Jing Yue left with Ning Wushuang. Ling Xing was placed in an awkward position before he brought Baili Zhuixing away. It was clear that the two exalted ones wanted to cover up for the culprits, and it would now be difficult for Yun Feiyao to avenge his daughter’s death.
“What an embarrassment!” Chong Yang snorted. The most troublesome thing was that Tianming had entered the Infernal Soul Volcano, and no one knew if he was still alive. “Disperse!”
With an order from the exalted one, the surrounding crowd immediately started to leave. Suddenly, Bai Zijin’s cold voice sounded out, “The Ancient Qilin Clan is pretty interesting. The criminal who murdered a fellow clansman in cold blood is so easily let off? It’s not exaggerating to say that she deserves to be put to death on the spot. What a maniac.”
The exalted ones all wore unsightly faces, but none of them responded. Bai Zijin added, “No wonder all of you immediately bowed to the Theocrats the moment something happened with Li Muyang. Bunch of spineless cowards.”
“You!”
Bai Zijin could no longer be bothered with them and she returned to the lower layer of the Infernal Soul Barrier and told the three Hall Kings about what had happened. Honestly speaking, Bai Zijin hadn’t had enough of humiliating the Ancient Qilin Clan. The exalted ones returned, and both groups were now silently waiting outside the lower layer.
“I heard that Tianming defeated Ning Wushuang?” Mo Yu turned to a sky saint of the Ancient Qilin Clan.
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure about that? He was only in the seventh level of Heavenly Will at best when I first saw him. Isn’t Ning Wushuang in the second level of the Earth Saint stage?” Mo Yu’s expression was dark.
“That was the case, and she really was defeated.”
“You’re saying that Tianming made a breakthrough into the Saint stage in the Infernal Soul Barrier?”
“No, I heard he was still using beast ki.”
“So you’re saying that he defeated Ning Wushuang while he was in the ninth level of Heavenly Will? Even if he’s in the ninth level of Heavenly Will, that means he managed to cultivate over the past two months!” The exalted ones exchanged a look, and all of them felt depressed. It seemed that Tianming wasn’t affected by the Infernal Soul Purgatory. On the other hand, he had made huge improvements to his cultivation instead. It had only been two months, and he had already become one of the strongest among his peers.
“This lad is surprising, but it’s a pity that he’s probably dead in the Infernal Soul Volcano,” Chong Yang sighed.
……
“Shit!” Tianming was free falling after he tore the final layer of the barrier. He couldn’t fly without Feiling around. He took out Archfiend from his spatial ring and tried plunging it into the wall at the crucial moment. But it was a pity that Archfiend was still too short. Seeing that Tianming was falling straight down and was about to plunge into the black lava, Ying Huo showed up and lifted Tianming by the collar.
“Why are other birds so huge and mine is so small.…” Tianming had finally managed to escape death. Although Ying Huo saved him, he grew depressed when he thought about how others could ride their lifebound beasts in the sky while he could only be carried in the air.
“Mhm? What’d you say? I didn’t hear clearly, so repeat it.” Ying Huo laughed, grabbing its belly. When its grip on Tianming was loosened, Tianming started falling from the sky again.
“Holy!” Ying Huo immediately dove down and caught Tianming, then threw him toward the wall. After Tianming was safe, Ying Huo flapped its wings and grinned at Tianming. “So, what did you just say?”
“Get lost!” Tianming glared at Ying Huo. He finally calmed down when he was leaning against the wall. The wall was hot, but fortunately, he had the Aeternal Infernal Body, so he wasn’t affected by it too much.
“That person said I killed Yun Zhenzhen?” Tianming raised his head, and he could see many silhouettes through the thick smoke.
“You’re being framed. So what’re you going to do?”
“I’m naturally going up so that I don’t alarm the Infernal Soul Race. If Big Sister Bai is at the lower layer, I’ll ask if I’m safe now. I’ll only go out when it’s safe.” There was no way the barrier could keep him out, as Tianming could enter and leave as he wished.
“Just what the hell was going on? If it wasn’t for the Infernal Soul Barrier, you’d probably be dead by now,” Ying Huo explained.
“How the hell do I know? There’s too many psychos in the world,” said Tianming. He then climbed up the wall. In this position, he could see through the barrier with the Insightful Eye, and he seemed to see Bai Zijin.
“Big Sister Bai is down here, so that means those two are under control now.” Tianming was relieved. That meant the problem had been resolved, but the only trouble was that he had revealed his ability to tear apart the Infernal Soul Barrier with his black arm. As he was pondering how he could resolve this matter, danger suddenly befell him. Tianming sensed a stinging pain in his head, coming from the depths of his soul. A crimson thread suddenly entered his consciousness. It was like a poisonous snake biting his soul, and gave Tianming a headache. Suddenly, a crimson ray stabbed at his throat.
“Who is it?!” Tianming released his grip on the wall and fell just to avoid this fatal move. As he fell, he grabbed on to the wall again with his right hand before using the Insightful Eye with his left to look at the person who attacked him. The first thing he saw was a pair of crimson eyes. They left a deep impression in Tianming, looking like a ferocious beast without any thoughts except bloodlust.
But the weird thing was that he could see thirty-six stars in the right eye of this person. This person’s eyes were crimson, but at the same time, one looked like a starry sky like the stars of lifebound beasts. Tianming even had a misperception that this person was a lifebound beast. Then again, this person had no stars in his left eye.
Apart from the pair of crimson eyes that had left such a deep impression on Tianming, this person’s pale skin looked somewhat scary. His long black hair was unkempt, reaching his waist. He was probably around Tianming’s age. The youth had a violent, beastly aura, and no emotions in his eyes. The weapons that he was holding were two crimson daggers, shorter than half a meter. The daggers each had fifty saint heavenly patterns; they were saint beast weapons that only sky saints could wield!
The youth held onto the daggers, one with an ordinary grip and the other in a reverse grip. They seemed like two ominous weapons in his hands as he charged at Tianming in the next instant. When the youth came over, Tianming discovered a few more crimson threads in his consciousness, accompanied by a piercing pain to his soul. The volcano seemed to change into a sea of blood with countless corpses floating on it. There were eighty thousand corpses, and all of them were staring at Tianming.
Their limbs were mutilated, and some even had their eyes fallen from the sockets. And all of them were crawling into Tianming’s mind. When Tianming saw this, he was shocked. “Illusion?” He could only say that compared to the illusion created by the Flowerymoon Sacred Qilin, this young man’s grasp of illusion was on a whole other level.
But the youth wasn’t only limited to illusions, as he also knew soul attacks and suppression. It was somewhat similar to the Godsoul Canon’s Bewildering Eye. Tianming immediately used his Insightful Eye, allowing him to see through the illusion and determine the youth’s location.
The two of them clashed on the wall, and every attack from the youth was aimed to kill. Tianming discovered that this youth was roughly in the second-level Earth Saint stage and was slightly stronger than him. However, he believed that Ning Wushuang would definitely not be this youth’s opponent, even if this youth had not summoned his lifebound beast. If it weren’t for his Insightful Eye, Tianming would’ve already lost the fight due to the soul suppression he felt.
As the two clashed together once more, they fell from the sky. Tianming had initially wanted to go out, but now he was being dragged down into the volcano. When he looked down, he could see the black magma bubbling like a ferocious mouth, waiting for him to fall into it. Tianming discovered a relatively large island in the magma and quickly kicked off from the wall, trying to gain a footing using his falling momentum.
When he finally gained his bearings, he looked around briefly and was shocked. He was standing on an altar with eighty thousand tombstones erected before it, all of which were created from the rocks on the wall. The tombstones were directly erected on the island, and there was a possibility that there wasn’t anyone buried beneath them. After all, the rocks on this island were tough. Each tombstone had a name carved on it, and everything told Tianming that this was the place that he previously saw in the Infernal Soul Barrier, where eighty thousand people had conducted their soul sacrifice. After twenty thousand years and thousands of generations, the eighty thousand souls of the Infernal Soul Race had merged into one.
Suddenly, danger came from his back once more, and Tianming felt a piercing pain in his mind. The crimson threads were moving toward Tianming’s Imperial Will. But the instant those threads came in contact with his Imperial Will, the Prime Tower in his lifebound space trembled, releasing a white light that wiped out the threads. Only then did Tianming feel that the headache had gotten better, and his mind clearer. Turning around, he briefly clashed with the youth’s crimson daggers before they moved away from each other.
“Feng?” Tianming widened his eyes when he looked at the youth with crimson eyes and pale skin. When Tianming called out to the youth, the youth was stunned. With a hoarse voice—perhaps, it had been a long time since he had spoken—the youth asked, “Y-you know me?”
“I’ve seen you.” Tianming’s mood eased. He knew about this scene, and Feng was currently the only member of the Infernal Soul Race left. That meant that the Infernal Soul Volcano was no longer dangerous for Tianming.
“Who am I?” Feng was excited as he approached Tianming.
“You don’t know who you are? Isn’t your name Feng?” Tianming asked in perplexion.
“Do you know anything else aside from my name?” Feng seemed to have a headache and started shaking his head.
Looking at this youth, Tianming wondered if something had happened during the fusion of souls and caused the youth to lose some of his memories. Taking a few steps forth, Tianming lowered his head and saw the name engraved on the altar over and over again—Ye Lingfeng.