40: Chapter 40 The General Who Punishes Rebels, Not the Emperor's Order

Ye Feng sat cross-legged.

Beneath his seat was meat paste and crushed bones that hadn't cooled yet, and the air was filled with a nauseating smell of burning and blood.

He had no time to worry about the filth.

The Thunder Core he had just swallowed was revolting.

It felt like a red-hot hedgehog rolling wildly in his stomach; violent thunder power rampaged through his blood vessels, and everywhere it passed, his Meridians snapped inch by inch.

"Sizzle."

His skin looked like a cooked shrimp shell, splitting open with hundreds of fine bloody gashes.

As soon as the dark red blood seeped out, it was instantly evaporated by the high temperature of his body into puffs of bloody mist, enveloping him in a hazy red light.

The pain made him want to pull out all his internal organs and wash them.

But Ye Feng didn't make a sound, only gritting his teeth hard, the red light in his eyes even thicker than the blood mist on his body.

Without madness, one cannot survive.

If he didn't use this momentum to break through the shackles of the Divine Sea Realm, once this thunder energy dissipated, he would be nothing but a waste waiting for death for the rest of his life.

Just then, a sudden change occurred.

Dozens of steps away, Iron Madman, who had been standing still like a wooden stake, suddenly moved.

It wasn't that he wanted to move.

It was the crumpled secret decree in his arms that suddenly began to burn on its own.

There was no flame, only ink-black smoke.

The smoke seemed like a living thing; sensing the out-of-control energy fluctuations on Ye Feng, it instantly transformed into a ferocious black snake, following the wind and sand to strike directly at Ye Feng's seven orifices.

Corrosive and cold, it carried a nauseating stench of corpses.

Is this Demonic Qi?

How could such a thing be hidden in the Great Xia Emperor's secret decree?

Ye Feng's heart skipped a beat; he wanted to dodge, but his body was locked down by the Thunder Core, unable to move.

"Sizzle—"

The black smoke was like strong acid poured onto tofu.

A piercing pain came from his left shoulder; it was the sound of flesh being dissolved alive.

In the blink of an eye, white bone was exposed on his shoulder, the edges turning black and continuing to rot inward.

Quite a tactic.

Is this the so-called 'vast imperial grace'?

A cruel sneer curled at the corner of Ye Feng's mouth.

That old dog sitting on the dragon throne, to kill an 'anomaly' like him, had actually resorted to methods involving collusion with evil demons.

It wasn't over yet.

His ears twitched slightly.

The wind carried a faint sound of something cutting through the air.

In the shadow of the clock tower ruins a hundred meters away, a cold gleam like lightning shot straight for his brow.

That was a 'Lightning-Inducing Needle'.

A sinister Magical Artifact specifically used to attract heavenly thunder and detonate the Qi nodes within a Cultivator's body.

Su Xiaoxiao.

This woman really wasn't someone to be trifled with; she saw that he was currently like a powder keg and wanted to use this needle to light the fuse and blow him into a sky full of fireworks.

At this moment, he faced both internal and external threats.

Inside was the Thunder Core ready to explode at any moment, and outside was the bone-corroding demonic poison and the lethal needle.

A dead end?

In Ye Feng's dictionary, there was no word for 'death', only 'fight'.

"Freeze for me!"

Ye Feng snapped his eyes open, his eyeballs covered in terrifying bloodshot veins.

His right fingers hooked like claws; he ignored the incoming needle and the rotting flesh on his shoulder, instead thrusting his hand violently into the gap between the ribs on his left chest.

Puchi!

His fingertips gripped his ribs, and using this self-mutilating pain, he forcibly locked down the rampaging Thunder Core inside him.

At the same time, the Chaos Sword Body operated at full power.

The black-hole-like vortex showed its true fangs at this moment.

Want to corrode me?

Then let's see who eats whom!

[Attribute Stripping].

The black Demonic Qi that was still frantically devouring his flesh felt as if an invisible giant hand had seized its throat.

Since you're here, don't think about leaving.

Ye Feng didn't reject this poisonous power; instead, he opened his Meridians and swallowed that sinister Demonic Qi in one gulp.

The Chaos vortex was like a precision millstone, instantly crushing the 'life' component of the Demonic Qi, leaving only the purest and most extreme 'destruction' attribute.

Transformation.

A tiny grey sword thread formed at his fingertip.

That was a destructive Sword Intent that combined corrosion and devastation.

"Go."

Without even looking, Ye Feng flicked his finger back.

The grey sword thread struck first, tracing a bizarre arc through the air.

A crisp sound.

The hair-thin Lightning-Inducing Needle was tightly entangled by the grey sword thread less than three inches from his brow, then, like rock weathered for a thousand years, it instantly disintegrated into a pile of useless metal powder, drifting down.

This was the dominance of the Chaos Sword Body.

All things can be swallowed, and all things can become a sword.

From behind the clock tower ruins in the distance came a suppressed cry of surprise, followed by an aura rapidly fleeing.

Consider yourself fast.

Ye Feng withdrew his focus; now was not the time to hunt down rats.

Since the external threats were removed, it was time to deal with the internal problem.

He took a deep breath, the blood-scented air filling his lungs.

"Break!"

A low growl, like the roar of a beast from the abyss.

The forcibly suppressed Thunder Core finally found an outlet.

It didn't explode outward, but collapsed inward.

The Divine Sea within him, which was originally as vast as an ocean, was shattered by this brutal force at this moment.

It was a true fragmentation.

All his Qi and cultivation vanished in an instant, only to be reorganized among the ruins.

Countless golden fragments converged frantically toward the purple thunder vortex at the center.

Compression, and more compression.

Until qualitative change occurred.

Boom—!

A visible shockwave exploded outward with Ye Feng as the center.

There was no world-shaking roar, only a suffocating silence.

Within a thousand-meter radius, the mountain-like piles of Bat Dragon corpses, along with the hard black rock ground, were all turned into dust the moment the wave swept over them.

The dust settled.

Ye Feng slowly stood up.

The wounds on his body were still bleeding, and the bone on his shoulder was still exposed, making him look wretched.

But his aura had changed.

If he was a sharp sword before, now he was a volcano ready to erupt at any moment.

At his Dantian, a pigeon-egg-sized Golden Core was slowly rotating.

On the surface of the Golden Core, purple thunder patterns were entwined, faintly exuding a heart-palpitating aura of Heavenly Tribulation.

Shattering the Divine Sea to condense the Golden Core.

And it was the highest-grade Purple Thunder Golden Core.

Dozens of steps away.

Iron Madman's legs went soft, his kneecaps making an overburdened cracking sound.

"Thud."

This great general who dominated the border was actually forced to kneel in the rubble by the pressure of this newly broken-through Golden Core.

It wasn't that he wanted to kneel.

It was a tremor originating from a difference in life levels that made his body simply not obey his commands.

Ye Feng carried the broken sword and walked step by step toward Iron Madman.

His boots stepped on the gravel, making a crunching sound, each step feeling like it was treading on Iron Madman's heartbeat.

On the ground was a half-burned fragment of the imperial decree, the bright red private seal on it looking particularly piercing at this moment.

Ye Feng raised his foot and crushed it hard.

He ground it back and forth.

Until the imperial decree representing imperial power was crushed into the mud, mixed with the excrement of Yao Beasts.

He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, which landed right on Iron Madman's helmet.

"Go back and tell the one sitting on the dragon throne."

Ye Feng's voice was light, yet cold as ten-thousand-year-old ice, every word carrying bone-chilling killing intent.

"This General of Suppressing Rebellion title, I'll take it."

"But this life, he cannot take."

The broken sword was raised, patting Iron Madman's stiff cheek.

"Tell him to wash his neck clean. When I return to the capital, I will surely borrow his head."

After saying that, Ye Feng didn't even look at this trash who had been scared witless.

Killing such a character would only dirty his sword.

Only stronger power could allow one to survive in this man-eating world.

Just now when swallowing the Thunder Core, the Chaos Sword Body seemed to sense something calling from deep underground.

There, that was the real feast.

His figure flashed.

Only a blurred afterimage remained.

Ye Feng turned into a streak of light, heading straight for the Spirit Ore Vein in the center of Black Stone City.