Zhang Yu turned around and took two steps. With a sweep of his sleeve, he vaulted through the air for several li and arrived before Wu Zhonghou's fallen corpse.
He looked at the severed remains. From the sword-cleaved break in the outer armor, strands of crystalline fluid seeped out, wriggling forward through the mud and sand soaked in blue blood, as if trying to reconnect the separated halves.
The man himself no longer held any trace of life, and his soul had been utterly extinguished. Yet Zhang Yu could still sense a force within the shell he had left behind. It was this force that had repeatedly helped him escape danger during the battle.
That force was now gradually fading and weakening.
But upon further sensing, it was less that it was fading than returning somewhere, as though it had never belonged to this world in the first place and had merely been temporarily lodged within this man's body.
In truth, he had no way to directly perceive this thing. The reason he had reached such a conclusion was that it was constantly repelling everything around it.
At that moment, two streaks of escaping light descended from the sky, landing to his left and right. Cao Fangding and Daoist Wan Ming stepped out from within them. Since Zhang Yu had already made his judgment beforehand, he had arranged for them to provide support outside.
If there were few enemies, they were to prevent their escape; if there were many, they were to help share the burden.
In fact, more than just the two of them had come this time. Other Profound Convergence cultivators were patrolling farther away, ready to rush over at once upon seeing the signal.
Wan Ming and Cao Fangding looked at Wu Zhonghou's corpse, their expressions grave.