Cold Centipede had lost another four Primordial Spirits and was overwhelmed with urgent fury and resentment. She wished she could blast the entire Outer Heaven Divine Mountain to pieces. Calling upon the Daoist priests and strange beings she had brought with her, she had nine of them stir up trouble at a time. After harvesting their Yuan Yang, she would devour them, crunching bones and sucking blood. Satiated, she would fall into a deep sleep. Upon waking, she would summon another nine and repeat the cycle.

She was also afraid of the Black Dragon and dared not provoke him carelessly, instead indulging in food and drink within the confines of her own home.

On Shi Feiyang's side, there was a rare calm. Of the two great forces in the Outer Heaven Divine Mountain, one was the never-sleeping City Master Qian Kang across the sea, who had been as quiet as a chicken lately. The other was the Myriad Cold Centipede of the Bright Realm right here. Besides these two, there were several other beings with thousands of years of Dao Level, as well as some human cultivators who had run here to escape disaster. Seeing the Myriad Cold Centipede suffer a great loss, they too did not dare to provoke the dragon needlessly.

Shi Feiyang and his disciples were diligently cultivating, mainly focusing on refining magical treasures. His trip to the Central Plains had not yielded many treasures, but those he had obtained were useful, albeit difficult to refine.

The Nine Heavens Yuan Yang Ruler, Cave Spirit Zither, and similar items were of the Three Emperors lineage, and he found them easy to handle.

The four treasures obtained from the Shaqing Immortal Mansion were of The Three Pure Ones lineage. Their paths different, they were challenging to refine and required the use of the Taiqing Immortal Technique for many days to reveal their full power. Shi Feiyang, not knowing the Taiqing Immortal Technique, used the Three Emperors Daoist Technique to dismantle and re-refine them with a different method. It was time-consuming and strenuous, but the upside was that many properties of the treasures were altered. After refinement, not even Ai Zhenzi, should he descend from the heavens, could snatch them away. And even if somehow he did, he wouldn't be able to use them without re-refining them himself.

Of the four treasures, the three Purple and Blue Douluo Fires were the most formidable, best suited to fuse with one's own Essence, Energy, and Spirit—the Three Treasures—to achieve the Three Flowers atop one's head, but they were also the hardest to refine. Coming in last with the least power was the Mystic Yin Slip. Setting these two aside, he focused his efforts on refining the Three Talents Clearing Circle and the Xuan Guang Ruler from the Purple Cloud Palace.

A hundred days passed by, and once he had refined the magical treasures, he called his disciples over one by one to provide guidance.

One day, Jin Xunu suddenly entered to report that a Daoist had come from the mountain's base, an old acquaintance from the Purple Cloud Palace who had just come from the Cold Centipede, requesting to see the Black Dragon King.

Shi Feiyang had Jin Xunu bring the person to the entrance of the cave, where he conversed through a veil of purple mist. This was not to show off mysteriousness, but rather to shield against any remote spying by Cold Centipede using the Heavenly Treasure Mirror.

The visitor was a burly man around thirty years of age, weather-beaten and with hardly any light left in his eyes. At the cave entrance, he paid his respects and introduced himself as Jiang Dachuan (note).

Jiang Dachuan's life had been filled with bad fortune yet somehow he always found a way to survive. Originally the son of a wealthy merchant from the South Sea, he was accustomed to luxury from childhood. However, his luck turned during a sea voyage, where he encountered a sea creature engaging in a duel, which smashed and capsized his ship. Clinging to a plank of wood, he drifted southward with the current, and just when he was about to die of thirst, he landed on an island and began a struggle for survival.

Less than a year into his life of eating roasted fish and drinking coconut juice, he encountered a large bird that snatched him up and flew countless miles south, depositing him on a cliff to feed its chicks. Just as the bird was about to tear him to shreds to feed its offspring, a predator arrived. The big bird flew out to fend off the attacker, and in the confusion, Jiang Dachuan managed to kill the nestlings and escape down the cliff.

The large bird was killed by its predator, a four-winged strange eagle, which then caught him intending to take him back to its nest to eat. On the way, he was fortunate enough to encounter Sanfeng and Dongxiu passing by. Seeing the strange bird carrying a human, they released a flying sword and killed the bird to rescue him. They brought him back to the Purple Cloud Palace. There, he had a wonderful time and even learned Sword Control and simple spells.

However, the good times did not last long. That year, Chu Feng's disciple Hu Ping was sent on a mission to collect herbs. Passing by the Black Sand Island, she was captured and imprisoned by the Island Master Gang Chen, who tried to force her to be his concubine. Rather than submit, Hu Ping shattered her heavenly spirit cover, letting her Primordial Spirit escape back to the palace to report in tears. Chu Feng was furious, and accompanied by Jin Xunu and two other disciples at the palace, went to seek vengeance on Gang Chen. Jiang Dachuan was among them.

Reaching the island, they found Gang Chen absent. Chu Feng killed all of Gang Chen's seventy-odd disciples and was about to kill his concubines too. Jin Xunu managed to persuade him to spare them, pointing out that most were innocent women caught by Gang Chen, so they devised a plan to send them back to inhabited areas.

Jiang Dachuan took responsibility for escorting these women home, making more than a dozen trips back and forth. Once all were safely returned, he went back to Black Sand Island only to find that both Chu Feng and Jin Xunu had left. Instead, Gang Chen had returned in a furious rage. He captured Jiang Dachuan on the spot and interrogated him. Crying and pleading, Jiang Dachuan claimed that he had no relation to the Purple Cloud Palace and had merely passed by the island by chance. He concocted a series of lies to get through the interrogation. Given his urgent need for people after losing all his disciples, Gang Chen kept Jiang Dachuan by his side, restricting his Primordial Spirit with a spell and making him work on the island.

Fortunately, Jiang Dachuan was clever by nature and had a knack for merchant dealings—he came up with many strategic plans for Gang Chen and even saved him from a disaster, earning his favor and being taught numerous spells. So he spent several anxious months on Black Sand Island but took the chance to escape with Gang Chen's mountain treasure, the Red Cloud Pestle, and his Lifebound God Card, which was confining his Primordial Spirit, when Gang Chen was away. Wanting to return to the Purple Cloud Palace, he instead encountered an unprecedented cold wave from the north blowing southward. Wary of Gang Chen's pursuit, he fled southward and came across a Daoist from Central Earth heading to Outer Heaven Divine Mountain to avoid calamity. He followed the Daoist and ended up here.

Later on, the Daoist was bewildered by the Cold Centipede's enchantment and, after being harvested for his essence, was forced under its control. He was harshly harvested several times, but fortunately, he had previously ingratiated himself with Sanfeng and Dongxiu at the Purple Cloud Palace and learned some skills from the "Heavenly Demon Secret Manual." Later, taught by Gang Chen, he learned a few more combat techniques, and this was what barely allowed him to retain his Yuan Yang and survive.

Jiang Dachuan was controlled by the poison of the Cold Centipede's Dan and utterly infatuated with the illusion of the beautiful women it conjured. Closing his eyes, he saw nothing but snow-white arms and long legs wrapped in green gauze. A day's separation was too much to bear, and he wished he could be harvested for his essence a few more times.

Since its last defeat by Shi Feiyang, the Cold Centipede had become even more perverse, treating its captives with increasing cruelty. Jiang had already lost much of his Essence Energy, and just yesterday, he had nearly lost his Yuan Yang. Should that happen, he would be useless to the Cold Centipede and likely be chewed up alive. After a night of horrific nightmares, especially for those who had practiced magic and often harbored terrifying fantasies, he dared not stay any longer and made a hasty escape.

As for seeking refuge with the Black Dragon King, he had little hope to begin with. Coincidentally, a few days earlier, Jin Xunu had received guidance from Shi Feiyang and successfully performed sacrificial refinement on the Taiyin Qingning Fan for the second time. He went out to relax, and his Fire Eyes allowed him to see from afar. Standing atop a mountain, he recognized Jiang in the distance, flew over to greet him, and offered help.

As Jiang Dachuan lingered nearby, fearing that the Black Dragon King's volatility might lead to being eaten, he hesitated to approach. Seeing Jin Xunu, however, he was overjoyed and quickly asked for his help.

After listening to Jiang Dachuan's own account and occasional interjections from Jin Xunu, Shi Feiyang nodded and took out an Immortal Pill to give to Jin Xunu, "In that case, you should first take him back to your cave and have him take this Immortal Pill to suppress the poison. Then use the 'Dunjia' technique to conceal his Primordial Spirit so that the Demon Centipede cannot detect it. This way, the Demon Centipede will temporarily be unable to seize his Primordial Spirit."

He then said to Jiang Dachuan, "I've divined that the Demon Centipede has nine peaks behind it, and each peak is protected by prohibitions. Write down everything you know about the prohibitions—their strengths and weaknesses—and provide details of all the Daoists and monsters there, their characteristics, the Daoist Techniques they practice, the Magical Treasures they use, and so on."

Jiang Dachuan, unable to see the Black Dragon King's expression through the purple mist, was relieved to find that he was not going to be eaten and that he was even offered an Elixir to cure the poison. He promptly made a vow and followed Jin Xunu away.

Cultivators used divination and calculations, which could not provide the clarity of sight as if seen with one's own eyes. They first built a spacetime model and produced a Gua Xiang, using signs such as the Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, Eight Gates and Nine Stars. Then, inputting the knowledge they sought to understand based on the Gua patterns to analyze the situation. The initial setup of the Gua pattern was like a formula, which anyone knowledgeable of the rules could construct. The difficulty lay in the subsequent interpretation and deconstruction of the Gua Xiang. With the same Gua pattern, a thousand people could produce ten thousand different results, and the skill was reflected in the accuracy of the analysis.

The more information one held during the analysis, the more accurate the deconstruction could be.

Shi Feiyang could not possibly calculate all the details about the Cold Centipede using just divination, so he needed Jiang Dachuan to write down everything he knew as completely as possible.

Within the nest of the Cold Centipede, there were at least three thousand "foods," mostly monsters, with less than two hundred human Cultivators. Many had been consumed recently, leaving only a little over fifty.

Jiang Dachuan did not have a complete grasp of all the information, but he was familiar with the happenings on the peak where he lived. This provided Shi Feiyang with plenty of data to work with, allowing him to calculate a more comprehensive and precise analysis.

Shi Feiyang planned to eliminate the Cold Centipede once and for all, claiming the Bright Realm as his own.

Defeating the Cold Centipede was not difficult in itself. The challenge lay in two aspects: first, she must not be allowed to escape.

The Cold Centipede had four remaining Primordial Spirits, one being her original Main Primordial Spirit, which was extremely powerful—almost reaching the level of an Undying Body. The other three were the Three Corpses Primordial Spirits she had cultivated. These four were far more formidable than the five she had lost previously. If even one were to escape and steal the body of a human or another animal, in no time at all, she could restore her four thousand years of Mana!

The second challenge was to avoid causing significant damage to the local environment.

The Outer Heaven Divine Mountain had fallen from the Spiritual Space Immortal Realm into outer space, before being captured and forcibly drawn in by the magnetic True Qi emanating from the South Sea's Earth Axis. The place where the Cold Centipede had settled was originally an Immortal Palace of the Immortal Realm, with numerous palace buildings and various immortal jade trees—it was the office Shi Feiyang intended to use in the future. It would be a pity if the buildings were destroyed in a duel with the Cold Centipede.

After several rounds of planning, Shi Feiyang aimed to strike a fatal blow to the Cold Centipede, preventing any of her Primordial Spirits from escaping and avoiding any intense battle. This required the cooperation of his Disciples—a collective effort was essential!

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