Tainted will

In nature, under the right conditions, mystical creatures known as primordial spirits would come to being but the exact necessities to birth these primordial spirits are still unknown, even after thousands of years of diligent studies and research by cultivators there hasn't been much progress in this field.

The only known things about Primordial spirits are that they are condensed forms of heaven and earth essence, more accurately they are awakened life forms of the essence of the world itself. These Primordial spirits can exploit the naturally occurring spiritual essence and create wondrous effects.

Primordial spirits are extraordinarily rare specimens, and whoever owned them would surely incur the greed of cultivators all over the world. Even in the Red Lotus sect be it the great elders or even the sect head as of now, not one of them owned a primordial spirit. But would they like to have one? Absolutely.

And right now Bai Ming had one such chance in front of him to acquire something that even the grand divine astral realm experts would go to 'war' over, it was too much of an allure to resist.

Bai Ming flapped his wings as he hid behind the veil of dark clouds drifting high in the sky, Bai Ming coldly observed the cultivators below who were clashing with each other while at the same time closely chasing after the primordial spirit.

Bai Ming's mind churned with myriad thoughts as he covertly followed after the primordial spirit;

'Four hundred plus peak spirit realm cultivators, 276 quasi Yin-Yang void cultivators. But the truly troublesome ones are the four spirit realm brats leading the pursuit, the four of them are true disciples just like me.'

'Even though these four brats seem to be struggling to get their hands on the primordial spirit but that isn't actually the case. The primordial spirit seems to have speed comparable to initial yin-yang realm experts. However, it is far from enough to gain an edge over these true disciples.'

'Firstly, the true disciples are wary of each other hence they are holding back their strength. Secondly, if they were to go all out fighting each other, the other spirit realm cultivators trailing behind them would be foolish not to take advantage of the situation. Thirdly, these true disciples are also on guard for unexpected threats covertly looming in the area like myself. If my guess is right, they are waiting for a huge disruption to transpire, and at that juncture, these true disciples would burst out fiercely.'

'Hmm, even if they go all out I am sure I can outclass them in the speed department, but the moment I get a hold of the primordial spirit, it's guaranteed that all of them will collaborate and bombard me without holding anything back.'

'Even with my top-tier spirit realm battle strength, I should avoid being the center of attention, so that the crowd would not attack me together. I need to strategize, only a fool would charge head-on.'

Bai Ming made his tactics.

Although he had high battle strength, there were many nearly 700 spirit realm cultivators present, he could not fight them together. Of course, he was not stupid enough to attempt doing that anyway.

Bai Ming halted his momentum, he quickly removed the Red lotus sect's official clothing and wrapped himself in black clothing from head to toe. Next, Bai Ming called his beast wings back into his body. Then he spat out his superior-grade flying sword, the flying sword teleported and appeared under his feet.

Bai Ming then darted toward the large crowd, Bai Ming was quiet in his actions. He silently moved around in the crowd as he covertly placed divine sense markers on these cultivators, he made sure to not gain any unnecessary attention.

Even when someone attacked him, he would go on the defensive and quickly change his position. After placing divine sense markers on nearly fifty-plus cultivators, Bai Ming then inconspicuously made his way out.

Afterward, Bai Ming patiently waited for the horde of cultivators to travel a couple of miles ahead, then Bai Ming made a few hand signs and summoned a dozen giant hand phantoms and instructed them to construct a huge underground cave.

At the same time, Bai Ming took out a formation from his storage bag and began modifying the formation. After a dozen breaths, he was done altering the formation.

Then Bai Ming made a few more hand signs creating another set of phantom hands to help with the digging. After a whole minute had departed, there was a 3000-meter-wide empty area deep within the earth's surface.

Then Bai Ming placed the altered transfer array down and surrounded it with a hundred defensive and offensive formations!

Next, he took flight and hurriedly blanketed the conspicuous hole with a basic earth path technique that he had comprehended during his stay in the Red lotus sect.

The base elements skill book that he had previously bought in the sect, contained fundamental guidance and basic skills of the five base elements. Bai Ming had thoroughly done his homework, he was a firm believer in both smart work and hard work.

After making sure nothing looked out of place, Bai Ming pondered for a second before taking out the corpses of the few tier-5 demonic beasts that he had stored in his bag of holding.

He quickly placed the corpses on the ground, two corpses were placed face to face while the third one was dragged and then placed a thousand meters away from them.

The corpses of demonic beasts were placed here to deter other beasts or human cultivators from simply entering this place, even if the corpses couldn't prevent others from entering this place, at the very least it can waste a bit of their time, this was simply an act done on the fly.

Bai Ming then gave the place a quick glance before he took flight, flying into the dark clouds Bai Ming began to head in the direction of the primordial spirit while using his soul to sense the location of the divine sense markers he placed before.

Not much later, Bai Ming caught up with the army of cultivators but he had no intentions of joining them this time around, he only wished to reanalyze the current situation of this hunt.

'It's still too soon for things to get serious here, it's perfect for me.' Bai Ming thought silently, then he continued to fly straight ahead at his full speed leaving behind the crowd.

After flying for another hundred miles Bai Ming dropped to the ground. Making a bunch of quick hand signs while carefully scanning the area, he inwardly let out a sigh of relief seeing everything was normal for the time being.

'It should take them slightly over two minutes to reach this place, it's more than enough.' Bai Ming thought as tapped his bag of holding, hundreds of low-grade flying swords appeared before Bai Ming.

Bai Ming used his divine sense and skillfully maneuvered the flying swords to form a vortex, he used the sword vortex to drill a massive hole in the ground.

Then under Bai Ming's will, the giant hand phantoms entered the hole, and just like earlier, they started to excavate a 3000-meter-wide place under the earth's surface.

A minute later Bai Ming dove into the hole before sealing the entrance, then he quickly placed down another transfer array. After Bai Ming's modifications to the array, the formation base extend till it almost covered the entire underground palace, only leaving a tiny area for Bai Ming to hover.

Now was the moment of truth, Bai Ming took a deep breath as he began to inject his divine sense into the formation.

'It has to react, I have placed too many defensive mechanisms this time around, and it's only been like three minutes since I placed that transfer array, it possibly couldn't be destroyed so quickly. But if does fail, it will be troublesome but I'll just think of something else, giving up is not an option.' Thinking of this the little unrest in Bai Ming's heart vanished like thin smoke, his eyes were tranquil as started at the formation.

Just a second later, a trace of a smile appeared on Bai Ming's face as watched the formation lit up. But Bai Ming wasn't overcome with joy, in his mind; 'For now, the coordinates are safe but that doesn't necessarily mean it will remain safe till that mob arrives. The preparations are complete, now I can only wait. Failure or success, it's bound to be fun regardless.'

Bai Ming planned to wait for the cultivators to approach this place, and the moment they were within the range of the transfer array he would activate the formation and teleport all of them away, and he would take this opportunity to snatch the primordial spirit and fly away from this place. It was simple a plan but also a brilliant one at the same time.

Time continued to tick by ever so slowly as Bai Ming felt the pressure on him increase with every passing second, his eyes turning colder as he watched the transfer array with much focus.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up as he suddenly started sensing the divine sense markers rapidly approaching him.

"The time has come.." Bai Ming spoke with a cold and callous smirk on his face, his demonic nature intensified wildly.