The salt-laden sea wind carried an evil miasma far thicker than before, cutting across my face like a blade. I crouched behind a reef half-submerged in seawater, my fingertips unconsciously tracing the Warlance Blade at my hip. The blade ran faintly warm, resonating in a steady pulse with the sword-tip fragment inside my Qiankun Pouch — as though urging something forward.

"Senior Ethan, the spiritual energy fluctuations ahead in Treasure Cove are at least three times stronger than they were three days ago." Beside me, the azure-robed cultivator Zheng Chen lowered his voice, a shadow of gravity settling in his eyes. He held a water mirror in his hand; reflected within it, black fog churned and billowed at the entrance to Corrosion Bay. This was no natural phenomenon — it was a malevolent array deliberately laid by human hands.

I gave a curt nod, squinting through the haze of evil mist, trying to make out what lay within. The System's alarm had already sounded in my mind, more urgent than the last time:

Ding! Danger Warning! High-intensity Demonic Formation detected — "Blood Fiend Maze Array" — fluctuation range expanded to cover the entirety of Treasure Cove! The array contains three spiritual power nodes at the Core Formation stage and five patrol squads at the Foundation Establishment stage!

Blood Fiend Maze Array? My heart sank. I had seen this formation in the Array Diagram Records — a vicious, demonic array fuelled by the lifeblood of living creatures. Those who entered would be ensnared by illusions while the array ceaselessly devoured the spiritual energy from their bodies, until they were reduced to nothing more than fodder sustaining the formation. Victor Jin had come prepared, having clearly calculated that we would venture here again.

"System, is there any way to break the array?" I asked inwardly, my thoughts racing.

Ding! Array-breaking talisman exchange option detected: "Profound Yellow Fiend-Sunder Talisman" — consumes 50,000 Merit Points. Can temporarily tear open a corner of the Blood Fiend Maze Array, creating an opportunity to retreat or advance.

50,000 Merit Points! The corner of my mouth twitched with pain — but staring at the black mist growing denser by the moment, I steeled myself and made my decision. "Exchange!"

A flash of golden light, and a yellow talisman paper covered in ancient, unadorned runes appeared in my palm. The moment I touched it, it scorched my hand, as though I were clutching a ball of burning flame — a stark contrast against the cold, malevolent energy seeping through the air around us.

"Everyone, listen up!" I kept my voice low, eyes sweeping across the nine Foundation Establishment cultivators behind me. Most were familiar faces who had infiltrated with me last time; their expressions held tension, but not a trace of retreat. "9528 — take four people and loop around the left flank. Draw the attention of the patrol squads outside the array. I'll lead the remaining four in a hard push through the right flank. Our target: the black coral forest deep within Treasure Cove. Remember — keep your spiritual sense link active. The moment anything goes wrong, fall back immediately!"

"Understood!" The group answered in low, unified voices, each summoning their spirit treasures and scattering into several streaks of flowing light.

I drew a slow, deep breath, carefully tucked the Profound Yellow Fiend-Sunder Talisman into my sleeve, and led four cultivators in a water-blue streak of light, skimming low over the surface of the sea and charging toward the weak point on the right side of Corrosion Bay. The array nodes marked by the System flickered ahead of us like lighthouses in the dark.

The instant we were about to plunge into the mist, the System's alarm rang out again: Warning! Formation activated! The Blood Fiend Maze Array has been triggered!

The scene before us lurched and warped. The familiar reef clusters suddenly turned grotesque and terrifying; the seawater transformed into a boiling pool of blood, and countless pallid arms reached up from within, grasping toward our ankles. The overwhelming stench of blood surged straight into my nostrils, nearly forcing me to retch.

"Don't let the illusions take hold — stay close to me!" I bellowed, circulating the Tide Saint Body Art. A curtain of water rose around my body, sealing those phantom arms away. But one of the cultivators beside me clearly lacked my composure; he cried out in alarm, and his spiritual sense link instantly dissolved into chaos.

Not good! My chest clenched — before I could move to help him, the seawater on all sides suddenly surged upward, forming towering black walls of water that split and encircled us in an instant, separating all five of us. The spiritual sense link was severed by force. All I could hear was the howling wind and the violent hammering of my own heartbeat.

"Senior Ethan!" 9528's voice broke through what remained of the spiritual sense link, laced with urgency. "We're surrounded! There's a Core Formation demonic cultivator on the left flank!"

"Same here!" Another spiritual sense signal flickered in and out. "Dozens of Foundation Establishment patrol squads — we can barely hold on!"

The situation was worse than I had imagined. I was trapped inside a black water dome barely thirty feet across, surrounded on all sides by churning crimson mist, the air thick with suffocating demonic energy. On the System panel, the array's energy readout was spiking wildly — it was clear that Victor Jin had staked everything on this encounter.

"System — the talisman!" Without another moment's hesitation, I drew out the Profound Yellow Fiend-Sunder Talisman and drove my spiritual energy into it with full force.

BOOM!

The talisman paper blazed into a brilliant column of golden light, shooting like an arrow toward the edge of the water dome. As the runes flickered and flared, the black dome shuddered violently, and a crack roughly a foot wide split open across its surface.

"Now!" I roared, poised to break through.

At that very moment, three dark silhouettes emerged beyond the crack. The one at the front wore a blood-red robe, his face covered in twisted, fish-scale markings — it was the Core Formation personal guard I had crossed blades with last time. Behind him stood two more Core Formation demonic cultivators, their auras equally cold and sinister, faint black astral energy coiling around their bodies. These were clearly Victor Jin's elite inner circle.

"Ethan Lu — Heaven's road stands open and you refuse to walk it; Hell has no gate, yet here you come barging in!" The blood-robed demonic cultivator let out a savage laugh and slammed his palm forward. A palm strike black as ink split the air with a shrieking wail, driving straight for my face.

Ding! Core Formation demonic cultivator all-out strike detected — threat assessment: capable of gravely wounding a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator!

My pupils constricted sharply. There was no time to think. I wrenched the Warlance Blade from its scabbard in a single motion. The instant the blade left my body, the meteoric iron anvil at my hip and the sword-tip fragment inside the Qiankun Pouch erupted simultaneously in blazing radiance. Two streams of Dao-Ancestor sword intent, born of the same origin, fused together in a heartbeat. The dark-gold runes and water-wave patterns etched along the Warlance Blade shimmered and interlaced, coalescing into a double-hued blade flash of gold and blue — surging with tremendous force as it rose to meet that oncoming black palm strike.

End of Chapter 73: The Bloody Mist Array