Ashen God
Chapter 357 - 356: Blood Demon Sect

Chapter 357: Chapter 356: Blood Demon Sect

Zhang Yanhang had read many such anecdotes: for instance, soldiers becoming unable to sleep due to the war, remaining awake for seven days and nights straight, and afterward losing the ability to sleep completely, requiring only a brief rest with eyes closed to sustain activity throughout the day.

While losing the ability to sleep might seem like a blessing, giving one eight extra hours of leisure time daily, it wasn’t quite pleasant for the body. After all, sleep is meant to relieve the physical strain caused by exercise.

Once this vital process is lost, humans function like continually overheated machinery that can’t shut down for cooling, ultimately breaking down far before reaching their expected life span.

Of course, Zhang Yanhang was not at that point yet; he felt his body had just developed a related inertia due to prolonged wakefulness. If he could just expend a bit more physical strength, he would surely find his way back to sleepiness and smoothly enter a state of sleep under the drive of instinct.

"Sigh, I should lessen the number of times I go without sleep like four days and nights in the future. It’d be troublesome to lose the ability to sleep, after all, deep sleep is currently the most efficient way for me to recover strength."

Although Zhang Yanhang would eventually discard the physiological behavior of sleep as his rank progressed, sleep was still quite crucial for him at the moment.

"Since I’m going for a night run, which route should I take? Heading south would lead into the Yellow Sea, north would take me into the Bohai, east would allow me to enter South Korea after crossing the sea, and only west would let me venture deeper into the inland areas of the Empire."

As a coastal city surrounded by water on three sides, Zhang Yanhang would encounter the sea in any direction but west. He wasn’t particularly fond of the ocean, so, during such times, his only option was to travel west, deeper into the Empire’s mainland.

Heading east to cross the sea into South Korea? While this route wasn’t impossible, considering it’s an enemy state of the Empire, Zhang Yanhang felt that casually releasing his Death Wave skill there might cause undesirable incidents, such as South Korea unilaterally marking him as an enemy and attacking him.

If that were to happen, Zhang Yanhang estimated that even though survival wasn’t guaranteed for him, he would definitely take some adversaries with him to his grave—perhaps by starting with a Thermo-baric Bomb to destroy South Korea’s capital, Han City, and then perishing together with the enemy.

Late at night, just for the sake of facilitating sleep through exercise, but resulting in the destruction of an enemy’s capital city—Zhang Yanhang felt he surely wouldn’t go to that extent over something as trivial as sleep. He simply wanted a brief rest, not a plunge into eternal slumber.

Besides, even if he really wanted to destroy Han City, Zhang Yanhang would need to at least advance to the Third Tier to feel somewhat confident.

His current Death Wave skill, even if released at maximum range every time, could at best cover an area of only a dozen square kilometers, but Han City spans nearly six hundred square kilometers in total.

Though to the city of Qin Island, with an area of eleven thousand three hundred square kilometers, Han City was roughly one-twentieth its size, even this one-twentieth was large enough. It would certainly be difficult for Zhang Yanhang to plow through the entire city before the enemy Awakeners reacted.

Indeed, when Zhang Yanhang spoke of destruction, he referred to complete annihilation; cutting grass must remove the roots. If he couldn’t achieve total destruction, the enemy could easily rebuild a capital elsewhere and mobilize a mass of fearless settlers from the rural outskirts.

However, if he could advance to the Third Tier and upgrade his Death Wave skill to the Original Stage’s LV.MAX, he wouldn’t need to talk about destroying the whole of Han City; at full strength, Zhang Yanhang could definitely level half of it without any problem.

After all, it was a Death Wave skill of the Original Stage; Zhang Yanhang believed that at this level, the skill would see significant enhancement in both range and power.

"Forget it, let’s not think about destroying Han City for now. After all, the Empire hasn’t issued a Conquest Order for quite some time..."

As a global power with a population of two billion and a territory of twelve million square kilometers, the Empire often issued something known as the Conquest Order before Zhang Yanhang was born—prior to the year 2000—to mobilize national logistical support, rapidly expand the soldier count, and correspondingly increase territorial expansion.

But after the year 2000, the Empire mysteriously stopped this behavior of territorial expansion and instead began extensive development of the domestic economy.

Before the Spiritual Qi Recovery, Zhang Yanhang found the Empire’s strange policy shift at this particular juncture baffling while studying history. But in hindsight, he thought that the Empire might have already received some information about the upcoming Spiritual Qi Recovery, which is why they paused their external conquests.

Moreover, regarding the Conquest Order, its main purpose, apart from mobilizing national logistical support and rapidly expanding soldier count, was to gather cultivators to participate in mundane wars.

With thousands of years of cultural heritage, the Empire’s cultivators always had the upper hand when facing local wizards and other native cultivation systems.

The reason Zhang Yanhang knew about this Conquest Order is mostly because he had seen other Awakeners discussing it in group chats before. If you ask how they knew, it was naturally their sect elders who had told them.

Although ordinary Awakened individuals like Zhang Yanhang, who relied solely on the Empire-provided Cultivation Methods, were the true mainstream, those cultivators who existed before the Spiritual Qi Recovery often inherited their practices through sects.

These individuals, although representing a very small proportion within the Awakened community, were generally much stronger than the ordinary Awakened.

For example, there were several local sects and religious factions in Qin Island City that Zhang Yanhang knew of, such as the Blood Demon Sect, Lao Mountain Taoism, Zhan Mountain Temple, and the like.

By the way, although the Blood Demon Sect might seem quite evil in name, in reality, it was a rather orthodox sect; it was only called that because its Cultivation Techniques were particularly adept at manipulating blood-related Strength.

Out of these local sects in Qin Island City, the most powerful was undoubtedly Lao Mountain Taoism—after all, as one of the birthplaces of Taoism, it would be odd if it weren’t formidable.