The leader of the Corpse Poison Sect, an old man named Elder Gu, narrowed his eyes. The arrogance of the youth before him was infuriating. "Fertilizer? Bold words for a brat whose hair hasn't even fully grown! Disciples, show him the agony of the Hundred-Rotting Mist!"
The three disciples behind him moved in unison, throwing small glass vials that shattered at Shen Yuan's feet. A thick, sickly green smoke erupted, smelling of melted flesh and stagnant swamp water. This mist was the pride of their sect; even a drop on the skin could melt a hole through a 5th-layer Qi Condensation cultivator.
Ye Fan and Ye Lin gasped, instinctively covering their noses, but Shen Yuan stood perfectly still within the heart of the toxic cloud.
"Lin, Fan, look at this mist," Shen Yuan's voice came out of the green haze, calm and untroubled. "They call this poison. I call it... a poorly mixed tea."
He took a deep breath, literally inhaling the toxic smoke.
"What?! He's suicidal!" one of the disciples cried out, expecting Shen Yuan to collapse into a puddle of gore.
Instead, Shen Yuan exhaled a faint purple spark. The green mist began to swirl, not away from him, but toward him, being sucked into his skin as if he were a vacuum. His black eyes flickered with a cold, mocking light.
"The ratio of Viper Gall to Rot-Root is off by three percent," Shen Yuan remarked, stepping out of the dissipating smoke. His skin looked even more vibrant than before. "You used the 'Cold-Extraction' method, didn't you? Pathetic. You've left the essence raw and untamed."
Elder Gu stumbled back, his face a mask of horror. "You... you consumed the Hundred-Rotting Mist? Impossible! Not even our Sect Master can do that!"
"That is because your Sect Master is a worm crawling in the mud," Shen Yuan replied.
He raised his hand, and a drop of concentrated black liquid condensed at the tip of his finger. It was the essence of their own poison, refined and purified by his internal Void fire.
"Now, let me show you the True Rotting Mist."
Shen Yuan flicked the drop. It didn't explode into a cloud. It hit the ground and turned into a wave of black ripples that raced across the grass.
The three disciples didn't even have time to scream. The moment the black ripple touched their boots, their bodies turned into grey ash, starting from the feet up. In three seconds, three 4th-layer cultivators were nothing but piles of dust blowing in the wind.
Elder Gu fell to his knees, his yellow teeth chattering. "S-Senior... Mercy! I have scrolls! I have treasures! I can be your dog!"
"I have no need for a dog that cannot bark," Shen Yuan said, standing over him.
He grabbed the Elder by the throat, hoisting him into the air. With his other hand, he pressed the [Bone of the First Ancestor] against the old man's chest.
"But I do have need for a key."
Shen Yuan's Qi surged. He didn't just kill the Elder; he used the bone to refine the man's entire cultivation and bloodline into a single, glowing crimson orb. The Elder's body withered into a husk, his soul screaming in a frequency only Shen Yuan could hear.
"Lin, Fan. The gates of the Wailing King require a sacrifice of 'Malice'. These fools provided it perfectly."
Shen Yuan turned toward the massive stone gates of the tomb and tossed the crimson orb at the center of the relief.
The stone eyes of the carved demons began to glow blood-red. The ground shook, and with a sound like grinding teeth, the gates that had been sealed for centuries slowly groaned open, revealing a dark tunnel that breathed out a freezing, ancient wind.
"Welcome to our new home," Shen Yuan said, stepping into the darkness. "Let the Lin and Zhou families search the world. They will never find us here. And when we emerge... the world will wish it had stayed hidden."