You said you would practice martial arts. Have you mastered the Tiangang Dharma?

The sand in the Blood Desert was not blown by the wind, but moved on its own on the surface. Each scarlet crystal recorded the remnants of a battle in the past 200,000 years. When twelve scorching suns were hanging in the sky at noon, the sand sea would surge with a boiling war scene. At this moment, the hexagonal crystal crushed by Jiang Qiu's boots was releasing the bloody waves of the seventh era when the tiger and eagle tribes fought for the moon phase.

The air was filled with not only heat waves, but also murderous intent. The mirage condensed into translucent heavy-armored cavalry. Wherever the bronze horse hooves stepped, the sound of real organs breaking could be heard in the sandstorm. These illusions were more dangerous than the real entities. When the afterimage of an Eagle warrior swung a halberd, a deep wound appeared on Jiang Qiu's left shoulder. In the desert, even memories can hurt people.

The sand dunes suddenly collapsed into a funnel shape, and there was a dense sound of bones grinding against each other underground. Hundreds of bronze skeletons emerged from the sand, with green demonic fire dancing in their eye sockets and new flesh and blood growing on their spines. This was the "war-forged breeding nest" set up by the lion tribe. The remains of the dead were reassembled deep in the gravel, waiting to be re-injected with combat consciousness by the obsidian pyramid.

The twelve obsidian pyramids standing on the horizon were actually giant living weapons cultivated by the lion tribe. Under the scorching sun, the golden lines on the surface of the pyramids were like blood vessels beating, and the beams of light ejected from the top of the towers were absorbing the war spirits wandering in the air. Jiang Qiu licked his cracked lips and tasted the rusty spiritual energy - this was the energy waste gas released when the pyramids digested the ancient residual souls.

The base of the pyramid was covered with honeycomb-like holes, and each hole imprisoned a "war priest". These half-human, half-lion monsters were covered in sand crystals, with only the vocal organs in their throats exposed. When they chanted in unison, the sand condensed into cuneiform characters of the "Blood War Code" in the air, and each character that fell left a burning inscription on the ground.

The moment Jiang Qiu touched one of the pyramids, the skin on his palm began to automatically write strange memories: the ritual of the third lion king using millions of fighting spirits to refine the Sun Wheel Sword, and the solar eclipse caused by the blade being unsheathed lasted for a full forty-nine days. The blood beads oozing from the stone wall suddenly turned into a small scorpion, and its tail needle pierced Jiang Qiu's wrist with trembling ecstasy - this was the special way for the lion tribe to welcome guests.

Following the quicksand vortex and diving three hundred feet underground, the temperature rose to an incredible level. The sand layer formed an amber-like war specimen library: the explosive wolf pack that was eternally frozen in the moment of self-destruction, the black tortoise armor formation that maintained a siege formation, and the twin demon cores of the phoenix and the phoenix that were fusing. Each piece of amber continued to replay the moment of death, and the wails and roars formed an ultrasonic storm in the confined space.

Jiang Qiu's dragon tail accidentally brushed against a piece of amber, and he was immediately dragged into the seventh illusion. His skin, which had turned into gravel, witnessed the end of the ancient demon general: his right eye saw his heart pierced by a trident, and his left eye watched the bloody battle flag rising in the enemy camp. The experience of death from a dual perspective almost shattered his demon core. When he broke free, he found that three hours had passed in the real world, and the white hair on his temples proved that time erosion was real.

The dark river changed its course at this time, and the hot blood sand like magma broke the ancient seal. A giant mechanical corpse the size of a mountain was washed out, and the three thousand gears in its chest were still running, and mercury flowed in the rusted bronze blood vessels. When Jiang Qiu's blood dripped on the rune array on its forehead, the remains of the soldier demon suddenly opened the single eye inlaid with a red moon - the fighting spirits of the entire desert were kneeling in this direction.

This is the case with the fourth illusion. The desert becomes more dangerous after nightfall. The wailing of the cooling sand gave birth to the "Night Fighting Spirits". These ghost armies materialized by the temperature difference are reenacting the battle for the sacred Jianmu tree. Jiang Qiu witnessed the moonlight arrow rain summoned by the fox illusionist and the sound waves of the lion blood roar warrior collided. The aftermath of the two ancient sorcery is still tearing the space apart.

At midnight, the Black Pyramid began to "ruminate". The fighting spirits absorbed during the day were decomposed into raw energy and shot toward the starry sky through the light column at the top of the pyramid. However, there were always stubborn remnants of souls that broke free, and these fragments with deep obsessions attached to the gravel, giving birth to "resentful sand soldiers" - they used magma to condense weapons and attack all living things just to continue their fighting hunger in their previous lives.

The third tail of a certain nine-tailed fox in the fourth illusion automatically protected its master at this moment, and the fox fire burned a protective array in the sand. What emerged from the center of the array was not a flame, but the afterimage of a certain ancient fox general. When he and Jiang Qiu faced off against the endless stream of resentful sand soldiers back to back, they found that the sword moves they performed were completely in sync - the blood resonance spanning three thousand years made the moonlight bloom the first white flower in the desert.

There is also a "memory resonance layer" buried deep in the desert, where the gravel has quantum entanglement properties. When Jiang Qiu crushed the red sand engraved with the eagle totem in his palm, a sand dune three hundred miles away collapsed, revealing a giant eagle bone pierced by chains - this is the remains of the ancient eagle commander Garuda, and each of its feathers infiltrated by sand crystals is releasing a gravitational vortex.

The Lion Clan used this characteristic to build a "war sand table". In the spherical space at the core of the pyramid, millions of grains of sand were suspended and rotated like a galaxy, each linked to a specific war spirit. The priests used tuning forks to adjust the resonance frequency, and they could summon the phantom of the army of the corresponding era. At this moment, the sand table was reenacting the "Fenhai Battle" at the end of the Fourth Era. Jiang Qiu saw the dragon and phoenix made of sand biting each other in a space the size of a palm, but the energy that exploded actually burned Jiang Qiu's eyelashes.

The world of the fourth illusion is magical. Creatures that are exposed to the radiation of the fighting spirit for a long time will be infected with a demonic plague called "blood rust disease". Bronze rust spots appeared on Jiang Qiu's fingernails. This is an early symptom - metal ions are crystallizing in the blood. The exile tribe in the eastern desert regards this as a gift from God: their bones grow jagged blades, their eyelids are replaced by iron sand, and the sparks emitted when breathing can ignite a group of scorpions ten feet away.

At the Rusted Bone Market, caravans are trading diseased organs with fragments of battle spirits. A deer demon cut out his own completely steeled heart in exchange for a crystal bottle containing three hundred eagle arrow spirits. The heart turned into a bronze bell the moment it was separated from the body, and after the buyer inserted it into his chest, arrow tattoos immediately appeared on his skin. This cruel symbiotic system constitutes an evolutionary tree unique to the desert.

At noon, the mirage condenses into "memory punishment pillars". These translucent crystals will execute infinite cycles of punishment on specific fighting spirits: Jiang Qiu witnessed a wolf general being repeatedly beheaded, and the executioner would change the torture instruments after each rebirth. This is the spiritual weapon of the lion tribe, which weakens the fighting power of its tribe in the world by torturing the war memories of key figures.

Even more bizarre is the phenomenon of "mirror torture". When the tiger queen in the torture column was skinned for the seventh time, the newborn tiger cubs in reality suddenly screamed, and the same wounds appeared on their backs. As a result, countless alien spies crawled on the sand. They carried jellyfish-like creatures that recorded images, trying to interfere with the causal law of the torture column by self-mutilation - until they were torn to pieces by patrolling sand blade scorpions.

The hot wind of the desert carries painful memories in stereo. When Jiang Qiu put his earlobe against the hot sand, his skull was filled with a multi-layered hell of sound: the surface was the physical sound of swords colliding and war drums; the middle layer reverberated with the spiritual fluctuations of dying curses and pleas for mercy; the bottom layer was surging with the elegy of the mines when the weapons were born and the gnawing sounds of fungi when the armor decayed. The lion tribe "wind talkers" used this characteristic to transform their own throats. Their vocal cords evolved into sand vibrators that could intercept war noises of specific frequencies to attack the enemy. When a wind talker demonstrated to Jiang Qiu, the sound waves emitted from his throat plowed gullies in the sand, and what rose from the gullies was actually a mixture of the remains of black iron weapons and demon bones - the ultimate form of sound waves materialized.

Another magical thing is that under the shadow of the black pyramid, the "Valley of Buried Soldiers" is undergoing a strange transformation. The piles of broken weapons are growing blood and flesh, teeth are sprouting from the cuts of broken swords, and bowstrings are entangled into nerve bundles. The most disturbing thing is the giant axe inserted into the sandstone. The beating heart can be seen in the cracks of the axe face, and every beat causes the sand waves within a radius of a hundred feet to twitch.

This is the birth site of the "weapon monster". When the killing memory carried by a weapon exceeds the critical point, it will backfire on its original purpose. Jiang Qiu witnessed the awakening of a snake spear: it first pierced the statue of its holder, then strangled all nearby metal products, and finally used the devoured weapons to combine into a centipede-like body. The lion tribe allowed this change, as they believed that the war was complete only when the weapons participated in the war on their own.

However, Jiang Qiu discovered that the ultimate secret of the desert ecosystem is to convert war energy into edible substances. At night, "blood dew grass" drilled out from the sand cracks. These half-plant, half-animal creatures feed on sound waves, and berries with concentrated war cries hang between their leaves. At dawn, sand lizards began to lick the condensed murderous aura on weapons, and their scales evolved into sharp edges like daggers.

In the "Blood Banquet Hall" at the bottom of the pyramid, the lion nobles were enjoying the top war echoes. The waiter used the leg bones of the thunder beast to strike the bronze chimes, and the notes that fell off condensed into the sound wave entity of "Phoenix Nirvana" on the plate, and the taste of alternating flames and ashes was in the mouth. When Jiang Qiu swallowed the solid sound waves of "Ten Thousand Cavalry Charge", his eardrums spontaneously played a triumphal march, and the blood and tears that overflowed from the corners of his eyes carried the aroma of gunpowder.

When the moon wheel in the Burial Valley changed into a gear-like shape, the first bronze spear cried like a baby. This ancient weapon, inlaid with seventeen crystals of war spirits, was piercing its barbed roots deep into the sandstone. When Jiang Qiu arrived at the mouth of the valley, the entire canyon was already filled with pulsating metal blood vessels, and those rusty spear shafts were swaying like wheat ears in the night wind - they were waiting for the "Master Devouring Moment" at three quarters of the midnight hour.

The lion patrol had obviously underestimated the crisis. The leading centurion wielded a lightning whip to lash out at the restless swords, unaware that this action had activated the weapons' last memory of humiliation. The broken sword that was hit suddenly rose up, and the serrated mouthparts of the cracked handle bit his wrist, while the blade spontaneously performed the seven-style "Wind-Slashing Sword Technique". When the centurion's heart was pierced by his own sword, 100,000 weapons simultaneously emitted high-frequency vibrations, and the sound waves carved a declaration of rebellion on the sandstone surface.

The core of the riot was the remains of the "Weapon Demon God" soaked in the blood fountain. Inside its bronze skull, the weapon spirit that was sealed three thousand years ago was being reorganized. Jiang Qiu witnessed the formation of a steel placenta in its chest, and each rib became an umbilical cord for transporting liquid metal. When it tore open its abdominal armor, it did not drop its internal organs, but countless micro-weapon embryos - these metal life forms that looked like scorpions and tigers, frantically gnawing at the corpses on the sand when they landed.

The most terrifying evolution occurred at midnight. The Soldier Demon God inserted his palm into the base of the black pyramid and extracted the spirit of the war priest imprisoned inside. The moment those half-lion, half-human monsters were sucked dry, their skin quickly hardened into armor plates, becoming the first batch of "humanoid soldier monsters". Their vocal cords evolved into copper whistles, and the whistling sound could resonate and explode all metal objects within 300 miles.

The "war terracotta warrior breeding nest" that the lion tribe was proud of became an arsenal for weapon monsters. When bronze skeletons were implanted with weapon embryos, the "skeleton blade monsters" that were born had both killing wisdom and immortality. Jiang Qiu witnessed them besieging the black pyramid from the top of the sand dune: the bone-winged archers used ribs as arrows in the air, and the ground commandos disassembled the vertebrae into chain blades, and even knew how to use skulls to form a temporary shield formation.

The defensive runes on the surface of the pyramid began to flow backwards. The spells that were originally used to suppress the fighting spirit were transformed into self-destruction programs by the soldier monster. The spire of a pyramid suddenly bent, like a blooming metal flower, and each petal was spraying rusty mist. When the lion nobles fled in panic, their gorgeous clothes inlaid with fighting spirit crystals became a fatal burden - the residual soul in the gem was being summoned by the soldier monster to counterattack.

The enslaved diseased people became allies of the rebels. The leader of the Rusted Bone Tribe removed his spine, revealing the high-speed rotating serrated sword spine. These exiles who were alienated by the blood rust disease had a strange resonance with the weapon monsters: their metal bones could change the form of cold weapons at will, and the festering wounds sprayed acid barrages. When the leader inserted his arm into the sand, the spikes on the entire battlefield grew his fingerprints.

The blood rust on Jiang Qiu's left hand worsened at this moment. The protruding gears under the skin bit through the flesh, and a three-foot-long chain blade extended from the fingertips. The remains of the Soldier Demon God summoned Jiang Qiu across the sandstorm, and those micro embryos whispered in his consciousness: "You are a breathing weapon." The fox fire suddenly exploded in his dantian, and he barely suppressed the urge to transform his eyeballs into a scope.

The unusual movement from the towering Jianmu tree exacerbated the chaos. Among the twelve natal moon phases hanging from the canopy of Jianmu, the "Fiery Sun Moon Wheel" representing the Lion Clan was being entangled by mechanical vines. The soldier monsters used some unknown means to connect the metal root system of the Burial Valley with the Jianmu ground vein. Every time the moon wheel gear turned one degree, tens of thousands of ancestral weapons of the monster clan rebelled in various places.

Jiang Qiu discovered a more shocking truth in the wreckage of the pyramid: the red moon gem on the forehead of the soldier demon god was actually the same as the sacred object of the Jiao clan in the Wuxiang Sea. The mercury flowing in the bronze veins clearly carried the mark of the Jiao clan's forbidden technique "Ten Thousand Scales of One Core". Behind this rebellion, there is a hidden revenge of the Sea Kingdom on the thousand-year-old grudge of the desert.

In the darkest moment before dawn, the soldier monster completed its ultimate evolution. A steel flower bud rose in the center of the Buried Soldier Valley. After the layers of armor peeled off, a "war lotus" made of 100,000 pieces of weapons was revealed. Sitting inside was no longer a machine, but a metal monster fetus with the face of a lion prince - this was a hybrid king carefully cultivated by the rebellion leader, and his umbilical cord was connected to the central nervous system of all the soldier monsters.

The final killing move of the lion tribe high priest was to awaken the remains of the ancient thunder beast buried deep in the sand sea. When the thunder and lightning collided with the metal frenzy, Jiang Qiu saw the enchanting beauty of the essence of war: the thunder gave birth to lightning elves on the blade, the broken spear grew into metal red willow in the sandstorm, and even the mercury blood flowing from the soldier monster was writing a new martial arts secret book on the sand. (End of this chapter)