"I couldn't learn it. What was I supposed to use to learn?"
As gazes fell upon him, Fei Heng, residing within a monster's body, looked incredibly desolate amidst the wind and sand.
His hoarse voice carried a sense of the vicissitudes of time.
He seemed to finally understand why the Li family members hadn't saved him in the Dusheng Nunnery.
Perhaps everything he had done over these years had already been unearthed by them.
Formulating a strategy before making a move—this truly was the method of operation of the Azure Cloud Li Clan.
"I thought about everything too simply. I believed that as long as I followed the vision in my heart, the world would develop exactly as I imagined. But the imperial court is complex.
I don't know how many eyes were staring at me. I couldn't command the Grand Tutor, and I couldn't command the State Preceptor.
Almost everyone in the Imperial Capital was paying lip service while secretly acting against me."
"I encountered assassination attempts time and time again. Even the remnants of Crown Prince Sheng were a threat to me. I could never compare to Fourth Prince in Duskwild Prefecture."
"But at that time, Min Tiange sought me out."
The corners of the Li family members' mouths twitched. This Min Tiange was a lingering ghost that refused to disperse, simply a malignant tumor upon the dynasty!
"To inherit the world, I had to come to the Western Frontier. I had to personally lead an expedition against the Wu tribe and establish peerless merit."
Crown Prince Fei Heng lowered his head, looking at his thick, pustule-covered hand—the hand of the Corpse God from the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems.
"The number of cultivators loyal to me would gradually increase. The soldiers guarding the territory in the Western Frontier would all serve me.
And the facts proved this to be true; the Shadowfell Prefecture and Sunreach Prefectures of the Western Frontier all came under my command.
Given time, it would have become an existence equal to the Northern Frontier."
"This was what Li Tianyue taught me. To control these great prefectures and an army of a hundred battles would be more than enough to serve as my bargaining chip to ascend the Human Emperor's throne."
"But she was just as naive as I was at the beginning. It wasn't enough."
Li Wei said calmly, "Was that when you cultivated the Corpse-Stitching Art?"
The Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems hadn't been destroyed that long ago, but Min Tiange had controlled it and the Grand Tower for tens of thousands of years.
The secret arts passed down through generations in the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems would naturally be delivered into Min Tiange's hands.
Fei Heng knew of the existence of the Corpse-Stitching Art far earlier than the Li Clan and the rest of the world, cultivating the demonic art in the Western Frontier while hiding it from everyone.
"Yes. Every year, there was a massive number of corpses and souls in the Western Frontier.
When Min Tiange placed the Corpse-Stitching Art in front of me, I hesitated. But how could I resist such a temptation?
With my strength, how could I suppress the entire Western Frontier, let alone the Imperial Capital?
I was afraid. I was afraid that the Western Frontier would become just like the imperial court."
An even denser aura of corpses surfaced from within Fei Heng's body.
The injuries he had previously sustained while resisting Nun Dairou's Buddhist Dharma were actually recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye.
His face turned sinister and cold. "Human desire is endless. I never expected that even I would be like this."
"The Corpse-Stitching Art... Every part of my body comes from a different corpse. I can take their techniques, their strength, and even their conceptual intent and use them for myself.
In a short period of time, I felt the power. I saw the hope of returning to the Imperial Capital and suppressing the world with absolute might."
After hearing these words.
Zhou Chengli had his mouth wide open.
"Crown Prince, you are the Crown Prince! Do you know how many people died because of the Wu tribe's surprise attack? How many commoners had their families torn apart?"
"That was my Void Refinement opportunity."
Fei Heng no longer cared about how others viewed him; his vacant eyes stared at his own hand.
"The corpses and blood of countless people, combined with the divine blood of the Three Corpses of Ling Tian, along with years of comprehension, were enough for me to reach the Void Refinement realm."
"Of course, I know that countless people lost their lives for my Void Refinement opportunity, but they forged my Dao Foundation!"
"This was my trade with Min Tiange."
Dao Foundation!
At this moment, the expressions of everyone present changed, even the two Body Integration experts, Nun Dairou and Perfected Qinghe.
To break through to the Body Integration realm, they had all done some unsavory things to varying degrees.
Nun Dairou had Dharma Master Hongzhen break through by absorbing an unknown amount of faith power from living beings, yet even that was nowhere near this psychotic and deranged.
"Your Dao Foundation... the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems."
Li Wei let out a long breath.
The family had investigated for many years.
Min Tiange allowing the Wu tribe into the Central Plains... sacrificing the Grand Tower and the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems... everything finally connected.
"Yes, the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems."
At this time, Fei Heng's Spiritual power surged.
The crowd looked around in horror and saw countless streams of blood welling up from beneath the ground across Shadowfell Prefecture, transforming into beads of blood in mid-air.
"Roar!!!"
The corpse dragon let out a sharp, agonizing shriek. Its body actually began to continuously decompose into chunks, fusing bit by bit into Fei Heng's body.
"Oh no!" Feng Tu, the City Lord of Highsun City, cried out in alarm.
"Dao rhythm! He's breaking through! No, he already opened his Dao Gate long ago!"
Before the crowd could even make a move, they saw those beads of blood and the soul of the corpse dragon being absorbed into Fei Heng's body.
A fleshy sphere gradually formed, and this mass of flesh continued to grow larger as it gathered and fused with the blood and corpse chunks, its aura rapidly climbing.
Without hesitation, Feng Tu launched a technique at Fei Heng, only to be counterattacked by countless beads of blood, shattering his technique as if it were as fragile as foam.
"You can't stop him." Li Xinnian's Yun-Slaying Saber unleashed a blood shadow, slowing the speed of the blood beads.
The giant hand of his Blood Spirit Dharma Body pulled Feng Tu back.
He said expressionlessly, "He pretended for hundreds of years and had so much assistance. He simply has no reason to disguise himself anymore."
Li Xinnian understood this blood better than anyone.
It was the blood shed by countless living beings in Shadowfell Prefecture, which had seeped into the ground during the war, yet it had also become a part of Crown Prince Fei Heng.
He had refined this blood long ago; he was merely waiting for the right moment to reclaim it into his body.
Everyone looked around at this blood energy, their expressions heavy as they stared at the Fei Heng on the ground, who was neither human nor ghost.
The fleshy sphere grew larger and larger, gradually condensing into a terrifying existence.