Chapter 222: A Huge Price

The Slave Seal is something that also exists in the Immortal World, but it is merely a type of soul imprint, and in essence, it is a type of Array.

Once a cultivator is forcibly implanted with this Slave Seal, their actions will be controlled by the caster, manipulated like a marionette, unless the caster voluntarily removes the Slave Seal, or the person being controlled is powerful enough to break through the Slave Seal.

In the Immortal World, the Slave Seal is a forbidden Magic Spell; it is absolutely not permitted to be used on humans and can only be used on Spirit Beasts and Demon Beasts, which is why the Slave Seal is also called the Beast-Taming Seal.

It is heard that some vicious evil cultivators will secretly use such Magic Spells to control humans, but if discovered, it will inevitably incite public indignation in the Immortal World and lead to an all-out denunciation.

After a moment of chaos in his mind, Xu Chen took a deep breath, let his mood slowly calm down, closed his eyes slightly, and began to circulate the Divine Slave Seal.

As an obscure aura emanated from Xu Chen, strands of illusory Blue Starlight appeared from all the Apertures of his body, like a vortex of stars, swirling endlessly around his body to form an illusory blue nebula.

A moment later, after this aura had completely stabilized, Xu Chen slowly raised his hand, extended a finger, and lightly tapped the center of Feng Feiyi's brow.

A speck of Blue Starlight appeared from the void and vanished into Feng Feiyi's Soul out of thin air.

"Boom—"

The instant the starlight touched her Soul, lightning lit up across the sky within Feng Feiyi's Sea of Consciousness, and the Divine Runes hidden within her flesh and blood suddenly began to churn violently; like startled venomous snakes and beasts, they emitted hair-raising hisses and roars, as if facing a formidable enemy, breaking free directly from her tendons, bones, and flesh, intertwining and tangling to form a twisted web of blood-colored light that appeared in the Sea of Consciousness and wrapped toward Feng Feiyi's Soul.

The lightning resisted this blood-colored web, and the two sides clashed violently, surrounding the Soul.

A large amount of blood-colored light was destroyed by the lightning, but the blood-colored light appeared continuously; the power of the blood web grew stronger and tighter, as if it were trying with all its might to completely devour Feng Feiyi's soul.

Watching the changes in Feng Feiyi's Sea of Consciousness, Xu Chen felt a heart-stopping shock.

In no more than a few breaths, the power of the lightning diminished significantly and began to become sparse; the blood-colored web contracted rapidly, eventually forming dozens of clear Ancient Rune imprints, almost completely wrapping Feng Feiyi's Soul inside.

At this moment, Feng Feiyi's entire body was trembling violently, blood began to ooze from her seven orifices, and bright crimson light flashed across her body, as if a sharp blade were dismembering her.

It seemed that after losing the Blood Poison Divine Rune, her body had begun to collapse.

Xu Chen was horrified; he already sensed that something was wrong.

Although Feng Feiyi's clan mark had not been restored, her inherited bloodline still remained.

Therefore, the Divine Slave Seal he had planted encountered a frantic counterattack from the power of her bloodline; if he were to let these blood-colored Ancient Runes completely wrap around her Soul, the final result would surely be a direct confrontation between the Blue Starlight and the blood-colored Divine Rune, inevitably leading to the most violent clash within her Soul.

By then, no matter which side gained the upper hand, Feng Feiyi's Soul would inevitably suffer heavy damage, or even be completely annihilated.

Therefore, Xu Chen's Divine Sense transformed into a sharp sword and slashed down at the blood-colored Ancient Runes wrapping around her Soul.

"Boom—"

The blood-colored light shattered.

Xu Chen's Divine Sense wavered.

He felt as if this sword, condensed from his Divine Sense, had struck a towering, ancient, ferocious beast.

An inexplicable terror instantly made the hair on his body stand on end, as if in the dark, a pair of giant eyes covering the sky and sun were watching him from some unknown world, the gaze filled with incomparable coldness and anger.

"Hmph!"

A cold snort, as if illusory, appeared out of thin air in Xu Chen's mind.

"Wah—"

As if struck by a bolt of lightning from the nine heavens, Xu Chen opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood.

His Divine Sense was violently shattered, his vital energy suddenly lost control, and a terrifying, irresistible force pierced from the top of his head to the tips of his toes; he felt as if his entire person had instantly turned into powder.

An illusory Blue Light Treasure Bottle suddenly appeared outside Xu Chen's body, and countless starlight flickered violently within this terrifying, dreamlike aura, spraying out light interwoven with gold, red, and blue, as if fighting a desperate battle against an invisible force.

Perhaps it was only an instant, yet it also felt like a billion years.

When this inexplicable aura completely dissipated and the Blue Light Treasure Bottle retracted into his body, Xu Chen's Soul, which had been lost and scattered like smoke and dust, slowly re-condensed and recovered; he sat on the ground with dull eyes, as if he had completely lost his soul.

"Xu Chen, Xu Chen—"

A call that seemed to come from a distant space echoed in his Sea of Consciousness, faint and indistinct.

He raised his eyes and looked blankly at Feng Feiyi before him; after another long moment of dullness, his body trembled violently and he came back to his senses.

"Xu Chen, what's wrong with you!"

Feng Feiyi, her face a mess of tears and blood, shouted with incomparable joy and terror.

Xu Chen's expression changed abruptly; he lowered his head and felt around his body with his hands, discovering that he was completely intact.

That moment just now felt as if it were merely an illusion.

However, before he could catch his breath, his body trembled violently again, and his face turned deathly pale.

He discovered that his dantian was gone.

In his daily internal observation, he could see his dantian as a huge, glowing space with vital energy churning inside.

But upon checking his body just now, he found that his dantian had disappeared; it was empty, leaving only a pitch-black void, as if it had been suddenly scooped out of thin air by something.

A cluster of illusory Blue Starlight swirled slowly around the pitch-black void like mist.

This was the state of all the Apertures in his body after his successful Foundation Establishment.

The starlight remained, but his dantian was nowhere to be found.

How could a cultivator practice without a dantian?

Xu Chen was completely dumbfounded.

"Xu Chen, are, are you alright?" Feng Feiyi seemed to heave a sigh of relief and asked again, her face full of tension.

After sitting blankly for a long time, Xu Chen looked up at Feng Feiyi and discovered that a clear blue mark had appeared on the center of her brow, resembling a twisted, rotating cross; her aura had also become much stronger, and the aura was very familiar, very similar to the Blue Light Treasure Bottle.

It seemed that his Divine Slave Seal had been successfully planted this time, and Feng Feiyi had obtained a completely strange new clan mark.

However, he had no heart to ask if Feng Feiyi had felt the Divine Rune; after a long silence, he shook his head and said, "I'm fine, you go out first!"

"O-okay!"

Feng Feiyi did not know what had happened to Xu Chen just now; she herself had only regained consciousness after experiencing intense pain and torment, as if her soul and body had been torn apart and then reassembled.

Just as she opened her eyes, she saw Xu Chen disappear into thin air, then the illusory Blue Light Treasure Bottle appeared from the void, and the vanished Xu Chen suddenly flashed and reappeared.

This process was very brief; to her, it felt entirely like an illusion.

But Xu Chen's state at this moment looked very bad, as if he had completely lost his soul, so she did not dare to continue asking or disturbing him.

Watching Feng Feiyi, naked and clutching her tight-fitting leather clothes, quickly walk out of the stone chamber, Xu Chen trembled all over, as if his strength had been drained, and he slumped against the stone wall, gasping for air.

The dantian is the foundation of a cultivator, especially during the Refining Essence into Qi stage, where the lower dantian is the primary focus; once the dantian is destroyed, the Dao foundation basically collapses completely, and there is no longer any possibility of cultivation.

Although a cultivator having their dantian destroyed does not necessarily mean death, they will soon degenerate into a mortal.

And in this dark and sunless place of Minghuang, ordinary mortals simply cannot survive.

"It seems I am really going to die here this time!"

Xu Chen sighed deeply in his heart, recalling the process of falling into the cavern, and ultimately felt another wave of inexplicable melancholy and annoyance.

Perhaps this is the price of being a show-off.

His actions just now must have touched upon the taboo of some ancient god and suffered a backlash.

Against such an opponent, even a True Immortal would likely have no power to resist, let alone a piece-of-trash cultivator like him in the Zhenyuan Realm.

The momentary terror and the illusion of being ground into powder just now were certainly not purely illusions, but rather that he had suffered a powerful attack, only he had luckily survived.

As for the reason he survived, although he did not feel it himself, he could roughly guess that it was inevitably the protection of the Blue Light Treasure Bottle.

Because every time he encountered a life-and-death crisis, the Blue Light Treasure Bottle would always protect him at the critical moment.

But the aura that appeared this time was so powerful that it had reached a point where even the Blue Light Treasure Bottle could not protect him completely.

And the other party had merely borrowed the aura of the divine patterns within Feng Feiyi's body and let out a light hum.

Carefully recalling the experience of fear just now, he could roughly draw a conclusion: that was absolutely not the descent of an ancient god's will, but merely a wisp of aura hidden within Feng Feiyi's bloodline.

If an ancient god had truly appeared, the Blue Light Treasure Bottle would very likely have been completely shattered as well.

Thinking of this, Xu Chen could not help but feel another wave of inexplicable relief.

But then he shook his head with a bitter smile.

If he hadn't taken action against that giant octopus beast back then, perhaps he could have continued to linger in the Immortal World as a small cultivator, cultivating silently, refining pills to make a fortune; even if the Five Elements array had gone out of control and exploded, and Soul Beasts had swept through Great Song, he might have been able to survive under the protection of the sect.

However, if Great Song had fallen into the state of the Eastern Wasteland, it would be impossible to predict how long he could actually live, and how many cultivators of the Immortal World or even the Taiyuan Sect could survive would be an even greater unknown.

Once cultivators suffer heavy casualties, the Mortal World will henceforth become the domain of Soul Beasts.

Think of the Taiyuan Sect that was destroyed back then; it was incomparably powerful and even had a Divine Monarch guarding it, yet it was still destroyed, leaving almost no information behind.

Therefore, this catastrophe can be avoided for the first day, but not for the fifteenth.

Although he might die here, he at least preserved the array, which means he preserved the Taiyuan Sect, and in a roundabout way, protected his master, the Elder, and a group of senior brothers and sisters.

And his falling here is not a wasted trip; at least he witnessed the Nether Human Race like the Feng clan and came into contact with some ancient secrets unknown to the Mortal World and the Immortal World.

Especially since he discovered divine patterns and the divine Slave Seal, two things related to ancient gods, which might reveal a secret related to Minghuang, the human race, Nether Beasts, and so on.

He suffered from a young age, experienced all kinds of hunger, cold, and humiliation, and his temperament was simple and pure; after going up the mountain to cultivate, he gradually developed a natural and casual personality, usually doing whatever he thought of without overthinking the complex consequences.

Although he usually cherishes his own life very much, in reality, people who cultivate the Dao see the words "life and death" quite clearly.

People who are sycophantic and cowardly are not suitable for cultivation.

Or rather, those who are greedy for power, wealth, and life are inherently flawed in their Three Souls and Seven Souls, and their personalities are not complete.

Only those with an open-minded temperament who see through life and death can have a stable Dao heart and not be disturbed by illusory things like worldly wealth and desire.

For example, all cultivators in the Spirit Transformation Realm, although they all have their own little schemes and temperaments, are actually objective and never hold onto hatred; one cause leads to one effect, one matter is settled after another, and at worst, they have a fight, then continue to sit together happily chatting, drinking tea, and discussing the Dao.

Being able to pick things up and put them down is the true temperament.

Therefore, although Xu Chen's dantian is gone for the moment, he does not seem to feel anything else different.

Besides, he isn't dead yet, is he?

Therefore, after a bout of inexplicable decadence, Xu Chen began to pull himself together, sat cross-legged, and began to introspect on the changes in his body.

(End of this chapter)