Depriving the Taotie Bloodline

"No, impossible!"

"This can't be real!"

"It has to be an illusion!"

Xuan Zi could not believe his eyes. He refused to face reality.

But reality was reality.

He had no choice but to face it.

Trembling, he approached and saw that the clothes on those children were Shrek uniforms—the uniforms of the students he had brought.

Everyone was dead.

Xuan Zi felt his head buzz, and then he went mad, slaughtering the surrounding Soul Beasts in a frenzy.

"Damn it, damn it..."

"It's all because of you filthy, ugly Soul Beasts! If not for you, how could Lexuan and the others have died..."

Xuan Zi completely lost his mind and rampaged wildly!

Every Soul Beast within his sight was brutally slaughtered!

In an instant, not a single living creature remained within dozens of miles.

Such a disturbance quickly drew Di Tian's attention at the Lake of Life.

"People from Shrek truly have a death wish!"

After sensing that man's actions, Di Tian was utterly enraged.

After several conflicts, they and Shrek had reached an unwritten agreement. The Soul Beasts allowed Shrek disciples to reasonably hunt Soul Rings in the outskirts of Star Dou, while Shrek Academy restrained its disciples from entering the core region, hunting rare Soul Beasts, or exterminating Soul Beast clans.

Now, Xuan Zi's large-scale slaughter of Soul Beasts had crossed Di Tian's bottom line.

"You push your luck. Then stay here!"

Di Tian attacked without hesitation, carrying overwhelming power as he charged toward Xuan Zi.

Hidden underground, Jiang Heng clearly sensed the strength of those two forces. He cautiously poked his head out to watch.

The battle did not last long. Even though Xuan Zi's Taotie Bloodline restrained Di Tian, the gap between them was simply too vast.

Under Di Tian's tyrannical Dragon God Claw, Xuan Zi lost an arm and fled in panic.

"That direction isn't toward Shrek Academy!"

Deep underground, Jiang Heng saw the direction in which Xuan Zi was fleeing blindly, and his eyes immediately lit up.

He had to admit, he was tempted.

If Xuan Zi had been at his peak, a mere Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast like him would naturally never have dared show himself.

But now, Xuan Zi was not only severely injured and on the brink of death, but had also lost an arm—an arm with a Soul Bone.

How much combat power did he still have?

Level 92, Level 93—at most, Level 94.

An opportunity like this was rarely seen even once in ten thousand years.

What he desired was Xuan Zi's Taotie Bloodline.

Taotie had another name: the Earth Dragon King, one of the Nine Great Dragon Kings beneath the Dragon God! (The settings in Soul Land 2 and Soul Land 3 are quite chaotic, so I'll use a middle ground here and try my best to keep the setting consistent.)

The Taotie Bloodline contained within Xuan Zi's martial soul was pureblooded, far beyond the diluted Dragon King bloodline he possessed after who knew how many generations.

For Soul Beasts to rapidly increase their strength, aside from consuming heavenly treasures, there was only one path.

Devouring!

He did not inherently possess a devouring talent. Though he had explored some methods over the years, it was ultimately only consumption rather than devouring, and he could not maximize the use of energy.

"Leave behind two clansmen over ten thousand years old to take the Silver Moon Wolf King back to the palace. Everyone else, come with me and dig with all your strength!"

Jiang Heng gave the order without the slightest hesitation.

Though they did not know what their king intended to do, all the Golden Earth Dragons obeyed Jiang Heng's command.

The Hundred-Thousand-Year Golden Earth Dragon King took the lead, with nine Twenty-Thousand-Year Golden Earth Dragons assisting him, while the remaining Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Earth Dragons continuously supported them from the side.

They dug madly and advanced at high speed.

From time to time, they poked their heads out to make sure they had not deviated from the direction in which Xuan Zi had fled.

Such a massive disturbance from the Golden Earth Dragon Clan caught the attention of many underground-dwelling Soul Beasts, but upon seeing the Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast at their head, they all avoided them.

They had no choice. They could not afford to provoke them.

Most Soul Beasts that lived underground and relied on the terrain for survival were quite weak. Naturally, they did not dare provoke a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast.

If Jiang Heng's group had not been digging ahead while the other Golden Earth Dragons filled in behind them, cave-ins would have surely appeared beneath the Star Dou Great Forest.

Xuan Zi's injuries were simply too severe. Not only had he lost an arm and a Soul Bone, even his Soul Core had developed cracks.

His cultivation had directly fallen back to Level 91.

Had he not threatened Di Tian with detonating his Soul Core at the end, he truly would not have escaped.

The cracks in his Soul Core threatened his life at every moment. Left with no alternative, he could only choose a relatively secluded place to first stabilize the injuries within his body and his Soul Core.

"Damn Di Tian, sooner or later..."

Xuan Zi had just wanted to spit out a few threats when Di Tian's overwhelmingly invincible figure appeared in his mind. He could only swallow the rest of his words.

"Bang!"

At that moment, an enormous dragon claw suddenly burst from the ground and slapped Xuan Zi.

Already badly injured, Xuan Zi suffered this blow, and more than half the bones in his body instantly shattered. He lay on the ground like a dead dog, without even the strength to sit up.

The one who attacked was Jiang Heng.

Even he had not expected the pursuit to be so easy.

Then his massive body, more than thirty meters long, burst from the ground. He immediately crippled Xuan Zi's limbs and dantian to prevent any accidents.

"I know a few methods for depriving bloodlines."

Looking at Xuan Zi's body on the ground, even after becoming a Soul Beast, Jiang Heng could not overcome the barrier in his heart and swallow him whole.

Besides, if he directly devoured him with his spiritual power, he might suffer a backlash.

Better to strike while he was down, strip away his bloodline, turn it into an ownerless thing, and then devour it!

He then controlled his Soul Power and began stripping away the bloodline power belonging to Taotie from within Xuan Zi.

"Soul Beasts... filthy, despicable Soul Beasts..."

Faced with the intense agony caused by the bloodline extraction, Xuan Zi struggled desperately, only to discover that he could not use any power at all.

The intense pain twisted his features.

He wanted to open his mouth and curse, but as his strength drained away, he no longer had any energy left.

Now that his dantian had been destroyed, he could not even mobilize Soul Power to detonate his Soul Core. He could only watch helplessly as his own power was stripped away.

"Yes!"

"Now I'm a Soul Beast. Even if I said I was human, no one would believe me!"

As he spoke, Jiang Heng slapped Xuan Zi to death. He then collected the Soul Bones and storage Soul Tools from Xuan Zi's body, wrapped the bloodline extracted from him in Soul Power, and once again dug an underground passage back to the Underground Palace where they lived.

After returning, Jiang Heng chose to enter seclusion.

As for what would happen in the outside world after Xuan Zi's death, with Di Tian around, there was no need for him to worry.

He gave the Hundred-Thousand-Year Silver Moon Wolf King to the Ninety-Thousand-Year Golden Earth Dragon in the clan that controlled both water and earth attributes.

Absorbing the Taotie Bloodline was destined not to be simple. With even the slightest carelessness, his own bloodline might instead be devoured by Taotie's bloodline.

He needed to proceed slowly, step by step.

Fortunately, he was no longer as weak as when he had first arrived.

It took him an entire year to successfully fuse the Taotie Bloodline with his own.

As a result, he gained another innate divine ability: Devour All Things to strengthen himself!

With this divine ability, he could devour other Soul Beasts and rapidly strengthen himself.

Using the Devouring Divine Ability, he refined the power that had accumulated within his body more effectively, and his cultivation leapt to one hundred seventy thousand years.

Over the next half year or so, he rapidly increased his strength through devouring power while also studying Soul Tools. As for the materials needed to forge Soul Tools, they were difficult for humans to find, but quite easy for Soul Beasts.

Finally, using rare materials and his knowledge of human Soul Tools, he successfully forged an eighth-grade Soul Tool.

Although it was much cruder than those made by humans, brute force could overcome finesse, and it could still unleash considerable power.

"By my calculations, the story should be starting soon."

As Jiang Heng murmured, his enormous body began to shrink until it reached around ten meters, where it finally stopped changing.

He was going to steal every opportunity that belonged to Huo Yuhao.