Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chen Fan remained silent for a long time before finally standing up slowly.

"This is the path our family chose."

"Since it's our family's choice, we have to keep going no matter how difficult it is."

Even though he disliked the madness that killing brought, he needed power now.

Moreover, since the second trial of the ancient demon Rosa has already been set, there is no turning back.

You either grasp the essence of killing and pass the level, or you'll be forever trapped in this sea of ​​carnage.

In Chen Fan's mind, there was never such an option as "forever".

Once his mind was clear, he resumed his steps and headed towards the distant army of the dead.

The ninth year.

Chen Fan's number of killing runes increased from eight to nine.

The ninth rune is blood-shaped.

It was a drop of congealed blood, suspended in the sea of ​​consciousness, emitting a faint scarlet glow.

The moment the rune took shape, Chen Fan suddenly understood something.

The dead have no blood.

The spirits of the dead in this wasteland, no matter how high their cultivation or how deep their resentment in life, are ultimately just a wisp of resentment clinging to their vengeful nature after death.

The blood inside them is nothing more than dark red mist formed from resentment.

Real blood is only found in living things.

Chen Fan was able to condense blood-shaped runes not because he killed enough undead.

It was because, in the ninth year, he discovered that the blades of his eleventh sword had begun to be stained with a different kind of red.

That wasn't the blood of the dead, but his own blood.

Whenever Chen Fan immerses himself in the killing intent, the blood and qi within his body will boil and surge uncontrollably, as if ignited by an invisible flame.

This surge of energy burst forth from the body's surface, flowing down the hilt to the blade, where it intertwined with the gray-white sword light of the Three Gates, forming a strange color that was gray with a hint of red.

In this state, the power of Eleven will suddenly increase by several times.

Any undead struck by this crimson sword light will not only be completely annihilated, but the resentment remaining in their bodies will also be ignited by the blood energy, turning into a dazzling red flame that burns in mid-air for several breaths before gradually extinguishing.

The price is that every time Chen Fan uses this power, he loses a portion of his essence and blood.

Although this amount of essence blood was nothing to him at the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm, it would eventually become a problem as it accumulated over time!

But Chen Fan didn't stop.

It was precisely this method of feeding the sword with his own blood and essence that allowed him to finally see the outline of the core runes of the Killing Intent.

That core rune doesn't have any specific form.

It is a straight line of blood running down from the very center of the sea of ​​consciousness, stringing together the nine runes in front of it like beads.

When this bloodline stabilizes and takes shape, that will be the day the killing intent is officially condensed.

On the last day of the ninth year, the bloodline flashed completely for the first time.

In the blink of an eye, all the dead within a thousand feet of Chen Fan were silently reduced to dust.

It wasn't destroyed by sword intent, but by a pure, unadulterated, and complete killing intent.

The bloodline lasted only a moment before dissipating on its own.

Chen Fan gasped for breath, kneeling on one knee, barely managing to stay upright by supporting himself with his eleventh knee. His sea of ​​consciousness churned violently, the nine runes trembling wildly, dim and lifeless as if drained of all their power.

But for the first time, a smile appeared on Chen Fan's lips.

"Soon."

He uttered two words hoarsely, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and stood up again.

The tenth year.

As another year quietly passed, Chen Fan had been fighting on this wasteland for a full ten years.

Over the course of ten years, his sword has buried at least ten million souls. He went through three sets of robes, each one becoming soaked and hardened with blood within three months.

His body was covered with countless scars, the deepest of which ran diagonally from his left shoulder to his right rib. It was left by a necromancer general whose cultivation was comparable to the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm, in his dying counterattack.

The scar still aches faintly, not because the wound hasn't healed, but because the lingering killing intent of the undead general still lingers deep within it.

Chen Fan's face looked more peaceful than it had a few years ago.

The bloodshot in his eyes was no longer so dense, and the red light deep in his pupils had also subsided considerably. If one only looked at his appearance, he did resemble the man who had first stepped into this wasteland.

But at their core, they are completely different.

One day that year, Chen Fan stood on a vast, empty bone plain. There wasn't a single undead within a radius of dozens of miles, not because they had been cleared away, but because they dared not approach.

Those originally fearless undead instinctively chose to retreat after sensing the aura emanating from him.

The undead have no consciousness, but they have instincts. And their instincts tell them that the blood-soaked monk before them is no longer prey.

He is the hunter, he is killing itself.

Chen Fan closed his eyes.

In his sea of ​​consciousness, all nine killing runes had condensed into form.

Sword shape, eye shape, heart shape, water shape, fire shape, earth shape, wind shape, bone shape, blood shape—these represent nine true meanings of killing, each a facet of the way of killing.

They resembled nine dark red stars, suspended in the sea of ​​consciousness, slowly rotating.

And right in the center of them, a straight line of blood was taking shape.

This time, the bloodline no longer appears intermittently.

It runs straight down from the top of the sea of ​​consciousness, passing through the very center of the nine runes and firmly connecting them together.

The bloodline color deepened, gradually changing from light red to dark red, and then from dark red to almost black deep red.

Chen Fan did not deliberately push this process forward.

He simply stood there quietly, keeping his mind in an extremely pure state.

There was no joy, no anxiety, no expectation, and not even the desire to kill.

Chen Fan simply exists, existing on this sea of ​​slaughter as a killer.

At that moment, space within a hundred feet of him began to distort. The dark red sky grew even deeper, as if something was hanging down from the heavens.

The black earth trembled slightly, and the white bones on the ground were crushed into dust by an invisible force, only to reform into new white bones in the next instant, repeating this cycle endlessly.

The layer of killing intent surrounding Chen Fan, resembling a blood cocoon, began to swirl rapidly. It was no longer clinging to his skin; instead, it detached from his body and formed a massive dark red vortex around him.

Every wisp of energy within the vortex contained pure killing intent, enough to make even a cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage lose their composure.

Chen Fan was right in the center of this vortex.

His eyes had turned completely deep red.

It wasn't the red covered by blood vessels, nor the red reflected by a red glow; rather, the entire eyeball had transformed into two crystal-clear pieces of blood-red glass.

Deep within these two pieces of glass, nine dark red runes can be faintly seen slowly rotating.

Nine runes flew out from between Chen Fan's eyebrows and arranged in a circle in front of him.

In the center of the ring, the deep red, almost black core rune slowly emerged.

Although its form is extremely simple, the moment it appeared, it made the entire Sea of ​​Slaughter tremble.

Countless spirits knelt on the ground, heads bowed, as if worshipping their sole master.

The intent of slaughter is complete.