A gigantic red umbrella spread over the sea cliffs, and an invisible suction pressed down from above, wrenching Sikong Tianyuan's manifested divine soul into a warped, distorted shape.
Though the Sky-Turning Umbrella had a pleasant name, it could absorb living beings' souls and blood qi, growing stronger with every kill and developing without limit. In both function and purpose, it really ought to have been called the "Ten-Thousand-Soul Banner." It was only because using such a thing was taboo for a Righteous Path Ancestor that it had been fashioned this way.
Though Sikong Tianyuan's Daoist cultivation was considerable, he clearly could not contend head-on with Qixia True Person. Upon discovering that the Sky-Turning Umbrella was tearing at his divine soul, he immediately dispersed the enormous phantom and returned to his mortal shell.
But that left only the surrounding poison mist to protect his physical body.
Xie Jinhuan seized the opportunity and charged at full speed. In the blink of an eye, he was within a hundred feet of Sikong Tianyuan. His long spear thrust forward with the power of a dragon, punching a hole through the poison barrier's rather weak defenses in a single strike and exposing Sikong Tianyuan's body.
A Poison Rat who could not stop a martial artist from closing in was practically a fish on the chopping block. Being killed by someone of a lower realm would be nothing unusual.
And with Xie Jinhuan unleashing everything regardless of the cost, his cultivation had already exceeded the average at the peak of the Fifth Realm. Sikong Tianyuan was in the early Sixth Realm, so the gap between them was not an impassable chasm.
Having lost his ancestor's protection and his advantage in divine soul, Sikong Tianyuan's only choice was to dodge.
But Xie Jinhuan pursued him with the