After passing through the dense forest, the gray-clad Soul Master finally stopped in front of a long-abandoned dye house. It wasn't far from the outer city wall of Heaven Dou City; they could even faintly hear the sound of horns coming from the direction of the city gate.
The dyehouse's gate had long since vanished, and a half-broken black wooden sign hung crookedly at the entrance, its inscriptions eroded beyond recognition by wind and rain. The air was thick with the musty smell of a place that had never seen sunlight for years, along with a faint stench of decay. It didn't look like a place where anyone was still living.
The gray-robed Soul Master stood cautiously at the courtyard gate for a moment, making sure no one was following him, before quickly walking into the courtyard, passing a few broken vats, and disappearing in a half-collapsed side room.
Once inside, a full fifteen minutes passed without any further sound coming from within.
Ling Yun, like a weightless nimble cat, silently climbed onto the roof of the dye house's main building. He clung to the perforated tiles like a gecko, slowly closing his eyes. The mysterious Aura within his body, like an invisible net, silently seeped and spread into the ground along the broken bricks and cracks in the floor.
The next second, Ling Yun suddenly opened his eyes, his pupils contracted sharply, and his face instantly turned extremely pale.
Xiao Wu, who was lurking under the eaves, keenly Frisk his change in mood and asked in a very low voice, "What's wrong? What's inside?"
Ling Yun didn't answer immediately. He put a finger to his lips, signaling Xiao Wu to be quiet. His brows were tightly furrowed as he controlled the Aura to continue probing deeper into the earth.
One layer, two layers... until his senses reached the deepest point, nearly ten meters underground, the temperature in his eyes had completely dropped to freezing point, and a chilling killing intent uncontrollably emanated from his body.
"There are people down there." Ling Yun said in a low voice, his tone as if it contained shards of ice.
Dugu Yan silently leaped onto the roof eaves, pressed herself against his side, and asked, "How many people? What's their strength?"
Seventeen.
"They're all Soul Masters?"
"There were a few faint fluctuations of Soul Power, but most..." Ling Yun paused, his jawline slightly protruding from clenching his teeth, "... were ordinary people without even Soul Power. There were even children among them."
The relaxed smile on Xiao Wu's face vanished instantly, replaced by shock and Rage.
Ling Yun took a deep breath, suppressing his anger, and continued to sense the situation underground, "Moreover, there's blood down there. Lots of blood. The air is thick with the smell of blood. They're drawing blood."
The three did not choose to violently break through the ground. That would not only alert the enemy but could also endanger the lives of the innocent people underground. Instead, they found a very hidden downward passage in a pile of collapsed ruins behind the dye house.
Below the passage was a huge underground stone chamber carved from hard bluestone. Several torches were stuck in the walls of the chamber, and the flickering dark red light illuminated the entire space as if it were a purgatory.
Seventeen people, men, women, and children, were tightly bound to the wooden cross-shaped frame around the stone chamber by thick iron chains and blood-stained hemp ropes. Some of them had fallen into a deep coma due to excessive blood loss, their heads drooping limply; others were still barely conscious, but their faces were emaciated, pale and bloodless, and they could only utter weak, painful groans.
What was most chilling was that each person had a wound cruelly cut open at the artery in their wrist, with a hollow copper tube, about the thickness of a little finger, inserted inside. Blood flowed slowly like a stream along the crisscrossing copper tubes, eventually converging into a massive soul-guiding array in the center of the stone chamber that emitted an eerie red light.
Drip. Drip. In this deathly silent underground stone chamber, the sound of blood dripping onto the array plate was amplified infinitely, striking the nerves of everyone present.
On a wooden frame at the far edge of the stone chamber, a little girl who looked only seven or eight years old was tied up. Her coarse cloth clothes were soaked with blood, her small body trembled unconsciously in the cold air, her cracked lips had turned completely bluish-purple, and she could no longer even utter a faint cry.
Xiao Wu stared intently at the little girl, her eyes instantly reddening. Her fair fingers dug fiercely into the cracks in the wall, her nails turning bluish-white from the excessive force. Her Soul Power began to surge uncontrollably, threatening to burst forth.
Ling Yun reacted quickly, pressing down hard on her shoulder with tremendous force.
"Let me go," Xiao Wu turned her head, a thin layer of bloodshot light already appearing in her eyes, her voice carrying a suppressed sob.
"Wait a moment." Ling Yun's voice was extremely low, yet it carried an undeniable calmness and resolve.
But she's dying.
"I know." Ling Yun looked directly into Xiao Wu's bloodshot eyes and said, word by word, "But if you rush in now, they only need to destroy the core of the formation immediately, and the immense suction force within the formation will instantly drain everyone's blood. To save them, we must first find the person controlling the formation. Trust me."
Xiao Wu bit her lower lip tightly until it bled, but finally forced herself to stop struggling and nodded tremblingly.
At this moment, on the stone platform in the center of the stone chamber, which emitted an eerie red light, the gray-robed Soul Master was respectfully bowing his head, offering a glass blood vessel containing fake blood to a man shrouded in a wide black robe.
"Sir, the item has been delivered safely. We changed routes three times along the way; there was absolutely no one following us."
The black-robed man's eyes, hidden beneath his hood, suddenly gleamed with a greedy red light as he grabbed the blood vessel. "Is this the primordial essence blood of Hundred-Thousand-Year Transformed Soul Beast?"
"The employer of the underground bank said so, and that they paid a high price."
"Excellent, wonderful!" The man in black robes stared at the dark red substance in his hand, his pale, withered fingers trembling slightly with excitement. "The higher-ups of the Holy Church have urged us three times already for this. Especially 'Master,' who's getting impatient waiting to overcome the final hurdle of array fusion. With this Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast's essence blood as a catalyst, our Blood Sacrifice Grand Array will definitely succeed."
Ling Yun, hidden in the shadows, suddenly narrowed his eyes. "Master? Blood Sacrifice Grand Array?"
The man in black robes eagerly uncorked the glass tube. He first brought it to his nose and took a deep sniff of the strange, sweet-smelling scent, then took out a slender, shimmering silver needle from his robes and carefully inserted it into the tube, dipping it in a tiny drop of red liquid.
He carefully dripped that drop of liquid into the core of the central array plate.
With a whoosh, the moment the liquid dripped, the crimson patterns on the floor of the entire stone chamber seemed to come alive, suddenly bursting out with dazzling red light. For the first breath, everything seemed to be operating normally. After the formation absorbed that drop of "essence blood," the energy fluctuations it emitted increased exponentially.
A wildly joyful smile had just appeared on the black-robed man's deathly pale face. However, the next second—
With a hissing sound, the patterns on the array plate suddenly began to flash violently, with red and black light alternating wildly, and a violent repulsive force suddenly erupted from the array eye.
With a sharp crack, the thickest charged crystal in the array exploded, splattering foul-smelling blood all over the black-robed man's face.
The black-robed man's smile froze on his face instantly, his expression changed drastically, and he exclaimed in shock, "Something's wrong!"
The gray-robed Soul Master was so frightened that he took two steps back. "My lord, what's wrong?"
"There's something wrong with this blood!" The man in black robes grabbed the glass tube, staring intently at the churning liquid inside, and roared, "While the power of this life essence is pure, it lacks the overwhelming soul pressure of Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast. This is fake; it's not the blood of Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast at all!"
The entire basement fell into a deathly silence.
The gray-robed Soul Master's pupils contracted sharply, cold sweat instantly beaded on his forehead, and his voice trembled. "My lord... could it be that we've been—"
"You guessed right, you've been hooked."
A chilling voice, laced with undisguised mockery, suddenly came from above everyone's heads.
The seven or eight Evil Soul Masters inside the stone chamber were all shocked and suddenly looked up.
Ling Yun squatted quietly on the thick, load-bearing wooden beams above the stone chamber. One hand rested casually on his knee as he looked down at the horde of panicked rats. His gaze was as if he were looking at a pile of rotting, stinking flesh.
"The inspection was quite fast, even more professional than I expected." Ling Yun's lips curled into a cruel sneer as he slowly stood up. "It's just a pity..."
"The window for returns is closed to you forever."
Sensing the terrifying killing intent emanating from Ling Yun, the man in black robes was terrified and roared hoarsely, "Enemy attack! Kill him! Activate the defensive array!"
Boom! The moment the black-robed man finished speaking, the wooden beam beneath Ling Yun's feet shattered, and he plummeted from the sky like a meteorite.
Extremely cold, icy blue light suddenly condensed in mid-air, and the Water-Cooling Sword, accompanied by a chilling dragon's roar, slashed through the air. Wherever the sword light passed, even the air was frozen into white frost. The temperature of the entire sweltering, blood-soaked underground stone chamber plummeted to freezing point in an instant.
"Die!" Two Soul King- level Evil Soul Masters wielding ghost-head blades roared as they pounced on Ling Yun in mid-air, their four Soul Rings lighting up simultaneously.
But they didn't even have time to fully unleash their Soul Skills.
Because a pink lightning bolt entered the battlefield even faster than Ling Yun.
Xiao Wu plummeted directly into the enemy ranks through a ceiling vent. Her long, powerful legs twisted strangely in mid-air, like a Limber serpent, instantly coiling around the thick neck of one of the Soul Kings. Her First Soul Ring suddenly lit up, and a terrifying folding power erupted from her waist.
Waist Bow, start,
With a bang, the burly man, nearly two meters tall, didn't even have time to let out a scream before Xiao Wu flung him away like a cannonball, smashing his head against the hard bluestone wall and embedding him deep in the rubble, his fate unknown.
On the other side, Dugu Yan's actions were even more deadly and silent. She didn't summon her Martial Soul phantom at all; she simply flipped her wrist slightly, and her wide sleeves drew a graceful arc in the air.
Hiss—Three extremely fine wisps of green poisonous smoke, as if alive, traced eerie trajectories in the air and precisely entered the mouths and noses of three Evil Soul Masters were preparing to unleash their long-range Soul Skills.
The next second, the three Evil Soul Masters' eyes rolled back violently, and their Soul Power instantly dissipated. They couldn't even hold their weapons, their legs went weak, and they all knelt down with a thud, convulsing and foaming at the mouth.
"Don't be nervous." Dugu Yan looked at the three people lying on the ground, her tone flat and without any emotion. "This is a trace amount of the Jade Phosphorous Serpent Emperor's paralyzing toxin. I controlled the dosage; no one will die for now. After all, we need to leave two breathing people for Sect Master Ning to question."
At the same time, Ling Yun landed heavily in front of the stone platform.
Beneath his feet, four Soul Rings —yellow, purple, black, and purple—that exceeded the limit of their proportions, rose slowly like four halos, radiating a terrifying pressure that made one's heart tremble.
The man in black robes stared intently at the jet-black, ten-thousand-year-old fourth Soul Ring. His already pale face had turned ashen, and his voice trembled with extreme fear. "You... you're that freak from the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect... Ling Yun?!"
Congratulations, you got it right.
Ling Yun didn't waste any words; the Water-Cooling Sword in his hand drew a perfect fan-shaped icy blue trajectory in the air.
The two Evil Soul Masters at the forefront hadn't even had time to fully activate their defensive Martial Soul when they saw a flash of blue light. Their steel weapons were sliced in two like fragile popsicles.
Extreme cold air spread wildly along the broken weapon's cut, and within half a breath, both men's arms were completely Ice Seal, stiff as stone.
Ling Yun didn't even look at them, nor did he use any Soul Skills. He simply raised his leg and kicked out two times in quick succession.
Two muffled Tackle rang out. The two Evil Soul Masters, whose arms were Ice Seal solid, were kicked away by Ling Yun's terrifying power like tattered sandbags, flying more than ten meters away to the corner of the wall. They coughed up blood repeatedly and could no longer get up.
The entire battle was incredibly fast. It didn't resemble a battle between Soul Kings at all; it was more like Ling Yun and his companions ruthlessly clearing out this group of Evil Soul Masters.
The man in black robes finally realized that the three monsters before him were simply not something their small underground blood bank could contend with.
"Retreat! Retreat through the secret passage!"
The man in black robes let out a hysterical scream and turned without hesitation, sprinting towards the secret passage behind the stone throne. At the same time, a wicked madness flashed in his eyes, and he suddenly gathered all his black Soul Power in his right hand, slamming it fiercely towards the berserk core of the Blood Array.
"Initiate a suicidal attack,"
Ling Yun's eyes narrowed sharply, and he roared, "How dare you!"
With a deafening boom, as the black-robed man's palm struck, the Blood Array, already in a semi-out-of-control state, erupted with a piercing buzzing sound, its crimson light instantly illuminating the entire basement. The seventeen copper pipes connected to the wooden frame began to vibrate violently, frantically drawing blood from the hostage's body.
Those bound to the wooden frames let out desperate, piercing screams. The flow of blood in the transparent tubes suddenly increased several times over, and even the copper tubes, unable to withstand the pressure, emitted a teeth-grinding grinding sound.
The little girl, who was tied to the very edge, began to convulse violently and uncontrollably, her already weak breaths seeming to stop at any moment.
Upon seeing this, Xiao Wu's face turned deathly pale, and she cried out in despair, "Ling Yun, save them!"
Ahead, the man in black robes had already stepped halfway into the secret passage. With Ling Yun's speed, if he abandoned the formation now and Pursuit directly, he could definitely chop off that old dog's head within ten breaths.
But Ling Yun only glanced coldly at that back before turning around without hesitation, abandoning the pursuit, and rushing towards the center of the Blood Array that was about to explode like a cannonball.
"Old Poison,"
Ling Yun's roar, imbued with powerful Soul Power, instantly Infiltrator through the thick layer of soil and shot straight to the ground.
Outside, Dugu Bo, who was leaning against a tree trunk idly picking at his nails, suddenly opened his eyes. Two beams of green light shot out as if they were real.
"We've been waiting forever, finally the work has arrived!"
Boom! The violent and unparalleled emerald green poisonous miasma Soul Power shot into the sky like a volcanic eruption, and the trees within a hundred meters withered and turned to ashes in an instant.
In the basement, the man in black robes had just scrambled out of the cellar exit in the dye house's backyard through a secret passage, breathing in the fresh air. Before the relieved smile on his face could fully bloom, he was met with a gloomy, withered, and Youyou green old face that was more frightening than a ghost.
The smile on the black-robed man's face froze instantly.
Dugu Bo, arms crossed, looked down at him, a chilling smile playing on his lips, "You run pretty fast, little mouse. Where are you planning to run off to?"
Feeling the unfathomable, terrifying pressure emanating from the other man, the black-robed man's legs went weak, and he collapsed to his knees, his teeth chattering wildly. "Poison... Poison Douluo?!"
"You guessed right. Your reward is a slap from me."
Smack! A withered hand slapped down casually, and the man in black robes screamed as he was slammed into the dirt.