Heaven Dou City was only a little over a hundred kilometers from Sunset Forest.
For An Jing, who could manipulate air resistance and air currents at will, that distance hardly counted as a long journey.
Propelled and buoyed by invisible currents, the group crossed the plains and entered the lush heart of Sunset Forest in less than half a day.
Suspended in midair, Dugu Yan went from furious curses and hysterics to screaming herself hoarse. At last, utterly hopeless and exhausted, she gave in, humiliatingly reduced to a living map who obediently pointed the way.
Before long, a vast valley of steep, jagged terrain stretched before them.
Yet before they could approach its true heart, a layer of emerald miasma, so thick it seemed impossible to disperse, completely shrouded the dense woods ahead.
The miasma churned and surged like a tangible green swamp, giving off a pungent, sickeningly sweet stench of blood.
Not a blade of grass grew within a hundred meters. Every tree had withered and blackened, and even the rocks on the ground had been corroded into pitted hollows. Faint, eerie sizzling sounds occasionally drifted through the air.
A few low-level birds and Soul Beasts that inadvertently skimmed the edge of the poisonous barrier could not even cry out before their flesh dissolved into foaming emerald pools of bloody pus within a single breath, leaving only stark white bones to fall into the dust.
An incredibly overbearing Deathly Poison Formation, powerful enough to bar almost every Soul Master, had been laid around the entire valley!
Zhu Zhuqing stopped abruptly. Catching a trace of the bloody stench drifting through the air, she felt even the circulation of her Soul Power grow sluggish, and a hint of gravity settled over her lovely face.
"Looks like this is the place."
An Jing halted, his indifferent gaze sweeping over the endlessly churning emerald barrier before him.
Watching the occasional passing bird or Soul Beast turn into a foul-smelling pool of blood after touching the faintest trace of its lingering poison, he knew he had found the right place.
"Senior... this poisonous barrier is terrifyingly potent. If an ordinary Soul Master carelessly touches even the slightest bit, I'm afraid both their flesh and soul will be completely corroded in an instant."
Zhu Zhuqing knitted her slender brows, deep concern appearing on her cool, delicate face. "How... are we supposed to get inside?"
"A mere cloud of impure gas carrying microscopic toxins. How could that possibly count as an obstacle?"
An Jing turned, his deep gaze passing over Zhu Zhuqing before sweeping toward Dugu Yan, who still hung in midair, her face twisted with teeth-grinding fury.
"Stay close. If you fall behind, no one will collect your bodies."
The instant his words fell, the currents around An Jing underwent an earth-shaking transformation.
Humm-!
He had not manifested even a single Soul Ring, yet the surrounding light and air refracted and warped violently like rippling water. The entire vault overhead seemed to become a transparent veil as thin as a cicada's wing.
At that moment, every impurity vanished from his dark, fathomless eyes, leaving a clear, almost divine azure, as though the timeless heavens were reflected within them.
His frost-white hair broke free of gravity's restraints and drifted languidly in invisible high-altitude currents.
Faint folds in space rippled around him. He silently rose several inches off the ground, standing upon empty air and floating freely, radiating an awe-inspiring divine might that transcended the mortal world!
Both Zhu Zhuqing's and Dugu Yan's pupils contracted sharply, their breath catching.
"Th-this is his Martial Soul?!"
Zhu Zhuqing gazed up at that godlike figure, towering waves of shock surging through her heart.
It had neither the traits of a Beast Martial Soul nor the tangible outline of a Tool Martial Soul. Such a Martial Soul was unheard of in the historical records of the entire continent!
"Putting on airs... it's nothing more than an intimidating sleight of hand!"
Dugu Yan snorted from midair, forcibly suppressing the panic in her heart.
Her grandfather had personally laid this lethal poisonous barrier. She refused to believe that some young man of unknown origins could break through it so easily.
Yet what unfolded in the next instant shattered every shred of her wishful thinking.
Facing the Jade Phosphorus Poison Miasma, which could melt gold, dissolve iron, and corrode all things, An Jing merely raised his right hand with a languid expression. Pressing his index and middle fingers together, he casually traced a slash through the air ahead.
Boom-!
Vast, precisely controlled aerodynamic forces tore through at the microscopic level in an instant!
The dense, impassable miasma, thick as a swamp, was cleaved in two as though an invisible heavenly blade ten thousand fathoms long had forcibly split it apart!
Violent, intensely pressurized currents drove every poisonous particle thirty feet away,
forming two towering walls of deadly poison, while directly before the three of them, a spotless vacuum passage was ripped open, impervious to even the tiniest speck of dust!
"Let's go."
An Jing slipped both hands back into his trench coat pockets and stepped into the passage upon empty air, as leisurely as if strolling through his own courtyard.
As they passed through the long, narrow corridor he had forcibly opened, the churning green mist around them gradually grew thinner and fainter.
When they took the final step out, the view suddenly opened wide. A magnificent world that should have existed only in myth unfolded fully before their eyes!
It was a vast, inverted-cone-shaped basin sunk deep into the earth, encircled by mountains on every side.
At the very center of the basin lay an immense, extraordinarily peculiar hot spring.
Its water was clear enough to see the bottom, yet it was strangely divided into two sharply distinct halves.
The left half resembled molten lava and raging fire, blood-red throughout. Billowing waves of heat rose from it, even distorting the air above.
The right half was icy white as marrow, releasing bone-piercing clouds of freezing white mist. The moment its vapor spread, it turned into ice crystals that pattered downward.
Where water and fire met, red and white nurtured one another without encroaching on either side. The rising vapor interwove in midair into dreamlike clouds of rainbow radiance.
Around the twin springs, countless exotic flowers and wondrous herbs grew across the slopes.
Herbs as crimson as fire, with leaves like gold and jade, swayed upon the scalding rock walls.
Crystal-clear flowers emanating the frost of ten thousand years bloomed silently in the frozen soil.
Golden chrysanthemums stood proudly, their petals hanging like silken threads. There was even an unparalleled immortal herb, pink and tender as jade, with a richly fragrant heart; the faintest wisp of its scent drifting from afar dissolved the valley's churning poison into nothingness!
Every immortal herb brimmed with profound spiritual vitality that seized the creative power of heaven and earth.
Heaven-defying opportunities that could unleash storms of blood in the outside world and send countless Soul Masters fighting until their heads split were scattered here like common weeds!
The Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well!
A supreme treasure land of natural creation on the Douluo Continent, uniquely blessed by heaven and earth, rarely seen even once in tens of millions of years!
An ordinary Soul Master who consumed a single immortal herb here could cleanse their meridians and marrow, alter their destiny, and turn from rotten wood into a peerless prodigy, gaining boundless potential to reach the divine realm.
An Jing drew a deep breath, narrowing his azure eyes as he hovered in the air, sensing the purest primal forces of extreme heat and extreme cold mingling and colliding here.
Yet before any of them could recover from this fairyland spectacle.
Atop a great boulder in the center of the valley, a dark-green figure who had been sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed was abruptly alerted by the presence of unfamiliar intruders and sprang to his feet!
The man was tall and thin, his long, dark-green hair hanging loosely over his shoulders. Within his deeply sunken sockets, emerald pupils like those of a venomous snake suddenly blazed with chilling murderous intent, locking firmly onto the valley entrance.
"Such audacity! What ants dare trespass in my forbidden grounds?!"
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