The screams echoing across the arena grew more desperate as the red-eyed cultivators continued their relentless assault.
Ye Xian's group moved cautiously through the chaos, stepping over fallen bodies and avoiding the battles still raging around them.
As they moved through the carnage, Ye Xian's enhanced spiritual perception, now spanning a full hundred meters of radius comparable to Elemental Master Realm spiritual perception. He picked up something that made his blood run cold.
The blood from both fallen cultivators and the defeated red-eyed attackers wasn't simply pooling on the ground.
Instead, it was being absorbed into the earth at a visible rate, leaving behind nothing but hollow, desiccated corpses.
Ye Xian's eyes narrowed as he focused his spiritual perception deeper into the bodies of the nearby red-eyed cultivators. What he discovered made his stomach churn with revulsion.
Tiny, writhing insects, no larger than rice grains, were embedded throughout their bodies. These parasitic creatures pulsed with dark energy, concentrated heavily around the brain region.
'Gu insects.'
He realized with growing horror. Someone had implanted them, using poison to send the victims into a berserk state, and the Gu insects to control them, forcing their bodies to burn through their own life force.
The revelation hit him like a thunderbolt. Gu cultivation was strictly forbidden on the human continent. It was one of the vilest and most taboo practices imaginable. Only those from the Ghoul Continent were known to master such dark arts.
'The Witch Spawn.'
Everything made perfect sense now. The Moonlight Sect cultivators were in Azure Sky City hunting a Witch Spawn. The timing of the City Lord's son's coming of age ceremony, which had conveniently gathered all the influential families in one location. The mysterious dome barrier that trapped everyone inside like cattle in a pen.
This wasn't random chaos. It was a carefully orchestrated harvest.
"Aureliana," he communicated mentally with his spirit companion. "Can you sense what's happening to all this blood essence?"
"Master," came her urgent reply, "the blood essence is being channeled through some kind of massive formation array beneath the mansion. The sheer amount of life force being collected....this level of blood sacrifice could power something truly catastrophic."
Ye Xian's mind worked rapidly, calculating the implications. The Witch Spawn hadn't just gained control over City Lord Ru Shi. It had turned him into the perfect puppet.
Using the City Lord's authority to send invitations under the innocent pretext of celebrating his son's breakthrough was brilliant in its simplicity. Now all the most powerful cultivators in Azure Sky City were trapped together, being systematically slaughtered to fuel whatever dark ritual the creature had planned.
But why go through all this trouble? A Witch Spawn could have simply fled the city to avoid the Moonlight Sect.
Instead, it chose to carry out a massive blood sacrifice. Whatever it was planning required an enormous amount of life force.
Moving closer to Sheng Qianying, Ye Xian carefully sent a ki transmission directly to her mind.
'Qianying, listen carefully. Don't react visibly to what I'm about to tell you.'
She tensed slightly but maintained her composed expression, understanding the gravity of secret communication.
'The red-eyed cultivators are being controlled by Gu insects. This entire ceremony was a trap set by a Witch Spawn to harvest blood essence from Azure Sky City's most powerful families. The blood is being absorbed into a formation array beneath us.'
Sheng Qianying's eyes widened in shock, her face going pale as the implications hit her. Her grip on her sword tightened involuntarily.
'The City Lord is likely under its control. Everyone who received an invitation. Our families, the other clans. We're all meant to be sacrificed for whatever ritual it's conducting.'
She looked around at the carnage with new understanding, seeing not random violence but a calculated slaughter designed to fuel a dark scheme.
'Ye Ling'er ran straight into the mansion where that thing is waiting,' Ye Xian continued grimly.
'We need to reach her before the ritual is completed, but we can't let the others know the full truth yet. It would cause panic and make them harder to control.'
Sheng Qianying gave an almost imperceptible nod, her shock transforming into determined resolve. She understood why he had chosen to share this information only with her.
"Everyone, stay close," Ye Xian called out to the group, his voice carefully controlled. "We need to reach the mansion immediately."
As they began their advance, Ye Xian's sharp mind was already formulating plans. He caught another ki message from Sheng Qianying.
'How long do we have before the ritual is complete? And what could this ritual be for?'
'I don't know the exact time...'. he replied silently, his eyes scanning the battlefield with calculating precision.
'The Witch Spawn will want the maximum blood essence in the shortest time possible. As for the ritual's purpose...'
Ye Xian paused, watching as another wave of enhanced red-eyed cultivators emerged from fissures.
'Whatever it's planning… it might be using the sacrifice to heal itself. The Moonlight Sect hurt it badly, and that kind of wound doesn't heal easily. Or worse, it could be preparing something far more terrifying.'
His cold analysis of the situation sent a chill through Sheng Qianying. This wasn't the naive Ye Xian she had known. This was someone who could see through deception and calculate outcomes with frightening clarity.
The white dome above them pulsed with increasingly ominous light, and Ye Xian knew they were running out of time. But unlike the panicked cultivators around them, his mind remained sharp and focused.
Somewhere in that mansion, a Witch Spawn was conducting a blood sacrifice on a massive scale. And his childhood friend had walked straight into its lair.
Some Hours Earlier...
As Ahmose Tiaa sped toward the South District, her thoughts kept circling back to the treatment she had just received.
"How did he make it look so effortless?" she wondered, still amazed by Ye Xian's technique.
"I've consulted top physicians across Azure Sky City, and not one of them had the ability to deal with the destructive energy inside me. But this young man diagnosed it in seconds and removed it completely in less than half an hour."
The more she thought about it, the more impressed she became. Someone with healing skills like that... if she could bring him to the Moonlight Sect, Master Mu Feixue would be thrilled. Ye Xian would be treated with honor, exactly what someone with such rare talent deserved.
And on top of that, he had told her about a Light Element user, one of the rarest elements in existence. Somehow, she might even be able to recruit her in the future.
'His master must be incredible.' She thought.
""To teach someone this skilled at such a young age..." Of course, she had no idea that Ye Xian's so called master was just a name he pulled out of thin air with a straight face.
As she neared the South District, the city changed around her. The clean streets and lively crowds of the central city were gone.
Now, rundown houses and shattered rooftops filled the area. Windows were broken, doors hung loose, and everything felt... abandoned.
The streets were dead quiet. Most people had either fled or were hiding indoors, sensing something dangerous had arrived in their part of town.
Ahmose Tiaa pulled a dark veil over her face, revealing only her sharp eyes, then landed silently in a narrow alley between two ruined buildings.
"Report," she said softly.
Three figures stepped out from the shadows, her undercover team, dressed like ordinary civilians but carrying themselves with the calm focus of trained cultivators.
"Senior Sister," the team leader whispered, urgency in his voice.
"we've found the source of the disturbance."
Ahmose Tiaa had been given a secret task by the Moonlight Sect.
While the main sect forces openly searched for the Witch Spawn across Azure Sky City, her job was more discreet: to investigate strange behavior patterns, people who had slowly started acting differently over the past years. Subtle signs of being manipulated... or worse, possessed.
Her team worked methodically. First, they spoke with neighbors and locals, collecting information about anyone who had "changed" over time.
Then, they used aura detection marbles, special artifacts given only to Azure Sky Academy students.
But there was a hidden function in those marbles. One that only she, her master, and her team knew about.
When a marble turned completely black, it meant it had detected the target's aura. At the same time, the marble sent the exact location of where the aura was found back to the receiver, allowing them to track it precisely.
"One of the students' marbles turned black," the leader said. In his hand was a compass-shaped artifact.
Instead of a needle, it showed a small black dot pulsing steadily. The dot marked the location where the black marble had detected the aura.