“Wah!”

It was at this moment what sounded like a baby’s cry rang from somewhere within the Nine Nethers Rift.

As soon as it appeared, the Nine Nethers Demons instantly scattered in every direction like frightened preys. Every single one of them.

Some of the Nine Nethers Demons discovered Jiang Yunlai and Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial, but they paid them no heed and kept running like crazy.

“What’s going on?”

Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial voiced his puzzlement.

“I don’t know. Let’s hide.”

Jiang Yunlai flicked a finger, and a sun disc appeared at his fingertip. As the sun disc rotated, it emitted some sort of dark radiance that enveloped them both.

The next moment, the ground beneath them collapsed, and the Nine Nethers Demonic Qi churned wildly like a hurricane. It wasn’t their imagination. The demonic qi beneath their feet had transformed into a terrifying vortex that sucked it all into its center. The Nine Nethers Demons who failed to escape in time and weren’t strong enough to resist the attraction force were pulled into the vortex. They were never seen again.

This was just the beginning. As time passed, the vortex grew larger and stronger. It eventually got to the point where it encompassed nearly the entire Nine Nethers Rift, and still the attraction force was increasing.

The attraction force was unbelievably powerful and all-encompassing. Even the Nine Nethers Demons that managed to escape dozens of kilometers away from the source earlier were pulled back into the vortex. A good number of them were Ancient-class Nine Nethers Demons too.

In the human world, any one of these Nine Nethers Demon could have singlehandedly taken countless lives, destroyed cities, and even annihilated an entire country. But before the vortex, they might as well be powerless sheeps. They were all pulled helplessly into the vortex without being able to put up even the slightest bit of resistance.

Jiang Yunlai and Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial were among them. Before the vortex appeared, they were curious and thought they were strong enough to fight off whatever it was that had scared off the Nine Nethers Demons. That delusion was annihilated as soon as the vortex appeared, but by then, it was already too late.

To say that the vortex felt dangerous would be an understatement. They had the distinct feeling that even they might perish if they were sucked into the vortex. This premonition only grew stronger as the vortex grew bigger and stronger, and it became harder for them to resist. They were slowly but surely being pulled closer toward the vortex.

“This can’t continue,” Jiang Yunlai remarked. He was currently in the form of a dark sun, and the sun disc above his head was reversing heaven and earth and spilling endless rays of light.

“If I’m not mistaken, the creature behind this vortex is a Nether Kun, and it is currently feeding.”

Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial was surrounding himself in thick puffs of clear qi. The profound clouds were heavy, and the rivers of stars they transformed into were many, many times heavier. “The situation isn’t hopeless though. We simply need to hold out until the Nether Kun is done feeding.”

“Why is there a Nether Kun here?” Jiang Yunlai looked confused.

The Nether Kun was an Ancient-class Nine Nethers Demon, but unlike your average Ancient-class Nine Nethers Demon, it was born in the Northmost Ocean of the Nine Nethers.

According to the strange book titled “Freedom”, there existed a fish with two wings in the farthest end of the Nine Nethers called the Nether Kun. The Nether Kun was believed to be at least tens of thousands of kilometers long, Normally found in the Nine Nethers, such was its size that its very breathing formed wind and clouds. When it fed, it opened its mouth and formed a vortex capable of consuming heaven and earth. It was an omnivore that fed on all living creatures.

Even in the Nine Nethers, the Nether Kun was among the strongest Nine Nethers Demons. Nearly unrivaled, even the likes of the Cloud Mother of Nothingness, Mountain Ghost, Pill Kui and more were but food and prey before the Nether Kun. To compare the likes of them to the Nether Kun be to compare a firefly to the moon.

Luckily for humanity, the Nether Kun was so big that it was exceedingly difficult for it to appear in the human world. It almost never left the Northmost Ocean of the Nine Nethers either. According to human history, the Nether Kun had only appeared once in the human world, and that was during the ancient times when the gods, the demons, the humans and the Strangers were at war.

At the time, a deity had opened the Nine Nethers and drew the Nine Nethers Demonic Qi into the human world, resulting in a Nether Kun making its appearance. One casual gulp was all it took for the Nether Kun to consume every living being and energy within a radius of five thousand kilometers and turn it into a wasteland.

The Nether Kun was an omnivore of all living things. It did not care if its prey was a god, demon, human or Stranger. Anything with even the tiniest bit of spirituality in them was a prey. That was why every place it went to turned into a barren wasteland with no spiritual qi or life. Even the space it existed was consumed into a void of absolute nothingness and death. It was, without exaggeration, the antithesis of all beings with spirit.

In just the span of weeks, most of the human world were tattered, and the number of casualties inflicted upon the gods, demons, humans and Strangers were positively innumerable. At this rate, the entire human world would be devoured by the Nether Kun, literally.

Left with no choice, the four races joined forces and sent the Nether Kun back to the Northmost Ocean of the Nine Nethers. They also sealed the Nine Nethers Rift it came from permanently.

Since then, the Nether Kun became public enemy No. 1. Be it the gods, the demons, the humans, the Strangers, the celestials, the Buddhas, the monsters, and everything else, no one welcomed the Nether Kun. Even the Nine Nethers Demons who wished for the chaos and destruction of the human world were unwilling to summon it because their goal was to corrupt and throw the world into chaos, not turn it all into a desolate void of nothingness.

In conclusion, the Nether Kun was beyond terrifying. It was an existence everyone avoided engaging with if at all possible.

With all that said, why on earth was there a Nether Kun in the Kunlun Ruins? Jiang Yunlai just could not figure out why.

“I don’t know.” Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial shook his head. That was the end of their conversation as they needed to devote all of their strength in resisting the Nether Kun’s power.

Although the two Sages were unable to break free from the Nether Kun’s power completely, they were strong enough to slow their descent to the maximum degree. Still, they were slowly but surely inching ever closer toward the vortex.

The vortex was like an infinite black hole. It continuously devoured anything and everything within the gap. Even the Nine Nethers Demonic Qi in the gap was thinning at a visible rate.

An entire teatime later, the vortex finally began to shrink, and the attraction force started to weaken gradually. A dozen or so breaths later, it disappeared completely.

By now, Jiang Yunlai and Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial were less than thirty meters away from the vortex. It was quite the precarious distance to say the least.

“Phew… it’s over.”

Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial let out a sigh of relief and smiled.

Jiang Yunlai did not say anything, but his face was relaxing a little as well.

“Look!”

It was at this moment they heard a long, wonderful cry from the darkness below. As if on cue, a pitch black fish far too long and massive to gauge by any reasonable standard appeared in the gap beneath them, its sleek, smooth body swimming through the darkness with ethereal elegance. A while later, it was gone.

“Is that the Nether Kun?” Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial murmured with a stunned expression.

It was at this moment Jiang Yunlai voiced his puzzlement, “Don’t you think that something is strange? The Kunlun Ruins boast far more spiritual qi than this rift. Why would the Nether Kun choose to stay here instead of departing for the Kunlun Ruins?”

As mentioned before, the Nether Kun fed on all living things. It was also fond of consuming spiritual qi. The Kunlun Ruins obviously possessed more spiritual qi than the rift, so the Nether Kun should have swam to the surface and turned it into a lifeless wasteland of nothingness and death a long, long time ago. Instead, it chose to stay here.

“It is strange.” Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial jolted out of his reverie and nodded.

There was a Nether Kun in this rift, and the Nether Kun was public enemy no. 1. Logically speaking, the Nine Nethers Demons would want to put as much distance between it and them as far as possible, and guess what? The exit was right above their heads. And yet, they did not do so. It

was

suspicious.

“Perhaps something is shackling them to this place and preventing them from leaving,” Cyan Radiance Superior Celestial suggested.

“That is definitely possible,” Jiang Yunlai replied after some thinking.