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

Chen Fan stopped and looked up at the familiar gate of the White Bone Village, and the black animal hide totem fluttering in the wind on it. He took a deep breath, his lungs filling with that familiar smell of sulfur and hay.

"Clan leader," Chen Fan said softly, a faint smile playing on his lips, "you're back."

Iron Bone stood frozen in place for a full ten breaths.

He rushed forward in two strides, his rough hands kneading Chen Fan's shoulders. Feeling the incredibly solid and warm bloodline power, he finally let out a long sigh of relief.

"You brat..." Iron Bone's voice was somewhat hoarse, even carrying a slight, almost imperceptible tremor, "Why are you back? Something happened at Heavenly Fire Holy City... did it? Why did the High Priest let you go?"

Looking at Tie Gu's face, covered with old scars but full of concern, Chen Fan felt a warmth rise in his heart for no reason.

This feeling is wonderful.

He had been through thick and thin in the human cultivation world, and was used to the deceit and treacherousness of life. Even within the sect, it was mostly about the exchange of interests.

Standing on this gray, cracked land, facing a rude ancient demon chieftain, he truly felt the warmth of "family".

"Nothing happened." Chen Fan shook his head, his tone as calm as ever. "I just felt that the Holy City was too noisy, not as quiet as our Black Rock Tribe, so I came back."

Tie Gu looked Chen Fan up and down suspiciously. He knew how strict the rules of the Tianhuo tribe were, and he also knew that the High Priest was no pushover. How could he let a genius chosen by the holy statue leave so easily?

But he didn't press the matter further.

In the Black Rock Tribe, as long as everyone returns unharmed, that's enough.

"It's good you're back, it's good you're back!" Tie Gu laughed loudly, slapping Chen Fan on the back. "Let's go! I still have half a jar of aged fruit wine. Let's have a good drink tonight! Those soldier bastards thought you were never coming back when they heard you went to the Holy City!"

Chen Fan did not refuse and nodded with a smile.

The two walked side by side into the tribe.

Along the way, the miners who were working, the ancient witches who were washing clothes, and the children who were rolling in the mud all stopped what they were doing when they saw Chen Fan.

"The pharmacist is back!"

"Uncle!"

"Great news! There's hope for my wife's leg problem again!"

There was no worship, no sense of superiority or distance arising from his visit to the holy city; there were only simple greetings in a familiar local accent.

Chen Fan nodded in response to each one.

Walking on the uneven stone path, he thought that perhaps it was this invisible bond and warmth that made him refuse the supreme position of clan leader without hesitation and choose to return to this barren wasteland.

A sense of belonging might not mean accepting the brutality and greatness of the entire ancient demon race.

Instead, it allows him to find a place in this cruel world where he is willing to stop and rest.

……

Days pass by like the ceaseless sandstorms on a barren plain.

Three years.

For cultivators, three years is merely a short period of seclusion.

However, for an ordinary ancient demon, three years is enough for a child to grow into a teenager capable of wielding a bone knife.

Over the past three years, Chen Fan's life has been so regular it's almost monotonous, yet incredibly fulfilling.

Before dawn, when the red moon had completely set, he would appear precisely at the edge of the medicinal herb field that he had been cultivating ever larger.

"Splash!"

Several buckets of cool well water were evenly sprinkled onto the dark red herbs. The bloodthorn vines that he had been focusing on cultivating had now grown to the thickness of a wrist, their vines covered with sharp barbs and emitting a faint smell of blood.

After watering the medicinal fields, he would carry several half-rotten monster corpses that had just been delivered from the hunting grounds to the muddy pond behind the stone house.

"Come out," Chen Fan called out calmly.

The once calm, stagnant mud pool suddenly began to churn violently. With a deep roar, a colossal creature over fifteen zhang long leaped out of the murky mud!

That was the Netherworld Beast from back then.

After several years of feeding, especially with Chen Fan occasionally using the medicinal residue he refined to temper its body, this Netherworld Beast has undergone a complete transformation.

Its once smooth black skin is now covered with a layer of fine red scales, and its flat head has even bulged with two fleshy lumps, showing a faint tendency to grow horns.

As soon as it appeared, the dozen or so smaller Netherworld Beasts around it were all so frightened that they huddled at the edge of the mud pit, trembling with fear.

"Thump!"

Chen Fan threw the monster's corpse over.

The Netherworld Beast King opened its enormous maw, as deep as an abyss, in mid-air and swallowed the hundreds-of-pounds-weight monster corpse whole. Then it crashed heavily back into the mud, splashing mud everywhere.

Strangely, the mud was blocked by a faint red aura when it fell towards Chen Fan.

The Netherworld Beast King swam to the shore ingratiatingly, bringing its enormous head close to Chen Fan's feet, and making a "gurgling" sound like muffled thunder from its throat.

"If you're full, behave yourself and don't bully other beasts." Chen Fan casually patted its scaly forehead, then turned and walked back to the stone house.

Inside the stone house, the furnishings remained simple, except for the addition of a stone table carved from obsidian.

On the stone table lay an ancient bone fragment that emitted a warm, reddish glow.

The Crimson Emperor's Heaven-Burning Technique.

In the past three years, apart from his daily work, Chen Fan devoted most of his energy to the secrets of the Tianhuo tribe.

"boom!"

Chen Fan sat down cross-legged, closed his eyes slightly, and a roaring sound like a rushing river immediately came from his body.

The dark ink-colored scales on his body instantly transformed into a crystal-clear crimson. A terrifyingly high temperature spread outwards from him, distorting and scorching the air inside the stone house, as if one were in a furnace.

However, he controlled it extremely well, and the high temperature was firmly suppressed within a three-foot radius of the stone house, without affecting the medicinal fields outside in the slightest.

In Chen Fan's sea of ​​consciousness, the densely packed tiny characters on the bone fragment transformed into leaping flame runes, constantly rearranging and recombining.

"The ancient demon's techniques are domineering but lack refinement."

Chen Fan secretly deduced in his mind, "This Crimson Emperor Burning Heaven Technique emphasizes using the ultimate fire-based laws to ignite blood and qi, and reshape the physical body amidst destruction. If an ordinary ancient demon were to cultivate it, it would be devoured by the flames and burned to ashes if it were not careful."

"But I'm different."

A confident smile curved Chen Fan's lips. "The Immortal-Demon Fusion Path I cultivate emphasizes balance. Yin and Yang in harmony, water and fire in fusion. If we use the energy of immortals and demons as a buffer to guide this violent Crimson Emperor's essence..."

With a thought, the crimson flames within his body underwent a wondrous change.