"My enmity with Black Crow amounts to nothing more than disrupting his plan to refine the Blood Demon Cave Heaven. Now that the Blood Demon Cave Heaven is long gone, his hatred toward me is utterly pointless. On the contrary, the various Cave Heavens and Blessed Lands view him as a catastrophic threat — they pursued and cornered him back in the Blood Demon Domain. Though he managed to escape with his life, he was driven to this Broken Sky to eke out a wretched existence. I believe that given the chance, he wouldn't hesitate to sink his teeth into the flesh and blood of those people."
Back then, when Black Crow Divine Monarch had sought to refine the Blood Demon Cave Heaven, had he succeeded, every living soul within it would have fallen under his absolute control. Regrettably, at the critical juncture Yang Kai had intervened and shattered his plans — and that was indeed a grudge deep enough that it could not be easily wiped away.
Still, there were priorities to consider. Yang Kai ruining his scheme was one grudge; the various Cave Heavens and Blessed Lands placing a bounty on his head and hunting him down was another. Between the two, the latter were undoubtedly far more formidable adversaries.
Black Crow Divine Monarch understood this perfectly well — otherwise he wouldn't have gone into hiding here in the Broken Sky.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Perhaps on this matter, the two of them could cooperate briefly. As for the debts between them, those could be settled later. Black Crow had lived for ages and should be able to see reason on this point.
"Either way, I'll go meet Black Crow first. There might be something to gain, and even if there isn't, I lose nothing."
With Yang Kai's decision made, the others had little to say in objection — especially Qu Huachang, who was after all a Disciple of one of the Cave Heavens and Blessed Lands. The Yin-Yang Cave Heaven had taken part in the campaign to hunt Black Crow Divine Monarch as well.
They hurtled onward, chasing the streak of light ahead without letting up.
Throughout this Broken Sky, shattered Spirit Lands lay scattered everywhere — all of them devoid of life, stripped of even the faintest trace of Heavenly Daos. These Spirit Lands had once been part of the great World within the Broken Sky, but a cataclysmic battle long ago had reduced the surrounding Great Domains to fragments. The World that had existed within them was obliterated entirely, broken into pieces large and small.
On one particularly small Spirit Land, numerous figures lay concealed, while powerful guards kept watch along the perimeter.
Without warning, a shrill, blood-curdling scream echoed from deep within the Spirit Land. The sound was enough to make one's skin crawl. The several Mid-Order Open Heaven cultivators standing guard outside couldn't help but shudder, their faces filling with the bleak expression of creatures who knew their own turn could come at any moment.
Every one of them had been a native warrior of the Blood Demon Cave Heaven. When that realm had collapsed, a man calling himself Black Crow Divine Monarch had found them, dissolved the Blood Dao restrictions in their bodies, and led them out of the Blood Demon Cave Heaven.
They had believed themselves reborn — free at last from the cage that had imprisoned their forefathers for countless generations. Little did they know it was merely the beginning of a far more wretched fate.
When they first emerged from the Blood Demon Cave Heaven, none had yet broken through to the Open Heaven Realm. Black Crow Divine Monarch had distributed all manner of resources, accelerating their advancement to the Open Heaven Realm in an astonishingly short time. Thanks to millennia of accumulated foundation and his targeted selection of whom to rescue, the weakest among them had reached the Fourth-Order, with Fifth-Order cultivators commonplace and even a handful at the Sixth-Order. Very few had perished during the breakthrough.
Then Black Crow Divine Monarch had led them on an exhausting journey all the way to this Broken Sky.
Because Black Crow Divine Monarch relished consuming human blood, every so often he required an Open Heaven cultivator to serve as a blood offering. The Broken Sky was lawless and utterly chaotic — murders and robberies were an everyday occurrence. A force as powerful as theirs, roaming the ruins and hunting for suitable prey at opportune moments, had met with considerable success.
Whenever an unlucky Open Heaven cultivator was captured alive, they would be brought back here to serve as a blood offering for Black Crow Divine Monarch.
But this situation could not last forever. Though their strength was formidable, there were inevitably times when fortune turned against them and no targets could be found.
Whenever that happened, Black Crow Divine Monarch would simply select one of them to be his blood offering instead.
Thirty-five people had followed Black Crow Divine Monarch out of the Blood Demon Domain in the beginning. In barely two or three years, only a little over twenty remained. The missing ones had not fallen in battle — they had been drained of every last drop of blood by Black Crow Divine Monarch.
Recently, their luck had been particularly poor. They hadn't managed to capture a single blood offering, so when that scream rang out, they all knew — another companion had drawn the short straw.
Yet now their lives and deaths hung on a single whim of Black Crow Divine Monarch. Even if someone among them surpassed him in cultivation, no one dared so much as raise a finger in defiance.
At this rate, it wouldn't be many years before every last one of them was dead at Black Crow's hands. But what could they do? When Black Crow had released them from their Blood Dao restrictions, he had laid down hidden safeguards. Even after advancing to the Open Heaven Realm, they still couldn't break free of his shackles.
The screaming at their ears didn't last long — after barely a dozen breaths, it gradually faded to nothing. But the Open Heaven cultivators scattered across the broken Spirit Land had grown utterly accustomed to it, their faces blank and wooden.
Someone suddenly cried out, "Someone's coming!"