「Early morning at the President’s Mansion.」
Inside the reception hall, sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a warm, golden glow on the polished marble floor.
A man in a suit, around thirty years old, stood in the hall, his face flushed with excitement. "Father! It’s a sign from the heavens!"
"Over in the Northern Wilderness Mountain Range, someone saw a giant snake! It was dozens of meters long, with a body as thick as a man!"
"Vice Commander-in-Chief Zhu Yi of the Secret Martial Department went to see it himself with his men, and it turns out it’s real!"
He swallowed, his eyes gleaming with fanaticism. "That thing was practically a spirit! But in the end, it died under cannon fire! Our men bombarded it with heavy artillery for a full hour before they finally killed it!"
"Vice Commander Chu has already sent a telegraph. The giant snake can be transported to the capital tomorrow!"
"When it arrives, Father, you can use this to prove something to the world: that a holy ruler has descended from the heavens to slay all demons and monsters and bring order to the universe!"
"The new imperial system will be legitimized!"
The young man fully expected his father to be as excited as he was, but Yuan Datong sat calmly on the sofa, with no hint of joy on his face.
On the contrary, his brow furrowed deeper. "Mu Fei, did Zhu Yi say anything else? Did the giant snake have any other distinguishing features?"
"Features?"
Hearing this, Yuan Mu Fei paused. He thought for a moment, recalling the contents of the telegraph. "Right, Vice Commander Chu said its blood was black. It spilled all over the ground and still hasn’t dried..."
"What?" Upon hearing about the black blood, Yuan Datong shot up from the sofa!
His face, which had been relatively calm, instantly turned grave. "It’s that clan... That clan has returned!"
"That damn Kunlun Secret Realm has appeared again... Dammit!"
As the President, and as the current Patriarch of the Yuan Family, he knew secrets that ordinary people could never possibly know.
They were the taboos passed down orally through the family for generations: the Outer Celestial Demons that poured in from the Kunlun Secret Realm.
Hundreds of years ago, they poured into this land from a rift in the Kunlun Secret Realm, once unleashing a monstrous catastrophe.
Emperor Zulong, Overlord Chu, Tiangong General, the King of the Western Regions... countless brilliant and astonishing heroes exhausted their entire lives just to slaughter them into disarray.
And now, Yuan Datong had thought he would never encounter these things in his lifetime.
He thought that as long as he ascended to that position, he could be an Emperor in peace.
But they had returned nonetheless.
Seeing his father’s expression, Yuan Mu Fei was completely stunned. "F-Father? What’s wrong? What do you mean, ’that clan’?"
After a moment, Yuan Datong looked at his eldest son with a complicated gaze and said, "Have you forgotten how many times I’ve told you to eat the Immortal Flesh slowly, and not to be greedy and eat too much at once?"
Yuan Mu Fei was taken aback. Of course he remembered. His father would remind him of this every so often, always speaking of it in a cryptic, mysterious way.
"If you eat a portion of Immortal Flesh so large that your body can’t even digest it all at once, you will attract ominous, ghostly things."
As he spoke, Yuan Datong sat back down on the sofa. "Now I will tell you. Those ominous, ghostly things I mentioned before are the Outer Celestial Demons from the Kunlun Secret Realm."
Hearing this fantastical news, Yuan Mu Fei’s pupils contracted sharply.
Yuan Datong looked up at him and said, word by word, "And the Immortal Flesh we eat... it all comes from that clan."
"Furthermore, back then, our Yuan Family was their vassal. Many of our elders were even possessed by them, transformed into strangers."
"Later, it was because of people like Emperor Zulong and Overlord Chu... They were too strong. That clan was forced into a steady retreat and nearly wiped out."
"It wasn’t just our Yuan Family. The Governor Families in other provinces, and some of the Ancient Martial Families... back then, they were all nothing more than dogs kept by them."
Hearing this, Yuan Mu Fei’s mind went completely blank.
’What did that mean?’
’The Immortal Flesh I had always regarded as a miracle, a gift from the heavens, was actually a gift from a horde of demons?’
’I’ve eaten so much of it... Isn’t that suicide?’
Yuan Datong looked at his eldest son’s state and sighed internally. "Don’t panic. The benefits of the Immortal Flesh outweigh the harm."
"The Outer Celestial Demons have no physical form; they can only possess the bodies of living creatures. Although the Immortal Flesh can influence us, their success isn’t one hundred percent guaranteed."
"Most of those damned Celestial Demons will fail. And after they fail, the will of that Celestial Demon will in turn strengthen the soul of us Martial Artists."
"At that point, it wouldn’t be impossible for a Martial Artist’s Realm to soar overnight."
After hearing this, the terror on Yuan Mu Fei’s face gradually faded. He let out a long breath and slumped back onto the sofa.
’Thank God... Thank God it’s not a one hundred percent chance of being possessed. After all, who would want their body taken over by something like that?’
’If that really happened, it would be no different from being dead.’
Yuan Datong continued, "So, sometimes, to be safe, the Outer Celestial Demons will choose to possess animals that have eaten Immortal Flesh."
"Whether it flies in the sky, crawls on the ground, or swims in the water—in short, any living creature can potentially become their vessel."
As Yuan Mu Fei’s scalp tingled with fear, he asked in confusion, "Those animals eat Immortal Flesh? Father, can’t Immortal Flesh only be found with Immortality Crystals?"
Yuan Datong shook his head. "After hundreds of years of searching, the Immortal Flesh has been almost completely depleted. The Department of Antiquities hasn’t found a single Immortality Crystal in over half a year."
He paused, a sharp glint in his eyes. "But things are different now. The Kunlun Secret Realm has reappeared in the mortal world. As the saying goes, fortune and disaster are two sides of the same coin."

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