The inner circle of Star Dou Forest.
The air was so thick it seemed ready to drip. The heavy stench of blood mingled with the Man Faced Demon Spider's distinctive sweet, rotting reek, making one want to retch.
"Damn it! I'm so close!"
Tang San knelt in the mire, gasping for breath.
Spider silk had carved a deep wound down to the bone in his right arm. The venom's corrosive effects had turned the entire limb a bizarre blue-purple.
Yet in his bloodshot eyes burned an almost crazed fixation.
The Man Faced Demon Spider before him, nearly two thousand years old, was also at the end of its rope.
Two of its spear-like legs were broken, and the human-face markings on its abdomen had twisted and blurred under the impact of the Mysterious Heaven Skill.
"Once I absorb this Soul Ring, once I get stronger—!!"
Tang San reached back for Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges, his fingertips already touching his last Godly Zhuge Crossbow.
At that moment, with life and death hanging by a thread and victory about to be decided, a golden rift suddenly split open without warning in the sky above the gloomy forest!
"BOOM—!"
A pillar of golden light, pure and sacred, accompanied by rolling thunder, descended from the heavens. Like a Sword of Judgment, it pierced through layer upon layer of treetops in an instant.
Then a figure clad in snow-white robes, not a speck of dust on even the hem, stepped out of the void alongside the phantom image of an angel.
It was Su Yun.
He hadn't even truly activated his Martial Soul. Simply relying on the Judgment Angel's overbearing pressure, he froze the air within a hundred meters solid.
"Crack!"
A sharp, heart-stopping fracture rang out.
One of Su Yun's feet came down squarely on the Man Faced Demon Spider's hardest head shell.
Its head armor could withstand a Soul Ancestor's full-force attack, yet beneath Su Yun's foot it was as fragile as a freshly hatched eggshell. It shattered at once, spraying pulp and fragments everywhere.
The forest's killer, the Man Faced Demon Spider, was dead on the spot!
As the dust slowly settled, Su Yun gracefully lifted his foot and lightly waved his Ivory Folding Fan. He even had time to flick nonexistent dust from his sleeve.
He turned slightly toward Tang San, who stood dumbstruck and covered in blood not far away, and flashed him a radiant smile, as if greeting an old friend.
"Well, if it isn't Little San! What a coincidence, running into you here. Are you doing volunteer work in the forest, or did you come all this way just to play in the mud?"
Tang San's expression was beyond mere astonishment.
His eyes nearly bulged from their sockets as he stared fixedly at the spider's corpse, now reduced to mush, his mind a complete blank.
"That was... my prey..."
Tang San's voice turned shrill and grating with rage and weakness. He sprang to his feet, swayed, and roared:
"Su Yun! You despicable scoundrel! I'd already crippled it! I nearly lost my life fighting it! What gives you the right to steal my Soul Beast?!"
Seeing Tang San beside himself with fury, Su Yun didn't get angry. Instead, he put on a look of concern, as if he'd done it all for Tang San's sake.
"Tsk, tsk. Little San, how can you talk like that to your savior?"
Su Yun shrugged, his tone leisurely:
"I was patrolling from high above when I happened to see this evil spider preparing to ambush you with its web.
"I saw we were classmates, so I reluctantly descended with divine punishment and rescued you from danger. That's justice in action, understand? No need to thank me. I've been kind-hearted since I was a kid. I can't stand seeing the weak get bullied."
"You... you shameless bastard!"
Tang San was so angry his lungs felt ready to burst.
He'd clearly had the upper hand. One more strike and he could have finished it. Su Yun was brazenly lying through his teeth!
"Pfft—!"
Enraged, and with his injuries flaring up, Tang San could no longer hold back the stagnant blood in his body. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the pile of dead leaves in front of him, his face turning from pale to deathly white.
"Oh dear, why are you spitting blood? Didn't Grandmaster teach you to keep a level head?"
Su Yun laughed mockingly, then sat cross-legged beside the spider's corpse.
"Since you're so weak, I'll gladly accept this Soul Ring and whatever other opportunities are left. After all, wasting things is a terrible crime."
With that, Su Yun closed his eyes in front of Tang San.
A thousand-year Soul Ring, so dark a purple it was nearly black and radiating a dense aura of evil, rose from the spider's corpse. Golden holy light instantly enveloped it.
Tang San stared fixedly at Su Yun. He could feel something that should have belonged to him, something of immense importance to his destiny, rapidly slipping away as Su Yun absorbed the Soul Ring.
The next moment, a strange scene unfolded.
As the Soul Ring merged with him, deafening roars of dragons and cries of phoenixes erupted from Su Yun's spine.
The External Soul Bone produced by the Man Faced Demon Spider should have been eight sinister, venomous, dark-purple lances covered in barbs—a symbol of evil and slaughter.
But under the assimilation of Su Yun's god-tier Martial Soul, the Judgment Angel, and the system's unreasonable purifying power, that evil aura was instantly washed away!
"Vmmm—!"
The pristine school uniform on Su Yun's back tore apart in an instant.
There was no bloody bone jutting out as expected. Instead, eight golden spheres of light, bright as the sun, coalesced in the air.
Then eight sacred, pure golden Wings of Light, covered in countless fine feathers, slowly unfurled behind him!
Each wing radiated waves that purified all things, illuminating the shadowy forest around him until it looked like heaven.
[ Ding! Key plot intercepted: Man Faced Demon Spider External Soul Bone! ]
[ System purification successful. External Soul Bone evolved into: Six-Winged Angel · Wings of Light (Pseudo, maximum of eight wings as the host's level increases)! ]
[ Due to the host's extremely brutal act of stealing, Tang San's Luck Value has fallen by 500 points! ]
The moment the sacred wings unfurled, Tang San let out a heart-rending scream in the distance.
He dropped to his knees, both hands digging into the dirt.
He felt as though the most important bone in his body had been ground apart and torn out with a dull knife.
That emptiness, that pain of losing the very core of his soul, made his sea of consciousness shudder violently.
He looked at the sacred Wings of Light behind Su Yun, and a bone-deep inferiority and jealousy swallowed him whole.
Why?
Those should have been mine!!!
"Su Yun... I... you..."
Before Tang San could finish speaking, the backlash of the plane, as his destiny was forcibly snatched away, made his head spin. He couldn't hold on any longer. His vision went black, and he collapsed limply into the muddy water, fainting on the spot.
Su Yun slowly opened his eyes, feeling the extreme speed and strength the Wings of Light brought him. A wicked curve tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Whew, this backbone really does feel better than the original."
He glanced at Tang San, who lay motionless on the ground, slapped the dust from his backside, and stood up. Then he pulled out that Diary again.
[Today's check-in: Star Dou Forest.]
[Results: One Man Faced Demon Spider Soul Ring, one pair of god-tier Wings of Light.]
[And, as a bonus, I got a certain "pure and immaculate" Son of the Plane to spit up a mouthful of blood. Tsk, tsk. What a beautiful shade of red.]
"Let's go, Xiao Wu. I'll take you to see the sights in the core area."
Su Yun tucked away the diary, took Xiao Wu's hand—she was still staring in shock—and beat his wings. He shot into the sky as a streak of light, leaving behind nothing but chaos and a protagonist who had become a laughingstock!
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