The Quest for Immortality - Chapter 1117 (Patreon)

Chapter 1117: Raising Baleful Qi

With a single Fireball Technique from Mo Hua, the knife-scarred bandit chief’s head erupted. With that, this filthy bandit stronghold in the Small-Realm Ji Prefecture was wiped out to the last.

Mo Hua tossed a few more fireballs into the surroundings.

Deep, abyssal flames rose and spread, engulfing the entire stockade. More than a hundred corpses, along with all their sins, were burned to nothing.

Flames speared into the sky, ghastly bright against the night.

A scorched, rancid stench rode the wind into the mountains.

At the foot of Small-Realm Ji Mountain, in the little mountain village—

The poor itinerant cultivators who had been sleeping with one eye open could smell a faint reek of rot at their noses. Jolted awake, they looked up to see firelight as red as blood staining the horizon, and their faces went pale with shock and fear.

“The bandits are raiding again?”

“Hurry, hold the child.”

“All women into the cellar…”

“All the men, with me…”

The village exploded into anxious clamor. After half a shichen of frantic bustle, they realized that though the sky burned, nothing was amiss around the village.

“The bandits… aren’t coming?”

Someone stared, bewildered.

They peered at the sky. After a moment, someone murmured in disbelief, “Could it be… the bandits… were killed…”

They looked at one another, at a loss.

They wanted to go into the mountains to see, but the bandits’ cruelty still cowed them. They hesitated, uneasy and fearful.

Three days later, a hunter used to skulking in the mountains—bolder than most—slipped up the slopes. He came down half a day later, shaking from head to toe, hands gesticulating wildly.

“Dead!”

“All dead!”

“Ten-odd on the road, burned so badly there was nothing left to see.”

“The whole stockade’s ash. The beasts inside—every last one of them—dead! Vultures are tearing at their charred flesh.”

“The whole mountain is clean again…”

The scattered cultivators were overjoyed, but soon their joy turned to awed speculation.

“Their chief was Foundation Establishment—killed people like mowing grass. Day to day he could stir up a bloodstorm with a flick of his sleeve. A towering figure. Who could kill him? Who had that kind of ability?”

“Not to mention, that stockade had over a hundred bandit-cultivators, all steeped in evil. Could they all truly die in a single night? Isn’t that the thunderous hand of an immortal?”

At that, a gaunt elder in the crowd trembled and said, “Yes, yes… it was the Immortal Child, my lord!”

“We prayed for the Immortal Child’s longevity, begged his protection. The Immortal Child truly answered us. In one night he slew all the bandit-cultivators in the mountains, struck down the wicked, brought peace to our land…”

The old man fell to his knees, trembling, and chanted devoutly, “May the Immortal Child enjoy boundless blessings, may his lifespan equal the heavens, great in compassion, saving those in suffering…”

With this “deed” before them, even more people began to believe in the Immortal Child.

Like the elder, they knelt, bowing to the sky, praying to the Immortal Child for blessings and protection…

…

At this very moment, the Immortal Child receiving their prayers was enduring torment.

Fifty li away, in barren hills, within a remote cave.

Crude, simple arrays had been set around.

Mo Hua sat within, lips white, the space between his brows black as ink. The baleful qi around him had nearly condensed to substance, turning into gray mist that streamed off his body and flowed down, yellowing and withering swaths of grass and brush.

Mo Hua’s heart was likewise racked by murderous intent.

In the unseen, the villagers’ votive power trickled like a brook into Mo Hua’s fate pattern, yet it could not possibly withstand the boundless slaughter karma he carried.

This time, Mo Hua had killed over a hundred bandits.

The backlash of baleful qi hit harder than ever.

With eyes shut tight, he dimly saw the Wild Heaven Blood Sacrificial Array—black and white, deathly still. The demonic cultivators obliterated by the force of collapse within it had turned to dust. Their souls manifested as one wailing specter after another, long-faced and twisted, screaming at Mo Hua.

“You killed me…”

“Give my life back…”

“With sins like yours, what’s the point of living…”

“Your crimes are heavy—why not die?”

“Kill everyone…”

“Kill…”

Countless shrill voices filled his mind. Any ordinary cultivator hearing them would have their head split by pain, their thoughts deranged, their killing urge inflamed.

But Mo Hua had honed his divine sense and clarified his Dao heart. Against these cause-and-effect “wronged souls and fierce ghosts,” his resistance was strong.

Besides, these demonic beasts in human skin deserved to die.

Even if he killed them all a second time, Mo Hua would feel no guilt.

The problem was that he had killed too many, and the baleful qi he stirred was too heavy.

Having proved the Dao with divine sense, half a step into divinity, Mo Hua could ignore the “wronged souls.”

He could not, however, ignore baleful qi.

Even a proper god can suppress ghosts, but must never treat baleful qi lightly.

Overrun by baleful qi, even a righteous god can have his source polluted and fall into a “God of Slaughter,” a “Fierce God,” even an “Evil God.”

The baleful qi grew heavier; the blackness between Mo Hua’s brows deepened, and his mind was slowly shrouded by killing intent.

A voice sounded in his heart.

It was exactly like his own, but colder, crueler:

“People are ignorant and profit-seeking, with no heart for equality and no will to seek the Dao. They live only for pleasure, preying on one another, throwing Heaven’s Dao out of balance, veiling the immortal design…”

“Such fools should all die—kill them all…”

The words secretly matched a part of Mo Hua’s state of mind, plucking at the impulse to end the world.

Mo Hua’s brow knit. He knew he had no choice now.

He steadied his breath and mind, took out the Water Prison Forbidden Casket, and visualized the Water Prison Diagram within. Following the Water Prison Sect’s traditional cultivation method, he drew baleful qi into his divine thought, engraved it upon his heart image, fused it into his divine soul, and merged it with the Sword Prison of the Seven Souls, making the two one.

The orthodox way to cultivate the Water Prison Sect’s Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye was precisely to use baleful qi to amplify the eye’s might.

Before, Mo Hua had never cultivated baleful qi, so he only used the Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye’s forms to drive the Spirit-Stirring Sword.

The Blood Prison Eye was form; the Spirit-Stirring Sword was essence.

But now the baleful qi on him surged like a tide, impossible to suppress.

He could only draw this overflowing baleful qi into his divine soul and, according to the Water Prison forebear who first created the ocular art, cultivate it properly.

The Mo Hua who always walked “side paths” was forced by baleful qi, this time, onto the Water Prison Sect’s “proper path.”

Even so, it wasn’t enough.

The cause-and-effect layer of baleful qi had been led into his divine soul.

But outside his body, a residue still clung.

Mo Hua took out a second manual:

True Manual of Demonic Path Baleful Transmutation.

He had kept this Demonic Path manual buried at the bottom of his chest for ten full years.

He had never intended to cultivate it.

Yet as matters stood, he had no choice but to use this Demonic Path method to force a transmutation—dissolving the surging, near-tangible baleful qi from his body.

The manual’s profundities flowed through his mind.

Thread by thread, baleful qi was guided into his sea of consciousness, then tugged by spiritual power along his meridians through a minor circuit.

At last it gradually fused with his spiritual power, settled into the depths of his sea of qi, and thus the initial “transmutation of baleful qi” was complete.

Mo Hua’s spiritual power now carried the might of baleful qi.

Thus, Mo Hua dual-cultivated the Water Prison Sect’s Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye and the Demonic Path’s True Manual of Baleful Transmutation.

The baleful qi overflowing from his fate pattern was split in two.

One portion fused into the divine soul and hid within his eyes.

The other mixed with his spiritual power and sank into his sea of consciousness.

The backlash of baleful qi began to be “dissolved,” little by little.

The blackness between Mo Hua’s brows started to fade. The baleful qi around him was cut off at the root and slowly dispersed. Color crept back into his pale face.

Half an hour later, Mo Hua opened his eyes.

A bloody gleam of baleful qi flashed and vanished in their depths, within which hid the thousand shrieks of cultivators at death’s door—murder karma so heavy that a single glance chilled the heart.

Mo Hua brought two fingers together and pointed. A fireball gathered at his fingertip.

Its center burned a searing red, but its rim was traced with a thin black edge—baleful qi coursed along it.

He flicked it. The fireball slammed into the ground and burst. Soil and stone flew; brush blackened.

That was the Fireball’s normal force.

What wasn’t normal: grass and shrubs the blast hadn’t touched—only brushed by the fireball’s baleful aura—also began to wither, a ring of bleak decay spreading out.

The good news was, Mo Hua felt stronger.

His ocular art was now the orthodox Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye.

Even without relying on the Spirit-Stirring Sword or overtaxing his divine thought, the baleful qi in his eyes alone could exert powerful intimidation, seeding terror in the heart.

Second, his Fireball Technique now carried that black edge and austere baleful qi, making it deadlier by a measure.

The bad news: both means had grown stronger because of “baleful qi.”

Strictly speaking, baleful qi was not a tool proper cultivators favored.

As he was now, he already looked a bit like a “demonic fiend.”

That, Mo Hua had trouble accepting.

“How did I suddenly end up looking like a devil…”

Frowning, Mo Hua ransacked his memory, sifting through what he’d seen and heard, trying to draw a line between orthodox and heretical.

A moment later, his expression shifted. He suddenly recalled something Elder Yu of the Water Prison Sect had told him long ago.

Much of the Water Prison Sect’s inheritance—even its ultimate forbidden art—was tied to “baleful qi.”

Thus the Water Prison Sect had studied baleful qi deeply.

According to Elder Yu Canghai, people are divided into orthodox and heretical—and so is baleful qi.

Baleful qi comes in righteous baleful qi and evil baleful qi.

Kill, and you gain baleful qi. If you would refine baleful qi, you must kill.

Kill the good, and you cultivate evil baleful qi.

Kill the wicked, and you cultivate righteous baleful qi.

Water Prison cultivators have long served in the Dao Court, punishing criminals with severe law, suppressing villains with Dao prisons, cutting down all treacherous, monstrous, and depraved. By slaughter they nourish awe-inspiring baleful might, brim with righteous qi, and make the petty and the wicked tremble at the mere rumor of their name. This is called raising “righteous baleful qi”!

When Elder Yu had said this, Mo Hua hadn’t thought much of it.

Now, thinking back, he nodded again and again. It made sense.

He also remembered Elder Yu saying:

“Righteous baleful qi is difficult to raise…”

“Those who raise it must have tremendous will and an unshakable Dao heart…”

“Once you raise righteous baleful qi, the wronged souls entangled with your killing will mostly be the worst of the worst. Their ferocity will gnaw at your mind without cease. If a crack opens in your nature, if you can’t withstand those ferocious thoughts, you’ll suffer backlash, your nature will fall, and the baleful qi will mutate—from righteous baleful qi into something even more extreme: evil baleful qi…”

…

Thinking this far, Mo Hua’s heart gave a thump.

He hadn’t expected the words Elder Yu had spoken back then to come true upon him now, point for point.

In the Wild Heaven blood sacrifice, he had slain too many vicious demonic cultivators.

In other words, he had raised immeasurable “righteous baleful qi.”

Within this righteous baleful qi, wronged souls indeed hid.

Those wronged souls were the most heinous of men; their malice would indeed assault his mind.

Fail to resist, and he would suffer backlash and fall.

If he plunged into deviation and slaughtered the innocent, the “righteous baleful qi” would reverse and become an even more extreme “evil baleful qi.”

A sky-filling “righteous baleful qi” might still be balanced.

But if that sky-filling “righteous baleful qi” sunk into an abyss and turned to “evil baleful qi,” his fate pattern would collapse in an instant.

He would go mad, become a great demon, be cut off from the Great Dao—his path to cultivation finished forever…

Mo Hua drew a cold breath.

Only now did he realize that, without meaning to, he had already stepped onto the Water Prison Sect’s path of “raising righteous baleful qi.”

And this path ran along a cliff’s edge—narrow, perilous, one-way only.

One misstep was a plunge into a bottomless abyss, doom without end.

Moreover, the slaughter karma he bore was heavy enough, and pure enough, that the “righteous baleful qi” he had raised might be stronger by countless times than any Water Prison disciple before him…

Ordinary righteous baleful qi wasn’t much.

But the quantity he bore was truly terrifying.

If it mutated, the result could be annihilating.

Mo Hua sighed deeply, helpless.

He was only Foundation Establishment—did he really have to shoulder cause and effect this great?

“Not only is dissolving and transmuting baleful qi extremely difficult…”

“Raising baleful qi is like raising ‘heavenly lightning’ inside you—a colossal hidden danger. One slip, and you’re blown to pieces.”

“And I must never wrongly kill a good person. Even that one stain would breed ‘evil baleful qi,’ a fuse that could ignite the restless ‘righteous baleful qi’ in an instant and blast me into eternal damnation…”

But things were as they were. His slaughter karma ran deep; his righteous baleful qi was like a sea. There was no turning back—only one step at a time…

Mo Hua deliberated in silence:

“From now on, if I can avoid killing, I won’t kill.”

“So long as I don’t kill, I won’t tug on cause and effect. In that state, the baleful qi is absolutely safe.”

“If I must kill, I must be sure the one I kill truly deserves death. That will only add ‘righteous baleful qi.’ The backlash that comes, I can somewhat dissolve by borrowing the Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye and the True Manual of Baleful Transmutation—but I mustn’t kill too many at once…”

“As for the innocent, I must never touch them. Raise even a little evil baleful qi and it will taint my righteous baleful qi. The consequences are unspeakable…”

Mo Hua calmed himself, sorted his thoughts, and nodded slowly.

“Men can be good or evil; baleful qi can be righteous or vicious. Good and evil change; so too can righteousness and viciousness transform into one another…”

At this thought, Mo Hua’s heart trembled. He felt as if he understood something.

But when he tried to grasp it, it was hazy and distant—like a deer’s horn hooked on a branch, leaving no trace.

He knew this was because his cultivation was insufficient, his horizon too low—his understanding of the Dao not yet deep enough.

He didn’t rush it. Insight had to be earned step by step.

Day by day, with study and reflection, there would come a time when water spilled over and he would see the sky.

Mo Hua rose, erased the traces of his arrays, then buried the marks where the Fireball Technique had scorched the walls.

Afterward he leveled the ground with the Mud-Sand Technique. Only when he was sure nothing remained did he leave.

Walking the mountain path, Mo Hua was still full of cares.

Now he thought about raising baleful qi, now about dissolving and transmuting it; then about the Seven-Soul Blood Prison Eye, then about the origin of the baleful-qi-edged Fireball Technique. Thinking and thinking, he suddenly froze.

“The Blood Prison Eye is the secret art of the Water Yama King.”

“Fire spells entwined with fear from baleful qi are the unique heretical method of the Fire Buddha…”

“Have I already… mastered the strengths of both, become a fusion of the two great fiends of Qianxue—Fire Buddha and Water Yama King?”

And better than blue from indigo?

Mo Hua heaved a long sigh, helpless at heart.

After traveling a few dozen more li, he reached the first—and almost the only—little Immortal City in the Small-Realm Ji Prefecture.

He stood outside, watching the bustle within, and after wrestling with himself, decided to go in.

He had thought it through: if he traveled alone, whenever he ran into “evil men,” he would inevitably feel the urge to kill—and give in.

That wouldn’t do. He had to find some people to “protect” him, to keep him from piling up more slaughter karma.

Mo Hua entered the city, wandered a circuit, and came to an escort agency.

This agency had one of the only Foundation Establishment cultivators in the Small-Realm Immortal City.

The Foundation Establishment cultivator was about a hundred and twenty or thirty, hair half white, body tall and sturdy, bearing hearty and open.

He had come to the Small-Realm Immortal City to escort a shipment. On the way back, he would take on escorting cultivators as a side job for some extra income.

Though he was Foundation Establishment—a realm higher—he still had to make a living and feed his family.

Especially in small places where resources were scarce.

Just the cost of cultivation for a Foundation Establishment cultivator was no small sum; daily expenses were tight as well. He had to find ways to bring in more spirit stones and cut costs.

Even one more spirit stone helped.

“Senior Luo, I’d like to ask you to take me along.”

Mo Hua stepped up to the Foundation Establishment cultivator and cupped his hands.

He had asked around just now: this Foundation Establishment cultivator’s surname was Luo. He was the chief escort of the Gray Wolf City Luo Family Escort Bureau.

And Gray Wolf City was also where Gray Wolf Sect was located—right on Mo Hua’s route.

Chief Luo was tightening a horse’s girth. Hearing the request, he glanced at Mo Hua, his brow arching—surprised by the boy’s refined looks and bearing, yet faintly puzzled.

“I’m Foundation Establishment, and I can’t see through this youth’s depth…”

He asked, “May I have your name, young sir? Where are you from, and where are you headed?”

Mo Hua smiled gently. “My surname is Mo. By my sect’s order I’m traveling abroad. I’m bound for Gray Wolf City, but I fear the dangers of the road, so I’d like to trouble Chief Luo to take me along…”

There wasn’t anything wrong with that story.

Even so, Chief Luo hesitated.

Mo Hua produced ten spirit stones. “I can pay extra.”

Chief Luo blinked.

The journey to Gray Wolf City was long. The usual fee was five spirit stones. Not a fortune, but for ordinary itinerant cultivators—especially the poor ones nearby—it was no small sum.

Mo Hua, however, offered ten at once.

“Likely some rich young master out sightseeing—doesn’t know how hard spirit stones are to earn…”

Chief Luo muttered inwardly. He looked Mo Hua over again. The youth was indeed handsome, his aura warm and gentle—harmless as a house cat.

“Can’t see the cultivation—likely carrying a treasure that conceals it. But he’s young; his realm shouldn’t be high. A handsome boy traveling alone, worried about danger—that’s only natural…”

A protective feeling rose in Chief Luo’s heart. He nodded. “All right. Come along.”

Mo Hua smiled and cupped his hands. “Many thanks.”

After half a day of preparations, Chief Luo finished handing off the bureau’s affairs, then led the convoy out—goods and people together.

Mo Hua blended in among them.

With a Foundation Establishment chief escort guarding them, the road was far safer.

Even when brainless bandits turned up, Mo Hua didn’t need to lift a finger. Chief Luo, together with the escorts and guards, dealt with them neatly.

Mo Hua only had to sip tea, nibble pastries, and watch the show from the side—no need for him to act at all.

“As expected, living well means learning to ‘slack off.’”

“It’s so much more comfortable to move with a crowd…”

So thought Mo Hua.

Thanks for reading! This chapter had a heavy, brooding vibe—Mo Hua juggling “righteous baleful qi” like a thunderseed is… yikes.

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