Time slipped by unnoticed, and in the blink of an eye, two and a half years had passed.
In Aolai City, Tang Wulin, a third-year student about to graduate, completed his daily confession at the Church and gratefully accepted a small bag of eggs from an Official Believer. After returning home, he felt his Soul Power at the peak of rank nine and hugged his Piggy Bank, which held almost thirty thousand Federation coins earned through his painstaking forging, imagining the joy of obtaining a Soul Spirit.
In Eastsea City, a Purple-Clad Woman who claimed to hail from a secluded family and bore the title Demon Dragon entered the city's Spirit Pagoda branch with a little girl whose face wore a cool expression.
At the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters in Shrek City, Heavenly Phoenix Douluo Leng Yaozhu refused the marriage arranged by her father, the old Family Head of the Leng Family. Yet remembering how the family's main line was dwindling because neither she nor her sister had a partner, she began considering taking a disciple.
In an unknown space.
Tang Hao lay in the void with a look of utter despair.
Three years. Three whole years! Who knew how he had endured those three years!
Even back when Spirit Hall had forced him to hole up in a shabby little village, he had never felt so stifled.
"This is going too far! Far too far!"
A roar suddenly exploded through the empty space, sending ripples through the surrounding void. Tang Hao, who was only one step away from refining the Plane Spirit and becoming the Plane Master, had once again sunk into impotent fury. He abruptly sprang upright from where he lay in the void, rolling about like an enraged ferocious beast and hammering his palms against the nonexistent ground beneath him.
He wildly swung his fists at the void, his knuckles whitening with the force. His eyes were blood-red, his once-deep brown irises densely webbed with bloodshot veins. He panted like an ox, his chest heaving violently, looking like a patient who had escaped from a psychiatric hospital. His already unstable mind had once again spiraled completely out of control, his madness worse than ever.
Watching from beside him, Ah Yin wanted to speak but had no idea how to console him.
Anyone whose plans were repeatedly disrupted at their most crucial stage, while they could not even locate the enemy, would have been hard-pressed to keep their composure.
From anger to boiling rage, then being soothed by Ah Yin, only to grow angry and boil over again-this cycle had repeated endlessly within this space over the past three years. It was as punctual as the two daily impacts from the Netherworld, which struck eight hours apart within each twenty-four-hour period.
"Ah Yin," Tang Hao called.
"Brother Hao." Ah Yin walked over to his side.
"We can't keep sitting here waiting to die," Tang Hao said.
He had thought the impacts from the Netherworld would happen only once or twice. Yet after three years of such frequent occurrences, they were most likely some sinister scheme that damned Plane Spirit had laid out long ago. Beyond that, Tang Hao could not imagine who else would come to interfere with him.
"Linlin has grown up now. Xiao San's Divine Sense should have awakened as the Golden Dragon King's seals loosened, too. Contact Xiao San. We can barely interfere with the physical world, so we'll have to let him make the trip for us."
"All right."
Elsewhere.
Entirely unaware that he had become the Tang Family's number one enemy-and had once again left the Plane Spirit to take the blame-Xu Qingjia used the Book of Life and Death to send his soul into the Netherworld once more.
Turn 2019.
Xu Qingjia played the transmigration card and launched an elbow strike.
Tang Hao took the hit. His status changed to boiling rage.
Tang Hao punched the air. It had no effect.
Xu Qingjia left the battlefield.
Turn over.
The Netherworld.
The surroundings remained a hazy expanse of gray, with no concept of sky or earth. There were only seemingly boundless gray mists and the waters of the Nether Sea. Broken souls devoid of any awareness drifted in one direction, following an unseen guidance.
Yet somewhere within the vast Nether Sea, a sight at odds with its surroundings had appeared: a road paved with blue-green stone slabs. Invisible ripples around it formed a seamless, invisible barrier, keeping the aura of the Netherworld from entering.
A gray figure sat quietly cross-legged on the stone slabs. He did not look like an ordinary person, seeming instead like a gray specter. Yet a layer of golden light resembling starlight draped his body, lending the handsome gray man an air of sanctity. He was none other than Electrolux. (His appearance from the comic adaptation.)
Not far from Electrolux, another figure sat cross-legged on a stone slab.
It was a young boy who looked about a meter and a half tall, half a head taller than others his age.
His thick, sleek black hair set off a face that had grown increasingly handsome as its features developed, its delicate contours even finer than before, like a meticulously polished piece of jade. Xu Qingjia's eyes were gently closed. The noble air that had once lingered between his brows had become more deeply ingrained, while three years of growth had lent his bearing greater elegance. Sitting there cross-legged, he already showed hints of a young man's upright silhouette, with a composure beyond his years.
A pair of invisible eyes surveyed this domain. With a shift of Xu Qingjia's will, wisps of Netherworld aura touching the Divine Domain's barrier were drawn inside and merged into the Yellow Springs Road beneath him and Electrolux. At the Divine Domain's boundary, the Yellow Springs Road continued expanding slowly into the Netherworld after absorbing its aura.
Xu Qingjia repeated the same process.
Over these three years, he had found something that could replace the power of faith to a certain extent when expanding his Divine Domain.
It was precisely what he was doing now: using his own Divine Domain to absorb the aura of the Netherworld.
After all, his Divine Domain would become the Underworld in the future, making it a world of the dead in its own right. The Netherworld also happened to be a world of the dead, and the composition of their powers was similar. Thus, after using the power of faith to make the Yanluo Heavenly Son's divine manifestation slightly more complete, he had begun controlling his domain to absorb the Netherworld's aura.
It went smoothly.
But expanding the Divine Domain could not rely solely on absorbing and refining the Netherworld's aura.
The core of a Divine Domain was the deity itself.
The relationship between them was like that between body and soul. If one blindly strengthened the body without tempering the soul, the soul would struggle to control a more powerful body.
He still had to refine the power of faith. Still, refining the Netherworld's aura had saved him a considerable amount of it.
Time flowed on, and several hours quietly passed.
Estimating that it was nearly time, Xu Qingjia slowly opened his eyes. A faint smile lingered in his clear black gaze as he glanced at Electrolux.
It's about time to begin.
Open the Ghost Gate and bring Electrolux back to the world of the living.
That would finally fulfill a promise I made to Elder Yi back then.
Xu Qingjia was deeply grateful to this elder. His guidance over the past three years had helped him tremendously.
But...
"I wonder whether the Silver Dragon King will notice."
After all.
The White-Haired Dumpling at his home had come to Mingdu precisely because of this assignment. Though by now, she might well have forgotten she even had such an assignment.
Would Gu Yue regard me as an enemy or a friend?
Xu Qingjia leaned toward forming an alliance.
It was not because he lusted after her beauty. After all, one more friend meant one more source of strength.
"Forget it. I'll take out some insurance. As it happens, the rate at which I'm gathering faith is starting to fall short of my needs."
He needed greater strength and influence to help him obtain more power of faith, as well as a safeguard that could keep him alive as he traveled the continent, both now and in the future.