Chapter 184: Fourth-Rank Soul Beast (Summoning Monthly Tickets)

Upon learning that the Song Kingdom had already utilized a large-scale array to suppress the two locations where Black Wind was leaking, the Immortal Alliance of the Ming Kingdom immediately prepared to take action and follow suit.

Unfortunately, the three locations where the Black Wind was leaking had already reached a deafening scale, and fourth-rank or fifth-rank Magic Treasures were simply unable to suppress them. After several consecutive failed attempts and even the loss of three Danyuan Realm powerhouses, the group of Great Cultivators of the Ming Kingdom had no choice but to consult urgently once more, ultimately deciding to spend a massive price to invite Chixia Zhenjun to help jointly refine a set of six-pattern flag arrays.

This set of six-pattern flag arrays consisted of nine command flags; aside from the Five Elements Flags of Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth which served as the main flags, there were four auxiliary flags of Wind, Cloud, Ice, and Thunder.

Once this flag array was deployed, it could suppress an area of a thousand miles.

To refine this set of array flags, the various Immortal Sects of the Ming Kingdom pooled their efforts and resources, bringing out Spirit Materials they had treasured for thousands of years. The group of True Monarchs lived up to expectations, and after spending three months in total, they finally succeeded in refining all the command flags.

In order to successfully deploy this set of array flags in one go, the Immortal Sects of the Ming Kingdom once again invited the three remaining True Monarchs from Yuqing Hall and Longmen Mountain to help. Leading over a dozen Danyuan Realm powerhouses, they arrived at Heifeng Gorge and spent an entire day finally setting up the great array, suppressing the Black Mist of Heifeng Gorge.

But as one gourd was pressed down, another floated up.

Just as the Immortal World of the Song Kingdom was joyfully celebrating the sealing of the Black Wind leak at Heifeng Gorge, the Nether Qi forcibly suppressed by the array had to emerge from somewhere else.

Consequently, at Black Wind Ridge—a place over twenty thousand miles away from Heifeng Gorge that usually had nothing to do with it—the pressure under the Five Elements Illusion Cloud Flag increased sharply. This triggered a sudden change: the Black Wind erupted at an accelerated rate, bringing with it a formidable Soul Beast at the Danyuan Late Stage.

However, no one knew about this.

The Immortal World of the Ming Kingdom did not know, the Immortal World of the Song Kingdom did not know, and even the four True Monarchs—Chixia Zi, Taiwuzi, Yuyangzi, and Baiyunzi—who had gone to help the Ming Kingdom would never have imagined that by helping the Ming Kingdom, they had nearly dragged the entire Immortal and mortal worlds of the Song Kingdom down with them.

And what they knew even less was that because of their contempt for Xuanchen Zhenjun, Xuanchen Zhenjun had already become suspicious and had therefore set out on a journey to investigate the truth behind the leakage of the Nether Qi.

At this moment, Xuanchen Zhenjun had already reached the borders of the Eastern Wasteland.

The situation he saw was just as Yuyangzi had described: the world was in chaos. Aside from the endless stream of Soul Beasts, both marine and land creatures were completely dead; within a range of ten thousand miles, not a single living person could be seen.

And just as he was preparing to venture deeper toward the Void Abyss, a terrifying tsunami that shook the heavens and earth suddenly erupted from the depths of the Void Abyss. A surge of Black Water shot into the sky, spraying ten thousand feet high and bringing with it a black tide hundreds of feet tall that surged in all directions. The sea and sky instantly seemed to turn upside down, and even the Divine Sense of a Spirit Transformation True Monarch was swept away and ground to pieces.

At the same time, from within the Black Water connecting the sea and sky, a terrifying roar came, carrying an irresistible aura that swept across ten thousand miles.

The moment he came into contact with this aura, the expression on Xuanchen Zhenjun's face changed abruptly. Not daring to linger for even a fraction of a second, his Nascent Soul, which had not long finished forming, actually left his body, spitting out a mouthful of Primordial Spirit essence to assist him in tearing through space and performing Space Instant Movement to escape.

And not long after he left, a giant beast covered in black scales broke through the air and stopped at the thousand-foot altitude where Xuanchen Zhenjun had just been standing, looking around and letting out an incredibly excited roar.

This was a formidable Soul Beast with strength reaching the Spirit Transformation Realm; it was shaped like a giant lizard, with wings spanning over fifty feet and a strange golden pattern on its head.

After a burst of roaring, the giant lizard Soul Beast flapped its large wings and vanished into a gust of Black Wind; by the time it appeared again, it was already a hundred miles away.

And behind it was the black tide, hundreds of feet high and connecting heaven and earth, moving toward the Dongwu continent with a sound like rolling thunder that shook the heavens and earth.

Wherever the black tide passed, islands large and small were all swallowed up.

Within the churning black tide, countless Soul Beasts were densely packed, emitting shrill and excited roars. Some were torn to pieces directly by the churning black tide, while others stood arrogantly atop the tide, and still others soared on the wind, emitting shrieks that pierced the Soul, as if demons had descended upon the world, intent on devouring everything.

The sudden massive leakage of Black Wind and the appearance of high-rank Soul Beasts were not limited to the Song Kingdom and the Eastern Wasteland. In fact, in other nations such as the Ming Kingdom, the Shu Kingdom, and the Xiang Kingdom, the places where Black Wind leaked also experienced massive tremors within just a few days; the Black Wind began to erupt on a large scale, and Soul Beasts surged out.

Not long after the Immortal Sects of the Ming Kingdom suppressed the Black Wind at Heifeng Gorge in Wulong Ridge, they received news that the other two leaks were accelerating their spread.

Baiyun Zhenjun also received a Flying Sword message from Xuanchen Zhenjun: a super Soul Beast with strength exceeding the Spirit Transformation Realm had appeared in the Eastern Wasteland.

Once the news was announced, the group of Spirit Realm Great Cultivators all turned pale, and their Dao hearts, which had been as steady as old dogs for hundreds of years, also lost control.

The speed at which the Black Wind was spreading and changing was too fast, and the appearance of a super Soul Beast with strength comparable to the Spirit Transformation Realm made them, these high and mighty True Monarchs, suddenly feel a strong threat of death.

However, as things stood, no one had any way out.

If the Black Wind were allowed to continue erupting and the Soul Beasts to continue their rampage, perhaps in just a few years, all the surrounding nations would be devoid of life, and the Immortal Sects would naturally be unable to stay out of it—the Wulong Sect was the best example.

Therefore, after the group of True Monarchs consulted urgently again, Taiwuzi and a Ming Kingdom True Monarch went to the Eastern Wasteland to assist the Eastern Wasteland and the Dongwu Immortal World in slaying that Fourth-Rank Soul Beast, while the remaining group of True Monarchs used the fastest speed to plug the two remaining loopholes in the Ming Kingdom, intending to go to Dongwu to help stabilize the situation once they were free.

It could be said that the current pressure was greatest and the situation most critical in Dongwu.

The Eastern Wasteland was already finished; all the Immortal Sects and cultivators of the Eastern Wasteland had already retreated to the Dongwu territory, and they were still continuously retreating.

Most of the strength of the Song Kingdom's Yuqing Hall, Longmen Mountain, and numerous small and medium Immortal Sects, as well as independent cultivators, was deployed at the border between the Song and Wu kingdoms, standing in battle array. Of course, there were also many independent cultivators who had formed teams and entered the Dongwu territory to hunt monsters and snatch treasures, but their strength was not great; they were basically unable to influence the situation in Dongwu, and these independent cultivator teams were not united—once they suffered major setbacks and crises, they would suffer heavy casualties.

However, as long as the cultivators of the Eastern Wasteland and Dongwu could temporarily stabilize the situation, the Song Kingdom could still maintain relative peace.

But how long this peace could last, no one knew.

Furthermore, while the Immortal World of the Song Kingdom was making such a great fuss about setting up defenses, the common people were still completely unaware. Aside from some border areas that had been invaded by Soul Beasts, causing heavy casualties, the villages and towns in the heartland of the Song Kingdom were still living in peace, working at sunrise and resting at sunset, men farming and women weaving, doing business and working, just as they always had.

Even the Emperor Zhao Rui, who was in Jingshi, was completely unaware of the news of the Soul Beast rampage; he was currently overwhelmed by the heavy casualties caused by the Spirit Sparrow's earlier havoc in Jingshi and the suppression of the Eight Princes' rebellion.

The war of mortals and the war of immortals were almost like two parallel worlds, neither caring about nor having any connection to the other.

However, if the Immortal World could not hold on this time, the mortal world would naturally cease to exist as well.

But it would only be when the Soul Beasts swept in that the mortals would feel that disaster was imminent and the end of the world had arrived.

……

Deep, deep underground.

A place of boundless darkness and cold.

Xu Chen did not even know where he was, nor could he distinguish north, south, east, or west.

That giant octopus Soul Beast, after he desperately unleashed the Grand Void Demon Refining Art and frantically poured white Qi into it, was finally blown to pieces, leaving nothing behind.

After igniting the Black Wind accumulated under the Five Elements Array of Black Wind Ridge with a trail of sparks and lightning, he had absolutely no idea of the consequences.

He only knew that he had been carried by the Soul Beast, running and falling rapidly. After an unknown amount of time, just as he was about to be unable to withstand the transformation of his body and Soul by the white Qi released by the Grand Void Demon Refining Art and was on the verge of collapse, his body suddenly felt light. The Soul Beast's giant tentacles burned out like fireworks in the explosion and finally collapsed completely.

In the end, within his Divine Sense, he only saw a cluster of five-colored rays of light explode with a bang in the boundless black Black Wind, eventually turning into a light mist and dissipating. In its place, only a giant Soul Bead with white cloud patterns remained, as large as a rice bowl—the largest one he had seen since he started encountering Soul Beasts.

However, this Soul Bead had clearly mutated; it seemed to have become strangely peculiar after being eroded by the white light.

It was like a giant Spirit Sparrow egg, releasing a faint halo, its black, jade-like surface covered with eerie white patterns, like a ghost face.

But he had no heart to study this Soul Bead now; he simply stored it in his Storage Bracelet and began to look for a way back.

At first, he thought the passage must be directly above his head, but in reality, after he flew upwards for a long time, he discovered that this cold Black Mist, thick as water, had no boundaries at all. Not to mention finding the passage the Soul Beast had brought him through, he couldn't even distinguish direction, because no matter which way he went, it felt the same.

There was no sense of up or down, nor could he feel any cave cracks or the slightest existence of rock.

In other words, he was now suspended in a seemingly boundless dark Void.

The only thing that made him feel somewhat at ease was that he had not discovered any danger in the darkness.

Furthermore, this boundless Black Mist had no effect on him; it did not affect his breathing, nor did it affect his flight, and he did not even need to release his Yuan Qi to stand steadily in the air.

With no sky above and no ground below, in total darkness and with no sense of direction—this was the situation he was facing now.

(End of chapter)