Republic of China Era: Entering the Dao through Divine Strike.

The gun vibrated, the blade rounded, and with a whoosh, it shot out like lightning.

【Broken Sea】

The moment the spear tip pierced through, the air emitted an extremely sharp whistling sound, and a huge hole was pierced through the white mist, the blood-red light, and the mountain road.

Ripples upon ripples swept in all directions.

A strong wind, like waves.

The Panlong Spear transformed into a golden streak of light, its tip striking the blood-red hard shell.

The blood-red, hard shell dented instantly, and cracks spread in all directions from the point of impact.

The blood-red light grew thinner and thinner, the cracks grew denser and denser, and finally exploded with a bang, revealing Ku Yun's face twisted in terror.

His Blood Sea Protection Technique couldn't even withstand a single shot.

The spear tip pierced his chest and emerged from his back...

His body began to disintegrate...

His body began to disintegrate under the force of the gunshot.

Finally, the head.

Kuyun opened his mouth as if to shout something, but only a very faint cracking sound came from his throat.

His entire body eventually turned into a cloud of ashes, which were scattered and drifted away by the mountain wind.

Where he stood, only a pair of footprints remained, each containing a small puddle of dark red blood.

Li Xin bent down, picked up the purplish-red gourd, uncorked it, and turned it upside down.

Dark red blood slowly flowed out and seeped into the soil.

On the hillside, the corpses, drained of their lifeblood, seemed to have a faint sense of peace on their stiff faces, whether it was an illusion or not.

Wang Jingya sheathed her goose-feather sword and looked down at her hands.

The hand holding the knife was still trembling slightly.

It wasn't out of fear, but because I hadn't fully processed the shock of that punch and that gunshot.

She wanted to say something, but her throat was too dry to make a sound.

That shout was my limit; now my mind is just a buzzing blank.

The strongest punch she had ever seen in her life was from her father, Wang Wu, who could break a tree stump as thick as a person's embrace with a single punch.

But it was a tree stump, not a rocky mountain.

She didn't utter a single curse; she simply leaned against the carriage and let out a long sigh.

Zhang Yourong loosened her grip on the burning-hot character and stepped out of the carriage.

She walked up to Li Xin and gently brushed the stone chips off his shoulder.

The stone chips were still hot from the golden flames. She burned her fingertip, hissed, and pulled her hand back to her mouth to blow on it.

As I blew on the wind, tears started falling...

Li Xin grasped her hand, channeled some of his inner energy into it, and smiled, "It's alright. Although this person's methods are wicked, they're not that strong."

"Ah."

Ali jumped down from the carriage, ran to Li Xin, squatted down, picked up a handful of bone powder with both hands, and looked up to ask, "Big brother, is this that bad guy?"

Li Xin glanced down at the bone powder in her hand and shook his head, saying, "No."

Ali was stunned for a moment... It was true, she had seen with her own eyes that the old Taoist priest was shot to dust by the older brother.

"Bad people are gone when they die; this is fertilizer."

Li Xin vigorously ruffled A-Li's hair.

“That’s right.” Ali’s smile was a little stiff.

She looked around, then looked down at the bone powder in her hand, and suddenly she no longer felt afraid.

I ran to the roadside weeds and carefully sprinkled bone meal under a few wildflowers.

It was a few wild chrysanthemums, thin and slender, sprouting from the cracks in the rocks.

The petals were covered with fine white dust, which floated up in the wind and sparkled in the sunlight.

After sprinkling the bone powder, Ali squatted down next to the wild chrysanthemum, resting her chin on her hands and muttering incantations.

Lin Si watched from the side and whispered to Sun Qi, "Master Li's skill in coaxing children is even better than his swordsmanship."

Sun Qi didn't respond.

He squatted down next to the clump of wild chrysanthemums, staring blankly at the bone meal clinging to the petals.

His parents were captured by the Red Lotus Sect, and they haven't been found in three years.

I wonder if, like the villagers on the hillside, they were drained of their lifeblood and sealed inside some gourd before they died.

He reached out and gently straightened the flower stem that Ali had knocked askew, a grain of bone powder clinging to his fingertip.

I wiped and wiped it on the clothes, but I couldn't get it clean.

Ali looked up and saw Sun Qi's face. She tugged at Li Xin's sleeve and said, "Big brother, Brother Sun Qi is crying."

Li Xin held Ali's shoulder without turning around: "Maybe the sand and dust got into your eyes."

He walked to the old locust tree at the entrance of the village, looked at the corpses on the hillside, and remained silent for a while.

He lowered his head and began digging in the soil with his knife.

Lin Si and Sun Qi had already begun collecting the remains. They moved the twisted corpses over one by one, very gently, as if they were moving sleeping people.

Lin Si found the little girl's home in a mud house that had collapsed halfway.

A faded New Year picture was pasted on the earthen wall; the color of the carp in the picture was no longer visible.

There was still half a pot of spoiled brown rice porridge on the stove, with a layer of grayish-white film on the surface.

On the threshold sat a pair of newly made cloth shoes, the soles still clean and untouched by mud. They were probably made by the old woman for her granddaughter, and hadn't yet been made for the New Year.

He picked up the cloth shoes, dusted them off, and placed them next to the little girl's body.

When Li Xin moved the little girl's body into the pit, he noticed that her little fists were clenched tightly.

Upon breaking it open, I found a shriveled red date clutched in my palm.

Li Xin put the red date back into the little girl's palm, closed her hand, and put her into the pit.

Ali squatted by the pit watching this scene, and suddenly pulled out a piece of candy from her little bundle...

Zhang Yourong gave it to her at the gate of Guangping City, and she hadn't been able to bear eating it.

She placed the candy next to the little girl, stood up, and tugged at Li Xin's sleeve: "Big brother, does she like candy?"

Li Xin covered the soil with the last handful and said he liked it.

Ali then asked her if she could eat in heaven.

Li Xin said he could.

Ali thought about it and felt that this was very reasonable...

You should be able to eat anything in the sky.

Li Xin found a sunny slope and dug a large pit under the locust tree.

The forty-nine corpses were moved into the pit one by one.

There was no coffin, no tombstone.

Lin Si found several usable straw mats in the village, and Sun Qi wrapped each corpse up carefully.

Ali placed the chipped ceramic bowl next to the little girl and straightened the straw sandals.

When the pit was dug deeper, several clumps of dark red soil were unearthed, which were the blood of the villagers that had seeped in.

But in that patch of dark red soil, there was an unknown wild grass, its roots embedded in the bloody mud, yet its leaves were tender green.

Li Xin moved the wild grass to the newly built grave mound.

He stood in front of the grave for a while, then reached out and broke off a branch from the locust tree, sticking it into the grave mound.

The sunlight shone down again, and the white mist had dissipated at some point.

The newly built graves on the hillside were bathed in golden sunlight...

The shadow of the locust tree was cast obliquely on the grave, like a thin blanket covering the nameless dead.

The wild grass on the grave swayed its leaves gently in the wind, like a little girl waving her hand.

Li Xin straightened up, glanced at the dilapidated mud houses on the hillside, and then looked down at the token in his hand that was engraved with "Right Protector of the Red Lotus".

After a moment of silence, he said softly:

"The Red Lotus Cult should be destroyed."

He held the token in his palm, his knuckles turning slightly white. "From Guangping to the capital, I've encountered this kind of person all the way."

The Fish-Dragon Taoist has been guarding the pond for forty years, using living people to refine elixirs and prolong their lives;

Kuyun had been holed up in this mountain hollow for two days, using the lives of forty-nine people as the key to his formation.

He put the token into his pocket, his gaze falling on the tender green grass on the grave mound. "This kind of sect that harms people and acts recklessly does not deserve to live in this world."

Once things are settled in the capital, find the Red Lotus headquarters and eradicate them completely.

Wang Jingya looked at him, remained silent for a moment, and then said, "Count me in."

Li Xin nodded.

Kuyun's belongings were scattered all over the ground. Besides the purplish-red gourd, there was also a letter written in blood, addressed to the Holy Mother of Red Lotus.

The handwriting was crooked and messy, but the gist was that the treasure of the Azure Dragon had fallen into the hands of a man named Li Xin, whose cultivation was too high for ordinary followers to handle...

It is suggested that the four guardians of the Holy Mother faction join forces to besiege and suppress them.

The blood-written letter ended with a note: "The Holy Mother's lifespan is almost over, and she urgently needs the horn of the Azure Dragon to refine a life-extending elixir."

This matter concerns the very survival of the Holy Church; there must be no mishaps.

There was also a tattered booklet with the words "Mountain-Moving and Mountain-Reversing Method" written on the cover.

Upon opening it, it was found that most of the content was missing, with only the first level, "Flying Stone Technique," remaining intact.

Ku Yun filled the blank spaces on the book pages with densely packed small characters, all of which were annotations and insights.

Turning to the last page, on the back was a line of blood-red words written in cinnabar: "This method requires the use of essence and blood as a guide; one must be extremely careful."

Li Xin flipped through it... The Mountain-Moving Technique, a remnant of the Taoist arts. Once mastered, it allows one to move rocks with true qi. At the Great Perfection stage, it is said that one can move an entire mountain.

However, this skill is extremely difficult to master, mainly because true qi is hard to cultivate, let alone magical power.

Taking an unconventional approach, repeatedly refining it with one's own essence and blood, can also be useful.

However, this would be too taxing on the body...

Ku Yun practiced for forty years but only mastered the first level of "Flying Stone Technique," which allows him to move boulders weighing tens of thousands of kilograms.

The later content is too incomplete; it needs to be filled in before you can continue practicing.

Li Xin put the booklet away... He didn't need it for the time being, and his true energy wasn't strong enough.

Naturally, they have no magical powers.

We can't just follow Ku Yun's example and use our own essence and blood to refine it.

That would be so stupid.

Keep it for now; it might come in handy later.

Li Xin burned the remaining Karmic Fire Talismans.

This thing is a heretical and evil practice of the Red Lotus Cult; it's useless.

……

The sound of horses' hooves echoed from the distant mountain path. A swift horse galloped from the direction of the capital.

The man on horseback was wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt from the Qinglong Chamber of Commerce. Upon seeing Li Xin and his party from afar, he reined in his horse, jumped off, and knelt on one knee by the roadside.