Fourth Soul Skill (Please Subscribe)

Chapter 45: Fourth Soul Skill (Please Subscribe)

"He really is an idiot. Tian Meng, just as we agreed beforehand, lend me your strength."

"Don't worry. I'm your strongest support!"

"Joy, Anger, Sorrow!"

The Passionate Sword pointed from afar, and the three longswords turned into streaks of light as they shot forward, as though they wanted nothing more than to punch several transparent holes through the Sealed Nether Wraith.

With Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's assistance, Jiang Yue felt everything around him slow down and become exceptionally clear. The movements of every leaf and blade of grass, the distance between every sword and the Sealed Nether Wraith—all of it appeared vividly in three-dimensional detail within Jiang Yue's mind. He did not need to look with his eyes; everything was laid out in complete detail.

Mental Detection! Sky Dream Ice Silkworm naturally knew this skill. After all, it was a soul skill that could be mastered once one's spiritual power reached a certain level. If Sky Dream Ice Silkworm could not even use a skill like this, he might as well find a block of tofu and ram himself to death.

After being attacked again, the misty gas around the Sealed Nether Wraith transformed into the heads of several Soul Beasts, trying to bite down on the blades.

But with Mental Detection's help, Jiang Yue had naturally noticed the Sealed Nether Wraith's movements long ago. The Three Apertures Heart activated, and the three swords simultaneously moved in entirely different directions, precisely evading the Sealed Nether Wraith's defenses. They sliced through its misty body and headed straight for the central core.

Clang!

Just as the sword tips were about to pierce the core crystal, the mist surrounding the entire crystal condensed in an instant. A complete turtle shell enveloped the core, blocking Jiang Yue's attack.

This instinctive will to survive was truly terrifying. And without an independent consciousness, every lingering Soul Beast remnant that formed it could act according to its own instincts.

His eyes focused as spiritual power burst from his body and slammed hard into the turtle shell, blasting a gap through it and exposing the Sealed Nether Wraith's core within.

Crack!

The Passionate Sword immediately passed through the opening and slashed at the core. Just as it cut an inch into the core, rings of Soul Power rippled outward from it, forming a special membrane over its body that evenly dispersed the Passionate Sword's attack across every corner of its surface.

The Passionate Sword could advance no farther. The distributed damage merely made the core tremble slightly.

Perhaps sensing that the turtle shell had been damaged, the shell around the Sealed Nether Wraith's core vanished. In its place, several snake heads attacked Jiang Yue from all directions. Jiang Yue twisted at the waist and raised his sword horizontally to block them.

"Second Soul Skill, Live and Die Together! Third Soul Skill, Substitution!"

Against attacks like this, especially from beast souls with no real consciousness, Jiang Yue's third soul skill had an extraordinary effect. Naturally, he could not use his third soul skill repeatedly; that would only waste too much Soul Power.

Jiang Yue's third soul skill itself fell within the category of spiritual attribute attacks, while his second soul skill allowed the effects of his third soul skill to be shared among multiple targets.

Affected by the soul skill, the snake head biting the Passionate Sword suddenly flung Jiang Yue away. Ignoring him, it turned and began a fierce battle with the other snake heads.

After steadying himself, Jiang Yue dashed forward. The three swords flew out from behind him at the same time, instantly severing every snake head from different directions.

Grasping the Anger Sword, Jiang Yue wielded two swords that complemented each other. The sword shadows spilling from them overlapped, leaving no gaps between attacks as they cut down every beast head attempting to attack him, turning them into clumps of mist separated from the main body.

A brilliant green light erupted from the Anger Sword's surface, dyeing part of the Sealed Nether Wraith's body green. It was like pouring oil onto a fire.

The noise was deafening, and Jiang Yue felt as though his ears were about to burst. Wolf howls, tiger roars, eagle cries—every kind of sound erupted at once. Boundless rage filled those cries, creating an incomparably chaotic din.

This part continued howling, while the rest remained eerily quiet, as though they had never been part of the same whole. Waves of spiritual power spread outward with their shrieks.

"Making up for quality with quantity? You think you can show off spiritual power before your Ancestor Tian Meng? You're a million years too early!"

"Mental Shock!"

Sky Dream Ice Silkworm was utterly disdainful of the Sealed Nether Wraith's meager spiritual power. Before it could even reach Jiang Yue, Sky Dream Ice Silkworm dispersed it with a glare.

Vast spiritual power like an ocean followed immediately after. Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's immense spiritual power was like a massive iron hammer, smashing into every beast soul that made up the Sealed Nether Wraith and knocking them completely offline. The density of the beast souls visibly dispersed by a large amount, and even the grayish-purple mist became far more transparent.

Seeing the Sealed Nether Wraith standing there blankly, Jiang Yue abruptly drove the Anger Sword into the ground with his right hand while grabbing the Sorrow Sword. He stomped hard with both feet and launched himself into the air.

With a whoosh, Jiang Yue threw the Sorrow Sword into the ground on the Sealed Nether Wraith's other side. The Joy Sword appeared beneath his feet at just the right moment, supporting him in midair.

"Second Soul Skill, Live and Die Together!"

"All living things have feelings: Anger-Sorrow!"

He brushed a finger over the Passionate Sword, and the Anger and Sorrow Swords below immediately emitted different lights. Those lights directly dyed the originally grayish-purple Sealed Nether Wraith green and brown.

In an instant, the two different emotions mixed together. The Sealed Nether Wraith's color shifted constantly between grayish-purple, green, and brown. It was completely drowned in rage and sorrow, and the emotions contained within the beast souls forming it were fully stirred up.

Under the effects of Jiang Yue's soul skill, they continued sharing each other's emotions, while the two emotional swords beside them continuously strengthened their respective feelings. It was like using one foot to step on the other and spiraling into the sky, with no sign of stopping. Their tiny brains had been completely overwhelmed by emotion.

Its entire mist-like body rapidly expanded like an overinflated balloon, as though it would burst with a single poke.

In an instant, the roars of countless Soul Beasts echoed continuously through the area, so miserable that it could only be described as hellish.

The beast souls had completely lost control, yet they possessed less intelligence than ants. They were merely lingering souls and resentment. Under the Passionate Sword's influence, they could not return to a calm state at all, leaving the central core exposed.

A flash of icy blue light swept past. The instant the sword light made contact, all the mist was cleanly cut apart like cloth. There were no flashy effects; the cold light pressed forward without obstruction.

As he launched the attack, the Anger and Sorrow Swords that had been embedded in the ground and constantly disrupting the Sealed Nether Wraith vanished. Jiang Yue's entire demeanor became much colder, his sharpness fully revealed.

Faced with the threat of death, some of the more intact lingering souls clearly realized what was about to happen. They did everything they could to block Jiang Yue's attack.

Several obstacles suddenly appeared along the sword's path. Some resembled turtle shells, while others looked like insect exoskeletons. Yet when these hard defensive measures touched the Unfeeling Sword in Jiang Yue's right hand, it was as though they did not exist at all. The blade passed straight through without the slightest pause.

Ignoring defense! This was the Unfeeling Sword's innate ability. Before this mechanism, every defensive method of the Sealed Nether Wraith was nothing but an illusion.

Crack!

The Unfeeling Sword pierced through the core, and the entire Sealed Nether Wraith became extremely unstable. Its grayish-purple mist-like body visibly trembled.

Seeing that it had not completely dispersed even after the core was pierced, Jiang Yue felt that the Unfeeling Sword's attack power really needed to be raised. If its base value was not high enough, there was no way to fully display the terrifying power of ignoring defense.

The lingering souls' last remnants of survival instinct awakened, and the remaining grayish-purple mist transformed into a strange Soul Beast. Its appearance was indescribable; Jiang Yue did not even know how to describe it. It was simply a gigantic stitched-together monstrosity.

Just as this stitched monstrosity bared its fangs and launched a final counterattack at Jiang Yue, the Soul Power within Jiang Yue immediately surged into the Unfeeling Sword.

A special layer of sword energy immediately condensed over the icy blue Unfeeling Sword. The sword energy was entirely composed of Soul Power, making it seem as though the Unfeeling Sword had suddenly grown a full size larger. In an instant, it severed the stitched monstrosity's core completely.

His hand gripping the hilt abruptly exerted force. Shing! The sword light swept through without resistance. Not only the core, but even the stitched monstrosity formed by that final counterattack was cut apart by the Unfeeling Sword.

As the core shattered, the beast souls forming it continuously let out low growls before dispersing one after another. In just three or four seconds, the Sealed Nether Wraith vanished without a trace. If Jiang Yue had not killed it with his own hands, he might have doubted whether the Sealed Nether Wraith had ever truly existed.

Flecks of light seeped from the core fragments and gradually condensed into a deep black soul ring. As the soul ring gradually solidified, the core that had been split in two completely disappeared as well.

Other than the black soul ring floating there, nothing remained to prove that the Sealed Nether Wraith had once existed.

Looking at that ten-thousand-year soul ring, Jiang Yue immediately sat cross-legged and began adjusting his condition while recovering his Soul Power.

Most Soul Beasts were unwilling to approach the Sealed Nether Wraith, making this area temporarily very safe. That worked out well for Jiang Yue and Sky Dream Ice Silkworm. They only needed to absorb the soul ring quickly, without worrying about Soul Beasts approaching anytime soon.

Very soon, after Jiang Yue adjusted his condition, he immediately summoned the Passionate Sword and guided the ten-thousand-year soul ring to merge with himself.

There was no spiritual confrontation like he had imagined. Perhaps it was because the Sealed Nether Wraith did not possess intelligence like a normal ten-thousand-year Soul Beast?

Absorbing a ten-thousand-year soul ring as his fourth ring indeed placed tremendous demands on one's physical constitution, especially since Jiang Yue was absorbing a twenty-thousand-year soul ring.

The violent Soul Power contained within the soul ring continuously battered his meridians, trying to destroy Jiang Yue's body from the inside out. However, after being strengthened by Living Gold, Jiang Yue's meridians were far more resilient than before.

No matter how that Soul Power struck Jiang Yue's body, it could only make him feel pain. It could not inflict any real injury.

Soon, Jiang Yue's Soul Power gradually wore down and assimilated the Soul Power inside the soul ring. The black soul ring slowly approached his other three soul rings, and the bottleneck at level forty shattered. The Soul Power within his body also began rising at a very slow but steady pace.

Jiang Yue did not possess an ultimate martial soul, so after level thirty, his Soul Power would not be compressed like that of an ultimate martial soul. This time, the soul ring he absorbed exceeded the normal age limit of a Soul Master's fifth soul ring by fifteen thousand years. Furthermore, he had remained at the level-forty bottleneck for over two months, so some Soul Power had accumulated deep within his body.

Even though the cultivation speeds of a quasi-Soul Ancestor and a Soul Ancestor were completely different, the accumulated Soul Power, combined with the Soul Power contained in the fourth soul ring, could not possibly raise Jiang Yue by only one level.

Forty-one—forty-two—forty-three. After reaching level forty-three Soul Power, the Soul Power continuously surging from Jiang Yue's body gradually calmed down. Since the Sealed Nether Wraith was a spiritual attribute Soul Beast, Jiang Yue's spiritual power also increased considerably after absorbing its soul ring.

"Phew..."

Brushing away the leaves above his head, Jiang Yue turned to look at the black ten-thousand-year soul ring floating behind him. This soul ring's age exceeded the combined ages of all his previous soul rings, even though Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had strengthened his first three soul rings before.

"Looking at you, you should have gained a pretty good soul skill, right? Want to tell me what it does? I'm curious what kind of soul skill this thing gave you."

"It is indeed quite powerful. My fourth soul skill is called Walking Corpse. It can barely be considered a forced-control soul skill. Its effect is to randomly seal the opponent's soul skills. It makes no difference whether they come from soul rings, soul bones, or self-created skills. The number that can be sealed depends on the gap between our spiritual powers. For someone with spiritual power lower than mine, as long as my Soul Power can hold out, I can turn them into a blank slate. Against someone around my level, I can seal two or three skills. Against someone stronger than me, I can guarantee sealing at least one, though I can't guarantee more."

By conservative estimates, Jiang Yue's spiritual power was roughly between that of a high-level Soul King and a Soul Emperor. It was impossible to determine exactly, since there were no machines at this point in time capable of measuring spiritual power. It was better to remain conservative.

In other words, when facing Soul Masters below the Soul Emperor rank, as long as Jiang Yue's Soul Power reserves could sustain the repeated use of his fourth soul skill, they would all eventually become blank slates.

In the world of Douluo Continent, where martial souls were everything, a Soul Master only had so many skills. Without self-created skills, even including soul bones, they only had around fifteen at most. And there were very few Soul Masters who could achieve a full set.

"This isn't merely powerful! It's completely outrageous! You're a spiritual attribute Soul Master! Your spiritual power is already among the very best of your generation! At your rate of spiritual power growth, by the time you become a Soul Emperor, your spiritual power will have reached the level of a Titled Douluo. You'll meet the requirements to absorb a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast!"

"It is indeed as you said, Tian Meng. This soul skill is very powerful, but it is also rather uncertain. Since the sealing is random, I can't determine which of the opponent's soul skills will be sealed. Unless I can foresee the future, or my luck is good enough, this soul skill's effectiveness will definitely be greatly reduced."

Jiang Yue felt there was still room for improvement in this soul skill. Otherwise, what use would it be if he sealed one of Tang San's Entangling soul skills when facing him in the future? Tang San was now the Sea God and Asura God; he fought with the Sea God's Trident and Asura Sword.

This soul skill had enormous potential, but it had to be paired with an ability that could see the future in order to unleash the true power it contained.

What a headache. Although time and space were both considered elements on Douluo Continent, spatial attribute Soul Beasts were still manageable—if one was lucky, one could encounter such a Soul Beast. But as for the time attribute, apart from the Evil Eye Tyrant Ruler, Jiang Yue truly did not know who else possessed it.

This was troublesome. Perhaps he could set his sights on that Golden Tortoise. As everyone knew, with enough luck, even the smallest probability could become reality.