My Scales Can Make Equivalent Exchange
Chapter 607 - 526: Appearance

Chapter 607: Chapter 526: Appearance

After a moment, Wang Zijia chilled out a bit after confirming that Tang Keli in front of him was harmless. He said, "Tell me about this incident."

"Reporting to Ninth Highness, the incident should have started several months ago..." Tang Keli narrated.

Wang Zijia frowned and cut him off, "You said several months ago? The report claimed it was around forty days. Are we trading facts with shrunken tales now?"

"Ninth Highness, you’ve misunderstood!" Tang Keli immediately replied seriously:

"The actual incident did begin forty-five days ago, but according to my investigation, the Ming family had people disappearing even before that. However, it wasn’t serious at the time. First, it was three to five people and then about a dozen..."

"For a clan as large as the Ming family with hundreds of thousands of people, a daily disappearance of a few people is normal. Some things are not related, and when reporting, I dared not include some speculations."

As Tang Keli explained, the events gradually became clear, including many details, which were much more detailed than what was seen in the files.

"So, the Ming family didn’t vanish overnight, but neither did individuals disappear without a trace separately?" Wang Zijia asked with a furrowed brow.

"Yes, excluding the initial uncertain ones, there were roughly three waves of disappearances happening at different times. The first wave was about a thousand people, mostly youths in the clans." Tang Keli, out of respect, phrased his words carefully:

"The second wave included tens of thousands of people, including some important members. The last wave was hundreds of thousands of people who collapsed and vanished in broad daylight."

"How intriguing, they started weak and got stronger, happening in batches. This doesn’t seem like a simple curse of bloodline now," Wang Zijia murmured to himself.

"That’s what I think too." Tang Keli hesitated for a moment before he said, "It’s more like the method the Devil Gate uses to rear livestock."

Wang Zijia nodded in agreement but didn’t dwell on this matter. He asked many more detailed questions before finally saying:

"Alright, do whatever you need to and don’t leak out the news of my arrival. If this thing escapes because of you, it’ll be on you!"

"I understand!" Tang Keli replied respectfully after a bow.

However, when he waited for a response, the room was silent.

Only when he looked up did he realize that the revered Ninth Highness, a peerless sword immortal, had already vanished without a trace.

’This Ninth Highness is becoming ever more elusive! But didn’t I hear that his days are numbered?’)

...

After leaving the City Lord’s Mansion, Wang Zijia didn’t stop.

He investigated each incident location, questioned related individuals, and even discreetly interrogated the people who were part of the previous investigations.

But there was no clue whatsoever.

Wang Zijia, having tried all methods, conducted investigations for several days but all to no avail. It was as if he were trying to bite into a turtle, finding it relentless.

It seemed as if the people of the Ming family had just simply vanished.

This made Wang Zijia, who was investigating this incident, all the more cautious.

Once he had confirmed that he couldn’t find a lead, Wang Zijia decisively changed direction.

He began a large-scale examination to filter out distant relatives related to the Ming family bloodline. On those who were closest in blood ties, he began placing divine thoughts one after another.

The reason being that demon seeding, without the aid of the Power of the Tao Fruits, was merely a powerful control technique and couldn’t surveil specifically for twenty-four hours. It wasn’t something that couldn’t be avoided.

After going around in circles for more than half a month, Wang Zijia had thought of all possible methods.

In the end, when he really couldn’t find any leads, he could only choose to wait for the opportunity to come to him.

While taking the two children sightseeing around the area and setting up some things, he also considered the possibility of a fourth wave of life harvests from the other side.

...

On this day, Wang Zijia was carving array talismans on the cliff around Hei Tan Valley with the two children.

All of a sudden, Wang Zijia felt a palpitation.

His spiritual senses were on alarm, and his Calculation Dao noticed a warning.

In a daze, Wang Zijia saw endless blood light filling the entire Hei Tan Valley. The thick blood color couldn’t be dispelled and filled the air!

No, not only the Hei Tan Valley City but also the large plain behind it.

Feeling extremely uneasy, Wang Zijia instantly slapped the two children.

"Thump!"

The two children were skillfully turned into two drawing paper pages by Wang Zijia and stored away.

"Swoosh!"

"Breath!"

The next moment, Wang Zijia’s entire body bristled, and his hairs stood on end.

The force field covering the entire Hei Tan Valley City, which seemed to be nurturing something, came to life suddenly.

It was as if someone standing above the Nine Heavens had gently sucked in their breath.

"Which demon dares to do this!"

"Ah..."

"Damn it!"

"Bold!"

"..."

The very next moment, various exclamations of anger were heard from the city, but amid all their voices was shock and uncertainty, and some even trembled, showing their fear.

Before their eyes, almost half of the remaining hundreds of thousands of people in Hei Tan Valley City vanished in an instant.

No matter what their cultivation level, they disappeared without a trace, vanished without the slightest resistance, and couldn’t even react.

Moreover, this time, not only those related to the Ming family disappeared but also some people who had almost no involvement in bloodline matters, at least not in their immediate generations.

With a hint of surprise in his heart, Wang Zijia paid no heed to the chaos that once again exploded in the city area of the valley.

In an instant, by employing the connection strings of divine thought on more than ten thousand people, and combining the power of Karma and Space-Time, a faint yet explicit clue was, at last, pulled out by Wang Zijia.

The golden thread of karma was extremely feeble, as if it could disappear at any moment. However, it was extending firmly into the distance.

With no time to delay, Wang Zijia traced the direction of the lead sensation.

"Could it really be in the city?"

With a mild chill in his eyes, and amidst the fluctuation of magical power, an unusual spatial-temporal stealth wave encompassed Wang Zijia. he seemed to have entered into a different space, disappearing from the current one.

Immediately, Wang Zijia took one step and descended from the cliff, heading towards the city.

"Could it be, in the direction of... Heitan Lake?"

According to the faint sensation, Wang Zijia was swiftly closing in.

······

The city of Hei Tan Valley was built around a lake, and thus many of the buildings in the east were lake-facing.

However, unlike the towering skyscrapers of his previous life, there were only a dozen courtyards on the banks of the Hei Tan Lake. Each courtyard varied in style, but all were highly decorated.

Despite their limited quantity, they occupied the majority of the finest locations in the entire Hei Tan Valley.

These were the most high-end ’properties’ in the whole of Hei Tan Valley City!

Wang Zijia had not failed to scour this area over the past few days, even digging three feet into the ground, but he found nothing unusual.

At this moment, however, Wang Zijia could clearly sense a faint pull, leading him to one of the vacant courtyards closest to the lake.

"Underground? Is it another basement fanatic?"

Upon arriving, Wang Zijia had almost confirmed his target. Yet even so, he still did not sense anything in the basement of the courtyard.

Without the slightest hesitation, he quickly burrowed towards the underground.

········

Several feet beneath the ground at this moment.

An expansive hemispherical space was enveloped by a special type of force field.

Looking down from the hemispherical dome, a complex and substantial array infested the entire empty square.

With bloody runes densely distributed, they were flickering with an eerie spiritual light, barely pulsating.

Each blood-red rune seemed to contain a trapped soul enduring torment that was hellish and marrow-eating!

As the runes flickered, the energy of the array fluctuated, continuously drawing power towards the circular center of the array base.

Culminations and refinements along the path eventually led to the center.

The entire array, as a whole, appeared as though a blood-red demon dragon was coiling within it. With a gentle breath, the endless power was gathered at the core of the array top.

The air in the entire area was filled with unrelenting blood Qi and burgeoning demonic Qi. A violent wind ravaged around the center, a hallmark of a sinister magical ritual.

At the center of these anomalies was a cauldron constructed of blood-red runes, next to which a young man was sitting cross-legged.

Under the reflection of the bloody light, the originally handsome youth, Ming Cheng, was filled with a sense of evil charm.

Under his supervision, endless blood Qi gathered within the cauldron, where a dragon-eye-sized blood Elixir was slowly forming. As it twirled, the scent of blood filled the air.

However, this smell was not unpleasant. To the contrary, the entire Elixir was emitting a fragrance that was intoxicating. Many people would be willing to go to insane lengths to get it.

This was a desire originating from the basic instinct of life, a primordial devouring desire that was stimulated by the Elixir’s fragrance. The youth, originally closing his eyes and meditating on the side of the cauldron, was constantly forming hand seals and using magical fluctuations to wholeheartedly refine the Elixir.

"Huh?"

In the next moment, he suddenly awoke as if he had detected something.

However, before he could react, a streak of light flashed behind him.

"Swoosh!"

The bloody sword light flashed like a bolt of lightning. With one slash, he was decapitated. Four dark-red longswords swiftly rotated, shredding his body into pieces.

Regardless of whether it was his severed head shot into the air or his shredded body, not a drop of blood seeped out.

"Crack······!"

As the dense fracture sounds roared.

The body shards that Wang Zijia had stirred were shattered like a ceramic shell.

Clearly, the youth’s life-saving gesture had been triggered.

With the weak spatial fluctuation, the body of the youth, Ming Cheng, emerged abruptly from one side, his face filled with shock as he turned towards Wang Zijia.

"Who are you? Wait, this feeling... It’s you!"

Before Ming Cheng could continue, Wang Zijia disappeared once again.

Ming Cheng didn’t have a chance to do anything when his body was pierced by Wang Zijia, who had disappeared again.

His body twisted once again, and unlike the shell-shedding transformation, this time his body collapsed quickly and right in the blink of an eye, turned into a half-human height old rat.