Yue Guan dropped to his knees with a thud, both hands clawing desperately at the cold marble floor. His nails broke, but he didn't even notice.
"Old Ghost..."
Yue Guan wailed, sobbing until his heart seemed to tear apart.
He would rather have seen that Double-Headed Main Soul swallow Gui Mei in one bite and put him out of his misery.
He couldn't bear to see his old brother of decades reduced to this soul-devouring demon just to stay alive.
From the moment Gui Mei took that first bite,
the Ghost Douluo of the Douluo Continent had already died.
All that remained was a newborn monster inside the Soul Banner.
Bibi Dong sat on her throne, every trace of color drained from her exquisitely beautiful face.
She closed her eyes, and a tear slipped from their corners.
Even she, proud as she was, felt a profound sense of helplessness at that moment.
Inside a magical treasure from that higher-dimensional world, even death had become a luxury. The soul's descent into depravity was the cruelest punishment of all.
On screen,
Gui Mei completely devoured the fragment of a soul.
A faint energy spread through his body, lending some solidity to the form that had turned transparent.
He let go and wiped the black mist clinging to the corners of his mouth.
Gui Mei lifted his head. His eyes, once human, had changed completely.
The whites had turned gray-black, and his pupils glimmered with the same scarlet light as the surrounding demons.
The tears on his face had dried.
When he looked again at the gray mist all around him, there was no longer any fear in his eyes.
In its place was the greed of a hunter eyeing its prey.
He slowly sank into the shadows and began prowling along the edge of the mist.
This time, he wasn't simply fleeing. He was searching for weaker remnant souls, ready to strike when the chance came.
His transformation was complete.
Just as the viewers on the Douluo Continent thought Gui Mei would spend the rest of his days surviving in this slaughterhouse,
the gray space inside the Soul Banner suddenly shook violently.
"Rumble!"
A thunderous boom erupted above the entire space.
All the gray mist churned frantically, as if summoned by some unseen force.
The wronged souls who had been fighting among themselves all stopped. They raised their heads, their eyes filled with instinctive awe and terror.
Gui Mei halted his hunt, ducked behind a stone formed from mist, and looked up.
A huge crack suddenly split open in the gray sky.
A pillar of dark red light shone down through the fissure, striking the center of the space.
Then the hoarse, sinister voice of the hunchbacked elder traveled down the pillar of light and echoed through the space.
"An outside enemy has violated the borders of our Soul Refining Sect! My boys, it's time to feast on flesh and blood!"
"Come out of the banner and kill for me!"
At the hunchbacked elder's command,
the rift in space instantly widened several times over.
An irresistible force of suction poured in from beyond the rift.
It wasn't trying to destroy them. It was trying to release them!
The hundred thousand wronged souls in the space seemed to have heard the sweetest immortal music in the world.
They shrieked piercingly, jostling to turn into streaks of black light and surge through the dark red pillar, toward the rift.
Swept up among the countless souls, Gui Mei's body was pulled helplessly into the air.
His scarlet eyes reflected the scene beyond the rift.
The sky was stained red by the fires of war.
Countless dazzling magical treasures clashed in midair, and multicolored spell light illuminated the night as bright as day.
On the ground lay shattered corpses and rivers of blood.
A battle between cultivation sects!
Everyone on the Douluo Continent gasped at the sight.
At last, they understood what made the Hundred Thousand Soul Banners truly terrifying.
The demons that had devoured one another inside the banner, growing ferociously bloodthirsty, were an unstoppable natural disaster for any living person outside once they were released.
Gui Mei shot out of the Soul Banner along the pillar of light.
The moment he touched the fresh air outside and smelled the thick scent of blood permeating it,
the bloodlust inside him blazed to life.
Just as Gui Mei lunged at a severely wounded low-level cultivator, the image on the Sky Screen flickered.
Ripples, like those on water, spread across the center of the screen.
Just as everyone thought the screen was about to go dark,
the image did not stop. Instead, it slowly and smoothly spread like ink in water.
The scene changed in the midst of that wash of color.
The view shifted smoothly from the battlefield awash in blood to a quiet place.
There were no cries of battle, no thunderous clashes of magical treasures.
Only the cool night wind swept through the falling snow, whispering softly.
It was that same mortal city buried beneath heavy snowfall.
In the woodcarving shop's back courtyard, snow had piled above the ankles.
Yue Guan still knelt in the snow, covering his face with both hands. His shoulders shuddered with each silent sob.
The sorrowful aura spreading from the woodcarving shop had not weakened. It had grown even more intense.
This sorrow was pure and clean, untouched by the baleful energy of the Cultivation World, yet it had a power that struck deeper into the heart than any magical treasure.
Under the aura's influence,
Yue Guan felt the Soul Power he had just raised to level ninety-six being swept up in the same emotion.
The phantom of the Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum Martial Soul appeared behind him of its own accord.
Usually, this golden chrysanthemum radiated sharpness and nobility.
But now, amid the falling snow and in the face of such profound sorrow,
the golden petals slowly drooped.
The sharp aura that embodied attack and defense peeled away from the Martial Soul bit by bit, like smoke blown away by the wind.
Yue Guan slowly lifted his head. His tear-streaked face revealed a look of sudden understanding.
"I was wrong..."
Yue Guan gazed at the Martial Soul suspended in midair, his voice hoarse.
"Flowers are delicate. They bloom in keeping with the seasons and wither when the seasons turn against them."
"I forced it to wear hard armor and gave it sharp edges to kill. I was defying its most fundamental nature."
Washed in the aura of Wang Lin's great Dao, "extreme devotion to emotion," this Titled Douluo finally understood the true essence of his Martial Soul.
As understanding dawned on him,
the gold of the Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum completely faded, turning a translucent jade white.
It had lost the piercing edge that once made people afraid to look at it directly.
But now the Martial Soul possessed a supple, unending vitality, as if it could bloom again come spring even after being buried beneath snow and ice.
The top experts of the Douluo Continent watched Yue Guan's Martial Soul transform, all sinking into deep thought.
Sword Douluo Chen Xin ran his fingers over the Seven Kill Sword in his hand, a glimmer of light flashing in his eyes.
"Set aside your edge and follow the great Dao..."
Chen Xin murmured, his voice touched with emotion.
"This Shopkeeper Wang is not only a mighty expert who has kept his abilities hidden."
"He is also a peerless master who can enlighten others through his own state of mind."
After witnessing the Soul Banner's extreme cruelty,
this quiet woodcarving shop was like a candle in the dark, giving everyone from the Douluo Continent a spiritual shock unlike anything they had ever experienced.
The Cultivation World wasn't all about killing and seizing treasures.
It also held tenderness and the great Dao, capable of stirring an echo from heaven and earth.
Just as Yue Guan completed the transformation of his Martial Soul,
all five screens in the sky suddenly flashed with blinding red light!
Everyone knew that red light all too well.
It foretold a major upheaval or the start of another round of teleportation!
But only a day had passed since the Fourth Batch of Explorers had been sent over!
The Sky Screen's prescribed recovery period hadn't even been reached.
That grand, icy voice rang across the entire sky of the Douluo Continent, its authority admitting no argument.
[Energy fluctuations in the Renegade Immortal World have become intense. World fusion procedure accelerated.] [To adapt to the collision of higher-dimensional laws, the exploration rules for this round have been temporarily changed.] [The fifth batch of forced transport candidates will now be selected!] [This selection will directly target the core bearers of fate on the Douluo Continent. Number of candidates: three.]
As soon as these lines of blood-red text appeared,
the entire Douluo Continent fell into a deathly silence, then erupted in barely contained panic.
Core bearers of fate?
What did that mean? Were they going to scoop up all the top figures on the Douluo Continent at once?
Inside the Pope Palace, Bibi Dong shot to her feet, her face deathly pale.
On Sea God Island, Bo Saixi gripped her scepter, her brows knitted tight.
On the Shrek Academy training ground,
Tang San's heart skipped a beat, and a powerful sense of danger instantly enveloped him.
The countdown on the Sky Screen gave no one a moment to catch their breath.
Red light gathered frantically in the air.
The huge countdown numbers kept changing overhead. Every tick landed like a heavy hammer on the hearts of everyone on the Douluo Continent.
[Thirty seconds until the fifth selection begins.]
The icy voice echoed through the air.
In the training ground of Shrek Academy in Fasinuo Province, the night wind swept by, kicking up clouds of dust.
No one spoke.
Tang San stood at the very front. Cold sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped into the dirt.
His hands clenched into fists.
Core bearers of fate... Tang San turned the words over and over in his mind.
He had a very bad feeling.
The previous selections had all been random. Anyone could be chosen, whether they were a commoner, a Soul Master, or a Soul Beast.
But this time, the Sky Screen had changed the rules outright, targeting top figures blessed with great fortune.
Who on the Douluo Continent could claim to be a core bearer of fate?
The rulers of the two great empires? The leaders of the major sects? Or the peak experts of the Spirit Hall?
Or perhaps a genius like him, who possessed Twin Martial Souls?
Tang San didn't dare think any further. He turned to look at Xiao Wu beside him, his eyes full of worry.
Flender wiped the sweat from his face, breathing heavily.
"This is bad." Flender sighed, his voice trembling slightly.
"If they take away all the pillars of our continent, what will we have left to defend ourselves against unknown dangers?"
Spirit City, Pope Palace.
Bibi Dong stood at the top of the steps, gripping her scepter so tightly it creaked.
Her beautiful eyes were clouded with gloom.
"Accelerating the process... core bearers of fate..." Bibi Dong bit her red lip, staring intently at the sky.
She had spent years plotting to unify the continent and considered herself one of the most fortunate people on it.
If the Sky Screen chose her and sent her to that Cultivation World, where even Titled Douluo had to sweep floors and hundred-thousand-year Soul Beasts had to pull carriages,
all her ambitions and aspirations would come to nothing.
She might not even survive the first day.
At the center of the hall, Qian Daoliu wore a grave expression as well.
The Peerless Douluo stood with his hands behind his back, gazing up at the light screen.
"What must come will come." Qian Daoliu murmured softly, as if reassuring himself, or preparing himself for what lay ahead.
Sea God Island.
Bo Saixi stood beneath the Sea God Pillar, the sea breeze stirring her red robes.
She raised her head, deep helplessness showing on her exquisitely beautiful face.
"Lord Sea God..." Bo Saixi prayed silently in her heart.
If the Sky Screen really has chosen me, please protect the people of Sea God Island.
Across the entire continent, whether on the bustling streets of Heaven Dou City, inside the heavily guarded imperial palace of the Star Luo Empire, or in remote villages—
Everyone felt an unprecedented suffocation beneath the pressure of the countdown.
Time ticked by, bit by bit.
[Three.] [Two.] [One.] [Countdown complete. The names have been confirmed!]
Accompanied by that grand voice,
the blood-red light on the Sky Screen suddenly contracted, then split in midair into three enormous scrolls.
Three clear lines of text, carrying an undeniable authority, slowly appeared before the eyes of the continent's ten billion inhabitants.
On the first screen—
[First: Spirit Hall's Great Enshrined, level ninety-nine Peerless Douluo, Qian Daoliu!]
As soon as the name appeared,
Spirit City erupted into an uproar.
Inside the Pope Palace, several enshrined elders gaped in disbelief.
"The Great Enshrined was chosen!"
Golden Crocodile Douluo sucked in a sharp breath, staggering a step.
Qian Daoliu himself, however, seemed relatively calm.
He looked at his name on the screen, a wry smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
"Looks like these old bones of mine will have to take a trip to that Cultivation World."
Qian Daoliu turned and glanced at Bibi Dong, who stood on the steps. Then he looked toward Douluo Hall, where his granddaughter, Qian Renxue, was.
"Perhaps that's for the best. If I can find some opportunity in that world, I might be able to help Xue'er."
Right after that, the second screen lit up.
[Second: A plant-type Soul Beast on the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest, Ten-Year Solitary Bamboo!]
When everyone saw those words,
the entire continent fell into a brief stupor.
On the grounds of Shrek Academy, Oscar rubbed his eyes, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing.
"A... a Ten-Year Solitary Bamboo?"
Oscar turned to Tang San, his face full of confusion.
"Isn't this Solitary Bamboo just the most common weed-like Soul Beast you'd find by the roadside? It doesn't have any attack power. One kick would crush it."
"Didn't the Sky Screen say it was choosing people with core destiny? What kind of destiny could a ten-year-old bamboo have?"
Tang San furrowed his brow as well, shaking his head in bewilderment.
Everyone was dumbfounded by the Sky Screen's sudden contrast.
One second it was a level-ninety-nine Peerless Douluo; the next, it had chosen a wretched ten-year-old bamboo.
The Sky Screen's selection criteria seemed like a joke.
However, before everyone could make sense of this Solitary Bamboo,
the third screen—the largest one in the very center—suddenly burst into a dazzling blue-gold light.
The light was pure and vast, carrying a sacred aura that made people want to fall to their knees and worship.
A line of golden text slowly took shape within the glow.
[Third: A First-level God from the Divine Realm, Sea God!]