Bai Yunsheng paused for thought.
"One of the main clichés in all stories, especially horror and thriller ones, is that when characters find a secret room that obviously contains some important secrets and dangers, they always go there. Because the plot would be uninteresting if the authors left that crap out and didn't dwell on it, keeping the readers guessing what's in there. Although, most people simply won't remember it..."
With a heavy sigh, Bai Yunsheng began to descend the stairs.
"Of course, I could just forget all this and run back, but curiosity is a thing that's not so easy to overcome!"
When his foot touched the seventh step, the door leading to the exit immediately closed, leaving him in pitch darkness.
Bai Yunsheng snorted in frustration, ignited his hand to light the way, and continued descending, plunging deeper into the darkness.
***
"Damn it, how long have I been going down these damn stairs?! When will it end?" Bai Yunsheng thought to himself, exasperated.
Although he couldn't be sure how much time had passed, it felt like he'd been descending for several hours.
Although cultivators are usually more resilient than ordinary people, this was still too much!
"Maybe I should just jump all the way to the bottom? At least that would be faster!" a desperate thought crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed it.
"No, I'm not that desperate yet! Besides, until I reach the Soul Formation (6) stage, I'll just die if I try to take the easy path and fail to reincarnate!"
While he was grumbling to himself, pondering how to quickly descend, he briefly noticed a small light on the wall.
Hm?
Raising an eyebrow, Bai Yunsheng approached the light and, upon closer inspection, realized it was a slot for a door key, and inside was a corridor.
Breaking a sigh of relief, Bai Yunsheng didn't bother trying to find the key. He simply concentrated his Yang energy into his fist and, with a single blow, punched a huge hole in the wall.
"Hmm... I'm slowly starting to get the hang of this technique... The Dual Cultivation Technique 'Unification of Two Hearts' is so simple, yet so powerful! Strange... Usually powerful techniques have strong side effects, so why doesn't this one have one?..." Bai Yunsheng thought for a moment.
He'd been using his Yang Fire for a long time after becoming Li Yuhua's Dao partner, and since it's a powerful technique, the recoil should also be incredibly strong.
But all this time, he'd felt nothing except that he'd grown stronger.
Although he used Yang Fire to enhance his fist attacks and fire bow creation, he hadn't used any other techniques.
Considering it was an immortal technique, he certainly wouldn't have been able to learn it, let alone use it in combat.
"Since it's a dual cultivation technique, maybe the side effects are related to having a partner? But the diary didn't mention any side effects! Only the technique itself..."
Bai Yunsheng was pulled out of his thoughts by a noise that distracted him.
"Fine, I'll think about it later!" he thought to himself and hurried toward the noise.
Running through the corridors, Bai Yunsheng noticed that despite this secret room being so deep underground, it was surprisingly quite clean. Chu Xiu apparently spent a lot of time here.
Reaching the door at the end of the corridor where the sounds were coming from, he pressed his ear to the door and listened.
From within, all he could hear were various groans, mixed with pain, despair, and anger.
"What's going on in there?..." Bai Yunsheng whispered to himself.
Curiosity urged him to go in and check, but his mind told him to go home, and the latter was more convincing.
As soon as he turned to leave, he received a powerful blow to the stomach, breaking the door and flying into the room.
Cough!
Bai Yunsheng spat out blood as the floor embraced him.
The blow was strong enough for him to feel it.
Fortunately, a cultivator's body, especially a cultivator at the Golden Core (4) stage, was durable enough to withstand such damage.
Recovering, he looked at the culprit and raised an eyebrow.
"I knew something was wrong with you!"
A green-haired man, dressed in the garb of a Yanshi Sect disciple, stared at him from the broken door, his eyes closed. He carried a basket of various herbs in his arms, and a faint smile adorned his face, which for some reason grated on Bai Yunsheng's nerves.
"Tsk tsk~ Didn't anyone tell you that breaking into someone else's home is wrong, Mr. Bai?" Chu Xiu asked mockingly.
Glancing around, Bai Yunsheng noticed a rather pitiful scene.
This "room" was full of cages, each filled with men and women of all ages from the Yanshi Sect.
Each of them was as pale as a corpse, their codes were stained with dark blue spots, and they were all thin, as if they hadn't eaten for days.
Some of them periodically coughed up a crimson liquid, their limbs trembled, and their Qi was unstable. It seemed they could die from a simple breath.
And all this was accompanied by terrifying screams and groans of pain.
"I take it this is your doing?" Bai Yunsheng asked indifferently, pointing at the people in the cage.
Chu Xiu's closed eyes scanned the people in the cage and chuckled.
"Yes, Master Bai! I was the one who created this disease and spread it throughout the Yanshi Sect!" Chu Xiu began boasting of his achievements with a villainous smile.
"Yeah... Right now, he looks like a typical third-tier villain who'll be killed off-screen!" Bai Yunsheng thought to himself, ignoring the green-haired man.
"And how did you create a disease capable of dispelling cultivation?" he asked, trying to ignore the noise of the people suffering from the disease.
Chu Xiu smiled sweetly and reached into the basket, pulling out a small red flower.
"This flower is called the Xue Hwa Flower (Blood Flower). This is a parasitic magical plant capable of absorbing a cultivator's Qi and growing within their body!
— The Xue Hwa Flower resembles a Red Spider Lily in appearance.
— The Xue Hwa Flower, or Blood Flower, grows on the corpses of deceased cultivators in dense Qi-filled forests and only under moonlight.
— This makes them quite difficult to find, let alone cultivate. Another problem is that it will immediately begin sucking out Qi upon contact and will grow within the cultivator until they are completely enveloped in these flowers.
— However, I have found a way to safely touch these flowers without harming myself and use it to my advantage!
Explaining the flower's properties, Chu Xiu placed the basket on the table and pulled one of the Yanshi Sect girls out of the cage.
"Thanks to finding a special technique, I was able to create a magic pill that can slightly aid your cultivation."
"It wasn't that hard to sell the pill to the sect's people while pretending to be other people! Although my acting skills leave much to be desired, the people from the Yanshi Sect are very stupid, so it wasn't difficult for me to sell a huge number of pills without giving myself away!"
"At first, everything was fine, and no one suspected anything, thinking it was just a pill to advance your cultivation! However, because I suddenly stopped supplying it one day, the Xue Hwa parasite inside those who took the pill rebelled, demanding more pills, and then, the results are clear to see~"
Chu Xiu pointed at the girl, clutching her hair and smiling coldly. It seemed he was waiting for Bai Yunsheng to praise his genius, until the girl collapsed in pain and need of medicine.
Bai Yunsheng straightened up and snorted.
"And as I understand it, the reason for all this madness is because you want revenge on them for how they treated you?" he asked, looking at the boy with an indifferent expression.
"You see, Master Bai... I am a hated disciple of the Yanshi Sect. My mother, a righteous cultivator, had sex with a follower of the demon path and became pregnant by him," Chu Xiu replied, continuing his story.
"Afterwards, my father attacked our sect, and my mother sacrificed herself to stop him and save the Yanshi Sect."
"However, despite her sacrifice, I suffered the fate of being the 'filthy child' of a human and a demon, resulting in everyone in the Yanshi Sect treating me worse than trash."
"You can't even imagine what it's like to be despised for nothing!" Chu Xiu's voice filled with anger, and she gripped the girl's hair.
"Her name is Meili. I've been in love with her for a long time and tried to win her attention, but all I got in return was contempt and ridicule!"
He began listing all the people in the cage.
"Gao Chun, always trying his tricks on me; Mo Chen, always taking my food; Lee Hwang Min, using me as a punching bag when he was in a bad mood; Mo Ji... Ju Liang... Zhao Bing..."
After a few minutes, he finally finished his list of grievances.
"They are all sinners who deserve every punishment in this world, and only Sister Yue Yang treated me kindly and with care!"
Bai Yunsheng, who had long since stopped listening to his whining, merely raised his hand, stopping him.
"In other words, you're a typical villain with a sad backstory that no one cares about!" "Bai Yunsheng said in an indifferent voice, infusing his fist with his Qi energy and striking Chu Xiu in the face...
To be continued...