Great Wilderness Demon Lord

Xiao Yunlan silently put the letter away.

The reaction from within the pass was as expected; Hechi was determined this time. His last hope, or rather, his last gamble, rested on his newly formed, rudimentary altar.

He looked up towards the northwest. In the twilight, above the Wolf Rong camp, there seemed to be a faint, ominous gray-black current slowly swirling.

"It's time." Xiao Yunlan said solemnly to the twenty veterans beside him, "Gentlemen, what I am about to do is extremely dangerous and may have unpredictable changes. It's not too late for you to withdraw now."

The twenty veterans looked at each other, but no one moved.

An old soldier with scars on his face grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow from tobacco: "Captain, we followed you all the way from the Shuofeng Plain, risking our lives long ago. Wherever you point, we'll go. This talk is just idle chatter."

Xiao Yunlan took a deep breath of the cold air and said no more.

He walked up to the stone altar and sat cross-legged in the center of the formation.

The twenty veterans, as instructed beforehand, sat cross-legged in eight directions around the altar, cut their palms, and pressed their bloody hands to the base of the corresponding flagpoles.

"Once I initiate the ritual, no matter what happens, unless I give the order or I die, you must not move or let go. Silently recite 'Hold fast' to resist distracting thoughts," Xiao Yunlan instructed in his final words.

The crowd solemnly agreed.

Xiao Yunlan closed his eyes, his mind completely sinking into his body. He no longer suppressed his emotions, but instead actively called upon and guided the two flames of azure and gray.

"Let's begin."

-----------------

At midnight, the wind and snow suddenly stopped.

The leaden-gray clouds hung low, yet emitted an eerie, dark red glow, as if the sky were stained with blood.

The stars disappeared, all was silent, even the usual hooting of owls on the wasteland vanished without a trace, leaving only a heart-wrenching heaviness, as if even the air itself had frozen.

The central altar of the Wolf Rong camp.

Under the dim red light, the three-tiered black stone altar resembled a colossal beast crouching. The enormous dark red array on its surface was now emitting a faint, visible light, flickering like breath.

Eight black banners fluttered wildly without wind, their strange symbols twisting and writhing as if they had come alive.

The old man in the gray robe had changed into his full ceremonial attire—a dark red robe embroidered with distorted faces and entrails, and a tall crown adorned with withered bones and feathers.

He held the seemingly ordinary wooden staff, and at that moment, the two withered leaves at the top of the staff began to glow with an eerie green light.

He stood at the center of the altar, facing the direction of Zhenhuang Pass, chanting a long and difficult incantation in an inhuman tone that fluctuated in pitch.

The sound wasn't loud, but it seemed to penetrate the tents and directly enter the eardrums of every living being, bringing waves of dizziness and nausea.

The dozens of wolf warriors around the altar, their bodies smeared with paint, began to tremble uncontrollably, their faces contorted in pain. Wisps of pale red blood seeped slowly from their mouths, noses, and skin, as if drawn together, converging towards the center of the altar.

Further out, the elite Wolf Warriors surrounding and protecting them also felt short of breath and inexplicably irritable, yet they still forced themselves to stand at attention.

Hechi stood on the high platform outside the central command tent, gazing at the direction of the altar in the distance, his face ashen and his fists clenched.

He could feel the increasingly intense, nauseating aura of decay and death.

Batu and other generals stood behind him, their expressions equally grim, their eyes filled with unease.

"Compassionate Heavenly Venerable...please heed my call...send down sweet dew to wash away disrespect..." The gray-robed old man's chanting reached its climax, and he suddenly plunged the wooden staff in his hand into the groove in the center of the altar!

"Buzz—!"

A deep yet soul-shaking roar erupted from the center of the altar!

A dark red light shot into the sky, forming a blurry, indescribable, enormous phantom in the air, radiating an eerie divine power that intertwined endless decay and compassion!

Within a radius of ten miles, all living beings, whether wolf-wolves, jackals, warhorses, or giant wolves, felt a fear and trembling that came from their very life instincts!

At almost the same moment, fifteen miles to the southeast, at the low-lying stone altar.

Xiao Yunlan has also reached the most critical moment.

On the stone altar, the array he had carved with his own hands was emitting a hazy halo of blue-gray and emerald green, which contrasted sharply with the dark red light in the sky, yet strangely resonated with and pulled at each other.

The blood seeping from the palms of the twenty veterans had already soaked through the base of the flagpole, seeped into the ground, and mixed with the "yin and filth of death" in this land and the medicinal herbs and rotten soil laid out by Xiao Yunlan, forming tiny energy channels that connected them to the altar and to Xiao Yunlan.

Xiao Yunlan sat cross-legged in the center of the altar, veins bulging on his forehead, sweat pouring down his face, and his body trembling slightly. His consciousness was undergoing an unprecedented shock.

When he actively connected with the two demonic thoughts of medicine, poison, and plague, and used himself as a bridge to try to resonate with, capture, and attract the "compassionate and corrupting vital energy" that was being guided and gathered in the northwest by the gray-robed old man, it was like rowing against the current in a stormy sea, or like fighting for food with a greedy beast.

A surging torrent of energy, filled with destructive and corrupting intent, swept in along the invisible connection between demonic thoughts, attempting to corrupt his soul and assimilate him.

The azure-green medical demonic thought struggled to analyze, guide, and attempt to "disinfect" and "transform" the plague demonic thought, while the gray-brown plague demonic thought frantically devoured and assimilated those parts with similar attributes to itself, thus strengthening itself.

Even more terrifying, as his consciousness deepened with the ritual, he seemed to "see" the source of the dark red light—a boundless, gray kingdom filled with corruption, rebirth, pain, and twisted bliss, and in the center of the kingdom, a wisp of "gaze" from the colossal being of indescribable form, yet radiating a soul-freezing "compassion" and "filth"—the Compassionate and Immaculate Heavenly Venerable.

It wasn't a direct arrival, but rather a detached, almost ant-like "attention." Although it was filled with joy and compassion, the mere pressure from this gaze was enough to shatter the soul of an ordinary cultivator.

Xiao Yunlan gritted his teeth. Deep within his mind, the obsession with "protecting the fortress" and "controlling the ritual" shone like a lighthouse in a storm, illuminating the extreme passion demon with astonishing light, firmly fixing his mind.

The last warm current flowed from the jade pendant around his neck, then with a "crack," it quietly shattered. But he had no time to care.

"Now!" A shrill cry echoed in his mind from the demonic thought of the Healer Gu. "Their ritual has reached its peak; the 'Corrosive Qi' is gathering, about to erupt! Seize its pivot and reverse its flow!"

Xiao Yunlan suddenly opened his eyes, his eyes blazing with a surge of bluish-gray and emerald-green light!

His hands moved swiftly, conjuring complex and ancient hand seals transmitted by the demonic power of the healing poison. What he uttered was no longer human language, but a spell imbued with the power of rules, a mixture of demonic roars and his own will: "Plague as the guide, poison as the path! Reverse the flow, obey my command!"

He pointed his fingers like a sword and thrust them fiercely into his own chest, specifically the Tanzhong acupoint! Using himself as the ultimate "catalyst" and "coordinate"—the body of the eight demons gathered together was a "lighthouse" and "container" that was more attractive to the power of the Compassionate Heavenly Venerable than any sacrifice!