Not only Mental Detection, but even their Mental Power failed to sense the old man's presence. Their eyes could clearly see him, yet their Mental Power seemed to disagree with their sight.
The old man's aura appeared steady, without the nauseating Evil Energy the earlier Evil Soul Masters had carried. Still, Ye Guyi instinctively frowned. She could sense a faint trace of Evil Energy from him, one of an exceptionally high grade.
Unless she was mistaken, even if this old man was not an Evil Soul Master, he had deep ties to them. He had very likely been in contact with an extremely powerful Evil Soul Master recently.
They exchanged a glance, confirming that everyone understood this old man would be difficult to handle and required extreme caution. Yet when they turned back, he had already vanished.
Everyone immediately grew tense. An ominous possibility surfaced in their minds, but by then, it was already too late.
The old man suddenly appeared behind them. Before they could react, everyone except Jiang Yue was suppressed by unimaginably terrifying soul power, brutally pressed into the ground and left unable to move.
They had no time to muster their soul power to defend themselves. Whether Di Qiu'er, Ye Guyi, or Xiao Hongchen, their martial souls seemed to have fallen into a deep slumber at that moment.
Even when they recovered enough to try summoning their martial souls, there was no response whatsoever, as though they had become ordinary people who had never awakened a martial soul.
Meng Hongchen fared somewhat better. The old man seemed to have discerned her condition and only used a little soul power to restrain her, without treating her as roughly as the others.
Jiang Yue, on the other hand, felt neither the slightest soul power pressure nor any killing