"It's over, it's over, everything's over. The True King is truly ruthless!"
Li Jindou was anxious and a bit frantic, "Is it really necessary to seal a demon in a place like the kiln factory?"
He felt the violent energy coming from the direction of the kiln factory. This energy was so powerful that even someone at his level of cultivation felt hopeless.
"Tianqing and Chen Shi are still outside playing, this is bad!"
He almost couldn't suppress the porcelain transformation of his legs, feeling extremely worried, and wanted to get out of bed. With the demon's emergence, all sorts of evil spirits would come out.
In the demon's domain, evil spirits thrive and won't be turned into porcelain, no longer limited to the night.
They would gradually awaken, absorbing the strange power from the demon domain, and start hunting living people.
Li Jindou, though not as well-read as Li Tianqing, had experienced far more and knew how terrifying the emergence of a demon could be.
He had lived through three disasters caused by demon transformations. A demon-level disaster could wipe out a city, leaving few survivors!
Every time a demon transformation occurred, the death toll reached millions!
Luckily, demon-level disasters were rare, mostly just curse-level.
Curse-level was much easier to handle.
Currently, the demon domain was still expanding, and the demonization wasn't deep. The affected ones were usually low-level creatures like flowers, birds, fish, and insects, as well as crops and vegetables, which would turn into porcelain.
After a day, when the demon domain expanded to about a hundred miles, it would stop growing. Then, higher-level creatures like humans and animals would be affected.
They would move slowly and turn into porcelain in two days.
By the fourth day, most people would turn into porcelain, leaving only the cultivators within a hundred miles.
On the seventh day, cultivators who had reached the Divine Fetus Stage would find their divine fetus turning into porcelain, and their bodies would start to as well.
By the eleventh day, the golden core would turn into porcelain.
By the nineteenth day, the nascent soul would turn into porcelain.
By the thirtieth day, the primordial spirit would turn into porcelain.
Li Jindou was sweating profusely. Even though each village had a godmother for protection, she could only help ordinary people and cultivators last two more days.
"With me and the godmother of Yellow Slope Village, we can only hold out for thirty-two days. After that, I'm done for! Oh right, the Heavenly Yang Hermit, there's still the Heavenly Yang Hermit!"
His eyes lit up, and he quickly called out Chen Shi's grandfather's name, but after shouting for a while, no one answered.
Li Jindou immediately used his arms as legs, dragging his porcelain-transformed legs out of the west wing, only to find the Chen house empty except for himself.
"Where is everyone, where did they go?"
He couldn't help but get agitated.
"If no one's home, then I have to go!"
He used his hands to support himself, head down and feet up, moving quickly outside.
At Mirror Lake Manor, one coffin after another opened, and Prince Xiao stepped out, looking up at the sky in surprise. The sky seemed to be covered with a thin red veil, enveloping Heavenly Yang Mountain, with no end in sight from the valley, but the range seemed vast.
Could it be... a demon-level disaster?
His face changed slightly, fully aware of the danger a demon-level disaster posed.
"The demon suppressed by the True King has been released. Who's so reckless?"
His injuries hadn't fully healed, but he reached for his long sword. The small sword transformed into a hairpin size, and Prince Xiao tied up his hair, inserted the hairpin, and walked out.
In a demon transformation, everything within a hundred miles is doomed! For my life, for the lives of people within a hundred miles, I must fight to the death!
In Hillock Village, Granny Sha stared at her rice jar. The rice inside had become heavy, no longer rice, but porcelain rice.
This kind of rice couldn't be eaten.
She went outside, where some cabbage she planted in the corner was now glowing like porcelain.
The little old lady walked out of the village with her hands behind her back, seeing villagers exclaiming one by one as they discovered their food supplies had all turned into porcelain.
With a dark face, Granny Sha reached the fields, seeing porcelain stalks everywhere. A group of New Township Rats stood confused at the field's edge.
In the river, a cormorant caught a fish and tried to swallow it, but spat it out again.
The fish was porcelain too.
"Food has turned to porcelain, we can starve for a day, two days, three days. We can still eat some poultry and exotic beasts. But when they turn to porcelain too, what will we eat?"
Granny Sha's face turned green as she whispered, "Eat people?"
This was almost inevitable!
"Heh heh, a hundred days of demon transformation, this place might be a hundred times more terrifying than the underworld! But..."
The little old lady straightened her back, returned to her house, grabbed the Ram-Horn Heaven Spirit Lamp, and walked out, "I can't fight the underworld, but I can fight you!"
In Fragrant Field Village, Jin Hongying no longer wore a red dress but changed into a floral outfit, looking just like a village girl, losing all her previous heroic and seductive charm.
She looked like a village girl, sitting beside the godmother of Fragrant Field Village, sunbathing with a bowl of rice soup in her hands, with only a few grains of rice.
These days, she had been hiding in Fragrant Field Village to heal her injuries. She had been hurt multiple times, first by Prince Xiao, then by the aura of an old monster in the coffins at Mirror Lake Manor, and again by the sound of Chen Du. Though each injury wasn't severe, together they were significant.
The sunlight seemed to be covered by a red veil, feeling no warmth.
Jin Hongying spat out the rice she tried to eat.
The rice was impossible to chew, feeling like sand in her mouth.
"A demon-level disaster... I've been hiding here in Fragrant Field Village to heal, and my injuries are mostly healed, but now this happens. Damn it! If I hadn't been chasing Prince Xiao, my Divine Mechanism Battalion could still fight the demon! But I was beaten so badly by Prince Xiao..."
She stood up and whispered, "Under a fallen nest, no egg is intact. If I don't get rid of this demon soon, I'll die here too! Thank you, godmother. If I survive, I'll offer incense and offerings to you!"
She walked out, smiling, "If I don't come back, godmother, you don't need to worry about your incense and offerings. Because you won't survive either!"
A demon-level disaster, a hundred miles of desolation, evil spirits rampant, not a soul in sight.
People can't survive, and neither can spirits.
As Jin Hongying approached the kiln factory, Prince Xiao was also heading there.
Their eyes met, though they were enemies, neither made a move, instead walking together towards the kiln factory.
"Today, we won't ask about right or wrong, hold no grudges, and make no plans for the future," Prince Xiao said.
Jin Hongying looked at the towering Eight-Armed Bodhisattva Porcelain Statue and laughed, "That's only for today. If I survive, please return the treasure seal you stole from my Divine Mechanism Battalion, Senior Xiao. Otherwise, I'll have to send you on your way and take it back from your body!"
Prince Xiao replied calmly, "The Western King Imperial Seal isn't a treasure of the Divine Mechanism Battalion but belongs to the Great Ming royal family."
Jin Hongying sneered, "The True King isn't here, so the Western King Imperial Seal has always been kept by the Divine Mechanism Battalion! You stole the seal, plotting something. Don't think I don't know your little scheme!"
Prince Xiao didn't answer.
"Not answering means you admit it!" Jin Hongying shouted.
At this moment, footsteps approached, and Granny Sha came with the Ram-Horn Heaven Spirit Lamp, smiling, "Little girl, you're big, but your temper is bigger. With a great enemy before us, let's put past grudges aside."
"Well said."
Li Jindou came, head down and feet up, and said seriously, "We're not saving the people within a hundred miles now, but saving ourselves! If we can't focus on saving ourselves, then we deserve to die!"
Prince Xiao said, "Saving others is saving oneself, sacrificing oneself is righteousness."
Jin Hongying said, "This demon is still waking up, not at full strength. It won't reach its peak until it assimilates all life within a hundred miles after a hundred days. Now is the best time to kill it!"
The four gathered, and Granny Sha felt a chill, thinking, "Four of us, three are injured, how can we fight? Am I the main force? If Old Man Chen isn't coming, it won't be easy to win."
Just as she thought this, something fell from the sky and shattered on the ground!
It was a porcelain doll, one of the three elders of the Zhao Family Dark Jade Manor, named Zhao Cunsi.
The Dark Jade Manor originally had four elders, and Zhao Cunyi was one of them. But Zhao Cunyi went to Chen Shi's house and never returned.
This Zhao Cunsi had already cultivated his primordial spirit, a master in the Spirit Transformation Realm, yet he turned into a doll and died here.
A jade porcelain demon-subduing staff crashed down, smashing the primordial spirit of another elder, Zhao Cunxiang, into pieces. The massive staff crushed Zhao Cunxiang into mush.
Among the three elders of the Zhao family, Zhao Cunping was the former lord of the Zhao Family Dark Jade Manor, the strongest in cultivation. Yet he flew into the air, too scared to fight, fleeing in panic.
The Zhao family's three elders stayed here, realizing that no one could survive the demon transformation. They stayed to fight the evil bodhisattva, hoping to kill it and give others a chance to live.
But the death of the other two elders scared him, and he fled.
However, he didn't get far before an unexpected arrow struck him.
The arrow carried his body, flying far away, pinning him to a mountain peak, stopping only then.
Prince Xiao looked serious. The arrow, made of porcelain, had such power that it pressured him.
If it were at full strength...
He pursed his lips.
Ahead, several porcelainized human figures, like strange sculptures, appeared before them. These were the Zhao family's Imperial Guards and descendants who couldn't escape during the demon transformation.
Demon transformation differs from the spirit realm. The spirit realm turns people into porcelain dolls, which can move, jump, and speak, while demon transformation turns people into motionless human-shaped porcelain.
The towering evil bodhisattva sat in the forest, with the kiln factory almost flattened around it.
Its body was covered in blue and white porcelain, crafted by the skilled artisans of the Great Ming, with vibrant blue using Sumali Blue. It had intricate patterns and blue dragon designs entwined on its collar and sleeves.
When its head turned, the four faces rotated together, making a sound of gears moving at the neck joint. The mouths of the four faces could open and close, the eyes could blink, and the pupils could move, though a bit stiff.
"What kind of creepy thing did the True King create?" Granny Sha muttered. As soon as she spoke, the blue and white porcelain evil bodhisattva turned its head towards her, its gaze like interwoven lightning. The evil bodhisattva raised its eight arms, with various weapon patterns lighting up.
Underneath the evil bodhisattva, there were three porcelain people, the kiln workers, busy moving around.
They grabbed porcelainized Zhao family members and placed them in a kiln burning with true fire, using them to repair the cracks on the evil bodhisattva.
"Kill the kiln workers first!" Prince Xiao ordered.
Granny Sha took the lead, shouting, "Attack!"
She activated the Supreme Eight Trigrams Protective Technique, and divine light burst forth. The eight trigrams of Qian, Kun, Gen, Li, Kan, Xun, Zhen appeared, transforming into heaven, earth, mountain, lake, fire, water, wind, and thunder.
Her primordial spirit emerged, standing behind her like an imperial woman, with boundless power. The eight trigrams rotated, intertwining with runes, unleashing immense power towards the evil bodhisattva!
At the same time, she raised the Ram-Horn Heaven Spirit Lamp, its light searching for the hiding place of the evil bodhisattva's demon soul!
Prince Xiao summoned his two swords, Jin Hongying unleashed her strongest spell, and Li Jindou activated the Six Yin Jade Wheels, the three attacking the evil bodhisattva!
Suddenly, the three shifted their attacks, swords, spells, and jade wheels aiming directly at the three kiln workers!
On the other side, the surviving Imperial Guards and Zhao family descendants of the Zhao Family Dark Jade Manor escorted the porcelainized Zhao Yanlong, galloping away with the sound of horse hooves echoing.
The edge of the demon domain, like a faint red curtain, continued to expand, but not as fast as the galloping horses.
Soon, the group reached the edge of the demon domain, leaping outward on their horses.
They crashed into the faint red curtain, which wobbled slightly, and they disappeared one after another.
The next moment, terrified screams echoed from above Heavenly Yang Mountain, as many Imperial Guards and Zhao family descendants, along with their horses, fell from the sky, crashing onto rocks, cliffs, and even getting impaled on trees.
The remaining Zhao family descendants and Imperial Guards quickly reined in their horses, not daring to charge towards the demon domain's edge. The edge of the demon domain had a peculiar space, known as the demon domain corridor.
Reaching the edge of the demon domain, it seemed possible to step out, but the next moment, one would find themselves back inside the demon domain.
Leaving the demon domain was nearly impossible.
Third update. Twelve thousand words updated today. There will be a fourth update at six in the afternoon. Please subscribe! Thank you to the supporters of the source, water meter reader, and the leader of the Divine Dynasty for their rewards!