Soul-Seizing Art

Less than thirty-six hours had passed since the Orion spacecraft's return capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. At this point, the Moon Landing Crew should still have been undergoing examinations and treatment at NASA. The miraculous survival of all four Astronauts alone was not something an investigation could explain overnight.

Yet the Robert before him wore a flight suit and helmet, looking every inch a helicopter pilot as he flew the helicopter away from downtown Houston.

Gao Jian swept his Foundation Establishment Divine Sense through the man, examining him inside and out. Nothing was wrong. He was unquestionably an ordinary human.

But the Heart-Binding Curse Gao Jian had placed on him was indeed gone.

The helicopter Elon Musk had sent should have been flown by an assistant he trusted. Robert clearly did not fit that description.

Where was the original helicopter pilot?

A faint spiritual glow rose in Gao Jian's eyes, and wisps of bloody aura immediately appeared around the Robert before him.

In response to Gao Jian's question, Robert smiled at him and answered in reasonably fluent English:

"Hello, Gao Jian. I'm here to take you back to your country."

"Which country?"

Gao Jian betrayed nothing, already prepared to kill him.

"China, of course, my friend."

Robert smiled. "You saved my life on the rocket, and I'm very grateful. That's why I have to take you back to China."

Gao Jian asked curiously, "China is so far away. How are we going to get there?"

Robert replied, "We can take a plane, a ship, a train... no, a train probably won't work. There's an ocean in the way."

"What about you, Robert?"

Robert shook his head at a steady pace. "I'm not going to China. China isn't good at all. None of us are going to China. I'm staying in the United States. The United States is my home. I'm taking you to the airport now. You'll be able to go home very soon."

Gao Jian spoke again. "What if I don't go back?"

Robert looked puzzled. "Why wouldn't you? Isn't China good? It's your homeland!"

A dazzling flash of sword light swept past, slicing Robert's mouth clean off while he was still speaking. Thick, grayish-red blood immediately spurted out.

"Aah-"

Robert screamed, but his scream ended there. The sword light shredded his vocal cords, and then an Unorthodox Cultivator's spell struck his head.

The hand hovered a little over ten centimeters above his head without touching his flesh. Yet hazy strands of gray-black light streamed endlessly from Robert's seven facial orifices and the space between his brows, gathering in the palm like snakes returning to their nest.

Every memory and the very essence of his soul were forcibly extracted.

Soul-Seizing Art!

For the record, Gao Jian had not learned the Soul-Seizing Art of his own accord. While he was hunting down a certain Foundation Establishment Unorthodox Cultivator, the cornered cultivator had thrown a Jade Slip containing the Soul-Seizing Art at his head. He had only learned it by accident.

The memories extracted by the Soul-Seizing Art made Gao Jian's expression grow increasingly grim.

The reason was simple: Commander Robert's memories were filled with vast stretches of blankness. His entire earlier life was nothing but snowy static. The only memories that remained began at four yesterday afternoon and ended at this very moment, as Gao Jian seized his soul.

Even counting generously, his memories totaled no more than twenty-seven hours.

Everything else was pure emptiness.

It was as though the Robert before him was an infant born only twenty-seven hours ago.

But those twenty-seven hours of memories alone were enough to enrage Gao Jian. Once he had extracted them all, his fury almost took physical form, and his terrifying Foundation Establishment spiritual pressure erupted.

Under that spiritual pressure, every bone in Robert's body shattered. His ill-fitting pilot's uniform and bloodstained flight helmet began disintegrating inch by inch. The molecular structures making up his clothing rapidly collapsed beneath the all-pervasive spiritual pressure, becoming disordered atomic dust that scattered on the wind.

Extreme agony flooded his consciousness.

But his consciousness was soon stripped away as well. Robert's soul was pulled straight out of his body and left floating in midair.

Gao Jian gripped "Robert's" soul and closed his eyes.

Scene after scene flashed through his mind.

He saw the real Robert, covered in wounds and tortured until his body was in pieces.

Under the Heart-Binding Curse, a gap had appeared in Robert's mental defenses. Those unknown creatures wearing human skin had actually managed to cut out Robert's memories, bypassing the curse's seal, then haphazardly splice those violently excised memories together into bizarre, fragmented scenes.

In those scenes, golden light shone, shielding the Command Module from a torrent of high-energy particles; a viewport shattered, and Gao Jian entered in Escape Light; Gao Jian released pill dust, saving the four of them in the fleeting instant between life and death; an Intercontinental Missile howled through the air; and, in another terrifying scene, Gao Jian summoned a waterspout to strike the return capsule and bleed off its kinetic energy.

The shattered images flashed past like a distorted slideshow.

After cutting out Robert's memories, the mastermind behind it all seemed to notice the "nutrients" in the real Robert's body. Robert was completely dismembered.

The images ended with plates littered with cold leftovers.

They had divided him up and eaten him.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

His eyes blood-red, Gao Jian gripped the neck of "Robert's" soul and unleashed spirit flame from his hand, scorching it. His eyes nearly split with rage as he demanded, word by word:

"What. Exactly. Are you? A demon? A ghost? Or some man-eating monster!"

He had already seen clearly that the helicopter pilot Elon Musk sent had also been ambushed and killed by the prepared "Robert" before him. The pilot's clothes "Robert" wore had been stripped straight off a corpse.

Boom!

A terrifying storm of Divine Sense stabbed into "Robert's" soul like ten thousand needles, spreading spiderweb cracks across it. It twisted in agony, seemingly trying to beg Gao Jian for mercy. But Gao Jian ignored it. A ball of spirit flame formed in his palm, burning the soul alive until it became ashes.

Not a trace of "Robert's" remains survived.

Gao Jian withdrew the spirit flame and coughed violently several times.

An unimaginable sense of guilt welled up in him. He closed his eyes, and only after a long while did he slowly open them again.

The helicopter was about to crash.

After going so long without anyone at the controls, the light helicopter was plunging toward the ground. But when it was just over ten meters above the surface, a powerful gust lifted it back up.

Gao Jian used the Wind Control Art to turn the helicopter around.

He slumped in his seat, his eyes lifeless, and remained silent for a long time.

In truth, whether that fake Robert had begged for mercy or been willing to confess all his crimes no longer mattered. Gao Jian had already extracted every detail of his life from those twenty-seven hours of memories.

This "Robert" had appeared twenty-seven hours ago. As for what "Robert" had been before that, Gao Jian did not know.

"Robert's" objective had simply been to land the helicopter near the FBI and the Federal Police, intending to use the power of the United States government to arrest Gao Jian. If Gao Jian were captured, it would also make their subsequent moves easier.

In short, this had been a probe-a probe aimed at Gao Jian.

Clearly, the scenes extracted from the real Colonel Robert's memories had made them deeply wary of Gao Jian, who had appeared from who knew where.

But there was some good news.

Gao Jian noticed that "Robert's" memories contained part of a conversation. The speakers were none other than the people in suits and polished shoes who had sat around the dining table, using knives and forks to divide up and eat Robert.

In "Robert's" memories, their faces never appeared. It was as though the "Robert" standing nearby was merely a mannequin in a clothing store. The mannequin kept his head lowered, catching glimpses of those elegant gentlemen from the corners of his eyes as they cut pieces of meat with knives and forks and held a conversation rich with human emotion.