Chapter 305

One treasure pearl, one command token; these two soul-defense supreme treasures firmly secured the souls of Sima Quan and Sima Shan.

The two panted, sweat drenched their bodies, attacking the surrounding magma sea with all their might, their forms flickering, ready to tear through the void and flee at any moment.

A rugged-faced old man wearing coarse hemp cloth, gripping a large wooden staff in his left hand, strode forward, smashing through the sky-filling magma. He approached Sima Quan and Sima Shan, casually snatching the pearl and token.

Sima Shan and Sima Quan let out a mixed roar of shock and anger: "This……is unfair……"

With a single strike each, the old man smashed their flesh bodies to pieces.

"That's right, I'm bullying kids—it's unfair, shameless, vulgar, despicable." The old man grinned, laughing at the two souls that had turned into streams of light, speeding toward the distant Soul-Scattering Banner: "But I did it—what of it?"

Wu Tie shook his head, speechless.

This old man is the head of the Wu family's main branch, a senior monster of the Wu family's main line and ancestral sect, the sole Wu family monster who permanently resides in Wu One Cavern, guarding the clan's peace.

His seniority exceeds Wu Dou's by several folds; ordinary Wu descendants don't know how to address him precisely, so upon meeting they vaguely call him "Old Ancestor," which is always correct.

"Old Ancestor!" Wu Tie and Wu Zheng simultaneously bowed deeply to the old man.

"Well, no time to dilly-dally here… The youngsters of the clan need to be sent out for training; these two can wait for you to deal with them slowly—it takes too long." The old man wiped his big beard and laughed heartily.

"Although I made a move, it's indeed a bit unfair, but as they say… 'Shameless, one is invincible under heaven'; and there's also the saying, 'To live long without dying is to be a thief'… For an old thief like me, doing something out of the ordinary isn't exactly justified, is it?"

The old man's left-hand staff emitted a turbid, overbearing aura; he struck the void with it, shattering the magma sea to pieces.

Originally a modest cavern, after the Wu family's grand formation tossed it about, it became a huge stone cavern hundreds of li across, with a ceiling nearly a hundred li high. In several spots, the rock walls suddenly burst open, and gloomy rivers roared in, forming raging waterfalls on the walls.

Ice-cold, bone-piercing river water scoured the reddened ground, steam rose, quickly filling the entire cavern.

The river carried strange fish, shrimp, turtles, crabs and various aquatic life downstream; soon a sizable lake appeared in the cavern, with water creatures frolicking freely, the lake water scouring the surrounding rock walls in search of an outlet.

The old man shouldered his large staff, humming a mountain tune, head high and strides firm as he departed.

That casual strike of his not only shattered the magma sea, but also cleared away every lingering aura in the void, leaving it spotless.

No matter what seals or arts Sima Shan and Sima Quan bore, those behind them could never know what had befallen them, nor could they pursue them across ten thousand miles, relentlessly.

Wu Tie licked his lips.

The divine ability the old man used with that staff—he would also be capable of it after breaking through the thirty-three Chonglou Realm seals; he merely knows it, yet hasn't realized the use of this art, "Disturbing Heaven's Secrets."

"Destroying corpses and erasing traces…" Wu Tie nodded thoughtfully, realizing he needed to deepen his comprehension and cultivation of this ability.

On the altar, the Soul-Scattering Banner and Northern Dipper Soul-Slaying Sword emitted a grim light; the banner's soul-scattering radiance intertwined and danced, while streams of netherworld Yellow Spring killing qi crisscrossed, incessantly bombarding the souls of Sima Shan and Sima Quan.

The two had glimpsed a hint of the Divine Realm's mystery, nearly grasping a Grand Dao; their auras were unified, as solid and bright as a golden core, with no leakage.

No matter how dozens of Profound Darkness Clan members tried to activate them, the Soul-Scattering Banner and Northern Dipper Soul-Slaying Sword, being just refined by Wu Tie, were too shallow in power, their lethality limited; they could still harm a soul like Sima Xiu, but had almost no effect on Sima Shan and Sima Quan.

When Wu Tie's party arrived, a Profound Darkness Clan elder held two black lacquered wooden spikes, ready to strike.

Seeing Wu Tie approach, the Profound Darkness Clan elder smiled and nodded: "This set of Soul-Scattering treasures actually fits our Wu family's path, and the refining method is quite exquisite; the profound Dao within is marvelous—tsk, tsk, even I, the old ancestor, can't quite grasp it."

Shaking his head, the Profound Darkness Clan elder chuckled softly: "Anyway, our Wu family values bloodline inheritance more; whether we understand it or not, we don't care."

"Moreover, this banner and seven swords are too shallow in power, like an ungrown divine tree—just a sapling—how much might they wield?" The Profound Darkness Clan elder told Wu Tie: "So, young Wu Tie, you should come along on this expedition."

"Such Soul-Scattering treasures must be nourished with countless souls of living beings and endless killing qi; only then can they grow swiftly."

Tossing the two black lacquered wooden spikes in his hand, the Profound Darkness Clan elder laughed with extra pride: "Let me say, these two 'Gate-of-Death Spikes' were handed down from my forty-ninth-generation ancestor; they've been in who-knows-how-many punitive wars, having impaled untold evil demons and monsters, which is why they possess their present aura."

The Profound Darkness Clan elder bit his tongue tip, spraying a drop of fresh blood onto the two wooden spikes.

With two sharp, eerie whistles—"woo woo"—shooting skyward, Wu Tie felt his vision darken, his body sway, nearly collapsing. Behind him, the Wu clan juniors who had followed to watch the spectacle had already stumbled back a great distance, then plopped down on the ground.

Two bolts of black light shot out, fiercely piercing the souls of Sima Shan and Sima Quan.

Sima Shan and Sima Quan grunted; their bodies' pale-gold, glass-like souls were ripped open a transparent hole, after which wisps of soul power swiftly drifted out, turning into vast rosy clouds that the Soul-Scattering Banner gulped down in one bite.

The Soul-Scattering Banner's aura markedly increased; the soul power emanating from Sima Shan and Sima Quan's souls grew denser, while the banner's soul-scattering light became stronger, and their auras visibly waned bit by bit.

"How dare you, how dare you?" the two finally panicked, breaking into hysterical screams.

"Why wouldn't we dare?" the Profound Darkness Clan elder said calmly: "If you're dissatisfied, let the experts of the Demon-Subduing Hall come seek revenge… You kill me, I kill you—this isn't the first or second time."

All the Wu family clansmen laughed together.

They laughed especially brightly, yet with a hint of ferocity; at that moment, Sima Shan and Sima Quan were like two white rabbits surrounded by a wolf pack, weak and helpless to the extreme.

Underground, in the great rift valley, Wu Zhan and Wu Jin, father and son, four of them stood in a tiny rock crevice, dumbly watching a tide-like swarm of poisonous bats and poisonous spiders howling upward to fly and climb. Moreover, some unnamed strange creatures they barely recognized surged from those several large caverns, crawling up the rock walls.

Gradually, the strange creatures pouring out of the caverns grew ever more bizarre; when a group resembling black-bodied octopuses, their long tentacles studded with sharp poisonous spines, writhed out of the caverns and climbed the rock walls, the four simultaneously gaped, unable to close their mouths for a long while.

"What is this?" Wu Zhan exclaimed in shock.

Several dozen zhang away, in another narrow crevice, a Three Emperors Camp warrior glanced at them and muttered: "Must be a brain-eating demon… Legend says this thing only breeds in absolutely lightless, ultra-deep earth fissures, utterly wicked and vicious…"

As if noticing someone watching it, a brain-eating demon nearly a hundred zhang long lashed a tentacle; the bucket-thick appendage bizarrely elongated in an instant to tens of li, whooshing toward the speaking Three Emperors Camp warrior.

That Three Emperors Camp warrior gave a weird laugh, then let out a low roar; yellow qi surged around him, and phantom mountain peaks took shape before him.

Then one of those phantom peaks suddenly turned into a hundred-zhang-high volcano, spewing magma and flames to smash that tentacle.

With a tremendous boom, the tentacle tens of li long instantly turned to ash; the volcano relentlessly continued bombarding the brain-eating demon's main body.

From the deepest underground came a sharp whistling like a bamboo flute, a distant voice saying: "Lords of the Three Emperors Camp, please hold back; these beasts are the vanguard sent to drain the Great Jin's demonic vermin… don't let them die pointlessly here."

Thereafter, dozens of bamboo-flute-like sharp whistles continually rose from underground.

These whistles seemed to have a strong restraining effect on the brain-eating demons; each hideous, vicious specimen let out a sharp, prolonged cry, then suddenly sped up along the stone wall, howling upward in relentless ascent.

Streams of black gales blew up from the depths of the great rift valley, after which Wu Jin and company heard a strange "whoosh-whoosh" sound.

Roughly the span of a quarter hour, they saw in the black wind and mist clumps of fuzzy, strange objects hurtling skyward with the gale.

If Wu Tie were present, he'd surely say these fuzzy giants resembled magnified dandelion seeds; each seed, several zhang across, rode the hurricane upward, with vines binding a dozen or so tiny ratfolk, lizardfolk, dwarves and the like beneath each.

These petite warriors wore tattered leather armor and bore crude, shoddy weapons; their auras varied, the weakest no higher than Foundation Establishment, the strongest merely at the initial stage of Chonglou Realm.

They emitted sharp shrieks, their eyeballs faintly reddened, roaring like beasts as they rode the colossal dandelion seeds straight up the black tempest into the heavens.

On the rock walls, patches of luminous mushrooms and other phosphorescent flora grew east and west; in the dim light, Wu Jin and company could see that such fuzzy giants numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Puff after puff of fuzzy matter shot straight upward, bearing countless low-rank warriors into the sky.

"These fellows must have been dosed with a secret medicine." Among the four, Wu Zhan had some experience, being of the Wu family, whose curses and elixirs are likewise formidable.

He crossed his arms over his chest, lifted his head to watch the sky-full of roaring, shouting low-rank warriors whose sound shook the great rift valley like thunder, and said: "This is sending them to die… that secret drug has robbed them of their wits; though they're fearless of death, it's merely to send them to die."

On the battlefield, warriors who have lost their sanity are undoubtedly terrifying, but undoubtedly they are even more pitiable.

Aside from dying in battle, Wu Zhan could think of no use for these low-ranking warriors.

He stretched out his hand, Wu Zhan grabbed a handful of air: "The taste is a bit odd."

Wu Jin also stretched out his hand, making a grasping motion at the air.

A clump of fuzzy large seeds flew past them, a dwarf hoarsely shouting until his voice gave out, spraying saliva onto Wu Jin's palm.

Wu Jin pulled back his hand, sniffed the saliva on it, and nodded: "They still have some strange curses and seals on them. The enemies who kill them won't have an easy time……these guys……"

These low-ranking warriors who had taken the secret medicine and feared no death became even more like moving bombs.

Strange sorcery had been placed upon them; at the moment of their death, terrifying transformations would surely appear on their bodies.

"Then they are nothing but pure consumables." Wu Zhan looked left and right.

In a great rift valley of unknown length, countless fuzzy large seeds were shooting upward at great speed, each seed bearing a dozen or so warriors, and no one could tell how many low-ranking warriors were now flying toward the sky.

"Where do all these lives come from?" Wu Zhan muttered: "Here, how many people are going to throw away their lives?"

Pah, Pah-pah, several drops of viscous fluid fell down.

Wu Jin and his companions had already been standing here for half a day, and no one knew how high the first wave of poisonous bats, riding the wind upward, had flown.

None of Wu Jin's group had cultivated special pupil techniques or heavenly eyes; they could see at most a few hundred li, beyond that everything was blurry.

Behind the black wind and black mist, no one could see what was happening above.

The viscous fluid dripped down, gradually, a pitter-patter fell like a light rain.

Wu Jin reached out, and the viscous fluid fell onto his palm—unmistakably drop after drop of dark, foul-smelling blood plasma. Mixed in the plasma were tiny hairs, clearly the black fur growing on those poisonous bats.

Wu Jin swept his gaze left and right—the entire great rift valley was under rain.

The blood plasma had condensed into a fine rain that kept falling.

At first the rain was light, but gradually it grew heavier, soon becoming a downpour that howled downward.

Those fuzzy large seeds suddenly emitted a hazy glow; the rain droplets of congealed blood could not land on them, but were pushed aside by the glow, sliding outward as the seeds continued to spiral upward into the sky.

The rain grew heavier, and after a long time, the blood rain began to mix with large and small limbs of poisonous bats, which kept howling as they fell from the sky.

The blood rain poured down, and Wu Jin and his companions stood in a rock crevice for nine days and nine nights.

The blood rain did not cease; poisonous bats, poisonous spiders, poisonous snakes, and various toxic beasts and monsters gradually mixed with countless severed limbs of low-ranking cultivators, falling together with the blood.

The entire great rift valley turned blood-red.