Chapter 494 – The Lifespan Stealing Demonic Blade, Frightening And Cunning Li Yuan - Part 1

The next morning.

Li Yuan arrived at the mountain cave, nerves bundled up tight in his chest. He unpacked the Earthfire Sword, three fire-colored banners, and a set of forging tools he’d prepared in advance.

These days, forging weapons no longer required a furnace or molds.

For the furnace, his golden body could simply cradle the materials and breathe fire directly onto them. As for the molds...well, with his current strength, he could shape metal with sheer force of will.

Still, he was nervous. Very nervous.

The Earthfire Sword was no ordinary sword. It had been passed down in the Sacred Fire Palace for millennia. There was no way it was simple.

For all he knew, it might not even have belonged to Wei Huosheng personally. It could have been a generational heirloom, something passed down an entire lineage.

And now here he was, about to recklessly melt it down and remake it from scratch. If that wasn’t blasphemy, he didn’t know what was.

However, Li Yuan had no choice.

The Earthfire Sword couldn’t be taken outside. The moment he stepped into the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain with it, he’d become a walking target. Every cultivator in the realm would zero in on him like hounds scenting blood.

So, the sword had to go. It needed to be reforged into something else, something unrecognizable.

If time weren’t so tight, if the conditions allowed, Li Yuan would’ve taken the slow route. He would’ve studied the proper forging skills for third rank weapons, and learned them the right way. But right now? He didn’t have that luxury.

And that wasn’t even the only problem. Could Heavenly Soul or Earth Soul cultivators even use weapons? Worse still, the reserve of source blood he’d painstakingly built up in the past? Gone.

Now, the blood running through his veins was something...different. Born from the ancestral seal and the withered flame fusing within his body. It still flowed the same way, still followed the old paths. But Li Yuan could feel it; it wasn’t the same.

So here came the real question. Could

blood

like this forge a weapon?

There was only one way to find out.

Besides, if he messed it up and lost the Earthfire Sword entirely, there was always that yellow robed envoy's inner armor. He could go steal that.

Right now, Li Yuan’s body was a strange patchwork of contradictions. To break it down, it was split between his True Body, Corporeal Form, and Human Form.

The True Body was his Immortal Form composed of withered flame.

The Corporeal Shell was the mountain.

The Human Form, his flesh and blood shaped by the Mortal World Transformation and Myriad Beasts Transformation.

From inside out, it looked like the following.

【【【True Body】→ Corporeal Shell】→ Human Form】

And within the True Body was his soul, which was formed of even more layers.

【Yin【Yang【Yin】Yang】Yin】

Now, what he needed to do was...

Extract the blood from his human form.

Melt down the third rank weapon.

Then, using the North Dipper Hammer, inject the maximum possible amount of lifespan into it.

And forge a weapon that, frankly, he had no idea what it would become. All he knew was that it wouldn’t be weak.

Whoosh!

In a large stretch of remote wilderness straddling the borders of Cloudpeak and Hidden River Province, a figure suddenly appeared out of thin air.

After arriving, the figure extended his spiritual senses, sweeping the area. No one was around.

Only then did he settle beside a stream, its waters trickling eastward, no doubt meltwater from the glaciers of the Western Extremes.

Everything was ready.

Li Yuan replayed the entire forging process one more time in his mind. Then he took a deep breath.

The next instant, a dazzling thousand-foot-tall golden body stepped out from behind him. Towering, radiant, and powerful, it cradled a strange, pitch-black sword in its hands. It was thick and sooty, like the mouth of a smokestack.

The golden body lowered its face close to the sword, inhaled deeply, and winds kicked up all around.

He held his breath, focused his mind. Then white, withered flames gushed from its mouth, blowing directly onto the strange sword.

But the sword didn’t react. Even under the roaring inferno, it remained cold. Icy. Utterly unmoved. And this was without a wielder's power, without being activated. It was relying solely on its

own

strength to resist.

Li Yuan had all the time in the world. He kept breathing fire.

Gradually, the black sword began to show signs of giving in. The surface, once cold and unyielding, finally loosened ever so slightly. Tiny cracking sounds started to echo out, soft, almost hesitant, like knuckles popping in a deathly quiet room.

Then, at last, a hairline fracture split open along the sword’s pitch-black spine.

From within came a chorus of eerie, incredulous howls.

“It’s loose! It’s finally loose! Hurry, we can escape!”

“How many years has it been...”

“This is our chance! Strike together, break the crack wide open!”

“GO!”

As the voices screamed, warped and shadowy silhouettes—vaguely human, disturbingly transparent—began to squeeze out of the thin fracture, twisting like smoke, and then burst forth like bolts of lightning.

They shot into the air, wild with desperate speed, chasing that glimmer of light, the first sign of freedom they’d seen in who knew how long.

But right at the edge of that light...a massive, grotesque face was waiting for them. It hovered silently in the sky, wreathed in pale, withered flames.

Fire? They weren’t afraid. But this wasn’t ordinary fire. This was condensed Yang energy, pure, refined vitality. The kind that ancient souls like them had no resistance against.

In the blink of an eye, the escaping phantoms, once rushing forth like a flood, screeched and sizzled, dissolving into thin air as if snow had been tossed into boiling water.

The searing withered flame became their grave.

And because they had surged out all at once, in a frenzied mass, none of them had a chance to retreat. One by one, they vanished. No trace, no sound, no hope of return.

Li Yuan watched in silence. He knew what they were. These phantoms, these broken remnants of will, were the former palace masters of the Sacred Fire Palace. Each of them had climbed to the very cusp of third rank...and each had been lured into a trap, just like he suspected the sword itself was.

Now, under the blaze of his own withered flame, they’d been reduced to nothing.

It gave him a strange, fleeting feeling, like he’d become some kind of dark overlord, a final judge snuffing out old legends.

Still, he had no intention of letting them escape.

Who knew what centuries trapped in that sword had done to their minds? They were no longer the people they once were. They had no bodies, no form, and who could say if something like that could still possess the living?

Better to end it here and now than let loose a new disaster.

As the last echo of those twisted screams faded, the lone fracture on the sword began to spread.

Crack crack crack!

The sound was relentless. Fractures spidered out across the sword like veins, and the edges of each crack began to bubble and melt.

Drip... Drip... Drip...!

An unknown metal began to liquefy, pitch-black and viscous, sliding down in molten rivulets.

Li Yuan controlled it with ease. With practiced precision, he shaped the pooling liquid inside his golden body’s palms, molding it into the rough form of a long blade.

As soon as the shape stabilized, he acted. Several drops of

blood

flew from his body, splattering onto the newborn embryo.

Then he grabbed the North Dipper Hammer.

The hammer’s handle ended in ten ghostly white fingers, pale as bone. The fingers bloomed open like a flower, then clamped tightly around Li Yuan’s arm, draining lifespan without mercy.

He swung the hammer down.

BOOM!

The first strike was infused with 1,000 years of lifespan.

At once, the world shifted. Yin and Yang were thrown out of balance. Thunderclouds boiled in the sky, earth fog stirred below.

Above him, thunder slurry pooled behind heavy clouds like an iron cauldron lid sealing the heavens.

Below, the earth fog churned like tadpoles in water, weaving beneath the vast, yellow ground.

BOOM!

But it wasn’t enough. Li Yuan could feel it; it hadn’t reached the bottom yet. So he swung again.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

One hammer strike after another, each loaded with another thousand years of lifespan.

A deluge of time itself poured into the forging process. And as he continued pounding, Li Yuan began to sense something else, something wrong.

The ghostly hand at the base of the North Dipper Hammer was not as

obedient

as it seemed. Or rather, perhaps the hammer had never been meant for mortals in the first place. Just like the previous Ghost Hammer, wielding it...still came at a cost. A steep one.

Li Yuan could feel it clearly. Each time a thousand years of lifespan flowed out through the ghostly hand at the end of the North Dipper Hammer, his

own

life was being drained as well.

That said, it was more

efficient

. Roughly speaking, for every thousand years he funneled into the weapon, he lost about a hundred years of his own life.

But he didn’t care. Lifespan...? That was the least of his concerns.

The imbalance of Yin and Yang around him grew more and more unstable. The heavenly lightning overhead had turned an eerie shade of red, and the earth fog below had shifted. What had once looked like tadpoles now slithered like venomous snakes.

Red lightning above. Snake-like death fog below. And both surged toward the black blade he was forging.

Li Yuan could feel the pressure building. The blade, once the Earthfire Sword, now a blank blade embryo, was nearing its limit. It had swallowed the ten thousand years’ worth of life essence. Any more, and it would rupture.

He dismissed the North Dipper Hammer. Then his golden body raised its fists and began pounding the semi-formed weapon with its bare hands, molding and shaping the metal like a blacksmith god.

The blade stretched, thinned, and took shape until finally, it was done.

Without wasting a moment, the golden giant plunged the glowing-hot weapon into the nearby stream.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!

The entire stream erupted into steam. White mist billowed in all directions.

Li Yuan stepped forward and fished the blade out, still hissing with heat.

Now it was time to add a hilt. Nothing fancy. Just a horn taken from a sixth rank demonic beast—tough, durable, and conveniently on hand.

A few swift taps, a bit of careful work, and the weapon was complete.

Li Yuan held the blade in both hands and lifted it to eye level.

The blade was pitch black, but near the edge, chaotic gray patterns writhed faintly—violent, unsettling, like scars left behind by something long buried. It looked nothing like the old Earthfire Sword, no longer resembling that thick, chimney-like monstrosity.

He tested the weight, gave it a quick swing, then finally let out a breath of relief.

"It actually worked."

Like any proper spirit artifact, the blade was now bound to him, connected through his blood and will.

He quickly glanced over his stats.

No changes.

Which made sense. The blade was linked to his Human Soul, not his Heaven Soul. And since the power of his Human Soul hadn’t yet synced with the overarching force of the Heaven Soul, any changes here were being overridden or simply hidden from view.

Still holding the weapon, he focused his senses, trying to

feel

it. And the more he probed, the stranger his expression became.

Through the blood connection between them, he was starting to understand what this blade truly was. This was a cursed sword, a true demonic weapon.

A blade that killed not only others...but also its wielder.

To put it simply, when the blade struck an enemy, it didn’t even need to draw blood. A mere

touch

was enough to sever lifespan. The moment it connected, it would shave years off the target’s life.

But, and here was the catch, no matter how much lifespan it stole from others, it would drain the

same amount

from its wielder.

A greedy weapon. One that, by all logic, should’ve been completely unusable. Unsustainable.

Yet somehow, it suited Li Yuan perfectly.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder why had the blade turned out like this?

His blood had been tainted with the chaos of his ancestral seal. He had poured 10,000 years’ worth of lifespan into the weapon, forged it from a sword that had imprisoned countless twisted souls, and shaped it under red lightning and death fog.

There were too many variables, too many elements at play.

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

By all accounts, this blade should’ve ended up with multiple abilities, a mix of traits and powers.

Unless...one trait had been so dominant, so overwhelmingly strong, that it smothered all the others. Only then could such a

single-natured

weapon exist.

But Li Yuan was sure of one thing. He himself had no particular obsession with lifespan. No craving for longevity. No hunger for stealing years from others.

So then...where had this hunger come from?

As he pondered, a woman’s scream suddenly pierced his mind.

It wasn’t external. It didn’t come from the forest or the air, but rather from inside the blade itself, transmitted directly into his consciousness.

But the voice carried no hostility. No invasion. It didn’t try to take control.

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes. After confirming the scream truly came from the blade, a thought occurred to him, a possibility he hadn’t considered before.

So...one slipped through the net,

Li Yuan deduced.

The woman didn’t respond directly, just kept

screaming

, her voice jagged with need, “I want...I want it! I want it!! I

NEEEEEED

it!”

“Want what?” He frowned.

“Lifespan! More lifespan! Give it to me! Give me more!”