Martial Peak

Nearby, the Annihilating Poison King went all out, constantly sending out swaths of poisonous gas, but under the siege of so many masters, his efforts were somewhat insufficient. Panting for breath, he laughed miserably and muttered, “En, Sir Demon Lord doesn’t care about ours lives; why else in this situation would he have not tried to help us yet? I’m afraid he’s already made his escape.”

“Bullshit!” The Force King roared hysterically, “How could sir Demon Lord run away? He must be preparing a decisive strike that will utterly destroy these Central Capital dogs!”

“Idiot!” The Poison King and Ghost King both snickered at once.

Anyone capable of sitting in the position of Evil King was not a simple character. Each of them was meticulous, cunning, and crafty in their own way. The only exception was the Tyrannical Force King, who had no redeeming qualities besides his brute strength.

Even now, he was still convinced that Demon Lord Yang Bai was engaged in some kind of strategy to destroy the Central Capital.

Not only did these five Evil Kings not know where Yang Bai was hiding at the moment, even the Eight Great Families had lost track of him.

Many people were actively searching for Yang Bai’s figure, but no one caught a single glimpse of him. If a Third Order Transcendent master wanted to conceal himself, no one here was capable of discovering him.

Many even thought that Yang Bai had seen that the situation was hopeless and had really escaped.

However, Yang Kai couldn’t help feeling a sense of foreboding, as if something big was about to happen.

Halting his absorption of the Spiritual Energy remnants for the fallen Immortal Ascension Boundary masters, Yang Kai quickly sought out the old Patriarchs of the Eight Great Families.

After fighting a few rounds in this intense battle, these old Patriarchs were currently meditating to recover their strength in preparation to cope with the final confrontation where they would completely smash the Ash-Grey Cloud Evil Land. When Yang Kai arrived, they were finishing up their final preparations.

“Great Uncle,” Yang Kai walked directly up to Yang Ying Hao and with a dignified expression asked, “Do you know why Yang Bai suddenly decided to launch this invasion into the Central Capital? What is his purpose?”

Yang Ying Hao was slightly startled and asked back, “What do you mean?”

Yang Kai took a long breath and continued, “On the surface, it looks like because the Eight Great Families encircled the Ash-Grey Cloud Evil Land some time ago, Yang Bai and the Six Great Evil Kings are counter-attacking for the sake of revenge. This reason also makes some sense; after all, after all these years, the Eight Great Families’ and the Ash-Grey Cloud Evil Land’s mutual hatred have reached an irresolvable level. However, I always get the feeling that Yang Bai wouldn’t attack the Central Capital for such a reason. He should know that even if he succeeds, victory will come at a significant cost. If it’s not simply because he is bored and is seeking entertainment through slaughter, then there must be something here that the Eight Great Families have that he wants badly enough to make all these sacrifices worthwhile.”

Listening to his argument, the eight old men fell into contemplation as they glanced around at each other, Ye Kuang Ren eventually postulated, “The secret of your Yang Family is probably the only thing we have that could peak his interest.”

“En, although our Eight Great Families’ heritages are all quite deep, nothing else that we own could possibly arouse Yang Bai’s attention.”

Yang Kai’s brow deeply furrowed, of course he knew they were referring to the Soul Foundation Temple.

If Yang Bai’s objective was the Soul Foundation Temple, it could barely explain his actions, but soon Yang Kai shook his head, “No, if what he wanted was my Yang Family’s secret heritage, he would not have invaded from the north but instead directly attacked from the south!”

The Ash-Grey Cloud Evil Land’s early offence was overwhelming, no matter where they attacked, no family was able to offer any resistance.

If Yang Bai wanted to seize the Yang Family’s Soul Foundation Temple, he would definitely not have invaded from the north.

What’s more, the secrets of the Soul Foundation Temple were only known to the Yang Family’s Patriarchs and the powerful Transcendent Realm Grand Elders who were about to die, where would Yang Bai have even inquired about its existence?

“Please think about it once more, is there anything in any of your respective families that he would covet.” Yang Kai swept his eyes over the eight former Patriarchs.

All eight of them wore dignified expressions and carefully considered the issue again, but in the end they still couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation.

With the situation having reached this point, if there was anything in their families that would interest Yang Bai, they would not continue concealing it. Watching everyone’s expression Yang Kai couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed.

Could it be that his own assumptions were wrong? What exactly was the purpose of Yang Bai’s invasion of the Central Capital?

At this moment, Yang Bai’s aura which had disappeared quite some time ago, suddenly re-emerged.

Everyone looked up with surprise and, sure enough, Yang Bai was quietly standing midair, his cold eyes overlooking the entire Central Capital, a burst of laughter like rolling thunder escaping from his lips.

Everyone involuntarily stopped their movements and stared towards the source of this laughter.

“It’s time!” Suddenly, Yang Bai restrained his laughter and shouted.

Yang Kai’s heart clenched, the sense of uneasiness he had been feeling becoming much palpable. He didn’t know what Yang Bai was talking about, but since he dared to show up now, obviously he had already achieved his goal.

“Eight Great Families… such pitiful existences dare to call themselves by such a lofty title, utter nonsense. Martial Nephew, although you are a rare genius, but your vision is not long-term enough, instead of worrying about such small matters you should be striving for greater heights instead. Martial Uncle will tell you today, that this world, and all you think you know, is insignificant, there are many, many things you don’t know about or understand. But regardless of all that, Martial Uncle really must thank you. If not for your sudden rise, I’m afraid that today’s war would not have resulted in so many casualties. Ensuring enough of these ants were slaughtered caused your Martial Uncle quite a bit of headache.”

Yang Bai appeared extremely calm and arrogant as he hovered above the battlefield, not placing this world or anyone in it into his eyes.

Yang Kai expression changed as he stared fixedly at Yang Bai. From what he just said, Yang Kai was able to gleam some key information.

Did Yang Bai know about the mysteries of this world and what lay beyond it?

Not giving him any time to ponder the issue, Yang Bai suddenly shouted, “Evil Kings, come to me!”

The Tyrannical Force King rushed toward Yang Bai without hesitation.

As for the Poison King, Ghost King, Shadow King, and Beast King, they showed some hesitation, as if they didn’t know what they should do.

Yang Bai gave them a faint look and chuckled, “What’s wrong? Do you want to defy my orders?”

The Poison King smiled gloomily and replied, “Sir Demon Lord, I just want to ask, why haven’t we seen you since the beginning of the battle yesterday? The Holy Land’s forces have suffered a great deal of casualties in your absence.”

“Because I needed them to die! If they didn’t die, how could I achieve my goal?” Yang Bai replied casually.

“I understand,” The Poison King nodded, suddenly cupping his fists, “Sir Demon Lord, you take care. We won’t be accompanying you any further.”

The four Evil Kings had followed Yang Bai to attack Central Capital because they truly wanted to destroy it. Now that there was no chance of them succeeding and seeing Yang Bai acting so indifferently to their situation, how could these Evil Kings still be willing to remain?

Each of them was selfish, insidious, and sinister. Loyalty and honour had nothing to do with them.

Finished with what they had to say, the Poison King, Ghost King, Shadow King, and Beast King turned to leave. Since Yang Bai didn’t care whether his subordinates lived or died, they naturally would care about his life or death either. As long as they could survive, everything else didn’t matter.

However, Yang Bai suddenly sneered, “None of you can get away! Stand guard for me!”

Just as his voice resounded, the four Evil Kings who were preparing to make their escape suddenly froze in place, a look of pain emerging on their face, like they were desperately resisting something. A moment later, their looks all slowly eased and then once more turned and flew to Yang Bai and began tightly guarding him.

The masters from the Eight Great Families all paled.

Although none of them were clear what just happened to the four Evil Kings, all of them understood that Yang Bai had used some kind of tyrannical method to forcibly control them!

Yang Bai finally took action, waving his hands as a mysterious energy spread through the air, quickly covering the entire Central Capital.

“Stop him!” Yang Kai shouted, it didn’t matter what Yang Bai’s true purpose was, what was most important right now was to stop him.

As soon as this order was given, all the Transcendents who could still fight charged into the sky, targeting Yang Bai and the Six Great Evil Kings.

“You’re too late!” Yang Bai laughed, “From the moment I appeared, there was nothing you could do.”

As he spoke, the blood of all the people who died throughout the Central Capital in this battle and all the blood which had seeped into the earth since the beginning of this war sunk into the ground, seemingly drawn down by a vague and mysterious energy.

Witnessing this, Yang Bai’s face filled with joy as his eyes turned towards a certain place and his hand waved.

The blood that had penetrated into the ground was all rushing towards that place.

A shocking bloody aura suddenly erupted.

Old Demon, who was next to Yang Kai, suddenly wore a dignified expression and quickly said, “Young Master, this should be some kind of blood sacrifice ritual.”

Old Demon was also a master when it came to blood sacrifices, so naturally he could see some clues from this situation; although his methods were different from Yang Bai’s, what was the same was the need for many people to die in order to gather a massive amount of blood.

The Ash-Grey Cloud Evil Land and the Central Capital’s forces had suffered massive casualties these past few months and the blood of the fallen flowed like a river. Yang Bai now using all this blood to perform some kind of blood sacrifice ritual was really quite luxurious; at least, it was many times grander than when Old Demon used his Demon Specter Saint Technique of Old Demon.

From deep underground, a loud boom resounded, shaking the entire Central Capital shook.

Everyone’s face was filled with shock.

Yang Ying Hao suddenly seemed to think of something and exclaimed, “Oh no, could Yang Bai be after what’s buried beneath the Central Capital?”

“What’s down there?” Yang Kai hurriedly asked.

Yang Ying Hao hurriedly explained, “This is a matter only mentioned in the ancient records of our Eight Great Families. No one has ever confirmed it really exists, but it is said that there is a huge Earth Vein that runs beneath the Central Capital. It is because of the existence of this Earth Vein that my Eight Great Families took root here. Not only does the Yang Family have records of this, the other seven families should also have them as well.”

Qiu Shou Cheng thought about it and nodded, “En, this old master has also seen this matter mentioned in my family’s ancient books.”

“However, it is said that many generations of our ancestors sought out this Earth Vein, yet after many years they never found anything. Could it be that it really exists and we were just unable to discover it all this time?” Meng Xi Ping asked with an ugly expression.

The Eight Great Families had already resided in the Central Capital for countless years and although they all had records of the existence of this Earth Vein, no one had ever seen it, so Demon Lord Yang Bai being able to accurately determine its location made him somewhat uncomfortable.

“An Earth Vein?” Yang Kai was stunned.

Yang Kai had encountered an Earth Vein before and had even absorbed a great deal of energy from it.

On Endless Sea Islands’ Hidden Island, there was a tiny Earth Vein that was all but exhausted and dried up, yet even that pitiful remnant contained enough energy for him to greatly improve his strength in a very short period of time.

Obviously the Earth Vein beneath the Central Capital was not only far grander in size, but was completely intact. If one could find it and enter it, they would be able to obtain an indescribably amount of benefits from it.

“There’s at least an eighty percent chance this is what he was after all along.” Yang Kai nodded gently.

Yang Bai was already a Third Order Transcendent; he had reached his limit, and if he wanted to further improve his strength, he would have to rely on external forces. The huge energy contained within this Earth Vein was his best option.

Although it was still only a guess, it shouldn’t be far from the truth.