The instant the gray light erupted, Yang Hong knew something was wrong.
As he threw a punch with his right hand, his body retreated.
But as he took two steps back, a powerful suction pulled him forward.
Immediately, a soft embrace held him tightly.
"Heh heh~ Yang Hong, don't you have great fortune? Don't you have great karma?
Now, let's perish together."
The palace maid in pink, who had been so gentle moments ago, now had a ferocious expression on her face. She embraced Yang Hong's body and began to rapidly inflate.
Clearly, she intended to self-detonate.
"Sister, what grudge do we have?
Why do you want to take me down with you?"
Yang Hong's true essence surged, and he was about to break free from the pink palace maid's embrace.
"Hmph~ When you die, you'll know what grudge it is."
"Damn it, you're going to self-destruct!
Qing Feng!"
Yang Hong forced his eyes open and saw the grotesque, inflated meatball. He immediately knew things were dire.
He instantly activated his Qing Feng Sword Intent, and the surrounding breeze, carrying sharp sword energy, began to ravage the palace maid.
Crimson blood instantly splattered.
Just then, the gray light flashed.
Yang Hong and the palace maid simultaneously vanished from their positions, disappearing from the Imperial Palace of the Sui Dynasty, vanishing without a trace.
It was not until the third day that Yang Jian realized Yang Hong was missing.
Yang Hong's disappearance caused a great sensation within the Sui royal family. Even Yang Guang, to clear his name, initiated a bloody purge in both the imperial court and the martial world.
However, Yang Hong's disappearance did not cause any ripples in the cultivation world.
It wasn't until four years after Yang Hong vanished that the Tianji Sect learned of it during their routine patrols of the Five Directions Dynasty.
His disappearance caused considerable tension among the Ten Great Immortal Sects, who dispatched several Rank 9 Mahayana True Lords to investigate.
Unfortunately, four years had already passed since Yang Hong vanished, and no traces were left behind, making it impossible to find him.
However, the seal of the Five Directions Dynasty remained intact, and Yang Hong's soul lamp was still lit.
The matter could only be dropped.
After all, the war between immortals and demons was ongoing, and the Ten Great Immortal Sects did not have the luxury of extensive investigations.
But Yang Hong's disappearance indirectly led to the premature end of the war between immortals and demons.
However, these are stories for another time. After Yang Hong vanished into the gray light, he plunged into a state of extreme peril.
...
"No~~ Master, you lied to me!"
"Bang~"
The gray light flared. The pink palace maid, who had already inflated into a ball, was even more terrified than Yang Hong. With a mournful cry, before she could even utter her last words, she exploded.
"Hmph~"
The pink palace maid's self-detonation did not cause much damage to Yang Hong.
Tens of thousands of years of cultivation at the Fusion Realm were not for naught.
The self-detonation of a late-stage Golden Core cultivator was only enough to make Yang Hong cough up a mouthful of blood.
As a consequence, Yang Hong's clothes were ruined.
But the real crisis had only just begun.
Yang Hong was now in a void, with darkness all around.
It looked somewhat like the Love Demon Space from back then, but this space seemed boundless.
Moreover, pale gray lights flickered past Yang Hong intermittently. If touched,
Yang Hong's body, which had remained unharmed by the Golden Core's self-detonation, would immediately tear open.
These seemingly inconspicuous gray lights were far sharper than any Rank 4 artifact!
"Damn it!
Where is this place?
Could it be spatial turbulence?"
After being scraped a few times, Yang Hong's heart pounded with fear. Instinctively, he reached for the storage patch on his person,
preparing to take out some artifacts to defend himself for a while.
However, as soon as his spiritual sense communicated with the storage patch, countless gray substances around him surged towards it.
This was when Yang Hong met his misfortune.
"Ah~~ Ah~~"
As the gray substances rushed forward, they carried gray light, which was spatial wind.
These spatial winds grazed Yang Hong's body, inflicting countless wounds.
None of these wounds were large, the biggest being about the length of a palm and half a finger wide; the smallest were as tiny as sesame seeds.
But the sheer number of wounds was overwhelming.
In just over ten breaths, Yang Hong had become a bloodied mess.
If not for his tens of thousands of years of Fusion Realm cultivation and his powerful physique, he would have been reduced to powder in those ten breaths.
"I don't want to die! I can't die!
Advanced Breathing Technique, activate with all your might!"
Even though his body was covered in wounds and the pain was almost obliterating his sanity, as someone who had already died once, he cherished life immensely.
His remaining rationality allowed Yang Hong to fully activate the Advanced Breathing Technique, absorbing the violent spiritual energy of the gray space to fully repair his body's damage.
"I don't want to die~ I can't die~ I don't want to die~"
Innumerable spatial winds seemed to have found an outlet and continued to surge forward,
endless pain was eroding Yang Hong's sanity.
The pain of the spatial winds was not just physical; it was a pain that seeped into the soul.
Pain that offered no escape, no resistance.
Yang Hong could shield himself from physical pain with any basic-level cultivation technique.
But for the pain of the soul, Yang Hong could not resist it with any technique.
Only the Advanced Breathing Technique could absorb a certain spiritual energy in this space, allowing him to slightly alleviate the pain.
But even that was only a very slight relief.
The endless torment continued to plague Yang Hong,
but his desperate desire for survival kept him clinging on.
Time seemed to lose its meaning in this space; it felt like an instant, yet it could have been an eternity.
As Yang Hong's consciousness was about to vanish, he felt a fluctuation in the space around him.
Instinctively, Yang Hong, without hesitation, controlled himself to fall towards the area of fluctuation.
After a moment of soul-piercing pain, Yang Hong felt a sense of relief.
His vision was no longer a hazy gray but was filled with verdant green, fiery red, bright yellow, gentle blue, and the dazzling sunlight.
"Hoo~ I'm not dead."
Seeing the blue sky and the sun, the tension Yang Hong had held tightly in his heart finally relaxed.
He immediately fainted.
If he had been even a moment later, his body and soul would have been annihilated.
...
After an unknown period, a sharp pain jolted Yang Hong awake.
Immediately, a rough voice sounded in his ear.
However, he could not understand it; the language was entirely unfamiliar.
It was fortunate that he couldn't understand it, otherwise, he would have been utterly demoralized.
"Haha, I told you this biped wasn't dead, didn't I? Look, just boil it, and it'll be the freshest ingredient."
"Haha, Brother Hu Li is truly amazing. He even knows how to cook these bipeds."
"Of course! I, Hu Li, have seen the world and eaten many demons. I'm not like you bumpkins."
Hu Li declared proudly.
"Little ones, bring out the herbs you collected from the mountain. It's best to add herbs when boiling people."
"The herbs are here."
As Yang Hong, who was about to be boiled, opened his eyes, he was immediately covered in a pile of miscellaneous herbs.
Many of these herbs had strong odors, especially when boiled, their scent became even more extraordinary.
"Cough~ Cough cough~ Cough~~"
Yang Hong coughed incessantly from the fumes, which only elicited cheers.
"Brother Hu Li is so clever. After adding the herbs, the biped started to cry."
"Haha~ That's great. It's a live biped! This is the most delicious delicacy."
"Quick, quick, quick, cover the lid,
increase the fire, increase the heat."
Immediately, Yang Hong's vision darkened, and the cheers became less pronounced.
Yang Hong stewed in an iron pot officially commenced.