The Resurrecting Overlord

Before long, Dong Xian's whole body was siphoned into Tai Empire's public supply. No one would have expected that his whole body was simply composed of Demonic Qi! This allowed them to lower their guard and let Dong Xian escape from containment.

Now, Dong Xian had to choose an appropriate time to form his body again. He could not simply just form a body, lest he gets caught by Prince Ai Ling and his guards again. Even though his Demonic Qi would be hidden, they would be able to recognise his face. As for disguising into other people, that was out of the possibilities. He would not be able to replicate them well due to not understanding their body structure, and would be outed immediately.

While he was thinking, the guard responsible for monitoring the prison through the cameras installed in them was sleeping. "Zzz..zzz" Being assigned this position was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The prison chains ensured that no one would ever escape this prison.

For some reason, Prince Ai Ling wanted cameras to monitor the prison as some sort of "safety measures". The guard continued to sleep, dreaming about his monthly salary and the amount of beautiful women he could sleep with.

Dong Xian, after half an hour, realised that he was being so dumb. It was not like he was made out of pure Qi, and could affect the other Qi stored here with him. In the boundless waves of stored Qi, a smirk appeared, as the Qi was permeated and corrupted by Demonic Qi.

It was perfect to create a distraction to run away. They would be too busy handling the high amount of Demonic Qi than to notice me slipping away. Still, he left some Qi untouched. It was necessary to wait for numerous people to use the power source near the same time for his plan to work. To prevent suspicion, the normal Qi's pool would be used for the daily activities of the Tai Empire citizens first.

Now, somebody may ask, "Why are you doing this? Demonic Qi would harm the citizens. Aren't you supposed to be upright and righteous?" Dong Xian only had these words to reply, "Would anyone sacrifice their lives to save strangers? Only monks or fools would do so."

As Dong Xian started consolidating his Demonic Qi, in preparation to burst out of the public supply, other things were going on. For example, Dong Xian's family finally gained notice of their son's disappearance. Li Senior was crestfallen.

"My Son! My Son! How could this be? How could my precious Dong Xian disappear just like this?" He was really desperate for answers. It had been several days since he was notified of his son's disappearance. The highest bounty he could offer were only 1000 spirit stones, their family's lineage treasures. However, this amount of spirit stones was only enough to draw the Body Stage cultivators and the low Spirit Stage loose cultivators. None of them had been able to claim the reward yet.

Plenty of greedy merchants had used a lot of disguise skills on children slaves that they had bought from the capital when they heard about the news. They wanted to use spirit stones to bribe their own children into the famous Nine Leaf Sect. However, even though they disguised the children very well, the children had no cultivation experience at all, which caused all of them to be seen through by Li Senior.

These bunch of fraudsters were all thoroughly beat up by Li Senior. He took their belongings and gave them to the child slaves, before releasing them from their contracts. As Li Senior released the children, his feelings sunk even deeper. All of them looked like his son, reminding him of how he had disappeared. His son had only borrowed some money from the Tai Empire princess, and then just disappeared with the wind. The princess, Yi Lian, has waited for an entire three days and three nights, before reluctantly leaving for Tai Empire again.

She had sworn, "Li Dong Xian! You better not meet me the next time or I will beat you up! Have you not heard of paying your debts?" Li Senior had offered to pay her back the sum that his son owned, but she had declined the request, and left immediately. He was really puzzled. "What was the princess thinking? I thought the royal family had clear minds?" he said out loud. "Ai, it seems that the royal family are indeed different from the rest of the small town nobles like me." Accepting what had transpired, he continued to wonder, if he should go by himself and find Dong Xian.

He could have directly gone to find Dong Xian, but he was afraid that his old enemies in Xian Valley would take this chance to strike and abduct his wife and daughter with their hired mercenaries. In short, he had to either choose to find Dong Xian or protect his family. It was obvious that he could only choose to protect his remaining family. The rest, he had to leave up to fate.

******

It was the evening. Tai Empire's merchants were displaying their goods on the street, allowing passers-by to take a good look at them. The free Qi provided by the city powered up the artifacts and the special lighting, making people feel comfortable and nice. This was a normal day in Tai Empire, if not for the incident that would happen on this day.

"Boom!" The lighting suddenly blew out, as sparks from broken runes flew out everywhere. A dark miasma leaked out of the broken artifacts. The cultivators and normal people were horrified to see this scene. This was Demonic Qi, the one that they only saw when Demonic Beasts were sold at auctions. They had personally experienced for themselves what Demonic Qi could do, since their clans had brought them to auctions to see the effects.

It was too late to escape for them however, as the Demonic Qi, attracted by the abundance of Qi in their body, rushed towards them. It swirled around the cultivators, seeping through their orifices. The amount of Demonic Qi started to suffocate everyone that was in the area. Meanwhile, the Demonic Qi grew ever thicker as the cultivators' faces turned wrinkled and old, with their hair turning from black to white in an instant. Their life force fuelled the production of more Demonic Qi, which invaded their bodies more and slowly took control of these cultivators.