The sharp whistle of the whip tearing through the air hurt his eardrums, and Yin Yanjun shrank his neck and dug into the pile of wood. The coarse linen clothes on his back had long been hardened by sweat stains, and rustled against the rotten wood.
"The pretty boy is lazy again!" The black-scaled tail of the supervisor slapped on the Qinggang rock, and the stone chips splashed across the boy's cheek. The slaves of the Lin clan who were carrying stones nearby laughed, and one of them with missing front teeth spat: "The human cub is so delicate, didn't he steal the jade materials for building the palace and smear his face?"
Yin Yanjun didn't say a word, and his knuckles tightly clasped the half piece of Qinglan jade in his arms. This thing was dug out from the quarry this morning, and the edges of the broken jade were still stained with dark brown blood - this color was the color that seeped out of the gap in the coffin when his mother was buried three months ago.
"Shut up!" The rosewood chariot creaked over the gravel road, and an old man in gold silk soft armor rolled down.
Yin Yanjun lowered his head and stared at the night-shining pearl on the tip of the other's boot in a daze. The pearl glowed with a strange green light, just like a rotting firefly in a swamp. When the pipe suddenly poked in front of his eyes, he smelled the smell of camphor mixed with fox. Although Yin Yanjun had worked in the quarry for three months, his silver-white hair and blood-red eyes were still very eye-catching.
"That's it." The coral pipe lifted his chin, and the old man squinted and approached, "The eyeballs are beautiful, red as if they were quenched by fire." As he said that, he suddenly opened his collar and pressed his palm like dry bark on his collarbone, "Wow, you are still a spiritual root?" Yin Yanjun's whole body tensed up. When he stole the sacrifice the night before yesterday, he did feel a fire burning in his dantian.
"Sir, this is against the rules..." The supervisor came over rubbing his hands, his scaly tail curled into a spiral to please him, "Human slaves cannot enter the inner city, this is set by the Nine-tailed Goddess..."
"Rules?" The old man's pipe suddenly ignited with a faint blue flame, and the scales on the tip of the supervisor's tail instantly charred and curled up, "If you can't get eight lamp-holding slaves for tomorrow's festival, I will put you in the alchemy furnace as firewood!"
Fox slave bath. When Yin Yanjun was thrown into the bath, the moon had climbed to the top of the foxtail pine. The ice spring water stung his wounds, and he stared at the silver hair shaking on the water in a daze - since that night when he knelt in front of the pawnshop and sold himself for 50 crystals, his hair has been getting whiter day by day.
An oil paper bag suddenly flew in from outside the bamboo curtain, splashing water into his nostrils.
"Ahem... ahem! The maid gave me the mint ointment," a muffled voice from the water tribe came from outside the curtain, "said your eyes are scary red, apply this to relieve the pain."
Yin Yanjun's hand holding the ointment was shaking. It had been three months since he was chained through the boundary gate, and this was the first time someone gave him something, but they didn't know that his pupils had always been red. The ointment was burning in the corners of his eyes, and he gritted his teeth and sucked in a breath of cold air, and suddenly heard a chuckle coming from outside the door.
When the sound of the midnight clappers mixed with the fox's howl came, Yin Yanjun was following the team to climb the 900-level green jade steps. The leading maid's hand holding the glass lamp was shaking, and the shadow of the lamp passed over his drooping hair, casting spider-web-like silver lines on the ground.
"Kneel down!" The moment the gilded door burst open, the bloody smell covered his face. The nine-tailed totem suspended on the altar was bleeding, and the dark red liquid was crawling along the bronze array pattern, just like the pupils of my mother when she died.
In the dull sound of the knee hitting the bronze floor tile, the whip wound on the palm that had not yet scabbed suddenly cracked. The moment the blood dripped, the whole hall was filled with a shrill fox howl, shaking the eternal lamps on the beams and pillars that had not been extinguished for hundreds of years.
There was a crisp sound of porcelain breaking in the darkness. "Zhu Yin blood... This is impossible..." The girl's trembling exclamation came from behind the curtain of the high platform. This drop of Zhu Yin blood not only affected the sacrifice, but also unlocked the first level of "Taixu Sword Classic" sealed in the depths of his consciousness. There was also a fiery red heavy metal piece floating quietly in the sea of consciousness.
The Beidou trapped dragon formation formed by the seven foundation-building fox guards in the hall was shrinking at a very fast speed. The blood measuring compass suspended at the center of the formation suddenly began to rotate rapidly, and finally exploded into bronze fragments.
"The spiritual energy of the three hundred-foot ground vein is disordered!" The old fox guarding the ground vein rolled his Adam's apple, and spider-web-like cracks appeared on the surface of the dragon-prison pestle in his hand, "The three thousand-year-old black iron... was corroded by blood..."
Yin Yanjun was still in a daze, and the charming female fox priest immediately showed a shocked expression. After just a few seconds, she shouted to two servants to take Yin Yanjun to the dungeon.
The commotion in the hall continued to spread, "Shut up, and continue the sacrifice!" The fox clan leader on the second-floor viewing stand shouted, stabilizing the atmosphere on the scene.
The fox clan dungeon was gloomy and terrifying, and the green fox fire on the stone wall kept jumping. Yin Yanjun was hung upside down on the Lihuo Pillar, and the spiritual energy vortex rotating in his dantian was swallowing the fire poison in the chain.
He stared at the holes eroded by his dripping blood on the cold jade ground. The diameter of each hole was accurate to half an inch, and it flowed into the stone platform in front, arranging in the Beidou swallowing evil pattern.
"Speak!" The fox elder with a ferocious face held the Nine Nether Mirror suspended in his palm. In the meridian diagram displayed on the mirror, the golden thread representing Zhu Yin's bloodline was eating away at the seal spell. "Zhu Long's family died out in the era of extinction of the law. Where did you, a child of the human race, steal your bloodline?"
Yin Yanjun tried to move his index finger pierced by the black ice thorn, and found that every nerve was injected with bone-eroding powder - this was a seventh-grade poison specifically for body cultivators, but the golden threads in his eight meridians suddenly surged, breaking down the toxin into seventy-two wisps of green smoke.
"Huh?" A purple-veiled girl with skin as white as cream and a charming figure standing in the crowd suddenly exclaimed. The purple veil on her face made her look bright and beautiful. Just like the goddess above the nine heavens, she was out of tune with the people around her.
The red pulse-probing spiritual light emitted by the jade hairpin between her three thousand black hair dissipated three inches from Yin Yanjun's eyebrows, turning into starlight and dispersing into the air. The defense array of the entire dungeon lit up instantly, and the seventy-two dragon-suppressing nails wailed at the same time.
"The purity of the ancestral blood is 80%." The woman in purple gauze appeared in front of the rack at some point, "It is 17 points higher than the blood of the Qionglong that the Swamp Tribe paid tribute to three days ago."
The nine virtual tails behind the fox tribe leader suddenly solidified, and the tip of each tail emerged with the soul fire of the life force: "Senior Envoy Zi Li, if this boy's blood is really..."
"When the Candle Dragon appears, all things will be silent." Nine meteorite needles flew out of the sleeves of the purple gauze woman, and when the needle tips pierced into the acupoints around Yin Yanjun, a sound of metal clashing was heard. "The descendants of Candle Yin with a blood purity of more than 80%, their blood can suppress all monsters and beasts, and can also purify the blood of the monsters - do you need me to remind you of this common sense?" This Zi Li only came to the fox tribe to watch the ceremony because she had a good relationship with the daughter of the fox tribe leader.
Yin Yanjun suddenly twitched violently, and the metal pieces floating in his sea of consciousness began to automatically absorb the golden spiritual energy in the torture instruments. When the third wave of bone-eroding powder was injected into his heart veins, a double nine-palace array appeared in the depths of his pupils - this was the sign that the "Taixu Sword Canon" was operating on its own.
"Playing dumb? Do you think it will work?" The elder pinched the magic formula, and the temperature of the fire column suddenly rose to three thousand degrees, "Then try the burning veins..." Before he finished speaking, the Xuanyin Order in Zi Li's hand suddenly froze the entire torture chamber. Frost spread along the array pattern, sealing all the life treasures of the fox elders into the black ice.
"I'll take him away." Zi Li's fingertips brushed across the slave mark on Yin Yanjun's chest, and she spoke coldly, using the spiritual power of the God Transformation Stage to directly wipe out the mark of the Nine-Tailed Lady. "Three months later, the blood sacrifice of all races will be held. This child will be the key to Qiuyun's obtaining a better spirit."
Starlight suddenly descended from the dome of the dungeon, and Yin Yanjun saw the purple-veiled woman draw a teleportation array with her hand. When the last array pattern was completed, the metal sheet in his body suddenly trembled and the ancient seal script appeared - the two words "Zhu Zhao" exploded in the sea of consciousness, exploding thousands of sword intentions.