Devour

A leaden sky, a deathly silent village, rotting corpses strewn across the ground.

And the Man in Brocade, who had yet to fade away and was still rambling on.

A sudden sense of foreboding rose in Ye Wuyou's heart. He sprang up and leaped toward the Man in Brocade.

"Brother Ye, everything I told you was true. Are you really going to fight me?!"

"Take out the Bell! There's something wrong with it!"

The Man in Brocade's expression darkened, and he started to retreat.

But a massive hand blocked his way, while another, smaller ghost hand lightly swept across his chest.

The little hand lifted the Bell and held it suspended in midair.

It wasn't that Ye Wuyou didn't want to bring it over. It was that... he couldn't move it anymore.

The ghost hand could lift a thousand-pound boulder, yet at this moment, it couldn't move a tiny Bell.

"Brother Ye! You..." the Man in Brocade roared. He was about to lash out, but the sight before him cut his words short.

There was only one reason: a crack had appeared on the Bell meant to seal the "eyeball."

"Didn't you say it could keep it sealed?" Ye Wuyou's expression was grim.

"I... I didn't expect the Bell to break this quickly, either."

The Man in Brocade looked terrible, but this was no time to argue. He formed hand seals, preparing to cast a spell.

Crack, crack... bang!

Before the Man in Brocade could cast his Reinforcement Spell, the Bell-only ever a makeshift vessel-shattered completely before their astonished eyes.

Both their hearts plunged into the depths.

Without a vessel, the Man in Brocade couldn't cast his Sealing Spell. How were they supposed to take this thing now?

This thing that could disturb a person's mind with effortless ease.

A streak of white light emerged from the shattered Bell, but it didn't leave. It simply hovered silently where it was.

For the first time, Ye Wuyou saw the thing's appearance with absolute clarity.

An eyeball. An exceedingly strange eyeball.

Unlike a human eye, it had no white. In its place was pure black, and within that pitch-black eyeball lay a red, vertical pupil.

Utterly sinister.

Ye Wuyou's mind raced, laying out each piece of information clearly.

There was plenty of bad news and good news now.

Bad news: this sinister damned thing had escaped.

Good news: the eyeball hadn't looked at him immediately.

Bad news: although it wasn't looking at him, its oppressive presence had immobilized him.

Good news: he could have Ghost grab him and run.

After escaping the Bell, the sinister eyeball first glanced toward the distant Cloudmist Mountain, then swept its gaze over the surroundings and looked down at the village.

Under its gaze, the corpses the Man in Brocade had previously beheaded climbed back up from the ground.

Every one of them began regaining vitality, their flesh regenerating.

The massive, spectral-blue hand behind Ye Wuyou grabbed him, and Ghost carried him away.

Meanwhile, the Man in Brocade used some unknown method. Blood mist erupted from his entire body, and he forcibly broke free of that tremendous pressure. A cloud of blood mist then carried him through the air.

As he fled, the Man in Brocade looked down at the village, shock filling his eyes.

"The dead can come back to life?"

"It's fake. That's an illusion. You're from the Thousand Illusions Sect, and you can't tell?" Ye Wuyou replied, standing on Ghost's hand.

The blood-drenched Man in Brocade snapped out of his daze and shouted toward Ye Wuyou, who was likewise racing along like wind and lightning.

"Brother Ye, forget what happened earlier. We're grasshoppers tied to the same rope now. Whatever means you have, don't hold anything back!"

Ye Wuyou paused slightly. Meeting the Man in Brocade's urgent gaze, he silently nodded, then turned away without a word.

The Man in Brocade still didn't know he was already dead.

Moving swiftly and in perfect unspoken coordination, the two reached the original Water Well.

Their plan had failed. All they could do now was leave.

But more than a dozen figures had gathered around the Water Well. Lights of different colors burst from their bodies-the manifestations of various supernatural abilities.

These people had once been cultivators. They had long since died, some reduced to mere remains, yet now they had regained fleshly bodies.

Ye Wuyou reached a simple conclusion: without a surprise attack, he had absolutely no chance against this lot.

"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!"

A furious roar rang out beside him. Ye Wuyou turned and saw that the Man in Brocade had already charged into battle.

At that moment, he staked his life on it.

A ghastly blood mist enveloped every cultivator below who had regained a body. With a heart-rending roar from the Man in Brocade, bloody energy rampaged like a dragon, slaughtering everything around him.

After finishing all this, the blood-drenched Man in Brocade leaned against the Water Well, barely able to stand.

"Heh, a bunch of dead men think they can stop a living man? You want to kill me? I still have to rebuild the Thousand Illusions Sect!" The Man in Brocade grinned savagely, then moved to leap into the well.

But when he jumped, he crashed heavily onto roof tiles, his face making solid, intimate contact with the masonry.

Roof tiles? Why were there roof tiles?

Rubbing his face, the Man in Brocade tried to get up. As he raised his gaze, he first saw Ye Wuyou's grim expression beside him, then looked up into the air.

"Heh... heh..." He laughed miserably. The strength that had just supported his effort to rise vanished, and he collapsed straight onto the ground.

At some point, the eyeball had turned its gaze toward the two of them.

Everything that had just happened was false. All of it had been an illusion.

He had remained on this rooftop the entire time, never moving at all.

Ye Wuyou had no attention to spare for him now. He didn't look up, but he could still clearly feel the eyeball watching him.

Why?!

I'd clearly reached the Water Well, so why was I back on the roof in the blink of an eye?

Wasn't this thing supposed to be unable to affect me? Had everything just now been a hallucination?

[Not so. How could the illusion of this worthless Great Dao Aura affect you? Everything just now was real, and everything before you now is also real.]

What nonsense are you spouting?! If it was all real, how did I get dragged back?

[The Great Dao Aura is nothing to fear, because it was not what acted at all. It merely borrowed the power of another set of remains here.]

Another set of remains? There's another Uncanny here?

Ye Wuyou suddenly remembered the first place the eyeball had looked when it was released.

Inside Cloudmist Mountain, or perhaps... the more distant mountain range beyond it?

Then what should I do?

This time, the narrator gave no response. Not even a bark.

But a moment later, the familiar voice sounded in his mind.

[No matter. These stinking husks of a bygone age cannot withstand a single blow. You need only circulate the Formless Heart Sutra and return to the state of No-Self...]

Heh.

Ye Wuyou paid no further attention to the voice in his mind.

Having entered No-Self, the first stage of the Formless Heart Sutra, twice in succession, Ye Wuyou now understood that it was no good thing.

Moreover, No-Self seemed to subtly influence his thinking, making him increasingly resemble the arrogant version of himself described by that narrator.

Most importantly, although entering that stage did increase his strength, it didn't mean he could win.

He had entered it twice in succession and lost to others both times. His own arrogance had cost him victory.

Ye Wuyou kept his head lowered, not looking at the eyeball in the air.

But he suddenly felt that his body was sticky.

He reached up and touched the side of his face.

His fingers met a slick, sticky mess, and... rotting flesh.

Was I rotting?

Was this an illusion, or was it real?

At last, he stopped avoiding it. He raised his head and met the eyeball's gaze.

The sinister, scarlet pupil shone with an eerie light.

Countless spectral-blue arms struck toward the eyeball, but all stopped roughly ten feet away, unable to advance another inch.

Ye Wuyou discovered that he couldn't move. He couldn't even look away.

Pop.

A faint sound of something bursting.

As though unable to endure that gaze, one of Ye Wuyou's eyes suddenly exploded.

Blood spattered across the ground, and searing pain raced through every nerve in his body.

Ye Wuyou couldn't move, but that agony allowed him to let out a scream. The spectral-blue Uncanny manifested behind him, lowering itself slightly and stretching out its hands to shield his entire body.

It looked like protection, yet also as though it meant to kill the person held in its embrace.

"Devour. Devour it all!" Through gritted teeth, Ye Wuyou spat out the words along with bloody foam.

Vast amounts of soul power flowed from the Uncanny behind him, merging into his body.

All of Xia Anmeng's remaining soul power, and all the soul power from the Fourth Realm remnant soul of the Thousand Illusions Sect he had killed earlier.

This soul power had originally been stored inside the Uncanny. Ye Wuyou couldn't withstand such immense power, so he had simply used the Uncanny as a power bank.

But now, Ye Wuyou no longer cared about any of that.

Whether he rotted to death beneath the eyeball's gaze, burst from the power filling him, or was killed by the "resurrected" cultivators below.

None of it mattered. None of it!

As his own presence grew stronger, the oppressive weight of that gaze finally weakened considerably.

Ye Wuyou raised his head, fixing his sole remaining eye on the eyeball hovering in midair. He opened his mouth and let out a hoarse, savage laugh.

"Do you know why I'm not afraid of dying?"

In the sky, those countless Ghost Hands still couldn't approach within ten feet of the eyeball.

But behind Ye Wuyou, the spectral-blue figure extended its largest ghost hand and gripped his waist tightly.

Whether the eyeball in the sky understood Ye Wuyou's words was uncertain, but it continued watching him silently, almost as if waiting for his next sentence.

Ye Wuyou laughed. Facing the eyeball, he let out a laugh of utter arrogance.

"Because I'm not the one who'll die! Didn't see that coming, did you? I've still got another life!"

As he spoke, the massive, spectral-blue hand flung him straight into the air.

With all that soul power surging madly through his body, and with Ghost's tremendous strength, Ye Wuyou broke through the ten-foot barrier.

At the sight, the scarlet pupil actually revealed strikingly human confusion and surprise.

That scarlet sliver shifted, seemingly intending to unleash something else, but then the eyeball's vision plunged into darkness.

Ye Wuyou clamped his hands over his mouth, his jaws moving up and down as he chewed.

A trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth. There was red in that blood, but other colors, too.

Finally, with a gulp, Ye Wuyou opened his mouth. Apart from bloodstains, nothing remained inside.

He had eaten the eyeball.

Then Ye Wuyou fell from the air, hit the ground, and lost consciousness.

But as he sank into unconsciousness, that voice sounded in his mind once again. This time, however, Ye Wuyou didn't hear it.

[Yes. This is the mindset you should have. What does a Demon Fox's life matter? If she dies, she dies.]

[Destroy everything, kill everything, sacrifice everything, and ultimately obtain everything.]

[This is the real you. This is your True Self. You have finally taken another step toward true Formlessness and No-Self.]

The voice fell silent for a while, then sounded again.

[It was merely a remnant of Great Dao Aura. So you swallowed it. So be it...]

This story arc is pretty much over.

The fox hasn't died yet.

And while I'm at it, please vote and keep reading.