Ye Guyi, I Choose You

"100,000 Gold Soul Coins! Sold!" With the fall of the auction hammer, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife was successfully sold.

Seeing that the Soul Devouring Carving Knife had not gone unsold, the professional smile on the qipao-clad auctioneer's face gained a touch of genuine sincerity.

The qipao-clad woman thought happily, Thank goodness someone bought this Soul Devouring Carving Knife in the last five seconds. Otherwise, my performance rating would have taken a hit. That was close, so close.

As an auctioneer, her salary was closely tied to the transactions of auction items. The higher the selling price, the greater her commission. If an item went unsold, there would likewise be penalties.

Therefore, what she least wanted to see was an item failing to sell.

While the qipao-clad auctioneer was celebrating the fact that the Soul Devouring Carving Knife had not gone unsold,

the Soul Engineers attending this auction were all rather astonished.

Some Soul Engineers exclaimed, "Someone actually dared to buy a vicious weapon like the Soul Devouring Carving Knife that backfires on its owner? They really aren't afraid of death."

"It's probably another brat who thinks he can tame the Soul Devouring Carving Knife. He really doesn't know his own limits—he must be tired of living."

Other Soul Engineers even joked with their companions in their private rooms. "I'd like to see how long this owner of the Soul Devouring Carving Knife can survive under its curse."

Amid the discussions of the many Soul Engineers,

the qipao-clad woman hosting the auction said with a smile, "Congratulations to this honored guest for winning the Soul Devouring Carving Knife. Please bring out the next item: a seventh-level Soul Tool, the Storm Howl Cannon!"

As the auction continued in an orderly fashion,

inside the private room,

Wang Chen could not help but feel greatly surprised that he had obtained the Soul Devouring Carving Knife so easily.

He had originally thought someone would bid against him.

Afraid that he would not have enough money, he had even swallowed his pride and borrowed 1,000,000 Gold Soul Coins from Meng Hongchen, the little rich girl.

Who would have thought that he would settle it with just 100,000 Gold Soul Coins in the end? It felt like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.

However, Wang Chen would never think that being thoroughly prepared was a bad thing, nor did he believe that preparing 1,000,000 Gold Soul Coins had been unnecessary.

That was simply the kind of person he was. He gave everything his all and did his utmost. If he had prepared only 100,000 Gold Soul Coins, then should anything unexpected happen, or should someone else join the bidding, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife would have slipped through his fingers.

By then, it would be too late for regretful tears.

Having secured the Soul Devouring Carving Knife, Wang Chen let out a breath of relief. His goal for this trip had been achieved. All he had to do was wait for the auction to end, pay the money, complete the final transaction, and return to the family estate.

Wang Chen thought to himself, I'll return the 1,000,000 Gold Soul Coins to little Meng Hongchen later. I never expected the Soul Devouring Carving Knife to be so unpopular in the Sun and Moon Empire. Not a single Soul Engineer even joined the bidding. This was a real bargain.

And indeed, there was a reason no one in the Sun and Moon Empire wanted the Soul Devouring Carving Knife.

The Soul Engineers who needed it were not strong enough to suppress it.

Meanwhile, powerful Soul Engineers capable of resisting the Soul Devouring Carving Knife already possessed excellent carving knives. They had no need for a vicious blade like this that could backfire on its owner.

Thus, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife gradually became ignored in the Sun and Moon Empire.

Otherwise, given its power, its starting bid could never have been only 100,000 Gold Soul Coins.

Before long, the auction ended.

Soon afterward, an auction house staff member respectfully knocked on Wang Chen's private room door. He carefully placed the Soul Devouring Carving Knife in an exquisite box and presented it to Wang Chen.

The staff member said, "Honored guest, this is the Soul Devouring Carving Knife you won. Please inspect it.

"Once you have finished checking and confirming it, please pay the full amount. Then this Soul Devouring Carving Knife will belong to you.

"There are several precautions regarding the Soul Devouring Carving Knife that we need to inform you of.

"First, as long as you do not inject Soul Power or Spiritual Power into it, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife will not backfire on its owner.

"Second, before using it, we recommend having someone stand guard nearby..."

After listening to the staff member, Wang Chen took the box and carefully examined its contents, confirming that everything was correct.

Wang Chen took out a card worth 100,000 Gold Soul Coins from his Soul Tool and handed it to the staff member.

Once the transaction was complete, the staff member said with a smile, "Congratulations, honored guest. From this moment onward, this Soul Devouring Carving Knife belongs to you.

"If you wish to leave the Sun and Moon Auction House, we recommend departing through the passage inside the private room. That will ensure your safety to the greatest extent possible."

Clearly, the Sun and Moon Auction House had taken personal security extremely seriously.

After saying that, the staff member respectfully withdrew and closed the door behind him.

Wang Chen stored the Soul Devouring Carving Knife in his Storage Soul Tool and waited in the private room for a while longer.

About a quarter of an hour later, the two guards he had sent away returned to the auction house with the items they had bought. After entering the private room, they handed the items to Wang Chen.

Smiling, they said to Wang Chen, "Young Master, everything has been bought."

Wang Chen nodded, stood up, and left the auction house with the guards through the private room passage.

Then, Wang Chen and the guards boarded a Soul Tool vehicle and headed toward the Wang Family. Along the way, Wang Chen watched Mingdu's nighttime scenery while considering how to erase the evil intent and curse within the Soul Devouring Carving Knife.

Although a Soul Tool vehicle was not as fast as a Flying Soul Tool, it was still quite speedy. As for why they did not use a Flying Soul Tool, it was naturally because flight was prohibited in Mingdu's central district.

Anyone daring to fly around in Mingdu's central district, a place filled with high-ranking officials and nobles, would immediately be arrested by the Soul Engineer Corps responsible for defense.

Of course, if you were a Ninth Level Soul Engineer or some other big shot with immense strength and high status, then you could do whatever you wanted. Otherwise... it was better to keep a low profile.

Before long, Wang Chen and his group returned to the Wang Family. Wang Chen then dismissed the guards and returned home alone.

After returning home, Wang Chen greeted Wang's Father and Wang's Mother, then immediately went upstairs and entered his bedroom.

Once inside, Wang Chen eagerly shut the door, took the Soul Devouring Carving Knife from his Storage Soul Tool, placed it on the table, and began studying it carefully.

Naturally, throughout the examination, Wang Chen kept the staff member's warnings firmly in mind and did not inject Soul Power or Spiritual Power into it.

During the process, Wang Chen could clearly sense the cold, malicious intent hidden within the Soul Devouring Carving Knife, as though it could not wait to kill him.

Wang Chen knew from the original novel that the reason this Soul Devouring Carving Knife backfired on its users was because its original owner had injected evil intent and a curse into it three thousand years ago.

And the original owner of the Soul Devouring Carving Knife had been no minor figure. Not only had he been an exceptionally powerful Evil Soul Master, but he had also been a Ninth Level Soul Engineer.

It was precisely because the Soul Devouring Carving Knife contained its original owner's evil intent and curse that anyone who used it would be attacked.

Wang Chen had two ideas for removing the curse from the Soul Devouring Carving Knife.

The first was to find a Soul Master with a sacred-attribute martial soul and use the sacred attribute's suppression of evil attributes to purify the evil intent and curse within the Soul Devouring Carving Knife, restoring it to its original state.

The second was to find a way to use the Crystal Mark of the Black Book, his cheat, to deduce and perfect a purification-type skill or cultivation technique. Then Wang Chen could erase the evil intent and curse within the Soul Devouring Carving Knife himself.

Once he had an idea, he naturally had to put it into action.

Wang Chen decided to test the second idea first. If it failed, he would begin searching for someone with a sacred-attribute martial soul.

The Black Book's second function, the Crystal Mark ability, was very simple.

He only needed to inject Spiritual Power into it, then place a skill recorded in the Black Book into it, and it could deduce or perfect that skill.

As for the extent to which it could deduce or perfect something, that depended on the skill's potential for development, how incomplete it was, and the strength of the Spiritual Power injected.

Wang Chen did not possess any purification-type skills. As far as he knew, there were no universal purification abilities anywhere on Douluo Continent.

Therefore, he planned to make up a completely nonsensical, trash purification skill first. Then he would use the Crystal Mark's deduction and perfection function to upgrade that trash skill.

As for whether it would work... that depended on whether the garbage he made up could be recognized and recorded by the Black Book.

If the Black Book did not recognize it as a skill and thus failed to record it, then the Crystal Mark would be unusable. At that point, Wang Chen could only abandon the second idea.

In Wang Chen's view, a purification ability was fundamentally about removing energy that one did not want.

As for how exactly to do that... Wang Chen had no idea.

He was only a little Soul Grandmaster. Such profound matters were clearly beyond him.

If creating cultivation techniques and skills were that easy, God King Tang's Mysterious Heaven Skill would not still be so far ahead of everything else on Douluo Continent after all these years.

Wang Chen sat cross-legged on his bed and thought for an entire night, yet he still gained nothing.

The nonsense he had made up was not recognized by the Black Book at all. It simply did not consider what Wang Chen had invented to be a skill, so it was not recorded in the Black Book.

As the morning sunlight of the next day streamed through the window, Wang Chen wearily opened his eyes.

Wang Chen thought with slight melancholy, As expected, I'm not some monstrous genius. Or rather, creating a skill or cultivation technique in a single night that the Black Book would recognize and record was impossible to begin with.

Wang Chen sighed, then turned to look at the Soul Devouring Carving Knife on the table, which radiated a cold and evil aura.

Wang Chen would absolutely not give up on the Soul Devouring Carving Knife, which had been made from Gold of Life.

Gold of Life was incomparably precious, useful even to god-level powerhouses. The Silver Dragon King Gu Yuena used Gold of Life to heal her injuries. The necromancer Undead Scourge Electrolux used Gold of Life to stabilize his divine consciousness.

Gold of Life was useful even to god-level powerhouses, so it was naturally even more effective for ordinary Soul Masters.

As long as an ordinary Soul Master absorbed Gold of Life, their entire being would undergo a complete transformation. Even someone with abnormally poor talent would become an unparalleled genius with the potential to become a god under the effects of Gold of Life.

Furthermore, their physique would be strengthened, their Life Force would become extraordinarily vigorous, and their lifespan would be greatly extended. The benefits were simply too numerous.

Wang Chen was confident that as long as he could absorb the Gold of Life, his essence, energy, and spirit would all undergo a transformation.

His cultivation speed would become faster, he would be able to absorb Soul Rings of greater age, and even going seven times a night would be no problem...

Faced with all these benefits, a minor setback could never shake Wang Chen's determination to absorb the Gold of Life.

Since the second idea had failed, he could only carry out the first.

He would find a Soul Master with a sacred-attribute martial soul to help him purify the evil intent and curse inside the Soul Devouring Carving Knife. In any case, no one on Douluo Continent recognized Gold of Life, so there was nothing to worry about.

Wang Chen got out of bed, put the Soul Devouring Carving Knife from the table back into its box, and tossed it into his Storage Soul Tool.

Wang Chen rubbed his chin, a thoughtful look appearing in his eyes.

Wang Chen remembered clearly that there was a sacred-attribute Soul Master in Mingdu of the Sun and Moon Empire in the original Peerless Tang Sect novel.

Moreover, that sacred-attribute Soul Master possessed an extremely powerful martial soul: the Angel Martial Soul.

The Angel Martial Soul was undoubtedly among the very best of the top-tier martial souls. Its potential was astonishing. It could increase its owner's cultivation by killing Evil Soul Masters, and as long as enough Evil Soul Masters were killed, it could even break through to an extremely high realm in a short time.

Simply put, killing Evil Soul Masters made one stronger.

Wang Chen rubbed his brow and carefully recalled the details.

A moment later, a sharp glint flashed through Wang Chen's eyes as he quickly sorted through the information.

Ye Guyi. Martial soul: Angel.

In the original novel, she first appeared during the Soul Engineer Elite Tournament.

The reason Ye Guyi participated in the Soul Engineer Elite Tournament was that Shangguan Wei'er, leader of the Ordinary Alliance, one of Mingdu's three major underground forces, had invited her to help the Ordinary Alliance win the Soul Engineer Elite Tournament.

Wang Chen rubbed his chin. Since Shangguan Wei'er, the leader of the Ordinary Alliance, knew Ye Guyi, then he needed to visit the Ordinary Alliance.

Wang Chen knew Mingdu's underground forces rather well.

In Mingdu's underworld, there were three primary factions: the largest, the Xishui Alliance, along with the Ordinary Alliance and the Aodu Merchant Guild.

Among them, the Ordinary Alliance controlled all of Mingdu's sex industry and was considered the most publicly visible underground force.

The Aodu Merchant Guild controlled things akin to assassin guilds, thief guilds, and various criminal organizations. It made its living through protection money, assassinations, theft, and other dirty work.

The Xishui Alliance dealt in the underworld's most profitable goods—drugs and weapons—and also trafficked people on the side.

All three underground factions had powerful backers.

The Ordinary Alliance was backed by imperial relatives and nobles—that is, the great aristocratic families.

The Aodu Merchant Guild was backed by the military.

The Xishui Alliance, meanwhile, was backed by the Holy Spirit Cult and was the strongest.

The Ordinary Alliance and the Aodu Merchant Guild had an especially close relationship, faintly giving the impression that they had joined forces against the Xishui Alliance.

The Wang Family was a Marquis family, naturally part of the great aristocratic faction. Though it had no direct ties with the Ordinary Alliance, it could still make contact indirectly.

Especially now that the Wang Family had the Second Prince as its backer, finding the Ordinary Alliance would not be difficult for him.

Wang Chen immediately planned to make use of his connections, seek out some contacts, and find a way to learn Ye Guyi's whereabouts.

Wang Chen thought to himself, Ye Guyi, I choose you!!