The Evil Spirit King and the other evil spirits stood rooted in shock, unable to accept that Liu Wuxie had wiped out so many of their experts with a casual wave. One after another, they turned to the Evil Spirit King, waiting for his next order.

"Liu Wuxie, how dare you slaughter my clansmen! I will kill you!" The Evil Spirit King roared and hurled a violent surge of energy outward.

Nightmare City was a quasi-immortal artifact, so the slabs beneath them weren't ordinary stone at all. They had been forged from countless blacksmithing materials and tempered repeatedly.

"A quasi-immortal wants to kill me? What a joke!" Liu Wuxie sneered. He vanished without warning, and no one could tell how he did it. Space rippled, and in the next instant, he appeared right in front of the Evil Spirit King.

A loud explosion erupted as the savage fist tore through the air's resistance and slammed into the Evil Spirit King's chest. The dull impact boomed like a drumbeat, and every evil spirit winced as if their teeth ached from watching their king get blasted away by Liu Wuxie's punch. Their king had reached the Quasi-Immortal Realm, yet he looked pitifully fragile before Liu Wuxie.

The moment the Evil Spirit King went flying, Liu Wuxie shot after him like a spear and closed the gap in a blink. Before the Evil Spirit King could retaliate, Liu Wuxie's fist crashed down from above again.

The fight turned into a one-sided beating, and the Evil Spirit King couldn't even mount a defense despite standing at the Quasi-Immortal Realm.

"Liu..." The Evil Spirit King tried to speak, but Liu Wuxie's punch landed again.

"Shut your mouth. I don't want to hear anything from you," Liu Wuxie said as he followed up with another punch. He unleashed three consecutive strikes, gouging a savage crater into the Evil Spirit King’s chest and ripping flesh apart until bone lay exposed in a mangled, blood-soaked ruin.

A chill ran down the spines of the surrounding evil spirits. They couldn't believe a human who looked so insignificant could unleash power on the level of a quasi-immortal.

Blood continued to dye Nightmare City, and the artifact spirit drank it greedily. A quasi-immortal's blood fed it like pure nourishment.

"More! I need more Quasi-Immortal Realm's laws!" The artifact spirit let out a sinister laugh, sending countless evil spirits scrambling into hiding.

The artifact spirit began to struggle, trying to tear through the seal. Once it broke free of the seal, it would regain its freedom. It refused to be refined by Liu Wuxie and wanted to escape. A cold smirk rose on Liu Wuxie's lips as he saw through the artifact spirit's thoughts at once, yet he pretended not to notice. He could wait until he finished killing the Evil Spirit King before refining Nightmare City, and once he refined it, the artifact spirit would have to listen.

"Liu Wuxie, stop! I'll leave!" The Evil Spirit King howled as he was hurled back a hundred meters, his chest nearly blasted through as blood sprayed in a violent torrent. The evil spirits behind him trembled, scarcely daring to breathe.

"Too late," Liu Wuxie spat.

He had already given them a chance, and they could only blame themselves for refusing to take his offer. If he didn't kill the Evil Spirit King, the threat would remain, and he might even join forces with other sects against him, so the best solution was to end him here.

Liu Wuxie didn't hesitate to unleash the Heavenbound Immortal Finger. His earlier punches could only inflict heavy injuries at best, as the Evil Spirit King had reached the Quasi-Immortal Realm. His higher cultivation allowed him to regenerate lost body parts even with only one arm left.

The moment Liu Wuxie cast the Heavenbound Immortal Finger, Nightmare City trembled even more violently than before.

"Not good!" The evil spirits fled in all directions without a second thought. They couldn't be bothered with their king now; survival came first. The evil spirits feared sunlight and could only move at night. They had once lived elsewhere before relocating to Nightmare City. Even if they lost Nightmare City, they could still live and reproduce elsewhere. After all, the evil energy didn't originate from the city itself but in its environment.

A vast, oppressive aura descended from the sky, making the artifact spirit shudder as it devoured the Quasi-Immortal Realm's laws and hid within the seal. Liu Wuxie's aura left it shaken.

"How did he become so powerful in just half a year?" the artifact spirit wondered.

It possessed great intelligence, and when the three had barged into the underground world back then, Liu Wuxie had only been in the Void Realm.

Most of the evil spirits vanished in the blink of an eye, and only the ones fiercely loyal to the Evil Spirit King remained.

"Let's end this farce," Liu Wuxie said as the Heavenbound Immortal Finger descended on the Evil Spirit King.

The Evil Spirit King exploded under the impact. Just as the artifact spirit tried to snatch the energy and laws, the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron devoured them instead. Liu Wuxie needed only a few breaths to kill the Evil Spirit King with ease, and ever since he had reached the third-level Heaven Gaze Realm and refined the sarira, his combat strength had surged even further.

"Harvest!" The Heretic Blade flew out and devoured every evil spirit that failed to escape in time.

With that, the battle ended. Liu Wuxie turned to look down the empty streets, and a faint smile rose at the corner of his lips. Evil spirits fled Nightmare City in large swarms.

An hour later, not a single evil spirit remained in Nightmare City, and the city fell into a deadly silence.

Liu Wuxie took a deep breath and swept his gaze toward the depths of Nightmare City. The next obstacle lay in severing the Seven-Fiend Netherworld Chains, and he knew that wouldn't be easy. An immortal had forged those chains from rare materials and set them in place, and even an ordinary immortal wouldn't be able to sever them.

The Heretic Blade shot out and struck the chain at the southwest corner, scattering sparks, but the chain didn't budge. Anything capable of binding Nightmare City would never be simple.

After several strikes in a row, the Seven-Fiend Netherworld Chains remained intact, and Liu Wuxie became gradually frustrated. He knew slaughtering every evil spirit meant nothing if he couldn't sever the chains.

Only the one who set the chains could release them, and everyone else could only attempt to destroy them by force. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Great Five Elemental Immortal Art!" Liu Wuxie unleashed the immortal art and pressed it down on the chains.

It didn't take long for the chains to groan under the pressure, yet they still refused to snap.

That made Liu Wuxie realize he had underestimated the chains' toughness. Now he understood why Nightmare City had sat here for countless years with no one able to claim it, as even an ordinary immortal would struggle to break those chains.

"My strength is too weak, and if only I could reach the fourth-level Heaven Gaze Realm..." Liu Wuxie murmured as he sat on the ground in defeat. He had come so close only to be stopped by the chains, and he couldn't bring himself to leave now.

"Let's put it aside for now and see if the Evil Spirit King had any useful treasures," Liu Wuxie murmured. The evil spirits had lived here for countless years and killed every cultivator who had set foot in this place. The Evil Spirit King had to have hoarded staggering wealth.

He took out the Evil Spirit King's interspatial ring and dumped everything out. The items flooded the street like a mountain.

Even Liu Wuxie couldn't help feeling shocked by the harvest. Many items that humans would consider treasures held no value for the Evil Spirit King, and this accumulation must have spanned at least centuries, or perhaps even thousands of years.

Liu Wuxie stared at the mountain of loot and fell into brief silence. Treasures and junk lay mixed, yet he instantly caught the scent of an immortal stone and reached in to pull out a complete immortal stone. Immortal stones held little value to evil spirits, and they had already refined the treasures that actually benefited them by now.

"Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, it's your turn now," Liu Wuxie said. He didn't have the luxury of sorting them one by one, so he tossed the junk directly into the cauldron, letting the excavated energy perfect the desolate world further.

A world didn't consist of only a few thousand elements, and even Liu Wuxie didn't know how many more substances he still needed to absorb to complete the desolate world.

A black vortex opened before him, and the mountain of loot began to shrink rapidly. Liu Wuxie kept his eyes locked on the pile, saving everything useful, and feeding the rest into the cauldron.

Just like that, the mountain collapsed into the size of a small hill, while countless energies filled the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron. Refined liquid then flowed into the desolate world and seeped into the earth.

Liu Wuxie also found the remains of several extinct races stored within the Evil Spirit King's interspatial ring, and they now benefited the desolate world by forming several realms in succession. The speed of the refinement looked terrifying, and anyone watching would have been left speechless.

The artifact spirit felt too frightened to show itself, and after seeing Liu Wuxie beat the Evil Spirit King, it behaved obediently.

The pile of loot kept dwindling as Liu Wuxie's aura continued to rise. As the desolate world expanded, the density of his immortal energy grew thicker.

"The Witcher Clan's power?" Liu Wuxie frowned as he recognized an item belonging to the Witcher Clan. After he refined it, it dissolved into a vast tide of witcher energy, nourishing the Witcher Realm.

The item looked like a herb, yet it carried a strange shape and dense witcher energy, but Liu Wuxie didn't dwell on it. The Witcher Clan had once appeared in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain many years ago.

When only a few thousand items remained, a mysterious force suddenly swept outward from the leftovers.

Liu Wuxie immediately rose to his feet and stopped the cauldron's absorption, afraid he might refine a treasure along with the junk.

He walked over to the remaining pile and recognized a familiar aura. He swept his gaze across the ground to find its source, and his eyes soon locked on a black stone.