The blood snake let out a long howl towards the sky. Ye Bufan had not yet appeared, but sword energy filled the entire bar.
"There's a cultivator!" the leading Onmyoji shouted, his aura erupting, his long robes fluttering with the surge of energy.
Ye Bufan sneered, instantly expanding his sword domain. The bar wasn't very large, and Ye Bufan's sword domain could envelop everyone within its limits.
In an instant, sword qi crisscrossed the bar. The people from Sakurajima Island, faced with true qi, were all killed by Ye Bufan's sword qi, except for a few living puppets.
"Who are you?" The Onmyoji's forehead beaded with cold sweat. Most of his men were at the Martial Venerable level. Apart from the living puppets, the cultivators were only at the early or middle stages of Qi Refining.
In just a few seconds, many people in the bar had fallen.
"Ye Bufan." Ye Bufan's voice echoed through the bar.
The Onmyoji whipped his head around, and the blood snake grew even more agitated. Ye Bufan had, at some unknown time, appeared behind them.
"Hiss—hiss—hiss—"
The blood snake flicked its tongue at Ye Bufan and exhaled, then sprayed a mist of blood from its mouth towards Ye Bufan.
Silence. The scene became utterly quiet.
When the blood mist dissipated, Ye Bufan had already vanished from his original position. The Onmyoji searched for Ye Bufan's trace everywhere, when a broken sword suddenly descended from the sky.
The Onmyoji pushed the blood snake aside, and two crescent-shaped long blades appeared in his hands, slashing towards the falling broken sword.
Unexpectedly, the broken sword vanished. Ye Bufan's figure whizzed past, instantly appearing beside the blood snake.
The blood snake, sensing great danger, leaped into the air, spinning rapidly. An invisible barrier of qi formed around it. The snake's scales even spewed forth blood mist at this moment, which then merged with the invisible barrier, forming a blood-colored qi wall.
"Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—"
Just then, the blood mist permeated the qi wall, transforming into streaks of miniature blood-red arrows that shot towards Ye Bufan.
A slight curve formed on Ye Bufan's lips. Within his sword space, Ye Bufan's sword qi also transformed into countless small swords, colliding with the blood-red arrows.
"Bang bang bang—"
With continuous crashing sounds, the blood-red arrows, upon colliding with Ye Bufan's sword qi, all dissolved into small puffs of blood mist.
"Poisonous gas?"
Ye Bufan immediately aimed his palm at the blood mist and used his suction palm, enveloping the blood mist with his true qi.
"This is impossible!" the Onmyoji exclaimed. Under the control of Ye Bufan's suction palm, the blood mist was blown towards the living puppets and the Onmyoji.
"Hiss—"
Seeing that the situation was not good, the blood snake prepared to use its advantage and charged at Ye Bufan.
Suddenly, Ye Bufan sensed a very familiar aura from the blood snake—the Eight-Headed Serpent!
"What's going on now?" Ye Bufan frowned. As the blood snake reached him, it suddenly erupted with a burst of blood mist between Ye Bufan and itself. The next moment, the blood snake and the Onmyoji vanished, leaving only Ye Bufan and the living puppets in the bar.
Ye Bufan took out his phone and called Ji Feiyang. About twenty minutes later, people from the Jinhe Martial Alliance arrived at the bar.
"Mr. Ye." Upon seeing Ye Bufan, all the martial artists bowed respectfully with clasped fists.
Ye Bufan nodded and asked who their leader was. A martial artist stepped forward from the crowd. It was Elder Wu Cheng of the Martial Alliance, whom Ye Bufan had met in Jinhe several months ago.
"Elder Wu, long time no see." Ye Bufan greeted Wu Cheng.
"Mr. Ye, please command us as you wish, and we will do our utmost to assist."
Seeing Ye Bufan again, Wu Cheng no longer felt the sense of treating him as a junior, as he had when they first met.
"Elder Wu Cheng, please just call me Ye Bufan." Ye Bufan smiled helplessly.
"Hahahaha, alright!" Wu Cheng replied.
Ye Bufan had already informed Ji Feiyang about the blood snake. As Song Mingqin was in the capital during this time, Ye Bufan had also asked Ji Feiyang to inform Song Mingqin about the matter.
Therefore, the Martial Alliance's task now was to dispose of all the bodies of these Sakurajima Island people, check for any survivors, and take control of the bar to investigate its background.
Ye Bufan saw to these matters and then searched the vicinity of the bar for a while, but found no trace of the blood snake.
Under Wu Cheng's arrangement, the parents of the child saved by Ye Bufan were soon found.
"Could the plan mentioned by the Eight-Headed Serpent be this blood snake? And why did the blood snake appear here at this moment?" Ye Bufan repeatedly recalled the ancient texts and Daoist scriptures he had read in the mountains.
Finally!
Ye Bufan remembered a passage about the Eight-Headed Serpent in a book called "Wilderness Records." It stated that the Eight-Headed Serpent was hermaphroditic and capable of asexual reproduction.
However, the Eight-Headed Serpent did not have eight heads from birth. It would first produce eight large snakes, which would then fuse during the Core Formation stage, shedding their inner cores. After that, they would share one body and one inner core. The Core Formation inner core of an Eight-Headed Serpent was equivalent to the inner cores of eight Core Formation cultivators.
Ye Bufan relayed this information to Ji Feiyang and Song Mingqin. Upon receiving this news, Song Mingqin led some cultivators to reconfirm the location where the Eight-Headed Serpent had been sealed.
Three days later, Song Mingqin sent Ye Bufan a message. Below the sinkhole, they discovered a blood-colored snake skin, as well as a man-made tunnel that could accommodate one person at a time.
"So! Their plan is for the Eight-Headed Serpent to reproduce and cultivate a new Eight-Headed Serpent?" Song Mingqin had basically confirmed the conspiracy of the Sakurajima Island people.
Meanwhile, Ye Bufan received very grim news: in the underground wine cellar beneath the bar, many human skeletons were discovered, ranging from old to young.
Upon learning this, Ye Bufan clenched his fists tightly, secretly vowing to eradicate this menace.
"There's one in Jinhe, so where are the remaining seven?" Song Mingqin posed a question that stumped Ye Bufan and everyone else.
The blood snake in Jinhe was discovered by Ye Bufan by chance, but finding the other seven, especially if they were easily discoverable, would be difficult.
"We can start by investigating missing persons," Ye Bufan mused. This blood snake liked to feed on human essence and blood, so the other seven would likely do the same. Thus, Ye Bufan decided to try searching through missing persons reports, looking for cities with a recent surge in disappearances, and then investigating those cities one by one...