Sisters

The shriek came without warning.

The moment the petals of the Dark Bell Thousand Laurels Burying the Moon completely dissipated, her consciousness finally broke free from the fading fragments of memory.

Although it only lasts three seconds from beginning to end.

But for her, those three seconds felt longer than any three years she had ever lived.

Countless fragments of memories vanished permanently from her mind. She couldn't even remember which memories she had lost; she could only feel the blank spaces left in her mind, as if someone had dug out pieces of a puzzle from the depths of her soul, leaving jagged breaks, each one causing intense pain.

Once memories are stripped away, the emotions that were originally connected to those memories can no longer find a foothold and wander aimlessly in the mind like lost souls.

She feels sad about things she can no longer remember, and angry about faces she can no longer recall, but she doesn't know where these emotions come from.

This feeling is more unbearable than any physical pain.

Na Nali suddenly opened her eyes.

Her pupils remained unfocused, but a purely instinctive, near-death counterattack erupted from the depths of her Soul Core.

The bell in his hand rang by itself without being shaken, producing a continuous, increasingly high-pitched shriek.

The surface of the bell was covered with purplish-black cracks, and the light shining through the cracks was deeper than the night and colder than the Annihilation Demon Flame.

Ninth Soul Skill - Evil Spirit Abyss-Shaking Roar.

That was Na Nali's strongest Soul Skill, and also her last instinctive counterattack.

Rings of purplish-black sound waves spread outwards from her center, each ring carrying the evil spiritual power from the deepest part of her Soul Core.

Where the sound waves passed, visible black ripples appeared in the air, and the space itself trembled wherever those ripples passed.

The first wave of sound waves collided with Zang Xin's eighth Soul Skill.

The domain formed by the power of emotions trembled violently the moment it came into contact with the Evil Spirit Abyss-Shaking Roar.

The essence of the Evil Spirit Abyss-Shaking Roar is pure mental shock, and the realm of emotions is based on Divine Power.

Two completely different Mental Attribute forces collided, intertwined, and tore at each other in the air, emitting a piercing roar that could not be compared to any normal sound and reached the depths of the soul.

The giant sword that Zang Xin had transformed into suddenly trembled.

The seven-colored light flowing on the sword dimmed by a third in that instant, and the boundary of the domain that Since Ancient Times, Passion Leaves Only Regret began to shrink, causing a brief break in the suppression effect.

Taking advantage of the Leng Yulai's fire feathers broke through the domain's blockade, and their speed suddenly recovered to 70%. Although the direction was still deflected and the lock-on was still off, the power and speed were enough to pose a threat to Zang Xin's main body.

Zang Xin frowned slightly.

He had to withdraw some of the power he used to maintain his domain in order to deal with the approaching fire feathers. The true form of the Passionate Sword spun in mid-air, and the emotional radiance on the sword surface shone again, slicing the first dozen or so fire feathers into fragments.

And it was during this gap—

Na Nali moved.

She wasn't going to fight back; she was going to run away.

Her Seventh Soul Skill and her Martial Soul Avatar were released at the same instant.

Her body transformed into a semi-transparent, bell-shaped phantom, within which countless purplish-black runes surged, each emitting a low hum.

Then, using the last bit of her remaining Soul Power, she charged towards Leng Yulai.

"Walk!!!"

Na Nali's voice no longer sounded like a human voice at all.

It was a scream with a metallic, screeching quality, the kind that could only be produced by tearing one's vocal cords.

She collided with Leng Yulai's Phoenix True Body, and with her hand, which had been almost transparent from being corrupted by Thousand Laurels Burying the Moon, she gripped Leng Yulai's sleeve tightly.

Leng Yulai looked down at her, her pupils suddenly contracting.

She had never seen Na Nali like this before.

Na Nali is the most unconventional of the four Heavenly Kings of the Holy Spirit Cult, always maintaining a smile no matter the situation.

But at this moment, her face held an expression Leng Yulai had never seen before: fear.

A deep-seated fear of a specific target.

"Them--"

Na Nali's voice trembled, "They're here!"

Leng Yulai suddenly looked up.

She saw it.

In the distant night sky, towards Eastsea City, two streaks of light were flying toward the cross-sea bridge at an incredible speed.

A platinum dish.

The pure white-gold light was like a spear piercing the night sky, its edges burning with a pressure that made the entire night sky tremble.

That was the primordial light emanating from Limit Douluo after their Martial Soul Avatar was activated to its fullest extent.

Wherever the platinum-gold light passed, the air was automatically torn apart, forming a vacuum channel in which the light sped at an unprecedented speed.

Tiandou Douluo - Yun Ming.

A crimson streak.

The crimson light resembled a shooting star falling from the heavens, and flames surged around it, forming a gigantic phoenix phantom. Each flap of its wings could traverse a distance of thousands of meters.

The crimson tail of the flames left a long trail in the night sky, dyeing half the sky the color of a fiery sunset.

The color of that flame was completely different from Leng Yulai's Annihilation Demon Flame; it was a blazing, brilliant, pure Lie Yan with the power to cleanse all evil.

Heavenly Phoenix Douluo -- Leng Yaozhu.

Two people.

One in front of the other.

The direction was precisely located to the area where the cross-sea bridge was broken.

Leng Yulai's expression froze at that moment.

Yun Ming.

Leng Yaozhu.

Either of these two names alone would be enough to make any of the Holy Spirit Cult leaders consider retreating.

Now, the two of them are flying towards each other at the same time, in the same direction.

"How is this possible—how could they be so fast—"

For the first time, panic appeared in Leng Yulai's voice.

But she had no time to think.

Na Nali gripped her robe sleeve even tighter; her hand was beginning to turn transparent, and the glow of the bell's phantom was rapidly fading.

"Walk!!!"

Na Nali practically screamed the word, "If we don't leave now, it'll be too late—"

Then she released her grip on Leng Yulai's sleeve and, with her last strength, shook the cracked bell.

The sound of the bell was no longer a shrill whistle, but a deep, humming sound with a sense of spatial tearing.

A pitch-black rift slowly tore open in front of her. It required a large amount of Soul Power to open, and in Na Nali's current state, this rift could only last for three seconds at most.

Leng Yulai did not hesitate.

She reached out and embraced Na Nali's dissipating Martial Soul Avatar, pulling her entirely into the flames of the Dark Phoenix.

The Dark Phoenix True Body abruptly folded its wings, enveloping both of them deep within the core of the Annihilation Demon Flame, and then—

They rushed into the crevice.

The moment the rift closed behind her, a roar filled with suppressed, boundless hatred erupted from it:

"You all just wait--!!!"

The sound was cut off by the spatial rift, the last syllable still echoing in the air, while the dark rift had vanished without a trace.

Only the waves stirred up by the Evil Spirit Abyss-Shaking Roar on the sea surface were still churning, and the lingering wisps of purplish-black Soul Power in the air were dissipating.

Zang Xin withdrew from his Martial Soul Avatar state and transformed back into human form.

His face was much paler than before. He was being bombarded by Leng Yulai's ninth Soul Skill and Na Nali's ninth Soul Skill in turn. Even he, Limit Douluo, was finding it hard to cope.

He casually straightened his robe sleeves, which were slightly disheveled from the sound waves, took a deep breath to stabilize the surging Soul Power within him, and then looked up at the two beams of light that were rapidly approaching.

The platinum-gold light arrived first.

Yun Ming's figure emerged from the flames and landed steadily directly above the broken bridge ruins.

He stood with his hands behind his back, his platinum robe motionless in the sea breeze, and not a trace of the light of his Soul Ring was leaking out.

At first glance, he appears to be just an ordinary, tall, middle-aged man.

But it is precisely this extreme restraint that is most unsettling.

He stood there, and the entire space became quieter. The sea breeze dared not blow within ten feet of him, and a thin layer of ice patterns automatically condensed on the surface of the seawater beneath his feet.

His gaze first swept over the ruins of the broken bridge, then over the still-burning flames and molten, deformed metal on the bridge surface, then over the corpses of the three Holy Spirit Cult Titled Douluo who were already dead, and then over the countless sword marks that Yun Jingheng had slashed into the bridge surface.

Then he saw Zang Xin.

"Are you late?"

Yun Ming spoke, his voice soft and his tone calm.

"It's not too late."

Zang Xin shrugged, a roguish smile playing on his lips.

"You arrived just in time for the wrap-up. If you had come any earlier, the two Heavenly Kings wouldn't have been able to escape. But that's not necessarily a bad thing; it's good to have someone alive."

He paused, his joking expression fading, and his tone became more serious. "The Holy Spirit Cult set up a blood sacrifice anchor point under the bridge. I interrupted the ritual, but the remnants are still there."

"This area needs to be sealed off afterward, and the anchor points must be completely removed, otherwise there will be endless troubles."

Yun Ming nodded slightly, about to say something, when the crimson light behind him arrived.

When Leng Yaozhu emerged from the flames, the temperature above the entire cross-sea bridge changed.

Her Heavenly Phoenix True Fire was contained to almost no extent, but the faint phantom of the Heavenly Phoenix behind her still exuded an aura of majesty that made people dare not look directly at her.

She was wearing a long, crimson dress, her hair casually pulled back. She didn't look like someone who had come from the battlefield; she looked more like a woman who had been woken up by the noise in the middle of the night and had just thrown on a coat before heading out.

But the lingering sharpness in her eyes and the power that subtly emanated from her, enough to incinerate a mountain in an instant, made anyone who saw this "woman who just goes out casually" dare not have any thought of underestimating her.

Her gaze was fixed intently on the flames burning on the bridge.

"Yu Lai..."