Yu Ci swung his hand, and under the pull of the rope, two metallic hooks collided once again. The previously crisp and transparent sound abruptly shifted in tone. The sound itself seemed to disappear, leaving only an indescribable, violent tremor in the void. In an instant, countless changes unfolded, sending a shockwave targeting all living beings nearby.
This was the hook-and-rope weapon Yu Ci had obtained in the Demonic Beast Cavern. Though he didn’t know its origins, he had discovered that when the hooks collided, the resulting tremors directly impacted the soul.
Neither Nan Songzi nor Yu Ci escaped unscathed.
At that moment, Yu Ci nearly coughed up his Heart-Binding Horn. The shockwave released by the hooks was ten times more complex than the one Nan Songzi had produced. Even though Yu Ci had experience and was prepared, he barely managed to withstand it. In his perception, the invisible barrier protecting his soul twisted and warped, riddled with holes, on the verge of collapse.
To achieve the maximum effect, he had driven the hooks with full force, holding nothing back!
Fortunately, Nan Songzi’s reaction was even worse than expected.
In Yu Ci’s eyes, Nan Songzi’s Yin Spirit appeared as a pale, colorless phantom with a few glaring black spots. Surrounding it was his Five Aggregates Yin Demon, shrouded in red smoke. The stark contrast between the two colors was clear and distinct. However, when the hooks clashed again, the colors suddenly mixed together.
Then came a piercing shriek.
It wasn’t just Nan Songzi or the Yin Demon screaming—it was both of them together. These two intangible entities were simply venting their agony in this manner. The emotional shockwave from their combined shriek erupted like an explosion, filled with extreme frenzy and agitation!
In truth, this assumption wasn’t wrong.
Years ago, Nan Songzi had been hunted relentlessly by the Jade Cleansing Alliance, forcing him to flee to the south beyond Azure River. It was then that he stumbled upon a fragment of the Five Aggregates Yin Demon Scripture. This demonic manual was of some renown, containing numerous powerful yet perilous dark arts. The most infamous of these techniques involved the Five Aggregates Yin Demons, which required the user to refine fierce spirits. Using the Peach Blossom Canopy, an evil artifact, Nan Songzi had brutally slaughtered dozens of female cultivators with spiritual attainments, extracting their Yin essence and blood at the moment of their gruesome deaths. He then blended these souls with his own Heart Demon Qi, forging them into terrifying specters.
Such vicious entities, though stripped of higher intelligence, still retained their instinctual hatred from life. However, due to the powerful curses binding them, their resentment could only accumulate, making the Yin Demons even stronger. This process formed a self-perpetuating cycle, continuously increasing their power.
This method of feeding demons with oneself was extraordinarily dangerous. Even a ruthless practitioner like Nan Songzi had only managed to refine three Yin Demons after decades of effort. When he activated the Peach Blossom Canopy, the countless phantoms within were merely derivatives of these three true Yin Demons.
However, one of them had been absorbed into his body at Southern Frost Lake, enhancing his strength before perishing along with his shattered physical form. Another had been used to create an illusion of possession, but it was obliterated alongside the fiendish demon by Jie Liang. That left only the last one—his Innate Yin Demon, the one most intimately connected to his soul. Now, under the shockwave from the hooks and the effects of the Fleeting Dream, its primal nature was unleashed, attempting to devour him.
At that moment, a burst of purple light shone through the chaotic colors.
Yu Ci caught sight of it and forced himself to suppress his dizziness and nausea. Clutching his Pure Yang Talisman Sword, he focused intently on the shifting smoke.
Rather than adding to the disorder, the purple light stood apart from the mingling colors. It radiated gently, without harshness, and expanded slowly. Yet, under its illumination, the entangled Yin Demon and Yin Spirit began to separate.
The Innate Yin Demon let out a deep growl. Though it lacked true intelligence, it instinctively loathed this presence. The moment it touched the purple light, it wanted to flee—but at the same time, it refused to let go of the "enemy" at its mouth, its delectable prey.
Conflicting instincts clashed within the Yin Demon, momentarily halting its violent erosion of Nan Songzi’s soul. Meanwhile, Nan Songzi’s consciousness surged forward. The True Void Violet Mist Jade was taking effect, clearing his mind. No longer engaging in the ugly and perilous struggle for control, he swiftly chanted incantations, activating the pre-implanted control seals within the Innate Yin Demon in an attempt to suppress it once more.
The Yin Demon thrashed wildly, but under the combined force of the True Void Violet Mist Jade and the restrictive seals, its damage to Nan Songzi’s Yin Spirit gradually diminished.
Barely regaining his composure, Nan Songzi still felt lingering dread toward the strange hooks.
“What in the world is that thing?!”
As an expert in illusionary techniques, he had never encountered such a bizarre weapon. The moment the twin hooks struck, their reverberations had bypassed all defenses, striking directly at the soul with endless layers of disruption. The way they stirred up subconscious aggression and rage was unfathomably eerie. Even recalling it now sent chills down his spine—or at least, it would have, if he still had a physical body capable of sweating.
That thought suddenly reminded him—where was the body he intended to possess?!
Before he could finish the thought, sword Qi howled.
From within the mist of the illusionary formation, Yu Ci’s figure flickered like a phantom as he pierced forward with his sword.
Nan Songzi, just coming to his senses from his frenzied state, saw this and laughed, “If your sword qi can injure my Yin Spirit…”
Before his emotions could fully settle, the mist-like sword qi had already pierced through the body of his Yin Spirit—without a trace of force landing on his Yin Spirit or anywhere nearby. Instead, it dispersed and coalesced into a sharp beam of sword qi that struck heavily at the core, now suffused with purple light.
Yu Ci didn’t know the source of the purple light, but his long-honed instincts from years teetering between life and death told him this was his chance—a moment capable of turning the tide completely!
Naturally, Nan Songzi had taken the most meticulous precautions for such a critical object as the True Void Violet Mist Jade. However, just moments ago, as his innate Yin Demon had lost all reason and viciously clashed with it—and later when he had exerted every bit of power to control his incantations and suppress it, even mobilizing the Myriad True Qi protecting the warm jade—now, in this rushed moment as the Zhen Sha retracted, even if its momentum remained formidable, how could it compare to the sword qi Yu Ci was driving with his Half-Mountain Mirage?
The combination of the Half-Mountain Mirage sword intent with what Xie Liang had called “imitated innate qi” produced an effect that, in an instant, delivered lethality nearly on par with that of a Core Refinement cultivator!
The bundled sword qi clashed with the Myriad True Qi, producing a buzzing sound. At that moment, the difference in their cultivation became evident; an enormous shockwave surged from the Pure Yang Talisman Sword into his arm and then coursed through his entire body, sending Yu Ci flying backwards.
At that very moment, Nan Songzi suddenly realized he had made an unforgivable mistake!
He should never have allowed the sword qi and the Myriad True Qi to collide at such a critical juncture. Perhaps under the impact of the sword qi he might have been able to lock the True Void Violet Mist Jade within his Yin Spirit, but the jade’s material wasn’t sturdy—it simply couldn’t withstand the immense force from both sides.
But now, it was too late.
Where the sword qi and the Myriad True Qi collided, the purple light intensified dramatically—that was the reaction of the True Void Violet Mist Jade being struck. Sensing impending disaster, torn between permanently losing the warm jade and temporarily letting it go, Nan Songzi instinctively chose the latter. He released his grip to dissipate the impact force. Almost simultaneously with Yu Ci being thrown, the purple light shot off like a meteor in the opposite direction, streaking over ten zhang away and bouncing a few times on the ground before finally coming to a stop. God only knows whether it sustained any damage.
As the warm jade suddenly separated from his Yin Spirit, the innate Yin Demon he’d just managed to control let out an extremely excited shriek.
In response, upon realizing that the warm jade might have been damaged, Nan Songzi became truly enraged. He even disregarded the immediate threat; around his Yin Spirit, the Myriad True Qi roiled and black streaks flashed into existence, coalescing in the void into a barely perceptible ring of aura that, in the blink of an eye, caught up with the still airborne Yu Ci.
Though Yu Ci still couldn’t control his body, his keen sense of impending danger remained intact. However, as his gaze flickered, the calm expression he’d maintained all along suddenly changed.
The aura cut through the air with incredible speed. It wasn’t that Yu Ci had been unprepared—even if he had been, what could he do when faced with the most vicious hidden weapon in the cultivation world, the “God-Slaying Thorn”?
In that instant, Yu Ci could only react in the most basic way—raising his arm to shield his chest and cover his vital areas.
With a dull, heavy thud, Yu Ci felt his arm tremble and then become scorching hot, as if seared by raging flames.
At that point, the momentum that had thrown Yu Ci finally dissipated; he had been flung about seven or eight zhang away, and after landing, he slid a further distance, feeling as though his innards were ablaze from internal injuries. But compared to the blow on his arm from the God-Slaying Thorn, these injuries were nothing significant.
Consider Meng Wei, whose dao foundation was still unstable—even with her genius, after being hit by the God-Slaying Thorn, her Core Refinement nearly shattered; how could Yu Ci possibly fare in comparison?
Yu Ci pressed his right hand against his left arm… ‘Huh?'
His fingertips felt scorching hot, yet it wasn’t his own flesh that was burning, but rather a metal circular disc hidden in his sleeve—the Divine Illumination Bronze Mirror! His arm was merely being seared by the heat emanating from it, which created the sensation of burning.
Moreover, his meridians and energy channels remained entirely unscathed; it was only the internal organs that suffered a slight hindrance. According to legend, the ruthless killing technique that “travels against the meridians and stops upon breaking the orifices” had shown no signs of penetrating his body.
It had been blocked? That “God-Slaying Thorn”, which could disperse and transform its aura in an instant—capable of breaking through any tangible defense—had been stopped just like that?
Yu Ci pulled out the Divine Illumination Bronze Mirror, which resembled a branding iron, and looked at its unchanged bronze mirror exterior in bewilderment.
At that moment, he heard a very peculiar tone: “B*stard, I’ve destroyed you…”
It was Nan Songzi’s voice, and immediately thereafter, the guy let out an even more ear-piercing shriek: “Don’t devour me!”
The eerie, trembling tone was so bizarre that even Yu Ci, with all his nerve, felt a chill run down his spine.
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