Gentlemen, it's time to enter the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls.

Chapter 211 Underground Shadow
The red-banded snake swam around in the pool a few times, and it wasn't that there wasn't a single piece of remains to be seen.

At the bottom of the pool were many scattered items, which looked like torn and rotten clothes, or fragments of broken shackles, as well as some inconspicuous bone fragments...

All of this shows that there were indeed corpses that fell here, but the bodies should have been taken away, leaving only these inconspicuous fragments to settle down.

The question is, who is collecting these bodies?
The red-banded snake crawled out of the pool and searched for direction.

Sure enough, not far away was a wide passage leading into the depths. However, the ground was all solid rock, and there were no footprints to be found.

Chen Ye couldn't tell whether the people handling the corpses here were humans or demons, but since he was already here, how could he not find out?

The red-banded snake began to slither through the underground passage, its movements flickering.

Chen Ye's Fire Serpent Hell technique is very strange. The Crimson Fire Serpent has almost become Chen Ye's clone, sharing all his senses. And wherever the fire serpent sees, it can summon a new fire serpent.

They moved forward with their lights flashing, as if afraid of any traps along the way.

But Chen Ye seemed to be overthinking things. He walked a hundred feet through the winding tunnel without any problems, and instead saw many exposed cinnabar ore deposits. Large patches of crimson ore appeared, and the deeper he went, the deeper the crimson color became.

"It really is a goldmine."

Chen Ye didn't know much about geology, but the cinnabar mines he had seen along the way were enough for the Yellow Spring Sect to mine for ten years, and the winding passage in front of him seemed to have no end in sight.

It seems the Mirage Sect's map was indeed correct; there is indeed a rich underground mine here. The cinnabar extracted here is enough for the Yellow Spring Sect to use for several hundred years.

Although this depth is somewhat abnormal, it has little impact on the spirits, since spirits can fly and are not afraid of suffocation.

But Chen Ye was not at ease, as he had not yet found out what exactly was collecting the corpses.

Even if the corpse mutated and rose up on its own, there should still be traces.

"Wait...no way?"

Chen Ye's Crimson Fire Serpent suddenly shrank in size because he saw several staggering figures ahead.

There were still traces of water on the ground that hadn't completely dissolved, and the red-banded snake could still smell the blood and stench of decay.

"It really is a zombie?!"

The corpses that fell into the pool turned into zombies and then moved forward along this passage on their own?

Turning a corpse into a zombie isn't something that can be done by simply drawing a talisman. It took Chen Ye several days to refine Mo Ci's corpse, and even then, he only managed to get the corpse to barely understand the bell and act accordingly.

For a corpse to refine itself and follow a fixed route, there must be a unique formation within the pool. And it must be so ingeniously designed that Chen Ye hadn't even noticed it.

Not everyone who practices corpse refining is a demon, but most corpse refiners are demons. Only the demonic sects need a large number of living and dead people to practice their skills.

Could it be that a group of demons are hiding deep underground, just waiting for the imperial city to kill people and feed them to them?

Chen Ye was taken aback. Hadn't the Mirage Sect investigated this place? How come they couldn't find the demon's existence?

With too many questions to answer, Chen Ye could only shrink the Crimson Serpent to its smallest size and cautiously follow behind the drenched zombies.

However, Chen Ye did not wait for the zombies to reach their destination.

Chen Ye then heard a loud shout: "Where did this junior come from? Prepare to die!"

A large, skin-like hand suddenly appeared and reached out to grab Chen Ye.

Before they even touched the rotting, bleeding hand, layers of bloody light pressed down, and the zombies couldn't withstand it, turning into pus by the bloody light.

Chen Ye felt a chill run down his spine. This skinning, bloody hand was coming with a fierce attack and was no ordinary method.

The thin, red-stringed snake instantly transformed into a giant python, opening its mouth to spew out a condensed, tangible crimson flame that collided violently with the descending blood light.

The blood and flames collided, both invisible, yet they resembled two raging waves clashing, producing a deafening roar.

Where blood and fire mingled, a hissing sound rang out, and a foul-smelling mist of blood rose up.

After his initial attack failed, the man exclaimed in surprise, "A red-banded snake?!"

Chen Ye was not going to be polite. In the blink of an eye, the fire snake split into two, and then into four. The enormous snake body filled the entire passage, and endless flames spewed out from the snake's mouth and body, filling every crevice.

Under the endless scorching flames, the blood hand had no way to avoid it and could only use its magic power to withstand the attack.

In a short while, the blood disappeared, and the hand was burned so badly that the skin and flesh were charred black and sizzling.

But the creature underground seemed utterly fearless. A sinister laugh rang out, and its bloody hand spread its five fingers wide, revealing a hideous, bloody gash in its palm, spewing out thick, sticky blood.

This blood plasma seemed to be highly poisonous blood flowing from the Nine Netherworld Blood Pool; not only could it not be burned by flames, but it would also sizzle and smoke when it landed on the Crimson Serpent.

Chen Ye felt the pain deeply, as if he himself had been subjected to the agony of being skinned alive.

This slight pain only made Chen Ye frown slightly. When he used the Qi Refining Technique to temper his body, he first refined his bone marrow, which was a true pain that penetrated to the very marrow. Compared to that, this fleshly pain was nothing. The Crimson Serpent underground was mostly dissolved by the blood plasma, revealing its bare bones, but it vanished in an instant without leaving a trace.

The person in the shadows let out a puzzled hum and stepped out from a crimson shadow.

"How could it not even have any flesh or bones left? Isn't this a spirit beast of the Crimson Serpent Demon Sect?"

The man was dressed in a blood-red robe and had no hair on his head. He was not only bald, but he also had no eyebrows. His bald head and pale, wrinkled skin made him look like a corpse that had been soaking in water for too long.

The man searched everywhere for traces of the red-banded snake, but in the end he only found pus left behind after the corpses had melted.

Just as he was wondering, the man looked up and gazed into the distance of the passage.

In the darkness, several lights appeared.

Several more red snakes, as thick as buckets, appeared at the other end of the passage, rushing rapidly towards the direction where the strange man was.

"The Crimson Serpent Demon Sect is dead, so where did all these Crimson Serpents come from?!"

The strange man once again swung his blood-red hand, blocking the entire passage and spitting out more blood plasma towards the red-banded snakes.

The red-banded serpent's flames were completely unable to withstand the blood plasma, and it was once again engulfed by the blood plasma, eventually turning into nothingness.

But the red-banded snakes were endless; new ones kept emerging from the other end of the passage, fearless and charging forward wave after wave.

He could summon red snakes wherever his eyes fell. Chen Ye only needed to leave a small snake on the road to serve as his eyes and summon new red snakes.

From the very beginning of this battle of wits, Chen Ye was in an unassailable position.

Now it's a matter of whose spiritual energy runs out first!
The red-banded serpents were endless, as if this passage was connected to the hell of fire serpents, and the source could not be blocked no matter what.

At first, the strange man was able to handle it with ease, and the blood in his bloody hand seemed endless, but he couldn't hold on for more than the time it takes for an incense stick to burn before he started to feel the strain.

The fire serpent showed no signs of diminishing, but the blood gushing from the bloody hand had noticeably decreased.

The number of crimson fire serpents increased, and they rushed closer and closer, until one crimson fire serpent, now reduced to half a head, rushed onto the blood hand and opened its blood-red maw to bite down hard.

Blood Hand, in pain, began to convulse wildly, its five fingers tightening to crush the red snake into a pulp.

But more red-banded snakes rushed in, their venomous fangs biting into the bloody hand.

The hairless, blood-robed monster let out a scream, as if it were feeling the pain itself, and quickly withdrew its bloody hand, disappearing back into the shadows.

Chen Ye wanted to give chase, but the red-striped snake slithered underground for several times, only finding a maze-like cinnabar vein, and could not find the strange man's figure anywhere.

However, it wasn't entirely without discoveries. Chen Ye found several huge rooms in this underground mine, filled with many strange formations, as well as many severed limbs that hadn't been destroyed, furnace fires that hadn't been extinguished, and even a furnace of blood pills that hadn't been fully refined.

It seems this is indeed the hideout of that demon, and there should be more than one demon. Chen Ye searched around and found that the daily necessities were all in complete sets, indicating that there are at least a dozen demons living underground.

And this is only the area that Chen Ye has explored so far.

These underground passages are interconnected, and Chen Ye has no idea how much of them he has passed through.

Unfortunately, these villains all ran too fast, and Chen Ye didn't manage to capture a single one alive.

Chen Ye sighed, recalled the Crimson Serpent, and then said to Lan Yu, "We're in trouble. I've not only discovered cinnabar mines underground, but also traces of a demon hiding there."

Upon hearing this, Lan Yu immediately gripped her longsword tightly and asked Chen Ye, "Demons? How many are there, and where are they?"

Chen Ye laughed and said, "What are you thinking? I've already let that demon get away. Do you really want to chase after him and slay the demon yourself?"

That demon's cultivation was far superior to Chen Ye's, and his magical abilities were also more powerful. If that bloody hand had landed on Chen Ye, he might not have been able to withstand it.

However, the demon was unlucky and was countered by Chen Ye's supernatural power. The spiritual energy from his eighteen Qi Seas flowed continuously, and he defeated the opponent with this unreasonable fighting style.

Chen Ye said to Lan Yu, "This matter of the cinnabar mine is probably not so easy to resolve. As for the matter of the underground demon, we should report it to the Qinghe Sword Sect before making any further plans."

Although Chen Ye did not know the origin of the demon underground, the man's magic was too powerful, unlike any demon he had seen before.

Chen Ye couldn't help but recall what Zhang Qi had said: the eighteen Demon Lords had eighteen inheritances.

Where have these demons been hiding for the past thousand years?
In times of peace and prosperity, there may be one or two evildoers, but where exactly is that demonic sect that trains disciples on a large scale hiding?
The Nirvana Sect has its own blessed lands that allow it to evade the righteous path's search. Do other demonic sects also have such methods?

The Mirage Sect had explored this cinnabar mine, yet they hadn't discovered the demon's location. Was it an oversight, or did the demonic sect have its own hidden methods?

Why did Chen Ye discover it so easily this time?

He had a very bad feeling about it.

Have those demons, who have endured for a thousand years, reached a point where their numbers are too vast to hide, and are they already prepared to launch a counterattack at any moment?
It wasn't that Chen Ye discovered it too easily, but rather that the villains were no longer willing to hide.

(End of this chapter)