The two men who had been standing nearby, Tong Yuan and Zhao Yun, had vanished, leaving the place empty.
A hazy gray shadow emerged from the vortex and drifted toward Xiang Yu's body.
Shi Lan instinctively reached out, but the gray shadow passed straight through her palm without the slightest resistance and plunged into Xiang Yu's crown.
After a moment, the gray shadow appeared again. A layer of spiritual light, invisible to mortal eyes, enveloped it in the hazy glow. This was no Primordial Spirit, but the soul at the source of a living being, present from birth rather than cultivated afterward.
As she watched the gray shadow, Shi Lan began to suspect what it was. The vortex clearly led to the Yellow Springs, and that indistinct gray shadow was likely a being from the Yellow Springs that guided the dead—or perhaps another kind of living creature.
Perhaps because her strength was insufficient, Shi Lan could not touch the portal to the Yellow Springs suspended in midair. It was as though the portal did not exist in this realm. Even with the power of her double pupils, she could only watch.
The gray shadow wrapped itself around Xiang Yu's soul and disappeared into the vortex. The vortex soon vanished again, and the faint trace of deathly Killing Intent that had leaked out dissipated with it.
Xiang Yu's body remained standing where it was. As his soul departed, the pressure of death surged, filling the entire hall. Even with Shi Lan's current cultivation, she felt an oppression so intense she could hardly breathe.
Anyone below the Earthly Fiend Realm would have had no chance of surviving under that pressure. Clearly, Xiang Yu had been deliberately restraining his aura all along.
[Discovered a nine-star unit...]
The instant she touched Xiang