Off the Charts

The drop of pure yang blood flung out seemed like a spark falling into a cauldron of boiling oil the instant it touched the flames consuming the scroll's remnants!

Xun Huan, who had been trying to complete the ritual, froze... His twisted body convulsed violently, and his scarlet soul-fire brimmed with incredulous horror!

"No! The sacrifice failed?! This... this can't... Backlash?! Ah!!!"

BOOM!!!!

The Soul-Capturing Porcelain jar floating in midair let out an unprecedentedly shrill scream!

No more white mist poured from its mouth. Instead, it suddenly generated a targeted, irresistible force of terrifying suction!

This force was not indiscriminate. It precisely and violently locked onto Xun Huan's phantom, whose origin had been entwined with its own for more than two hundred years and whose spiritual essence was now in chaos from the ritual's backlash!

Xiao Fan shouted furiously, "You old bastard! The blood I used to burn the scroll wasn't pure—your seal failed!"

Just as he said, the instant he had pricked his finger and drawn blood earlier, he had secretly mixed in his father's blood!

Xiao Fan had won his gamble!

One of the conditions for sealing the Soul-Capturing Porcelain was pure pure-yang blood.

Once the blood was mixed, the seal would fail.

In truth, he had not been certain of his guess. He had simply wagered his life based on Xun Huan's earlier words.

The Soul-Capturing Porcelain's sealing conditions required pure pure-yang blood along with a living sacrifice. Once impurities were mixed in, the seal failed.

Then, he used truly pure blood to recite the Nether Soul-Gnawing Law in reverse and pull off a desperate counterkill at the very limit!

At this moment, Xun Huan's body had long been dismembered and sealed away. The head before him was nowhere near a second-rank existence.

What was more, his head had already been sealed by the Soul-Capturing Porcelain for more than two hundred years. The transcendent spiritual essence within him had been almost completely drained, leaving him utterly powerless to resist the porcelain's force.

"No!!!"

"You... treacherous little beast!"

"You people of Great Liang are all shameless wretches!!!"

"You will not die a go—"

Before he could spit out the word "death," Xun Huan's twisted body struggled madly. His soul-fire flickered wildly as he unleashed a shriek of despair and venomous hatred.

He tried to mobilize the power he had just gathered, but the ritual's backlash and the Soul-Capturing Porcelain's natural suppression of his origin left him like a moth caught in a spiderweb!

The suction grew stronger and stronger, forcibly dragging and warping his phantom...

In the end, his roaring head and spine were seized by an invisible giant hand and savagely, irresistibly dragged back into that pitch-black porcelain mouth!

With a soft pop, the glaze across the porcelain jar rippled, and a relief of a pained, hate-filled frozen human face slowly emerged upon its surface.

The instant Xun Huan was completely dragged back into the jar, a torrent of violent, chaotic information brimming with resentment and an ancient aura crashed into Xiao Fan's mind like a burst dam!

Fragmented images, twisted whispers, profound runes, bone-deep hatred... They drowned him in an instant!

[Name: Soul-Capturing Porcelain]

[Rank: Third Rank]

[Function: Captures souls and resurrects corpses]

[Mutation: Uncontrollably releases death mist, captures every soul within the mist, and resurrects every corpse]

[Seal: Use pure yang blood as the trigger, sacrifice a soul to create a human-skin sealing membrane over the bottle mouth]

[Incantation: Recite the Nether Soul-Gnawing Law...]

[Note: The service life of the human-skin sealing membrane is related to the strength of the sacrificed soul. The stronger the soul, the longer it lasts]

Xiao Fan's mind roared as fragments of information surged in like a tide before receding, leaving behind a cold, central realization...

He had not "obtained" the Soul-Capturing Porcelain. He had used Xun Huan's soul and the properties of his own pure-yang blood to forcibly create a temporary seal!

This porcelain bottle was a scalding-hot potato—and even more, a death warrant!

Almost instinctively, he hissed at the Soul-Capturing Porcelain floating in midair, its human-face sealing membrane at the mouth faintly writhing, "Withdraw the mist!"

Buzz!

The Soul-Capturing Porcelain trembled violently. The "sealing membrane" formed from Xun Huan's frozen face twisted in agony and opened an invisible enormous mouth.

The deathly white mist rolling across the sky was swallowed by an invisible giant whale, forming a violent vortex as it poured madly toward the bottle mouth!

The moment the white mist reversed course, an icy, viscous aura filled with malice stabbed fiercely through that invisible connection and into the arm Xiao Fan used to grip the porcelain bottle!

Calamity Poison Value... +1... +3... +5... His Calamity Poison Value soared again!

"Holy fucking hell!" Xiao Fan cried out in fright!

The golden scales on his chest seemed to have received a fatal stimulus and began growing without end...

The edges of the hard scales were like sharp blades, cutting viciously into the flesh around them. Blood instantly soaked through the front of his clothes!

The indescribable agony made his vision blacken, and he could barely hold onto the icy porcelain bottle.

He could clearly feel something cold traveling through his blood vessels, trying to erode his heart and brain!

Drip!

When the final wisp of ghastly white mist was drawn into the porcelain bottle, the pained human-face sealing membrane abruptly clamped shut, sealing the bottle mouth tight.

The canyon's cold dead silence was scattered by the night wind, revealing its original desolate landscape.

"Se... sealed!"

His entire body was soaked in cold sweat and blood. The agony and the icy sensation of Calamity Poison eroding him made his teeth chatter.

[Calamity Poison Value: 118/100]

...It had already gone off the charts, but thankfully, the value had stopped soaring.

Because the Calamity Poison Value had exceeded its limit, the scales on his chest continued to grow and cut into him, slowly yet relentlessly. Every breath tugged at the wounds on his chest, bringing tearing pain.

"Ha... ha..." He panted heavily, not daring to look at that life-threatening Calamity artifact again. All he wanted was to throw it as far away as possible.

But reason told him that this thing was like a time bomb... No, a ticking nuclear bomb! Once it went out of control, the consequences would be unimaginable.

He absolutely could not just toss it away...

Just then, another mutation arose!

The Soul-Capturing Porcelain clenched in his hand suddenly began to swell and contract violently and irregularly, as if something inside were struggling and crashing about madly!

The bottle gave off teeth-grating creaks, while the human-face sealing membrane twisted to the utmost limit, nearly splitting apart!

"What's going on?!"

Xiao Fan was horrified. Could Xun Huan still not be completely dead? Or was this Calamity artifact about to backlash against him on the spot?!

Pop! Pop!

With two soft sounds, two objects were forcibly "spat" out from the "mouth and nose" of the human-face sealing membrane, which had yet to fully solidify, and fell to the ground.

One was an ancient dark-gold ring. Set into its face was an amber gem that seemed to contain flowing quicksand, and a tiny character for "child" was engraved upon it.

The other was a palm-sized, dull gray bag of indiscernible material, its surface dim and lusterless.

After spitting out these two "foreign objects," the restless Soul-Capturing Porcelain seemed to have exhausted all its strength and instantly fell silent.

"Could these... be things Xun Huan hid deep within the source of his soul? Were they forcibly stripped out by the Soul-Capturing Porcelain?"

Xiao Fan endured the pain, his heart full of uncertainty and shock.

He had no time to inspect them closely. He only wanted to leave this damned place as quickly as possible.

He tried bringing the dull gray bag close to the dark-gold ring.

A strange scene unfolded!

When the opening of the bag touched the ring, the ring vanished without a sound.

When he touched the Soul-Capturing Porcelain with it next, that heart-palpitating Calamity artifact was instantly taken into the bag as well!

[Name: Essence-Storing Pouch (Damaged)]

[Rank: Seventh Rank (Originally Fifth Rank, degraded due to damage)]

[Function: Stores items; anyone other than its owner cannot retrieve them]

[Binding: Bound to a soul. It can have only one owner at a time. After the previous owner's soul scatters and vanishes, it may be bound to a new owner]

The pouch's previous owner had naturally been Xun Huan. Now that Xun Huan was gone... Xiao Fan casually took over!

"This is good stuff—a storage divine artifact!"