Thousand of blood essence threads were currently swirling in the sky. 

Gu Yao's words were like a deity's judgment and the threads descended upon the people. Lin Mu was watching from below and could tell that the power of the ability that Gu Yao was using was much more than before.

"How did it suddenly increase in power?" Lin Mu questioned.

"He is sacrificing his longevity to increase the potency of the ability… you need to get away too," Xukong replied.

A blood thread appeared in front of Lin Mu too, but he cut it with his short sword. The blood essence thread dissipated and another one soon appeared in its place. Lin Mu kept on cutting them while observing Gu Yao. Lin Mu wanted to see how his skill worked, so as to find out flaws in it.

He knew that this was a lost cause for now and that he had already lost this battle. But for the next one in the future, Lin Mu knew he needed more information. He thus wanted to take advantage while he could witness the skill himself.

'Hmm… so it is called the Human Controlling Blood Curse. From its name, the effects are rather obvious, but there should be more peculiarities of this ability. There should definitely be some restrictions, seeing that he is trying to control the entire population of the Wu Lim city.' Lin Mu thought as his spirit sense spread all around, observing everything closely.

Lin Mu searched for the supreme elder and Yi Deng for a bit before he found them on the other side of the Temple grounds. The two of them seemed to have already been captured and the blood essence threads were entering their bodies.

"Dammit! Looks like their guard was off while they tried to protect themselves from the falling debris. But still, how did he do it this quickly when it was taking him so long back in the chamber?" Lin Mu said to himself.

"The runes… he is using the old runes that are in the tunnels as well." Xukong suddenly spoke.

Lin Mu had nearly forgotten about the other runes as they had been damaged. His spirit sense pieced the ground, and he took a look at the tunnels.

"He's repaired the runes!" Lin Mu said with shock.

Gu Yao had apparently made this as a contingency if his other plan didn't work and was infusing the blood essence to repair the old runes. Lin Mu saw that the uncomfortable and repulsive aura that was spread in the tunnels was what was repairing the runes as well.

"He has modified the source such that it had a delayed response. The runes were always ready to be repaired, he only activated it now. Even I missed it somehow… this method is rather peculiar." Xukong explained.

By now Gu Yao had taken control over half of the population of the Wu Lim City and Lin Mu still wasn't able to find anything that could be done. He had been continuously chopping the blood essence threads and had finally caught the attention of Gu Yao again.

"YOU PEST! You should have died down there, but now your luck has run out. I'll refine you alive for years to come!" Gu Yao shouted.

Lin Mu gave him a glace before muttering.

"Activate the ward…" 

~Shua~

It was as if the entire city had fallen dead silent at once. Gu Yao too felt his vision getting dark and found himself in a pitch black space.

"Wha-what? What is this?" He said in shock, feeling a bit disoriented.

Then it happened…

Ten Golden Yellow eyes the size of huge temple bells opened in the distance. A terrifying presence was exuded from them and they stared at Gu Yao. The man shuddered with fear and couldn't understand what was in front of him.

This was the strongest being he had seen till now and could not comprehend what its cultivation base would be.

In the real world, the air started to tremble, and even the ground started to shake. Lin Mu became alert and asked, "what is happening?" 

"I'll try to do something more, you start running," Xukong replied in a stern voice.

~gulp~

Lin Mu nodded his head in acceptance and took one last look at the people before sighing to himself. He jumped on the short sword and controlled it to fly towards the Northern town. He had to get little shrubby before anything happened to him.

Lin Mu didn't want to leave it behind, and his next goal was in that direction, anyway.

***

At the Sky precepts sect, the Start catching peak.

"ALARM! ALARM!" Disciples were running around shouting in terror.

The elders were sweating like they were in a desert and controlling the star catching formation that was going haywire.

"There's no other choice, inform the patriarch!" The high elder spoke.

"What should I exactly tell him, high elder?" Another elder that was low in ranking questioned while trembling.

Disturbing the patriarch could be a grave mistake and if they were joint to do it, they needed to have a legitimate reason for it. The star catching formation array had a few incidents like this before and the patriarch had already grown sick of it.

He had ordered that unless it was of grave importance, the matters should not be taken up to him directly. In exchange, he had increased the authority of the high elder of the Star catching peak so that she could take care of most troubles on her own.

This had worked for the past few months, but then suddenly this had happened. 

The star catching peak had lost a lot of their disciples a year ago, and they did not want a repeat of that again. Thus they now had different protocols that they followed and the number of elders assigned to the star catching peak was increased as well.

The junior elder waited for the response of the High elder and shuddered when he heard it.

"Tell the patriarch, the world's barrier has been cracked…" 

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