Kun Province, the Great Spiritual Field Realm.
Within it lay a small third-grade prefectural realm called Qingchou.
Clad in a black robe with his face concealed, Mo Hua walked across a barren field. The crops had withered and rotted, while blood seeped from the soil. His feet tread upon the bloodstained earth as a copper coin slipped between his fingers, guiding him toward his destination.
According to Yu Cangming, Gu Changhuai's last message had been sent from the Qingchou Prefectural Realm.
The message reported that calamity was sweeping through Qingchou, the uprisings were growing increasingly fierce, and the situation was rapidly spiraling out of control.
After that, all contact had ceased.
Even the internal Yuan Magnetic channels of the Dao Court Bureau had been severed.
Gu Changhuai's group of more than a hundred Dao Court Bureau cultivators, most of them trusted members of the Gu family, had disappeared into Qingchou. Their fate was unknown.
The Dao Court Bureau in Houtu City had stood by and done nothing. They would have been more than happy to see Gu Changhuai, that thorn in their side, die in the line of duty amid the uprising in the Great Spiritual Field Realm.
Yu Cangming of the Demon Suppression Bureau had wanted to take charge of the matter, but the Bureau was severely understaffed, and he already had more than enough to deal with. In the end, the matter had simply been left unresolved.
No one knew what had happened within Qingchou or how far the turmoil had spread.
It was not until more than half a month later that Mo Hua finally set foot on Qingchou's soil, determined to find out whether Gu Changhuai was alive or dead.
The problem was that Qingchou was a vast prefectural realm. Even with Mo Hua's extraordinary karmic arts and well-practiced divination techniques, all he could determine was a vague direction.
Given the volatile situation, finding Uncle Gu would be no easy task. Time was also of the essence. If he arrived early, there was still a chance that Uncle Gu was alive. If he arrived too late, he might find nothing but Uncle Gu's corpse.
Mo Hua's gaze grew solemn as he ventured deeper into the Qingchou Prefectural Realm.
The farther he went, the more desolate the land became. Scorched earth stretched for a thousand li, with not a trace of human habitation in sight. The desolation was horrifying.
After traveling several hundred more li, he finally saw human figures.
But they were all corpses.
Bodies lay scattered across the fields, along the roads, and at the edges of the land. Some had even been decapitated and hung upside down from trees.
For a moment, Mo Hua could not tell whether these people had died from hunger or the uprising.
He had witnessed bloody tragedies like this before in the Great Wilderness.
But that was the Great Wilderness, a land beyond the Dao Court's rule. It was a war-torn place where cultivators were brutal and fought without end, where great disasters had brought about every imaginable form of suffering.
This, however, was Kun Province, a place long renowned for its wealth and abundance.
This was the Great Spiritual Field Realm, where fertile soil nurtured all things.
Not long ago, Mo Hua had been visiting great clans over marriage negotiations. He had witnessed the splendor of noble families, their wealth and prestige, their extravagant lives amid jade towers and jeweled halls, with wine and delicacies in abundance.
Yet in the blink of an eye, he was now faced with starving refugees dying miserable deaths and countless people being swallowed by catastrophe.
Mo Hua reached out and drew a wooden branch into his hand before thrusting it into the ground.
A foul stench immediately surged from beneath the earth.
The once-fertile soil now resembled rotting corpse flesh, oozing putrid fluids.
"Rotten corpse flesh..."
Mo Hua stared at the viscous soil. A thought suddenly occurred to him, and his pupils narrowed.
Yet this corruption was still in its early stages. Although the soil resembled corpse flesh, it was not actual corpse flesh.
Various possibilities churned through Mo Hua's mind, tangled together like a knot. He could not determine which karmic possibility lay behind it.
He sighed inwardly, dropped the branch, and took out the copper coin once more to divine the road ahead.
He had only just arrived in the Great Spiritual Field Realm, alone and without support. There was only so much he could do at once.
Under these circumstances, he could only hope that Uncle Gu was safe.
Mo Hua gathered his thoughts and continued northeast, following the guidance of his karmic arts.
Another hundred li passed.
The scenery remained largely unchanged, and corpses could still be seen everywhere. But at last, Mo Hua encountered living people.
On a hillside stood a village stronghold surrounded by stone walls, with guards stationed at the entrance.
Mo Hua swept his spiritual sense across the stronghold and detected more than a hundred living people within.
Most were refugees, though they came from various backgrounds. It seemed that after enduring the chaos and finding no one else to rely upon, they had gathered here simply to survive.
Mo Hua activated his movement technique, concealed his presence, and passed straight through the guards into the stronghold.
Those refugee guards naturally could not see through his concealment.
Inside, he immediately spotted a burly man sitting in the center of the stronghold.
His clothes were ragged, but he wore half a suit of armor. A large iron blade rested before him. His body was covered in scars, and his aura was not weak.
He appeared to be the leader of the stronghold.
Mo Hua walked straight toward him, revealed himself, and said, "I want to ask you something."
The stronghold leader was greatly alarmed when a strange black-robed cultivator suddenly appeared out of nowhere in broad daylight.
He immediately drew his enormous iron blade, pointed it at Mo Hua, and demanded, "Who are you?"
The other guards heard the commotion and raised their weapons, surrounding Mo Hua with grim expressions.
In such troubled times, a black-robed figure who appeared out of nowhere was usually associated with evil cults or demonic cultivators. He certainly did not look like a good person.
Surrounded by the guards, Mo Hua remained calm.
"Answer my question honestly."
The leader frowned.
"What question?"
Mo Hua asked, "Have you seen anyone from the Dao Court Bureau nearby?"
"The Dao Court Bureau?"
The leader's expression stiffened immediately.
"I have nothing to say."
Mo Hua looked at him coldly.
"If you speak, I won't make things difficult for your people."
The leader sneered.
He hesitated no longer. Spinning his iron blade, he slashed directly at Mo Hua.
The blade swept across Mo Hua's waist.
Joy had only just appeared on the leader's face when, in the next instant, Mo Hua's body transformed into a phantom resembling black water. His figure vanished into the air before slowly coalescing once more.
That slash had struck nothing more than a mirage.
Mo Hua flicked a finger.
The Water Prison Art descended, instantly pressing the peak Foundation Establishment cultivator flat against the ground.
The leader's expression changed drastically.
"A Golden Core cultivator!"
The other guards were shaken to the core when they heard the words "Golden Core." Their hands could barely hold their weapons steady. Their legs went weak as they retreated again and again.
Mo Hua asked, "Have you seen anyone from the Dao Court Bureau?"
The leader's face turned ashen, but he kept his mouth firmly shut.
Mo Hua gathered his fingers, preparing to strengthen the suffocating force of the Water Prison Art.
The leader finally spoke.
"I don't know..."
Mo Hua's gaze turned slightly colder as he cast another Water Prison Art, binding the leader even more tightly.
The leader cursed this "villain" inwardly for his vicious methods, but he had no strength to resist.
He could only grit his teeth and say, "Senior, spare me. I truly don't know. I don't know where the Dao Court Bureau people are."
Mo Hua's eyes shifted.
"You truly don't know?"
The leader gritted his teeth.
"The Dao Court Bureau's running dogs oppress the innocent. Death would be too good for them. I only hate that my cultivation is too weak to kill those bastards myself. If I truly knew where they were, why would I hide it?"
Mo Hua frowned slightly.
He turned toward the others, his gaze sweeping across their fearful and angry faces.
"Does anyone here know where the Dao Court Bureau cultivators are?"
The refugees exchanged glances.
They all looked confused, and no one answered.
The air fell silent.
Mo Hua's gaze grew somewhat cold.
Then, from among the crowd, a gaunt woman dressed in coarse clothing stepped forward. She held the hand of a thin child and half-knelt before Mo Hua.
In a tense voice, she said, "To answer Senior, this woman has seen Dao Court Bureau people."
Mo Hua asked, "Where?"
The woman hesitated and remained silent.
Mo Hua's eyes shifted.
"What do you want in exchange?"
"I..."
The woman kowtowed to Mo Hua and pulled the bony child closer.
"I only beg Senior to let this child eat a full meal."
Mo Hua was momentarily stunned.
His gaze became complicated.
"Just one full meal?"
The woman lowered her head, her voice filled with despair.
"Yes. This woman's child hasn't had a full meal in a month. He can only fill his stomach with tree bark. If he doesn't get some real grain soon, his blood qi will wither, and he will die."
Children were the weakest, with insufficient blood qi.
The thought that she might soon have to watch her own child starve to death before her eyes, unable to do anything about it, twisted the woman's heart like a knife.
Tears streamed down her face.
Mo Hua looked at the child.
The boy really was as thin as a bamboo pole, yet his lower abdomen was slightly swollen. It was an obvious sign that he had eaten too much bark and weeds, which his body could not properly transform into blood qi.
Of all the victims of a famine, children suffered the cruelest fate.
Mo Hua sighed inwardly and nodded.
"Very well."
The woman was overjoyed, but she was afraid of offending this mysterious Golden Core senior, so she dared not show too much emotion.
She hurriedly said, "To answer Senior, southeast of here, about a hundred li away, there are some low hills covered in forest. There is a wild temple in that forest."
"When this woman was fleeing the disaster, she took shelter in that wild temple to escape the mob. She also gathered wild fruits there for her child to eat. It was near that place that she saw people wearing Dao Court Bureau uniforms."
Mo Hua asked, "They were wearing Dao Court Bureau uniforms?"
The woman nodded.
"There were quite a few of them, perhaps several dozen. They were all wearing uniform robes, and they looked frightening. This woman didn't dare approach them. She only took a glance from afar before fleeing."
The local cultivators of Qingchou instinctively feared and hated the Dao Court Bureau cultivators.
Mo Hua asked, "Anything else?"
The woman shook her head.
"That is all."
Mo Hua looked at the woman, especially at her eyes, and quietly asked, "You are not a spirit farmer, are you?"
The woman was startled.
She quickly replied, "This woman was born into a farmer's family. I only worked as a maidservant in a wealthy household for a few years."
Mo Hua said nothing more.
After thinking for a moment, he took out a piece of dried meat, a steamed bun, and a Bigu Pill.
"The dried meat and steamed bun are for the child. The Bigu Pill is for you."
The woman was overcome with joy, tears streaming down her face.
She hurriedly kowtowed to Mo Hua.
"Thank you, Senior! Thank you, Senior!"
She then held out both hands and tremblingly accepted the dried meat and steamed bun.
Breaking them into tiny pieces, she carefully fed them to the child in her arms.
The child was still very young, only a few years old, and had been starving for so long that he could not eat too quickly.
His cultivation was also low, only at the Qi Refining realm, so Mo Hua had given him only a small piece of meat and a single steamed bun.
If he ate too much, his body would not be able to digest it. It could even kill him.
Mo Hua looked at the child and the woman who had humbled herself simply to give her child a full meal.
Compassion welled up within him.
He considered leaving more food for the mother and child.
But when he turned his head, he saw the surrounding refugees.
Their stomachs were hollow, their eyes red, and all of them were staring at the meat and steamed bun in the mother and child's hands.
Some were even swallowing their saliva.
A chill ran through Mo Hua's heart.
He realized that during a famine, giving the mother and child more food might actually get them killed.
Unless he stayed behind to protect them, the moment he left, what happened next needed no explanation.
These starving people would do anything for a single bite of food.
Mo Hua's thoughts turned.
He took out two medicine bottles and tossed them to the stronghold leader.
The leader caught them and stared in surprise.
"These are..."
Mo Hua said, "Bigu Pills. Distribute them among everyone and ration them carefully. They should keep you alive for a while longer."
The leader clutched the bottles, both shocked and delighted. He stared at the Golden Core senior in disbelief, momentarily unable to speak.
Mo Hua added, "Take good care of this mother and child."
After all, she had helped him.
The leader hurriedly nodded.
"Yes, yes."
When the others heard that there were Bigu Pills that could keep them alive, they were stunned.
Then their despair turned into joy.
They kowtowed excitedly.
"Thank you, Senior, for bestowing these pills!"
"Senior's virtue is boundless! May you live as long as the heavens!"
After the crowd finished bowing and offering their thanks, they raised their heads.
There was no one before them.
The black-robed senior had vanished without a trace.
For a moment, everyone felt as though they had been dreaming.
The stronghold leader stared at the empty space before him, unable to hide his shock.
Then he turned toward the mother and child and thought with relief,
"Good thing I didn't throw away that useless mother and child as deadweight back then. Otherwise, where would we have gotten these Bigu Pills in our time of need?"
Still, two bottles of Bigu Pills would not last long.
This world was simply too harsh.
Who knew how many people would die across Kun Province?
Even if an immortal descended to this world, he would still be powerless to save them all.
The stronghold leader's brow furrowed heavily as he took a deep breath.
Outside the stronghold, Mo Hua remained concealed.
His body flowed like water as he skimmed across the ground, speeding toward the northeast, in the direction the woman had mentioned.
It was not that he was unwilling to give them more Bigu Pills.
He had set out in such a hurry that he had not brought many supplies with him.
Moreover, the world was already in too much chaos.
One or two bottles of Bigu Pills, even ten or a hundred, would not solve the problem.
Many things had to be considered from the long term and approached from the perspective of the overall situation.
Otherwise, not only Qingchou, but the surrounding Nansui, Guitian, and Huangrang, and even the entire Great Spiritual Field Realm, might be swept into the disaster.
By then, the fields would be covered with the corpses of those who had starved to death.
Mo Hua put these thoughts aside and quickened his pace.
He flashed across the desolate fields like a drifting ray of light.
Less than an hour later, he stopped before a stretch of low hills.
The hills were densely covered with trees.
Strangely, although it was a famine year and many of the trees outside had already been stripped of their bark and eaten, these trees remained lush and green, with hardly any signs of having been peeled.
Their thick foliage cast deep shadows over the low hills, completely concealing them beneath the canopy.
Mo Hua narrowed his eyes and stepped into the grove.
Immediately, he felt a chill.
Following the direction of the trees, he walked for a long while, yet he still could not find the wild temple the woman had mentioned.
The trees were tall, the shadows dense, and amid the layered forest, even his sense of direction gradually became blurred.
Yet there were no traces of illusion formations or trapping formations anywhere around him.
It was truly strange.
Mo Hua frowned and searched through the trees for a moment.
Then he raised a finger and performed a divination.
Following a karmic thread, he discovered a broken, semi-transparent spiderweb on the trunk of a gloomy, towering tree.
The broken web looked ordinary, faint and almost intangible.
Yet a sticky divine sense clung to it, flowing slowly through the strands.
Scattered around the web were the corpses of a swarm of insects.
It seemed to be a medium for divine sense arts, but it was completely unlike any divine sense technique Mo Hua knew.
Mo Hua studied it for a moment and something stirred within his heart.
"This.. is an Unorthodox Path Technique?"