Deep in the dense forest, six Soul Masters cloaked from head to toe in grey robes fled desperately toward its depths.
Soul Rings glowed on all of them. Five had five Soul Rings, while one was actually a powerful Six-Ring Soul Emperor.
Three of them had wings on their Martial Souls and used their flight skills to leave their slower companions far behind.
"Move your dead legs, will you? Run faster! Don't let that calamity catch up with us!"
The Five-Ring Soul King left behind by everyone saw that he had fallen to the rear. As he cursed the others for their lack of loyalty and complained that his parents should have given him two more legs, he couldn't help feeling that he was in a sorry spot: he couldn't outrun the pursuer, and he couldn't catch up with his allies.
Just as he panted and released Soul Skills to flee in a desperate attempt to catch up with his companions,
a brilliant light, like a second sun rising, flared behind him.
"Third Soul Skill, Angel's Glory!"
A clear, ethereal voice drifted down from the sky. At the same time, a searing golden beam shot straight down from the heights above.
The instant it struck, the blazing holy fire engulfed the fleeing Grey-Robed Man. Countless blue-black currents of energy poured from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as the holy fire burned him.
Only after the holy fire had incinerated every last strand of blue-black energy did the Grey-Robed Man's charred remains crumble away in a breeze, scattering into ash that nourished the grass below.
A few breaths later, a young man with golden wings on his back and golden hair fluttering in the wind flashed over the forest, three pitch-black Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings circling him.
As he passed over the scorched ground, cracked in a spiderweb pattern by the Soul Skill, he didn't even spare it a glance. It was as if what he had just done were nothing worth mentioning.
Before long, golden light flashed twice more in the distant forest.
Clearly, two more Grey-Robed Soul Kings who couldn't fly had lost their not-so-precious lives.
In a clearing in the mixed zone of the Star Dou Great Forest, the last three Grey-Robed Men finally stopped. They had realized that if they kept fleeing in such a panic, their pursuer would catch and kill them one by one.
They made up their minds to settle things here with the murderous fiend hunting them.
"Why'd you stop running? You seemed pretty quick just now!"
The golden-haired young man spoke mockingly as he slowly descended from the sky, his golden angel wings beating behind him. In his hand, he held a long sword that radiated the same rich, holy aura.
This sword wasn't some ordinary weapon that only looked impressive.
It was the Angel Holy Sword, a genuine divine weapon—a divine weapon that made Evil Soul Masters feel a father's stern discipline.
"Boy, we've never had a grudge against you, past or present. Why are you hunting us?"
Under the golden sword's intimidating aura, which made their Evil Martial Souls tremble in fear, the leader, a Six-Ring Soul Emperor, seemed to give up. He yanked back his hood, revealing a skull-like face beneath his grey robe, skin stretched tight over bone.
"..."
Seeing this, the other two Grey-Robed Men exchanged a look before pulling back their hoods as well. Their grotesque faces were revealed. The two seemed to be twin brothers, with matching bald heads, narrow eyes, and bulbous noses. Their pockmarked faces were so deeply pitted that even the toads croaking in a pond would have looked handsome beside them.
The golden-haired young man merely glanced at the Soul Emperor and the two beside him as the Evil Soul Emperor screamed hysterically. After a moment, he raised his head and asked in confusion, "Do I really need a reason to kill the fallen?"
The Evil Soul Emperor heard the young man dismissively call them the fallen. Like a cockroach that had been crushed under a slipper but hadn't quite died, he beat his chest and roared furiously:
"Bastard! What fallen? We are the great Holy Soul Masters! We are the future masters of the Douluo Continent! The great Holy Emperor will—"
Before the Evil Soul Emperor could finish, the golden-haired young man seemed intrigued by his outburst. He hurriedly raised a hand to stop the man's futile rage, then asked with a smile:
"What is this Holy Emperor you're talking about? A legend, or does he really exist? If you tell me honestly, I might consider granting you a painless death. Otherwise...I won't mind letting you experience the methods of the Inquisition and Religious Tribunal from the church era tens of thousands of years ago."
"..."
The Evil Soul Emperor narrowed his eyes. After a brief silence, he spat viciously in the golden-haired young man's direction and made a defiant declaration with the air of a tough guy:
"Hmph! I'll never tell you anything! Go to hell!"
"Is that so? What a shame! Looks like I'll have to find out for myself!"
With that, the golden-haired young man silently took several steps back, raised an eyebrow at his shadow on the ground, and said mockingly, "Rakshasa, quit sleeping. Get out here and clean up!"
The instant he spoke, two illusory purple-black hands suddenly reached out from Qian Yuhan's shadow on the ground and pulled out a blurry figure. Its features were impossible to make out; only its general sex was barely discernible.
The purple-black phantom carried a long scythe as it slowly straightened up. Then it turned to Qian Yuhan, who stood calmly behind it, leaning on his sword, and complained with an air of arrogance:
"Qian Yuhan, I'm happy you think of me when there's a good fight to be had, but I don't like the way you talk to me. You should change your attitude next time—Ow! Why'd you kick me out of nowhere?"
Qian Yuhan raised one eyebrow, evidently fed up with the phantom's blathering. "You've been chattering away. Are you going to kill them or not? If not, get lost and let me do it."
"Look at you, in such a hurry! I never said I wouldn't kill them! But I have to warm up first, don't I?"
With that, the Rakshasa Phantom turned around and rested the ominous-looking, long-handled scythe on its shoulder. It flashed a smile at the three Evil Soul Masters, who still hadn't realized how grave their situation was, and let out a cackle:
"Cackle, cackle, cackle! You three had better not turn into vengeful ghosts after you die and come looking for me. If you're looking for someone, go find him!"
"His name is Qian Yuhan, the First Generation Angel God."
"Oh, wait, that's not right. You won't get the chance to turn into vengeful ghosts with me around."
"Third Soul Skill, Shadow Shift."
The Rakshasa Phantom, dragging its divine scythe, plunged without warning into the shadow beneath Qian Yuhan's feet and vanished. As the three Evil Soul Masters stared in alarm, it reappeared behind the one with the highest cultivation, the Six-Ring Soul Emperor, and split him vertically in two with the razor-sharp Rakshasa Demon Scythe.
"Cackle, cackle! Sweethearts, what are you looking at!?" The Rakshasa Phantom rested its scythe on one shoulder, while with its other hand it grabbed the first Evil Soul Master's soul, which writhed and struggled incessantly, and kneaded it into every shape imaginable. It only realized that playing with its food like this wasn't a good habit after a while. Then, right in front of the other two Evil Soul Masters, it began tearing into the "victim's" filthy but exceptionally delicious soul.
Qian Yuhan chose to turn a blind eye to the Rakshasa Phantom devouring Evil Soul Master souls. After all, the Evil Soul Master inequality went like this:
(Since Evil Soul Masters harmed people for no reason and lacked the basic humanity of normal people, Evil Soul Masters did not equal people.
And since killing Evil Soul Masters equaled saving people,
killing Evil Soul Masters equaled saving countless people, which equaled doing good.)
Based on the above, Qian Yuhan had concluded that Evil Soul Masters weren't people and could be killed as he pleased.
As for whether the Evil Soul Masters about to become bite-sized snacks cared that the Rakshasa Phantom was going to chew them up?
Sorry, Qian Yuhan didn't care. He believed that hardly anyone else cared, either.
In despair and terror, the two Five-Ring Evil Soul Masters were smashed into meat patties by the Rakshasa Phantom's scythe, which weighed eighty-eight thousand jin.
With a kick, the phantom sent the scythe into Qian Yuhan's shadow. Then it grabbed one screaming soul in each hand.
As it tore into them in great, beastly bites, it asked Qian Yuhan through a mouthful of soul, "Hey, since we're already here, want to pick up a fourth Soul Ring for each of your two Martial Souls while we're in the Star Dou Great Forest?"
"..." Qian Yuhan didn't answer the Rakshasa Phantom, his Second Martial Soul that could act independently of his body. Instead, he glanced back at the sky and concluded, "It's getting late. We'll stay near the outer zone tonight, then head farther into the mixed zone tomorrow, or look around the edge of the core zone."
"Works for me. They're your legs, after all. I just ask out of habit."
With that, the Rakshasa Phantom melted away like cream dropped into water, leaving Qian Yuhan alone to head toward the outer zone of the Star Dou Great Forest.
Night fell. At a sheltered hollow in a low hill near the boundary between the outer and mixed zones of the Star Dou Great Forest, Qian Yuhan pitched a temporary tent for camp.
The old rule about never lighting a fire when spending the night in a Soul Beast Forest unless absolutely necessary had been passed down for tens of thousands of years, and it still held true. Leaning against a huge rock shaped like a tortoise, Qian Yuhan used coals he had lit in a stove before the sun had set to prepare a simple dinner of charcoal-grilled masked palm civet.
After eating his fill, Qian Yuhan went into the tent alone. He took out the Angel Holy Sword and gently rubbed it in his palm, while reviewing what had happened that day.
In the morning, as he entered the outer zone of the Star Dou Great Forest, he first sensed a powerful spiritual fluctuation. Then, in the next instant, the sky, which had been perfectly clear, suddenly darkened.
After that came a thunderous boom high above.
At the very moment the thunder cracked, the bright sun in the sky darkened briefly for an instant, then cast a grey stream of energy down toward the ground. It carried a strange pressure.
The grey energy circled in the sky for quite a while before finally landing on him.
"This thing is no ordinary matter." Feeling the grey sphere he had suppressed in a corner of his Sea of Consciousness, where it had since remained motionless, Qian Yuhan suddenly opened his eyes and looked at his shadow. "Rakshasa, come out and talk."
"I thought you were an ordinary person now, not a god. Is it really okay to stay up chatting instead of sleeping?"
The Rakshasa Phantom poked its head out of the ground—or rather, out of the shadow—like a mole, and questioned Qian Yuhan in an overly familiar tone. "Forget it. You're Egyptian, sleep or don't sleep, whatever! To be honest, I've been wanting to ask you a few questions for a while. Can you answer them?"
"Go ahead," Qian Yuhan replied.
"Then I'm asking!" The Rakshasa Phantom crawled out of the ground and flopped down across from Qian Yuhan, with absolutely no regard for its posture. The first thing out of its mouth was, "I clearly remember you died ages ago. Why did you suddenly show up at my door not long ago? How'd you manage that? Did you learn some life-extending trick tens of thousands of years ago?"
At that, a rare trace of confusion appeared on Qian Yuhan's calm face. He said:
"I...I don't know, either. I remember that I really did die, but...when I opened my eyes that day, I found myself there. Then...you know the rest."
"Obviously I know," the Rakshasa Phantom said, rolling its eyes at Qian Yuhan and gritting its teeth. "You rude bastard barged into the ruins of the Capital of Killing and tore apart my coffin!"
"I did that to get the Angel Holy Sword! Who knew my successor would put it in the same place as your scythe? Besides, you always wanted to escape, didn't you?"
"Escaping on my own and getting dragged out by the scruff of my neck like a chicken—that's not the same thing!" The Rakshasa Phantom grew angrier the more it thought about it, as if it were about to jump up and punch Qian Yuhan in the head.
But after considering that it might not be able to beat the old geezer before it, a man in his tens of thousands of years who had hacked his way to godhood on faith, the Rakshasa Phantom sighed. It decided to ask a question that might get it hit, but would definitely be fun:
"Don't you remember how you used to be...? How'd you get so stylish now? In the literal sense of 'having style'?"
Having said that, the Rakshasa Phantom wore an extremely strange smile, as if it wanted to seize this opportunity to mock Qian Yuhan properly.
But Qian Yuhan's next words landed a heavy blow.
He looked expressionlessly at the Rakshasa Phantom and asked in a tone full of doubt, "You're a god, or at least closely connected to gods, right?"
"Yeah, of course. What else? Have I really kept such a low profile that no one can tell I'm connected to the gods?" The Rakshasa Phantom didn't understand what that had to do with its question. It scratched its head, bewildered.
"Gods have no fixed form! If you're a god, there's nothing wrong with showing yourself in another guise!"
Qian Yuhan, an old hand from the Divine Realm, put on a thoughtful expression and casually gave the Rakshasa Phantom a taste of the Divine Realm's shockingly permissive culture:
"As far as I know, several old hands in the Divine Realm secretly took female forms, while some of the female gods took male forms. They were passionately in love...entangled in a passionate embrace, forgetful of heaven and earth..."
The Rakshasa Phantom, desperately pretending it knew nothing: "◑.◑" Wait, let me sort this out...Er, is that Divine Realm you're talking about the same Divine Realm I know? Have those guys really been playing that wild all these years? Good grief. The divine ways are declining, divine virtue is collapsing!
"Stop pretending. I heard from my friends in the Divine Realm that the reason you use a female form now is because back then, you—"
"!!"
Realizing that her old scandal was about to become part of the "Divine Realm smut" genre, the Rakshasa Phantom instantly broke into a cold sweat and prepared to "leave her good name behind."
She scrambled over to Qian Yuhan and begged in a hushed voice:
"Enough, enough, bro, stop! I was wrong. I won't ask where you got your style from anymore, okay?"
"You're only going to stop asking?" Qian Yuhan's lips curled slightly. He draped his left arm over the Rakshasa Phantom's shoulder, then rubbed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together in a gesture for money.
"Without a little something to buy your silence, I'm afraid this matter will be rather difficult to handle!"
The Rakshasa Phantom: "⚆ᗝ⚆"
Hold on, Qian Yuhan, are you really the Angel God? Why are you asking me for hush money?!
A proper god like you should be upright and honorable, shouldn't you? Like the famously honest Qian Daoliu, for example.
If Qian Yuhan knew that the Rakshasa Phantom was complaining to herself that he didn't act like a proper god, and even comparing him to the honest Qian Daoliu, he'd probably have burst out laughing.
Come on, when had he become a god through faith?
The church era!
At the time, Spirit Hall didn't yet exist. Only its predecessor did: the church, which struggled to win the people's acceptance and spread its influence by purifying Soul Beasts with evil bloodlines.
The Douluo Continent of that era had been a chaotic, rowdy place.
It was a case of shallow waters teeming with turtles, and big shots everywhere you looked.
Back then, you could see evil Soul Beasts running wild through the streets and wreaking havoc. There were also plenty of newly established sects using all kinds of underhanded tricks to expand their power at breakneck speed.
With everyone slashing at everyone else and spilling blood all over the place, you could even see the two great empires, along with a whole brood of kingdoms and duchies, charging their armies against one another while plotting to seize each other's cities.
A pure, honest good guy?
Someone like that wouldn't have lived long enough to enjoy a hot breakfast the next day.
The reason Qian Yuhan had been able to unite the entire church and suppress every faction on the Douluo Continent back then came down to "three ironclad principles."
An iron banner, iron laws, and an iron fist.
The iron banner meant raising the banner of human supremacy, claiming the moral high ground, and killing evil Soul Beasts that threatened the noble human race.
The iron laws meant defining boundaries and rules, restoring order to the Douluo Continent, which had been in utter chaos.
And the iron fist? That was easy to understand. Put simply, it came down to one word: fight. Fight until everyone submitted. Fight until they understood that they had to act with restraint and respect the rules, or he would beat them to death!
No one knew how badly Qian Yuhan's nerves had frayed in that era, when "immortals were lined up like hemp stalks," facing a bunch of "poets" who were little more than insects.
And no one could understand how much he had suffered and struggled as he consolidated the powers of the Pontiff, the Inquisition's Chief Inquisitor, and the Angel Legion's Commander under his own authority, sweeping across the Douluo Continent and establishing its basic rules.
They only remembered that when Qian Yuhan drew the Angel Holy Sword used to suppress evil, he broke a seal that, in truth, hadn't even mattered.
They forgot that after he drew the Angel Holy Sword, he spent a full hundred and twenty years slaughtering the evil on the Douluo Continent, over and over again.
He had killed until no one on the continent dared to become evil, and no one dared secretly shield or support it.
It was a beautiful era. Even ordinary people who had never awakened Soul Power could sleep soundly at night. They didn't need to fear that Soul Beasts or the fallen would burst into their homes and chew them up, skin, bones, and all.
Because in that era, a blazing golden holy sword truly hung over everyone's heads, ready to come down at any moment.
Whenever he thought about it, Qian Yuhan remembered the successor to his Godhood, that girl called Qian Renxue, and the memoir she had written that sent his blood pressure through the roof.
I won't fault you for losing to Asura God. A First-Level God losing to a God King is perfectly normal. But for you, a god, to nearly get killed by a mortal, then get beaten down by Sea God, who was also a First-Level God, and finally need your mother to come avenge you—that's a bit hard to defend.
The First Generation Sea God from back then hadn't been weak, but at most he'd been evenly matched with Qian Yuhan, who had a six-to-four advantage.
How had things gotten to the point that each generation was weaker than the last, and she was the one getting beaten down?
After reviewing the memoir and the historical records,
Qian Yuhan was astonished to discover that the higher-ups of that so-called Spirit Hall were all war criminals!
Qian Renxue's problems were actually the fewest of the lot!
Qian Daoliu, the Great Enshrined of Spirit Hall who had inherited his Martial Soul, hadn't inherited a bit of his divine ancestor's fierce, passionate nature. He'd never dared to love or hate, fight or struggle, or take on anyone who defied him.
The Clear Sky Sect had indirectly caused the death of your own son, and you were still sitting there, patting yourself on the back while keeping your promise?
Did the other side even appreciate you keeping it?
A promise wasn't something you should keep that faithfully!
If Qian Yuhan had been in that position, he would have had the Clear Sky Sect wiped out. If he hadn't, it would only have been because he'd failed to order someone to kick the carriage wheel off before he arrived.
Qian Xunji had some personal ability, but he lacked the bearing and ruthlessness of a leader of a major power.
He couldn't bear to let go of the sunk cost of raising a successor, so he resorted to petty, underhanded means. That deserved criticism. If his successor wanted to elope, just kill her! If he couldn't bring himself to do that, he could at least cripple her cultivation!
He'd resorted to dirty tricks but hadn't crippled her cultivation. What was he expecting, if not a backlash?
Still, if he hadn't acted so underhandedly, he might not have raised Qian Renxue, a younger generation who would become a god in the future.
On that point, Qian Yuhan felt...there wasn't much he could say.
Bibi Dong was an even bigger heavyweight among the heavyweights.
Qian Yuhan could hardly imagine that a heaven's favorite, carefully groomed by one of the Douluo Continent's top powers and destined to become a god through her own efforts, could fall for a guy who had only reached level thirty at the age of fifty, then keep dreaming of eloping with him.
Qian Yuhan's verdict was: Having something wrong with your head is a kind of illness. You have to get it treated early.
And then there was Hu Liena. What, did you own Spirit Hall? Why were you busy ruining the place and leaking secrets?
Qian Renxue's recklessness was one thing. At least she was the successor to the Angel Martial Soul and Angel Godhood. Both her parents were Pontiffs, and she had a legitimate claim to inherit Spirit Hall.
But you were so proud of ruining someone else's estate?
Whenever Qian Yuhan thought about it, he would scowl and take Hu Liena's Soul Bone out of his Storage Soul Tool to roll it around in his hand.
Seeing Qian Yuhan scowl as he held Hu Liena's External Soul Bone like a collector's trinket,
the Rakshasa Phantom instantly realized that the Qian Yuhan before her—the one who had gone from a fiery little sister locked into a "Style Shift" to a fiery big brother after dying and coming back to life—was in a bad mood again.
Picking a fight with him now clearly wouldn't be a wise move.
Before you continue