Guixu

Eternal Silence Return Ruins lived up to its name.

This place seemed like the end of the world, an abyss in the deep sea. Light was utterly devoured, leaving only eternal darkness and deathly silence. The seawater was viscous and icy, filled with violent currents, chaotic folds in space, and unknown energy radiation powerful enough to tear ordinary soul beasts apart. There was no life in the conventional sense, only bizarrely shaped "return ruins creatures" with exceptionally strange soul power attributes, surviving on scraps of energy and the extreme environment.

This was a forbidden zone for life, and also the finest hiding place and proving ground.

Jingtian spent his first few months exercising extreme caution. He avoided the regions where the energy raged most violently and dug a crude, temporary lair in the relatively "calm" chaos at the outermost edge. Relying on his formidable concealment abilities and precise control over his poisons, he successfully evaded the perception of nearly all the return ruins creatures, like a shadow melting into the darkness.

He knew full well that Sea God Island and its forces would never abandon their pursuit easily. Mo Lin's death and the terror of Dan-Devour were enough for Sea God Island to classify him as a threat of the highest priority. The next pursuers would, at the very least, be led by a Soul Saint; they might even dispatch a Soul Douluo. If they failed to find him in the Storm Sea Abyss, they would certainly expand their search. Guixu was dangerous, but it might not completely halt the advance of true powerhouses, especially Soul Saints and Soul Douluos adept at ocean combat, with special soul tools or martial souls.

I have to race against every second to grow stronger! Before more powerful pursuers arrive, I have to gain enough strength to protect myself, or even strike back!

Guixu's environment was exceptionally harsh, but it also contained vast quantities of pure, primordial soul power, wrapped in chaotic energy, beyond anything the outside world could imagine. This soul power was difficult to absorb and highly corrosive. But for Jingtian, who possessed a transformed poison source and could use the principles of poison erosion to "digest" foreign energies to some extent, it was an ideal tonic.

He no longer relied solely on hunting soul beasts and devouring their life essence as he had before. He began attempting to devour and refine the chaotic energy drifting through Guixu directly. The process was painful and dangerous; the slightest mistake could cause the chaotic energy to turn against him, damaging his meridians or even his soul. But high risks brought high returns. The speed at which this refinement increased his cultivation far surpassed what he could achieve by devouring ordinary ten-thousand-year soul beasts.

At the same time, he did not give up hunting. Most of Guixu's bizarre creatures had strange soul power attributes and life essence that was difficult to absorb. Yet the special energy cores or toxic properties within some of them offered immeasurable benefits to the growth and diversification of his poison source. He even hunted a strange, wormlike creature that could spit attacks with the Spatial Severing attribute, extracting a faint trace of spatial power from its core. Although it had yet to develop into a coherent system, it gave him a glimmer of new understanding of how to control his Poison Domain and move his own body.

Time slipped quietly away amid endless darkness, agonizing cultivation, and battles to the death with return ruins creatures.

One year, two years, five years...

Jingtian's cultivation soared as though riding a rocket. From ten thousand years, he broke through to twenty thousand, then thirty thousand... Guixu's chaotic energy and the essence of its powerful, bizarre creatures supplied him with immense reserves.

His poison arts also continued to evolve in this extreme environment. To counter the corrosion of Guixu's energy and the special attacks of its monsters, he developed the principles of poison erosion to new heights. His poisonous power could corrode not only life and energy, but even briefly "contaminate" the spatial properties of a small area, creating a warped, highly toxic "pseudo-domain." His use of Dan-Devour became more proficient as well. Although creating it still consumed enormous amounts of power, he could deploy it faster and conceal it better.

His body grew even larger, his tentacles like mountain ridges. After absorbing vast amounts of Guixu's energy and special toxins, his dark-blue rings became deeper and more subdued in color, faintly tending toward dark purple. The golden patterns flowing between them also grew increasingly distinct—a mutation brought about by devouring rare metals and certain minerals from Guixu.

Fifteen years passed in the snap of a finger.

When Jingtian slowly "awoke" from a period of deep cultivation lasting several months, the soul power surging through his body had become as vast as the sea, mighty and boundless. His cultivation had reached a full seventy thousand years!

A seventy-thousand-year soul beast! In the Soul Beast Realm, such a being was already powerful enough to dominate a region, or even challenge the hundred-thousand-year heavenly tribulation! And with the unpredictable, defense-ignoring Dan-Devour, along with poison arts tempered over fifteen years in Guixu to become ever more terrifying and extraordinarily adaptable, his actual combat strength was probably enough to strike fear into many eighty- or ninety-thousand-year soul beasts.

He slowly stretched his eight enormous tentacles, which seemed capable of churning the deep sea's hidden currents. His perception spread like a tide, easily covering the surrounding Guixu waters for dozens of li. The turbulent energy and spatial folds that had once given him trouble were now clearly visible to his senses, and he could even exploit or avoid them with skill.

Fifteen years lying low had remade him from the inside out.

Yet just as he savored his immense strength and prepared to explore deeper into Guixu, searching for greater opportunities that might help him break through the hundred-thousand-year bottleneck—

An exceedingly faint yet unmistakably clear tremor, arising from some distant connection deep within his soul, reached him without warning!

This tremor was not a sign of danger, but a kind of... resonance? Or perhaps, when a powerful source of life he had once "marked" vanished completely, a faint echo had crossed endless space and time to reach the depths of his poison source?

Jingtian focused his senses. The source of that tremor... was none other than a mark left by Dan-Devour! And it was the very Dan-Devour he had planted inside the Quasi-Soul Saint Mo Lin in the Storm Sea Abyss fifteen years ago!

Mo Lin is dead?

No, he should have died long ago. Shortly after I left.

But this tremor... why did it only reach me now? And why did it feel so... intense and unusual?

Unless... this wasn't merely an echo of Mo Lin's death. It was a special resonance produced by that Dan-Devour poison after his death—or rather, when certain beings, such as Sea God Island's powerhouses, studied his corpse or remains by some means, stimulated the poison, or even attempted to replicate or counter it!

Humans... throughout these fifteen years, they never stopped investigating and studying me! They've probably already deduced some of Dan-Devour's properties from Mo Lin's death. They might even have... pinpointed the connection between this poison and my origin!

The thought set alarm bells ringing in Jingtian's heart once more! Though his pursuers might "at least be Soul Saints," Sea God Island's methods perhaps far exceeded his imagination. Their research into Dan-Devour might be intended to provide intelligence and support for pursuers of an even higher rank, such as Soul Douluos, or even...

Almost simultaneously, at the edge of his powerful perception, he caught an extremely vague trace of unfamiliar soul power so mighty that it made his heart tremble. It was still extraordinarily far away—at least a hundred nautical miles, as Guixu's energy field severely interfered with perception over such great distances—and was approaching Eternal Silence Return Ruins at astonishing speed!

Those soul power fluctuations carried the majesty of the ocean, surging vitality, and a quality that... faintly shared the same source as the Sea God Island aura left on Mo Lin fifteen years ago, yet was stronger by an unknown number of times! The intensity of these fluctuations far surpassed a Soul Saint's, and was even much deeper and more concentrated than what Jingtian had expected from a Soul Douluo!

A Titled Douluo! Definitely a Titled Douluo from Sea God Island!

Jingtian reached that conclusion instantly. He had still underestimated Sea God Island's determination and the importance they attached to Dan-Devour! They had actually dispatched a Titled Douluo outright! Moreover, through researching Dan-Devour or some other special method, the pursuer seemed to have roughly determined that he was hiding in Eternal Silence Return Ruins!

Fifteen years... from a Soul Douluo to a Titled Douluo. No, perhaps he was a Titled Douluo all along, or has only recently advanced... Jingtian's heart turned cold. Sure enough, what was destined to come would always come, and it had arrived in the worst possible form. He had hidden for fifteen years, and they had searched for fifteen years. Now they had finally called upon a true peak powerhouse, who had come to kill him at his doorstep.

Seventy thousand years of cultivation against a true Titled Douluo.

What were his chances of victory? Jingtian had no confidence whatsoever. Titled Douluos stood at the true pinnacle of human soul masters, possessing domains and commanding laws, far beyond comparison with Soul Saints or Soul Douluos. His Dan-Devour was powerful, but against a Titled Douluo with a domain, could it penetrate that domain's defenses and successfully take root? Even if it did, given a Titled Douluo's level of life and strength of soul, how long would it take to corrode him to death? That would give his opponent enough time to kill Jingtian countless times over.

I can't fight him head-on.

But I can't simply flee as I did fifteen years ago, either.

An eerie light flickered in Jingtian's eyes, and he swiftly made his decision. His enormous body slowly sank into the depths of his lair, and he began erasing every trace he had left in Guixu's outer regions over the past fifteen years as quickly as possible, especially the fluctuations from his recent activities and cultivation. At the same time, he suppressed his aura to its absolute limit, even actively guiding the surrounding violent Guixu energy to blanket and disrupt the area.

Once he had finished, he plunged without hesitation deeper into Eternal Silence Return Ruins, slipping swiftly toward the forbidden core, where the energy was even more violent and chaotic, and the spatial structure so unstable that even he had never ventured deep inside to explore!

Since a Titled Douluo dares to pursue me into Guixu, let him witness the true terror of this forbidden zone for life.

And I can use this desperate situation as the final... trial of life and death in my push toward the hundred-thousand-year threshold!

A pursuit through the deep sea, a blood feud spanning fifteen years.