So it turns out I'm the demon!

The sword energy raged, like yellow sand filling the sky, stirring up thousands of terrifying waves of energy.

Pang Da Sha's heavy sword emphasizes the principle of overcoming all techniques with brute force, and achieving great skill without artifice.

He had been somewhat restrained when facing Shui Miaozheng's gentle yet effective methods, but now, facing Jiang Mu, whose attacks were equally fierce, he was focusing on a powerful and heavy attack.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Pang Da Sha's face was a mass of fleshy, menacing features, and he swung his sword like a whirlwind with a ferocious laugh.

The greatsword danced in his hands like a black whirlwind.

"Jiang Mu, your knife is too slow! Faster! Faster! Haven't you eaten?"

He was born with superhuman strength and cultivated through physical means. The star power flowing through his meridians was as vast and powerful as a river. When he fought others, he could always overwhelm his opponents in terms of both endurance and strength.

He was never afraid of running out of spiritual energy; what he enjoyed most was watching his opponent gradually weaken under his relentless bombardment.

In the end, he cleaved it in two with a single sword strike, a truly exhilarating experience.

However, the ideal is full, and the reality is very skinny.

Jiang Mu's body was enveloped in a burst of sword energy, like a blooming lotus, with red sword light and dark sword light clashing wildly in a small space.

The two sides exchanged blows, having already fought dozens of times.

The two figures intertwined in the light and shadow, like two tireless killing machines tearing at each other.

As the fighting continued, the ferocious smile on Pang Dasha's face gradually froze.

He was horrified to discover that the young man in front of him showed no signs of exhaustion; on the contrary, his sword strikes were becoming heavier and more ruthless with each blow.

On the contrary, his arms were numb and weak from the shock.

He felt the pent-up energy in his chest being rapidly depleted, each breath shorter than the last.

"This script isn't right. How come this kid's stamina is even more exaggerated than mine?"

A storm raged within the vast sand.

He gritted his teeth and unleashed a powerful sweeping attack, forcing Jiang Mu back half a step. Taking advantage of this brief opening, he withdrew and looked up to catch his breath.

However, at the very moment he took a breath, a ten-zhang-tall phantom image of the God of Fire suddenly rose up behind Jiang Mu.

Flames surged all over the Dharma image.

With his body synchronized, he pulled his right arm back and delivered a pure and violent straight punch to Pang Da Sha's chest.

"Bang!"

Before the massive sand could even set up its defenses, the protective sword energy around its body shattered instantly.

He flew backward like a kite with a broken string, crashing heavily to the ground and creating a large crater.

"puff"

Pang Da Sha coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The broken greatsword slipped from his hand and clattered to the side.

He struggled to lift his head, staring at Jiang Mu with an incredulous look, as if he had seen a ghost.

Is this guy even human?!

What kind of monster possesses such terrifying physical strength and seemingly limitless endurance?

run!

Pang Dasha had only this one thought in his mind, and all his previous arrogance vanished. He tried to get up and run away by using both hands and feet.

"Pfft!"

The next second, two streaks of dark light flashed by.

The eerie Soul-Locking Coffin nailed itself into his shoulder blades, pinning him back to the ground, rendering him immobile.

"Senior brother! Senior brother, save me!"

Pang Dasha felt death approaching, and he was so terrified that he screamed in agony.

But the next second, a dark red blade of energy swept past like moonlight.

The massive head of the sandman rolled off its neck, bounced twice on the ground, and came to rest among a pile of rubble.

On the other side, Zhang Weiyuan, who was locked in combat with Shui Miaozheng, also had no way to express his suffering.

Shui Miaozheng was, after all, a seasoned eighth-realm expert who had attempted to break through to the ninth realm. Even though she had concerns at the moment, she kept Zhang Weiyuan outside the defensive circle of the fan.

Without help, Zhang Weiyuan alone could never have taken down the governor of Yunzhou City in such a short time.

Especially when he caught a glimpse of his junior brother being easily beaten and beheaded by Jiang Mu, Zhang Weiyuan was utterly horrified. His Dao heart almost collapsed on the spot. In his shock, Zhang Weiyuan had already decided to retreat.

If we continue fighting, I will surely die!

His sword strike faltered slightly as he considered how to escape, when a chilling killing intent suddenly surged from behind, making the hairs on his body stand on end. "Not good!"

Zhang Weiyuan hurriedly rolled away to the side.

At the same time, the wooden sword in his hand shot into the sky, turning into a streak of blue light, and pierced straight towards Jiang Mu, who was attacking him from behind.

Jiang Mu swayed and activated teleportation, causing the fatal sword strike to miss its mark.

The next instant, he appeared above and to the other side of Zhang Weiyuan, pressing his right hand down in the air.

"boom!"

The enormous "Thousand Gold Mountain" descended from the sky with the force of Mount Tai pressing down.

Before Jinshan even arrived, the immense gravity had already caused the ground beneath Zhang Weiyuan's feet to crack inch by inch.

Zhang Weiyuan's face turned pale. Just as he was about to use his sword escape technique to escape, a round fan embroidered with landscapes flew over in a whirlwind, setting up a water barrier around him and trapping him in place.

It was precisely because of Shui Miaozheng's tacit cooperation.

Seeing the mountain of gold pressing down on him, in desperation, Zhang Weiyuan immediately bit his tongue and spat a mouthful of blood onto the recalled wooden sword, while rapidly chanting incantations.

The wooden sword grew several feet larger.

Like a giant pillar supporting the sky, it stood atop the base of the fallen golden mountain.

"break!"

Hundreds of dazzling sword energies shot out from around the wooden sword, tearing a hole in the surrounding fan-shaped barrier.

"puff"

Forcibly using the forbidden technique caused Zhang Weiyuan to suffer a severe backlash, spitting out a mouthful of blood and becoming weak.

But at this moment, he couldn't care less about any of that.

Taking advantage of the brief opening created by the sword energy, his figure transformed into a streak of blood-red light, desperately speeding toward the other side at the cost of burning his life essence.

But before he could get very far, a dark figure blocked his path.

It was Jiang Mu's "Shadow Demon"!

Swish!

The demonic figure, wielding a shadow blade, brought it down on the head.

Zhang Weiyuan's eyes widened in fury. He hurriedly crushed a jade talisman from his robes and, at the cost of shortening his lifespan, forcibly moved several feet to the side. He narrowly avoided the shadow blade's slash.

Before he could even catch his breath, a streak of silver light silently swept towards him.

Flying sword [Forgetful River]!

"Pfft!"

The flying sword pierced through his brow, drawing out a string of beaded blood.

Zhang Weiyuan's knees buckled, and he fell straight to the ground, his eyes wide open, completely silent.

Jiang Mu flicked his sleeve and put away the Thousand Gold Mountain, ignoring the spoils on the ground. Instead, he immediately summoned the Fifth Demon Shadow and activated the "Star Proof" ability of the special demon pill within its body.

He planned to use the same trick again and directly strip these two experts from the Myriad Swords Sect of their star positions.

However, at that moment, something unexpected happened.

Above the corpses of Pang Dasha and Zhang Weiyuan, a blurry sword shadow appeared on each of them.

The sword shadow shattered, releasing dozens of long, silver threads like silkworm silk, which stuck to Jiang Mu's body.

"A causal link!"

Not far away, Shui Miaozheng's pretty face suddenly changed color, and she exclaimed in shock, "Someone is spying on cause and effect!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the void above Jiang Mu's head began to twist and rotate, slowly opening up a white vortex about ten feet in diameter.

A transparent fishing line, surrounded by white light, descended from the depths of the whirlpool, reaching out towards Jiang Mu.

The fishing line appears as thin as a spider's thread, but at its end hangs a crescent-shaped golden fishhook.

The fishhook is engraved with ancient seal script characters depicting insects and birds.

"This is the 'Life-Stealing and Heaven-Fishing Technique'!"

Shui Miaozheng, being well-informed, recognized the secret technique at a glance.

With a flick of her wrist, she hurled her fan at the fishing line, shouting, "Little Jiang, retreat! Someone's trying to fish out your luck!"

Fishing for luck?

Jiang Mu frowned.

He glanced at the two corpses floating in the air, forming a causal triangle with them, and murmured:

"So it was all a setup."

"boom"

The fan struck the dangling fishing line, but instead of severing it, it exploded in a burst of white light, sending Shui Miaozheng flying dozens of feet away. At the same time, several strands of causal threads, scattered by the impact, wrapped around Shui Miaozheng's body.

Shui Miaozheng turned pale and hurriedly took out several talismans from her sleeve and slapped them on her body, which barely managed to keep the causal threads outside her body.

But when she tried to help Jiang Mu again, she found herself blocked by an invisible barrier of cause and effect, unable to get any closer. Jiang Mu, who was directly below the vortex, tried to teleport away, but found that the surrounding spatial laws had been completely locked down.

He was like a specimen nailed to the spot, unable to move.

At the same time, he felt his body become incredibly heavy, as if he had fallen into a swamp.

What alarmed him even more was that he could clearly feel something indescribable being pulled away from his body bit by bit by the fishing line...

at the same time.

The Myriad Swords Sect, before the Sword Pavilion's sacrificial array.

The elder sat high on a rock, holding a somewhat old bamboo fishing rod in his hand.

A semi-transparent fishing line dangled from the tip of the rod and disappeared halfway into the center of the array below.

Ripples spread around it, like waves on the surface of water.

Zhu Xuantong sat cross-legged on the other side of the altar, his eyes closed, surrounded by purple aura.

In his hands, he held the enormous sand and Zhang Weiyuan's shattered life tablet, respectively.

Feeling the heavy weight transmitted through the fishing rod, the elder stroked his beard and laughed heartily, his eyes filled with pride:

"This lad is truly blessed with good fortune, a treasure bestowed by heaven. It's a pity he was born at the wrong time. If he had been born twenty years earlier, perhaps I could have personally plundered some of his luck to nourish my body, which would have greatly benefited my cultivation on the Great Dao."

Perhaps they would have taken that step long ago. What a pity, what a pity…

He said it was a pity, but his gaze drifted to his son Zhu Xuantong, who was sitting on the altar.

Beneath his kind and gentle face, a chill flashed deep in the old man's eyes.

"But it doesn't matter."

He secretly plotted in his mind,

"As long as Tong'er perfectly masters the 'Jade Emperor's Guide to Returning to Truth,' completely merging this supreme fortune with his 'Furnace Fire' destiny..." "Then, I will be able to devour his Dao foundation and his destiny!"

"With such an unparalleled foundation as nourishment, I can break free from the shackles that have bound me for half my life and directly point to the Great Dao!"

Thinking of this, an unnatural flush rose on the elder's face.

As the saying goes, raising children is for old age security, and storing grain is for famine prevention...

This son is well raised; he is destined to pave the way for my future as his father!

"It really does steal my luck."

Jiang Mu was secretly alarmed.

The fishhook hadn't actually touched his skull yet; it was just locked in from a distance, but it already gave him a feeling of being uprooted and stripped away.

This is the first time in my life.

He truly understood what it meant to be "a fish on the chopping block."

He now understood that the Ten Thousand Swords Sect had used the lives of two eighth-realm sword cultivators as bait to set up a trap specifically targeting him to seize his destiny. The Red Umbrella Sect was just playing around; the Ten Thousand Swords Sect was truly insidious.

Seeing that the space was locked, and that neither demonic energy nor star power could break free from the pull of the causal fishing line, Jiang Mu's mind raced, and he suddenly thought of something.

With a thought, a grayish-white bone bead appeared in his palm.

Remains and Bone Beads!

It was the bone bead that the mysterious Granny Maple had given him in the secret realm of Tree Village, representing the legacy of the old master of the secret realm.

Granny Feng once said that as long as you swallow it, you can become the master of that secret realm.

Regardless of where they are, they can ignore spatial barriers and teleport to the secret realm at any time.

Jiang Mu felt that the old woman was quite cunning, so he left her in his storage space to gather dust and never used her.

But now he's been caught in a trap set by a super-powerful being far beyond his own level, fishing from afar. The law of cause and effect is inescapable, and he can't worry about anything else. Between two evils, he chooses the lesser: first, he needs to escape this deadly fishing line.

If you're lucky, you can sit back and watch the tigers fight.

A ruthless glint flashed in Jiang Mu's eyes. With a flick of his thumb, he sent the bone bead into his mouth.

His Adam's apple bobbed, and he swallowed it whole.

In an instant, the air around Jiang Mu began to distort and fold.

The causal fishing line that was wrapped around him lost its anchor point under the pull of the laws of space.

It bounced away limply, like a dehydrated dead fish.

Jiang Mu steadied herself and found that everything around her had changed; she had found herself in a familiar place.

It was on the array of that secret realm.

"Well... young man, you finally made your choice."

An old man's laughter rang out.

Jiang Mu looked over and saw Granny Feng, her figure hunched over, leaning on her cane, standing at the edge of the formation, smiling at him.

Suddenly, Granny Feng's knees buckled, and she knelt on the ground, crying out:

"Welcome back to your master!"

With her sharp cry, the array beneath Jiang Mu's feet suddenly lit up with a blinding blood-red light.

"Buzzing"

Countless dense runes emerged from the formation.

The runes floated up.

Under Jiang Mu's astonished gaze, the runes transformed into tiny figures, each only an inch or so in size.

Jiang Mu frowned and tried to lift her feet to leave the formation.

Just like when he was locked in by the fishing line before, his body was pinned to the spot by some invisible law, unable to move. The little rune figures swarmed to his feet and began to climb up his boots and clothes.

They crawled up to his knees, up to his waist...

They climbed onto his chest and shoulders.

More and more rune figures emerged from the array, swarming forward like ants, layer upon layer covering his body. Soon, Jiang Mu was completely enveloped by these glowing rune figures.

As the layers piled up, Jiang Mu's original outline gradually became blurred.

At first glance, it looks like countless tiny golden building blocks being pieced together to form a brand new body.

This new silhouette is taller, broader in the shoulders and back, and longer in the limbs than Jiang Mu's original figure.

It took shape little by little.

Gradually, it became clear that he was a middle-aged man.

Although it was only an outline, it already exuded a terrifying aura.

"Owner!"

Grandma Feng raised her head, two streams of tears welling up in her cloudy old eyes, "Finally, you've returned..."

The middle-aged man slowly spoke:

"No one can escape greed. Jiang Mu, Jiang Mu, how can you believe in free lunches?"

From this moment on, I will take over your body.

All your opportunities, fortune, and cultivation belong to me. Let me, the Supreme Being, prove the supreme path for you!

As they spoke, the tiny rune figures clinging to Jiang Mu seemed to receive a command, burrowing one after another into his skin. They squeezed into his pores and seeped into his meridians…

The goal is to completely erode Jiang Mu's flesh, blood, meridians, and even soul, and replace them.

Jiang Mu sighed:

"Sigh, it's just that you're lusting after my body again. But it's a pity, there are just too many people and ghosts in this world who lust after my body. If you want to cut in line, you'll probably have to fight with someone else first."

"What do you mean?" the middle-aged man asked, puzzled.

Before he could react, a loud boom suddenly echoed in the hazy sky above the secret realm.

A massive, silvery-white spatial vortex suddenly tore through the sky.

Immediately afterwards, a fishing line dangled slowly from the center of the whirlpool, ignoring the laws and barriers of the secret realm, and hooked towards Jiang Mu.

Jiang Mu thought to himself:

"Sure enough, this fishing line can be traced back to cause and effect."

"The Life-Stealing Heavenly Fishing Technique?!"

The middle-aged man looked up at the dangling fishing line, completely bewildered.

Seeing that the fishhook was about to ignore the defenses and snatch away the perfect body he had his eye on, the man flew into a rage:

"Who dares to steal from me, Wenren Guhong! Your mere life-stealing technique is nothing but a amateur attempt to teach me a lesson!"

He waved his arm.

Some of the little rune figures that were originally drilling into Jiang Mu's body turned around and soared into the sky with a buzzing sound.

Like a swarm of blood-red locusts, they rushed toward the fishing line.

The torrent of runes collided with the fishing line in mid-air.

The fishing line was dissolved in large pieces.

In just a few breaths, the fishing line containing the power to steal life was completely devoured by the rune-like little figure.

It dissolved into a wisp of smoke and drifted away in the wind.

Wenren Guhong stood with his hands behind his back, gazing calmly at the still-lingering vortex in the sky: "Overestimating yourself."

However, before the words had even finished, the vortex suddenly expanded several times over.

Countless fishing lines dangled from the whirlpool at the same time, thousands upon thousands, spreading out in all directions like a celestial maiden scattering flowers.

A golden hook hangs from the end of each fishing line.

They surrounded Jiang Mu's location from all sides, simultaneously approaching from all directions.

"court death!"

Wenren Guhong was furious.

He stomped his foot on the array, and all the runes on it lit up.

The rune figures regrouped, transforming into a gigantic hand a hundred feet in diameter, which seized the hanging net of cause and effect. Meanwhile, in the forbidden area of ​​the Sword Pavilion of the Myriad Swords Sect...

The elder's fishing rod trembled, and a look of surprise appeared on his face: "Someone is helping that kid?"

Immediately, a fierce glint appeared in the elder's eyes, and he snarled,

"No matter who you are, if you dare to snatch food from my mouth, I'll take care of you too. I'd like to see how long you can last!" He gripped the fishing rod tightly with both hands, pouring his vast cultivation power into it.