Ten thousand question marks sprang up in Qi Xuan's mind at once.
Why was Ye Guyi here?
In his memories, Ye Guyi would not appear until the second All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Fighting Tournament, at least four or five years from now.
And her debut had taken place in the Sun Moon Empire.
So how had she ended up in a remote little town in the Dou Ling Empire?
There was no time to think. Several black-robed figures suddenly leaped out of the dim corners of the hall and lunged at Ye Guyi.
They were all Soul Masters, some with three rings and others with four. Each exuded a sinister aura so thick that even their Soul Rings had been stained somewhat black.
"Hmph!" Ye Guyi snorted softly, making no attempt to hide the disgust on her lovely face. Her longsword swept across, cutting straight through an Evil Soul Master of her own level at the waist like a hot knife through butter.
Qi Xuan's scalp prickled at the sight. Killing an opponent of the same level in an instant was no easy feat. Even when he had killed Yu Lian, he had needed two moves.
But the person Ye Guyi had killed was an Evil Soul Master.
As the saying went, turning evil made you ten times stronger. Everyone cried for Evil Soul Masters to be hunted down, yet Soul Masters still kept falling onto the evil path, precisely because Evil Soul Masters were generally much stronger than others of the same level.
On this continent, strength was the best passport.
Who would become an Evil Soul Master without some perks.jpg
So the sheer caliber of Ye Guyi's strike really was off the charts.
"This little girl has a fine attribute. The extremely rare holy attribute." Elder Yi materialized in Qi Xuan's mind without warning to offer his critique.
"Holy attribute? Aren't angels light-attributed?" Qi Xuan asked offhandedly. Meanwhile, with Cui'er on his back, he skirted the chaotic crowd and looked for a way out.
"Because the two manifest similarly, and both counter evil, people often lump them together."
"But think about it, and you'll see the difference. The light attribute is fundamentally a natural attribute. You see sunlight every day, don't you?"
"The holy attribute is different. Its essence is humanity's pursuit of justice and fairness. It is rarer, and it is innately especially effective against evil."
"Though almost all holy attributes do come with a little light attribute."
While Elder Yi was giving Qi Xuan an online lecture, he had quietly crept to the entrance of the hall.
The doors were tightly shut.
Qi Xuan pushed hard, but the heavy doors did not budge.
Given his current physical strength, even doors made entirely of heavy silver should not have been able to stop him.
That left only some metaphysical explanation.
Fucking deity, Qi Xuan cursed inwardly. He had been avoiding a direct confrontation with that statue, but now it seemed he could not even leave without destroying it.
In the hall, Ye Guyi faced the onslaught of seven or eight Evil Soul Masters alone, utterly fearless.
Every strike of her sword left a huge, unhealable wound on an Evil Soul Master, while they could not even get close to her.
And each time she killed an Evil Soul Master, the golden light around her grew a little stronger.
She sustained herself through battle, growing fiercer with every fight.
She's farming merit here.
But Ye Guyi's expression was ice-cold, because Zheng Hua's ritual had not ended. He was still conducting the blood sacrifice.
Of the two intended offerings, however, one had been rescued by Qi Xuan, while the other was slaughtering everyone in her path.
So, without any change in expression, Zheng Hua simply slit his own arm and let his blood gush into the trough beneath the statue.
One ruthless bastard.
As the blood poured in, the statue visibly stirred. Streaks of pitch-black light seeped out from beneath its surface and gradually began to spread.
"Argh." Agony tore through Ye Guyi's mind. At last, she remembered.
She had originally infiltrated this place to investigate after discovering traces of Evil Soul Masters, but the instant she saw this statue, she had lost consciousness.
This Fallen Angel Statue must have had some connection to her martial soul, the holy angel.
As an object bearing the aura of a deity, it was hard to say that it was merely an inanimate thing.
And what Zheng Hua was doing now was gradually awakening it.
"Ha!" As though they had all received some command, the Evil Soul Masters hurled themselves frantically at Ye Guyi, intent on stopping her. Even some ordinary people without Soul Power joined them.
I absolutely cannot let it awaken completely.
Surrounded, Ye Guyi made an immediate decision. She swept her longsword in an arc around herself, forcing back the Evil Soul Masters crowding her.
"Supreme Sacred Slash!"
Then she gathered every last ounce of her strength and slashed a massive blade of light toward the statue.
Visually, it looked a little like Wang Dong's charged Evil Light Slash, but in both purity of energy and power, Ye Guyi's attack was far stronger.
She did have four rings, after all.
After unleashing that strike, Ye Guyi turned deathly pale. She planted the Angel's Sword against the ground and struggled to hold herself upright, barely keeping herself from falling.
But she paid no attention to her condition. Her gaze remained fixed on the statue.
Zheng Hua was still smiling. As though dissatisfied with the pace of the blood sacrifice, he cut wound after wound into his own body.
By the end, his vision had begun to blur. He was only an ordinary man.
He collapsed helplessly, recalling his first day in the Angel Society.
The society's president had earnestly admonished him, "Offer up everything you have, and your daughter's soul will reunite with you in the Heavenly Realm."
As Zheng Hua completed the blood sacrifice, the statue erupted with intense black light, which wrapped it in a tightly sealed black cocoon.
Ye Guyi's all-out attack plunged fiercely into that black cocoon.
And that was that.
Like a clay ox sinking into the sea, the slash vanished without stirring so much as a ripple.
A black hand burst out of the cocoon.
Crack, crack, crack.
As the cocoon's shell peeled away, a young woman emerged. She bore some resemblance to Ye Guyi, but was far more sinister.
More precisely, she was a creature with the appearance of a young woman.
Her beauty was in no way inferior to Ye Guyi's. The eerie markings on her even made her more alluring.
Eight blood-black wings spread high behind her, forming a stark contrast to Ye Guyi's two.
She reached into her own chest and slowly drew out a blood-colored greatsword a little taller than herself.
Compared to her, Ye Guyi's angelic form looked like a small child standing before a giant.
"A little quiz for you. Why did that girl's attack just now have no effect?" Elder Yi remained so composed that he still had time to test Qi Xuan.
"The transformation's invincibility frames canceled it?" Qi Xuan offered what he considered a perfectly reasonable explanation.
"Never heard of those," Elder Yi played along. "It was because, among attributes of the same origin, the higher order holds absolute supremacy over the lower. My undead army back then feared no purification spell precisely because my own affinity for the light attribute was also extraordinarily high."
Indeed, the instant the Fallen Angel fully manifested, every Evil Soul Master present lost all signs of life, including the brainwashed novice believers.
Apart from Ye Guyi, who stubbornly held herself upright, only Qi Xuan, crouching off to one side, and Cui'er under his protection remained.
At that moment, Ye Guyi instead felt a sense of peace.
As the bearer of an angel martial soul, she understood all too well what the number of wings meant.
Four wings at level seventy, six wings at level ninety, and eight wings...
Meant the Angel God.
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