Moth became.

Upon successful cultivation, the Yellow Spring Moth bore a ghostly face that looked like the screaming, struggling visage of the victim before. It could not only fly freely but also became a deadly weapon that obeyed commands effortlessly, capable of sonic wave attacks and devouring metal.

Ultimately, it came down to the fact that the specially cultivated Yellow Spring Moth of the Nine Nether Sect possessed a Life Grove that could absorb human brainwaves. The more intense the emotions, the better the absorption effect. But clearly, compared to positive feelings like excitement, joy, and happiness, obtaining various negative emotions through torture was more efficient.

…

Time returned to the present. Above the Pirate Base, dark, misty clouds descended from the sky. In Zuo Zhicheng’s left eye, these were composed of countless tiny black insects. It was evident that Yilezi had pursued him and had even discovered his location.

Zuo Zhicheng looked down at his clothes and thought to himself, ‘Is it the residual heat from the flames on my body that allowed him to find me using his Spiritual Energy Vision?’

Yilezi’s Dao Arts were bizarre and powerful. In contrast, Zuo Zhicheng had not only sustained internal injuries and temporarily lost his sense of balance, but the Blood Curse was also accelerating, making his limbs increasingly numb and sore.

Everything seemed to be developing in the worst possible direction, but Zuo Zhicheng’s eyes still showed no trace of despair. He simply rolled a few times on the rooftop, then dropped his whole body towards the ground. After hitting the ground, he quickly crawled towards the direction of the warehouse.

A streak of black smoke plunged down from the sky, continuously emitting eerie, screeching sounds, as if it were an aggregate of countless ghosts, vaguely forming Yilezi’s ferocious face.

He scanned towards the warehouse direction, seemingly able to clearly perceive Zuo Zhicheng’s location through his Spiritual Energy Vision.

He circled slightly a few times above the warehouse, gave a faint cold laugh, and then whooshed towards the warehouse door. Countless metallic clashing sounds and sparks erupted where the black cloud made contact with the door.

A few seconds later, the large iron door of the warehouse had been torn open into a big hole by the Yellow Spring Moth. The black cloud, like living swimming fish, squeezed through the hole and flew towards Zuo Zhicheng’s location.

Inside the warehouse, it was pitch black, with goods, weapons, food, and similar items piled haphazardly everywhere. The lack of light, combined with the presence of various obstacles, rendered the naked eye nearly useless here.

However, in the perception of Spiritual Energy Vision, a human figure could still be seen hiding deep within the warehouse, continuously crawling forward. However, as the residual heat faded, the figure in the Spiritual Energy Vision became increasingly faint.

“Can you escape?”

Countless Yellow Spring Moths uttered these words in unison, filled with malice and iciness, like a voice emerging from the depths of the Underworld.

The next moment, the black cloud transformed into a black dragon and charged towards the location of the figure.