Soul-Chasing Seal? That's Just My Reinforcement Material!

Soul-Chasing Seal? That Was Just My Enhancement Material! Zhao Hao tore open his lapel and lowered his head to look at his chest.

The blood-red mark was the size of a palm and shaped like a vicious ghost, branded into his skin. It was still writhing slightly, radiating a bone-piercing chill that sank deep into his soul.

What made his scalp crawl even more was the feeling of being locked onto.

It was as if, from ten thousand miles away, a pair of cold, merciless eyes was staring fixedly at him, pronouncing the date of his death.

Zhao Hao did not hesitate for even a moment. He drew all the fierce ghosts that were about to scatter and flee into the Soul Summoning Banner.

Behind him, the headless corpse, the severed arm, and the head that had rolled away had already been swallowed by a fireball spell and burned to ash.

With one sweep, he rolled up the pale Ten Thousand Soul Banner on the ground along with the storage pouch. Zhao Hao did not even glance at Li Song, who had collapsed in fright inside the City Lord's Estate.

He directly activated the Ghost Bone Sword beneath his feet, turned into a streak of black flowing light, and deliberately shot through the air in the exact opposite direction from Ten Thousand Immortal City.

This was a psychological contest. He had to mislead any possible pursuers and buy himself more time to escape with his life.

After flying several dozen li in one breath, as he passed over a stretch of continuous mountains, Zhao Hao's figure suddenly sank without the slightest warning.

The perfect-realm Earth Escape Art!

His entire body seemed to merge into the earth. Without stirring up even a speck of dust, he silently sank into the solid ground.

Deep underground, there was only dead silence.

Zhao Hao dove a full five li in one breath. Endless earth and stone surrounded him, and the heavy pressure was enough to crush an ordinary Qi Refining cultivator into meat paste.

But to him, this place brought an unprecedented peace.

There was no other reason. Even a peak Golden Core cultivator, if they probed underground with divine sense, could at most investigate three li down.

He was in no hurry to open up a cave abode. Instead, he directly sat cross-legged, suspended within the earth and stone, and immediately summoned the pale golden screen only he could see.

In the [Status] column, the three words [Soul-Chasing Seal] were like a violently poisonous tumor, emitting an ominous glow.

Take it head-on? That was courting death.

But who said he had to take it head-on?

Zhao Hao's thoughts swept swiftly across the system panel and finally stopped on a spell he had just bought from Hundred Treasures Pavilion—[Yin Soul Nail].

With a thought, he directly dragged the spell [Yin Soul Nail] into the enhancement frame for [Main Item].

[Main Item: Yin Soul Nail (Proficient 0/200) Enhance to (Minor Achievement 0/400)]

[Please insert consumed materials...]

Here it came!

Zhao Hao's thoughts precisely locked onto that scarlet entry in the [Status] column.

[Soul-Chasing Seal]!

He tried to drag it with his consciousness.

It worked!

That deadly mark was actually like an item, forcibly dragged out of the status column by him, swaying as it fell into the frame for [Consumed Materials]!

The next second, the prompt on the panel refreshed.

[Enhancement Success Rate: 100%]

Looking at that number, Zhao Hao smiled.

This so-called Soul-Chasing Seal contained a wisp of a cultivator's pure divine will. Its "value" was comparable to a Foundation Establishment spell at minor achievement.

Using it as a consumable to pad the blade was more than enough!

"Confirm enhancement!"

He did not hesitate in the slightest.

[Ding! Enhancement successful! Yin Soul Nail proficiency raised to (Minor Achievement 0/400)!]

The instant the system prompt sounded, Zhao Hao felt the bone-piercing chill in his chest, along with that fatal sensation of being stared at by the god of death, abruptly vanish like smoke and clouds!

As if it had never appeared at all!

At the same time, a vast and pure wave of soul-path comprehension, mixed with a cultivator's methods for applying the power of the divine soul, flooded into his mind like a deluge.

The secret art [Yin Soul Nail] directly reached minor achievement!

"Whew..."

Zhao Hao let out a long breath of turbid air. The great threat gnawing at his heart and belly had been removed.

But his taut nerves did not relax in the slightest. Instead, he immediately poured out all the spoils he had just seized.

Inside that black-robed demonic cultivator's storage pouch, there were not many spirit stones, only a scant few thousand, but all kinds of ghost-refining materials had piled up into a small mountain.

He did not even look at them. He directly swept everything, storage pouch included, wholesale into the materials column.

This time, his target was another spoil of battle—the top-grade first-tier magic artifact he had seized from Jia Ren, which had now harvested another group of fierce ghosts: the Soul Summoning Banner!

[Main Item: Soul Summoning Banner (Top-Grade First Tier) Enhance to (Low-Grade Second Tier)]

[Materials consumed:...]

[Enhancement success rate: 80%]

"Still not enough?"

Zhao Hao frowned, then took out the first-tier supreme-grade artifact he had only just obtained, the Ten Thousand Soul Banner that had yet to even warm in his hands, and threw it in as well.

[Enhancement success rate: 100%]

"Enhance!"

Light flashed. The once utterly unremarkable Soul Summoning Banner suddenly had the black qi on its surface turn incomparably deep, with strands of mysterious runes flowing across the banner, and a fluctuation far surpassing that of a magic tool spread outward.

The Soul Summoning Banner had successfully advanced to a second-tier low-grade spiritual artifact!

After finishing all this, he cast the Earth Escape Art again and continued descending.

Six li... seven li!

Seven li underground, he changed direction and fled more than a hundred li before finally stopping. Then he opened up a cramped cave abode that could fit only one person and restrained every trace of his aura to the utmost.

Like a stubborn stone sinking into the deep sea.

At the same time.

Ten thousand li away, inside a grand palace wreathed in eerie ghost qi.

Ten Thousand Soul Hall.

A middle-aged man in black-and-gold robes, his face dark and sinister, sat cross-legged atop an altar piled from countless wailing skulls, the corners of his mouth curling with interest.

He was the Ninth Elder of Ten Thousand Soul Hall, Li Mingyuan, a mid-stage Golden Core cultivator, and the duty elder who had been in rotation for the past ten years.

Before him, a Brass Compass forged from copper essence and covered in bizarre runes suddenly gave a "click."

At the center of the compass, the speck of light that had originally been flickering with a faint red glow went out completely.

"The Soul-Chasing Seal... was erased?"

A hint of astonishment first flashed across Li Mingyuan's face. Immediately after, a fury so terrifying that it made the entire hall tremble violently erupted from his body with a boom!

The Soul-Chasing Seal was a secret art of Ten Thousand Soul Hall, fused with a cultivator's original divine sense. Forget a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator—even an early-stage Golden Core cultivator, once marked by it, would have no chance of erasing it in a short time!

Unless... the other party possessed some secret treasure capable of cutting off the heavenly secrets, or... had used some forbidden method he did not know!

But no matter which it was, to him, to Ten Thousand Soul Hall, it was a colossal humiliation!

"Good! Very good!"

Li Mingyuan laughed from sheer anger, his voice icy and sinister.

"This Seat would like to see exactly which thing that does not know life from death dares to touch a disciple of my Ten Thousand Soul Hall, and even dares to erase the Soul-Chasing Seal!"

His figure vanished from the altar in an instant.

In the next breath, he had already appeared outside the mountain gate of Ten Thousand Soul Hall.

He did not ride any artifact. His figure merely flickered, and he transformed into a black streak of light so fast it reached the extreme, tearing through the sky as he shot toward Blackstone City in an instant.