Chapter 726: Soul Summoning, Cold Abyss (Large Chapter)

The Tomb of Heavenly Water is coming back to life!

This was Li Fei's first impression; this lifeless graveyard had suddenly gained vitality.

He looked toward the glowing cavern, where liquid like magma was flowing and boiling inside.

Then, the surrounding light suddenly dimmed, and massive clusters of shadows appeared out of thin air, surrounding Li Fei.

These shadows were the soul-shadows Li Fei had encountered before!

A single soul-shadow did not pose much of a threat; in the water, its combat power was at most equivalent to an ordinary Dao Foundation realm martial artist.

But now, hundreds of soul-shadows had appeared!

Not far away, You Ming raised a hand and pointed at Li Fei, like an emperor of the waters.

The order to kill was issued, and massive clusters of shadows lunged at Li Fei from all directions!

Watching Li Fei fall into the encirclement, You Ming wore a look of triumph.

The Heavenly Water Soul Beast possesses a unique divine ability called 【Soul Summoning】. This ability has two functions: first, to store the spiritual consciousness of deceased life forms, and second, to summon the stored spiritual consciousness back out in a special way.

This is Soul Summoning.

The core divine ability of this dead zone, the Tomb of Heavenly Water, is 【Soul Summoning】. Thousands of years ago, the spiritual consciousness of the Heavenly Water beasts that died here would be stored in the dead zone, eventually transforming into soul-shadows.

Back then, the Heavenly Water clan specifically chose this unique location, allowing the most powerful Heavenly Water Soul Beast in the tribe to fuse its martial domain with this place before its death, and then the entire clan pooled their strength to renovate it.

Subsequently, every dying Heavenly Water beast would merge its power into this dead zone without reservation, all to build an eternal, immortal tomb for the Heavenly Water clan, allowing all Heavenly Water beasts to survive in another form after death!

Yet, no power, however great, can be truly eternal. Even though this dead zone could continuously absorb the water-elemental Qi from the underground river, problems still emerged after maintaining it for thousands of years, and cracks began to appear.

As for these soul-shadows summoned back by the 【Soul Summoning】 ability in the Tomb of Heavenly Water, they initially possessed a certain degree of self-awareness, but as time passed, their self-awareness gradually faded, leaving only some basic instincts.

The Heavenly Water clan's pursuit of eternity ultimately ended in failure.

Even these soul-shadows in the graveyard, after so many years, were now being driven by a human.

In this Tomb of Heavenly Water, the 【Soul Summoning】 ability is omnipresent, so You Ming could easily use 【Heart Mirror】 to reflect this ability.

If he were elsewhere, suddenly possessing the 【Soul Summoning】 ability would not increase You Ming's combat power at all.

But in the Tomb of Heavenly Water, where all the soul-shadows of the Heavenly Water clan exist, You Ming, having copied the identical 【Soul Summoning】 ability, directly gained control over these soul-shadows!

Under his control, hundreds of Heavenly Water beast soul-shadows launched an attack on Li Fei.

Watching the soul-shadows rushing at him from all directions, Li Fei did not dodge.

He had already discovered when fighting these soul-shadows earlier that their movement speed in the water was far superior to his, and they were much more agile.

Surrounded by so many soul-shadows at once, even if he continuously unleashed 【Flying Flower Rain of Fire】, he could not evade their attacks or break out of the encirclement.

Thus, Li Fei stood calmly in the water, holding his blade with both hands.

In truth, the essence of these soul-shadows was a cluster of spiritual consciousness wrapped in a large amount of water-elemental Qi and an intent of extreme cold.

The water-elemental Qi could cause physical damage, but to Li Fei, who had cultivated a Golden Body and Jade Marrow and was wearing a divine garment, it posed no threat. Even if he stood still and let these soul-shadows attack with water-elemental Qi, they could not break his defense.

What truly posed a threat to Li Fei was the extreme cold intent on these soul-shadows.

This power could damage both the body and the mind simultaneously, and it was impossible to resist.

Before entering the Tomb of Heavenly Water, Li Fei had learned about it from the data given to him by Wu Da.

Among the several divine abilities that constituted the dead zone of the Tomb of Heavenly Water, there was one called 【Cold Abyss】.

The 【Cold Abyss】 ability releases an intent of extreme cold. It is not powerful at first, but if one lacks a divine ability that can completely suppress this extreme cold intent, it becomes impossible to resist, and it will continuously stack, accumulating more and more.

Once the extreme cold intent accumulates to a certain degree, both the body and the mind will be completely frozen to death!

Therefore, when fighting an entity that possesses the 【Cold Abyss】 ability, the longer the fight drags on, the more disadvantageous it becomes.

In the Tomb of Heavenly Water, the power of 【Cold Abyss】 is omnipresent, so those who enter cannot stay too long; even after leaving, it takes several months to completely dissolve the coldness within the body.

Now, these attacking soul-shadows also carried the extreme cold intent; once Li Fei took the hits, the accumulation speed of the extreme cold intent would increase significantly!

When the surrounding soul-shadows completely surrounded Li Fei, forming a pitch-black sphere, beams of golden light suddenly erupted from within, piercing through the shadows.

Li Fei once again unleashed a move of 【Infinite Brightness Fire】.

It was just that Dao energy could not resist divine abilities; although the rushing soul-shadows were torn apart, the extreme cold intent remained, forming a hollow "sphere."

Li Fei immediately rushed out, and as he passed through the "sphere," the coldness within his body deepened further.

Soul-shadows rushed at him again from all directions.

Li Fei could not keep using Dao energy to shatter these soul-shadows, and he was soon struck by a cluster of them.

He sliced open this cluster of soul-shadows with his blade, but the extreme cold intent within still penetrated his protective energy, his divine garment, and his Golden Body and Jade Marrow to invade his body.

This coldness was unstoppable!

Ten invisible "heavy hammers" flew toward the surroundings simultaneously, each striking ten soul-shadows.

Li Fei consumed 50 Blood Souls to unleash 【Blood Might God】, only this time he chose to disperse the 【Blood Might God】.

After being strengthened, 【Blood Might】 could hit ten targets simultaneously, and the 【Blood Might God】 Li Fei created himself could do the same.

The ten soul-shadows that were hit immediately froze in place.

The spiritual consciousness contained within them was severely damaged; some lost the ability to move, and some even dissipated directly!

These Heavenly Water beast soul-shadows had existed for thousands of years, and the spiritual consciousness within them had long since decayed, so they were easily severely damaged by 【Blood Might God】.

Li Fei seized the opportunity to rush through a gap in the encirclement, while simultaneously splitting off a clone to actively collide with a soul-shadow.

The clone possessed thirty percent of the main body's physical strength. Li Fei formed the clone when his strength was at its limit; although it was not enough to destroy the soul-shadow, with its formidable power, it was enough to impact the soul-shadow, thereby buying more time and space for the main body.

Just like that, Li Fei slashed at the soul-shadows while unleashing 【Blood Might God】 to rout the surrounding soul-shadows, occasionally condensing clones to attack them.

He thereby seized the opportunity to pass through the gaps in the encirclement, trying his best to endure the least amount of extreme cold intent.

"Dual cultivation of Dharma and Martial Arts?"

Seeing Li Fei repeatedly use 【Blood Might God】, and having fought Zhu Fenghua not long ago, You Ming finally saw the clues.

Although the spiritual consciousness of these soul-shadows had decayed, they were protected by water-elemental Qi and extreme cold intent, so it was not that easy to use pure techniques to impact their spirits.

Even if he let Zhu San, who was already at the peak of the Possession realm, take action, combined with magic treasures specifically for attacking the spirit, he could not be as efficient as Li Fei, who routed ten soul-shadows in one go!

And if one were to use spiritual power to attack, one would either use special extraordinary abilities or use Dao energy.

Li Fei was clearly using neither of these two.

That left only the dual cultivation of Dharma and Martial Arts.

"I want to see how long you can hold on."

You Ming watched the battlefield in the distance calmly.

Although his 【Heart Mirror】 could copy others' divine abilities, it could not achieve one hundred percent restoration.

A minimum of fifty percent, a maximum of eighty percent.

Therefore, the 【Soul Summoning】 ability You Ming copied was not complete; he could only mobilize the soul-shadows formed by sixth-grade Heavenly Water beasts and could not mobilize the soul-shadows of the seventh-grade, or even eighth-grade, Heavenly Water Soul Beasts in this Tomb of Heavenly Water!

The soul-shadow of a seventh-grade Heavenly Water Soul Beast, even if only a portion of its power remained, could mobilize the power of divine abilities, and the threat it formed was completely different from ordinary soul-shadows.

However, You Ming felt that these hundred-plus Heavenly Water beast soul-shadows were enough to exhaust Li Fei to death.

Just like that, one soul-shadow after another lunged at Li Fei one after another.

Li Fei was shrouded by shadows time and again, and time and again he fought his way out.

One soul-shadow after another was either slashed to pieces, stopped in place, or dissipated directly.

Zhu San and Ye Zhao in the distance were stunned.

They asked themselves that if it were them, they would surely have been frozen to death by the extreme cold intent by now, yet Li Fei was able to continuously destroy soul-shadows with a terrifying killing speed.

A few minutes later, more than half of the hundred-plus soul-shadows had been destroyed by Li Fei!

Although he had tried his best to avoid being contaminated by the extreme cold intent, the extreme cold intent accumulated in Li Fei's body had already exceeded the danger line and began to continuously cause him damage.

"Li Fei, I will give you one last chance: join us."

You Ming sent a voice transmission to Li Fei.

In his view, Li Fei must be at the end of his rope, nearing his limit.

Giving the other party one more chance at this time would show more sincerity.

"Unfortunately, this Marquis does not intend to give you any more chances."

Li Fei sent a voice transmission while rushing toward You Ming.

After a series of battles, the consumption of 【Blood Might God】, plus maintaining his transformation, maintaining 【Blood Rage】, the self-injury from unleashing the Diamond Seal: Dragon Elephant, and the damage he had sustained, etc.

The Blood Souls within the Myriad Blood Bead were immediately consumed until only 10 remained.

The Blood Souls stored in the Blood Spring were also consumed by 693!

Now, 1691 remained in the Blood Spring.

However, when the Blood Souls in the Myriad Blood Bead fell below 50%, 【Blood Breath】 would automatically trigger, restoring 5% of the maximum Blood Soul value per minute.

【Blood Breath】 is a passive Blood Soul skill and is not within the amplification range of the "Blood Demon State."

However, the current recovery speed was already very fast; in a few minutes, Li Fei had recovered 206 Blood Souls, the Blood Souls in the Myriad Blood Bead became 216, and they were still continuously recovering.

Seeing that Li Fei was still not knowing what was good for him, You Ming completely abandoned the idea of recruiting him.

The scene reflected in his heart mirror changed, turning into a sky full of snow, a vast expanse of white.

【Heart Mirror】 shifted from copying 【Soul Summoning】 to copying 【Cold Abyss】!

"It's over."

You Ming looked at Li Fei, who was rushing toward him, and shook his head with regret.

He raised his hand and pointed at Li Fei.

The next second, a terrifying cold tide surged toward Li Fei from behind.

Although the hundred-plus soul-shadows had been destroyed, the extreme cold intent contained within them still existed in that area of water.

You Ming did not copy 【Cold Abyss】 at the beginning because he himself generating extreme cold intent consumed too much, and the extreme cold intent in this Tomb of Heavenly Water was too scattered.

But now, the hundred-plus soul-shadows containing extreme cold intent were gathered together, and the extreme cold intent left behind after their destruction was highly concentrated; You Ming only needed a very small consumption to drive a tide of cold!

Even many martial arts masters cannot withstand this cold wave and would gradually freeze to death; You Ming did not believe that Li Fei, already at the end of his rope, could hold out.

Soon, the cold wave caught up to Li Fei, surging continuously into his body.

"To die at my hands is not an insult to you."

You Ming sent this final telepathic message to Li Fei.

To display his composure, he turned around confidently, no longer looking at Li Fei, and swam toward Zhu San and Ye Zhao.

He felt that in at most two or three seconds, Li Fei would be completely frozen; whether it was flesh and blood or heart and mind, everything would lose control, and he would eventually just wait for death.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

You Ming saw a look of horror in the eyes of Zhu San and Ye Zhao.

The movement behind him had still not ceased.

He frowned and turned around.

Li Fei was still swimming toward him, less than a hundred meters away!

"How is this possible?"

You Ming looked at Li Fei, who was moving freely within the cold wave, and was shocked once again.

"Could it be that the treasure on him containing Dao principles can even block the 【Cold Abyss】 divine ability? Then why did he waste his strength to destroy those soul shadows just now?"

The reason You Ming was certain the cold wave could kill Li Fei was that Li Fei had just spared no effort to consume his own strength to avoid coming into contact with the extreme cold intent as much as possible.

This showed that the extreme cold intent was capable of causing harm to Li Fei.

Yet the reality now was that Li Fei was moving freely in the cold wave!

In fact, the most terrifying aspect of the extreme cold intent was that it first slowly froze a person's body and mind, making them unable to move, until they could only wait for death.

But the Ten Thousand Blood Bead transferred 99% of the direct damage, and the remaining bit of damage was completely insufficient to freeze Li Fei.

Moreover, the 【Cold Abyss】 divine ability was not an explosive type; the damage it brought was continuous and cumulative.

Therefore, in the initial stage, the damage brought to Li Fei by the extreme cold intent had not exceeded the amount of blood soul recovered by 【Blood Breath】.

In these few seconds, Li Fei's blood soul count was even still increasing!

He suddenly exploded into a burst of sparks, then appeared above You Ming's head, holding his blade with both hands and slashing downward.

You Ming immediately switched the 【Heart Mirror】 replication ability, changing to Li Fei's physical strength, and raised his sword to parry upward.

Blade and sword clashed, wild waves reappeared, a spherical ripple expanded in all directions, and the two separated.

You Ming's expression was uncertain; he unleashed 【Ghost Shadow】 to retreat and create distance, while simultaneously switching 【Heart Mirror】 again to replicate the 【Cold Abyss】 divine ability.

Frequently switching 【Heart Mirror】 would increase the consumption of divine ability power, but You Ming still believed that using divine abilities would cause greater damage to Li Fei, so he was unwilling to engage in close-quarters combat.

The blade strike Li Fei had landed on his neck earlier had also left him with psychological trauma.

The cold wave once again enveloped Li Fei, who had been shaken back.

Moving in the water, You Ming, using 【Ghost Shadow】, was faster than Li Fei using 【Flying Flower Fire Rain】, so You Ming could consistently adopt a 'kiting' strategy, always controlling the cold wave to exhaust Li Fei.

At this moment, the damage brought by the extreme cold intent had already exceeded the recovery of 【Blood Breath】, and the blood souls within the Ten Thousand Blood Bead began to decrease slowly.

Li Fei's eyes remained calm; he injected a burst of force into the Golden Thread Jade Scale Armor on his body.

The next second, a 'torrent' was triggered!

This 'torrent' was composed of a massive amount of water-elemental Qi, resembling a water dragon!

"This is?"

You Ming was startled, then quickly reacted.

The hundreds of soul shadows had brought a large amount of highly concentrated extreme cold intent, and they had also brought a large amount of highly concentrated water-elemental Qi.

He used the 【Cold Abyss】 divine ability to mobilize the extreme cold intent to form a cold wave, while Li Fei relied on the Golden Thread Jade Scale Armor to mobilize a massive amount of water-elemental Qi to form a torrent!

As a divine garment, the Golden Thread Jade Scale Armor, besides its basic defensive power, possessed special abilities: 【Golden Vein Jade Body】 and 【Hundred Rivers Qi Circulation】.

Among them, 【Hundred Rivers Qi Circulation】 could store, sense, and control water-elemental Qi.

This ability was no worse than Ye Zhao's core-level extraordinary ability 'Water Lord', but Li Fei had never used it in his previous clashes with Ye Zhao.

Because it was unnecessary.

On the black boat, Ye Zhao's face flushed red in an instant.

He gritted his teeth, intending to activate 'Water Lord' to compete with Li Fei for control of this water-elemental Qi.

But Li Fei merely glanced over, and it struck him like a thunderbolt; his mental defenses were breached again, and he spat out a mouthful of blood!

In this moment of delay, Li Fei had already used the torrent surging behind him to catch up to You Ming and controlled the water-elemental Qi to bind him.

【Cold Abyss】 was not a 【Water Control】 divine ability and could not control water-elemental Qi; You Ming could only rely on Dao force to forcibly break free from the bindings.

A burst of sparks exploded behind him; Li Fei appeared behind him and slashed horizontally with his blade!

You Ming turned around, holding his sword vertically with one hand to block the blade edge; a waterfall-like river of silver surged from the tip of the sword and fell vertically.

The surrounding water flow was driven by this waterfall; this was a defensive-type Dao force.

The golden blade light instantly cut through this waterfall, even causing a blade mark over fifty meters long to appear in the water!

The blade edge struck the sword body heavily, the immense power pressing the sword body back, pressing it against You Ming's chest, against his protective clothing, and finally pressing it together with the protective clothing into his flesh!

You Ming was knocked back by Li Fei's blade.

Just as he wanted to use 【Ghost Shadow】 to escape, the surrounding mass of water-elemental Qi disrupted the force he had projected outward.

Taking advantage of this time, Li Fei appeared above his head, holding his blade with both hands and slashing downward.

You Ming raised his sword to block, then was slashed into the silt at the bottom of the water, forming a large crater.

He could no longer care about controlling the extreme cold intent and hurriedly switched 【Heart Mirror】 to re-replicate Li Fei's physical strength.

Otherwise, he would have no way to fight Li Fei in close-quarters combat.

The two began a close-quarters struggle similar to the previous one, but now the situation had reversed.

Li Fei, assisted by a massive amount of water-elemental Qi, held the upper hand, using danger perception to predict You Ming's movements and repeatedly controlling the water-elemental Qi to interrupt You Ming's movement, while he himself was like a fish in water, his movement speed increased by more than one level!

After the two exchanged a few moves, Li Fei seized an opening; letting You Ming stab his chest with a sword, he slashed You Ming's left shoulder with his blade.

The blade edge cut through the opponent's protective clothing and flesh, and a large amount of black flames and blood-evil Qi surged into it!

You Ming immediately used 【Heart Sword】 to extinguish the heart fire, then used force to disperse the blood-evil Qi.

In the short time of less than half a second of delay, a large patch of flesh and bone on You Ming's left shoulder had been completely corroded!

He revealed a look of pain, retreating while swinging his sword to knock away the Ghost-Slaying Blade.

"Go to hell!"

You Ming fell into a rage; a strong sense of crisis made him start to activate his divine ability regardless of the cost, with one 【Heart Sword】 after another bombarding Li Fei!

Li Fei was expressionless, continuing to swing his blade without being affected in the slightest.

After a dozen moves, he suddenly appeared on You Ming's left side using 【Flying Flower Fire Rain】, simultaneously controlling the water-elemental Qi to transform into 'chains' to bind You Ming.

You Ming relied on his powerful strength to forcibly break these chains, then turned to the left.

But the injury on his left shoulder had not yet completely healed, his body rotation was slightly affected, and coupled with the impact of breaking the chains, Li Fei slashed him first.

Swish—

You Ming's left arm was severed at the shoulder!

Startled and furious, he swept his sword horizontally, knocking Li Fei back, his inner fear no longer suppressible.

In just this short while, he had already bombarded Li Fei with twenty-six 【Heart Sword】 strikes, but Li Fei had not been affected in the slightest.

From the initial use of 【Heart Sword】, to the later frequent switching of 【Heart Mirror】, to now using twenty-six 【Heart Sword】 strikes in a row, You Ming's divine ability power had been mostly exhausted.

Yet Li Fei looked completely unscathed!

Moreover, what You Ming did not know was that after enduring twenty-six 【Heart Sword】 strikes, the blood soul amount Li Fei had consumed for damage absorption had already exceeded 1000, and the energy absorbed was all divine ability power, which was of high quality, so the Ten Thousand Blood Bead's energy value was finally full.

The Ten Thousand Blood Bead leveled up to 29, the blood souls were instantly replenished, and the total blood soul amount increased by 56, becoming 1083!

Now, there were still 1025 blood souls remaining in Li Fei's blood spring.

The energy value required for each level of the Ten Thousand Blood Bead doubled, so even if all these two thousand-plus blood souls were used for damage absorption, and even if they all absorbed divine ability power, exhausting them might not necessarily allow the Ten Thousand Blood Bead to reach level 30.

However, Li Fei felt that using these two thousand-plus blood souls was enough to kill You Ming.

It was just that there was no way to display a health bar; otherwise, Li Fei felt that if You Ming watched the health bar he had worked so hard to beat down for half a day suddenly surge back up by a large chunk, his mentality would definitely collapse directly...

Looking at the armless You Ming, Zhu San and Ye Zhao on the black boat also fell into fear.

They had never imagined that You Ming would be defeated.

Located within the Tomb of Heavenly Water, You Ming could replicate several types of divine abilities, as if fighting on his home turf, and his combat power was higher than when he was in Tianhe City.

And he still couldn't beat Li Fei?!

"Will Senior You Ming lose?"

Ye Zhao couldn't help but ask.

He didn't even notice that his voice was already trembling.

Zhu San was relatively much calmer; he shook his head:

"He won't; Lord You Ming still has a trump card!"

"What is it?"

Ye Zhao grabbed Zhu San's arm as if grabbing a life-saving straw, asking impatiently.

"It's what Xu Jing left for him."

Zhu San was also very nervous at this moment, staring fixedly at the distant battlefield.

"Xu Jing? That Grandmaster?"

Ye Zhao's eyes lit up.

On the other side, after nearly being struck by Li Fei again, You Ming once more unleashed the 【Nether Heaven】.

Although the 【Nether Heaven】 had already been broken by Li Fei once, it could at least buy him precious time.

He intended to use his final trump card!

Just as Zhu San had said, this was something Xu Jing had left for him.

His 【Heart Mirror】 divine ability could replicate the abilities of others, but it had to be done by reflecting them face-to-face with the 【Heart Mirror】, and it was time-limited.

For instance, he was currently unable to replicate that Profound Scene Dao Force move of Zhu Fenghua.

However, after developing the 【Heart Mirror】 divine ability to its limit, You Ming could use the 【Heart Mirror】 to store another person's ability for a long time.

This ability could be infused with power by others, so You Ming could unleash an ability far exceeding his own cultivation realm!

It was just that this was a one-time use.

After learning that You Ming possessed the 【Heart Mirror】 divine ability, Xu Jing had taken the initiative to suggest that You Ming store one of his moves.

"I want you to use this move to kill Li Fei."

This was also part of the deal between the two parties.

Originally, You Ming had intended to use the 【Cold Abyss】 divine ability to completely freeze Li Fei, and then finally use this move to send off this Marquis of Jing'an.

By that reckoning, it would be he who defeated Li Fei.

But now, he could no longer afford to care about such things.

Within the 【Heart Mirror】, a patch of dark, gloomy marshland emerged.

PS: This chapter is also a two-in-one.

(End of this chapter)