With that, Da Ming drew a deep breath, his tone becoming incomparably solemn.
"What lies down there isn't some Ancient Ruins."
"A few days ago, the ground suddenly split open, revealing a boundless expanse of scales."
"That aura has never appeared even in the Soul Beast Clan's oldest inherited memories."
At this point, Da Ming paused, then lowered his voice further.
"The being sleeping below..."
"Is definitely a supreme creature beyond a hundred thousand years, or even a million years."
"That being..."
"Could very well be the legendary true progenitor of the Soul Beast Clan."
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Douluo Continent.
Slaughter City.
This city of sin, built deep underground, was steeped in the smell of blood all year round.
Inside the Hell Slaughter Arena, a hundred-person melee was taking place that day.
High on the platform, the King of Slaughter sat on his spacious throne, swirling a glass of scarlet Mary in his hand.
He watched the fallen ones slaughtering each other below, his eyes full of enjoyment.
"Report!"
Just then, a Hell Messenger scrambled onto the platform and dropped to their knees before the King of Slaughter.
"Great King, a foreign object has appeared at the bottom of the Blood Pool!"
Hearing this, the King of Slaughter frowned, a flicker of displeasure crossing his eyes.
The Blood Pool was the foundation of all Slaughter City. Yellow Springs Dew relied entirely on its blood for fermentation and refinement. How could something have gone wrong?
"Why the panic? What foreign object?"
The Hell Messenger trembled all over, stammering out the report:
"A..."
"A gigantic Dark Gold tentacle has pierced through the rock at the very bottom of the Blood Pool!"
"Not only is it unaffected by the Blood Pool's corrosion, it's continuously giving off astonishing fluctuations of blood vitality!"
Hearing this, the King of Slaughter was startled too.
Without another word, his figure flashed, and he headed straight for the deepest part of Slaughter City.
A moment later.
The King of Slaughter arrived at the edge of the underground Blood Pool.
There, amid the churning blood ahead, hung a Dark Gold object tens of meters long, extending all the way into the deepest part of the Blood Pool.
And it was drifting slowly, as though it were alive.
"This blood vitality..."
Standing on the bank, the King of Slaughter carefully sensed it.
Suddenly, delight spread across his face.
As the host of the Nine-Headed Blood Red Demon Bat, his thirst for and perception of blood surpassed those of anyone else on the Douluo Continent.
He could clearly sense that the blood contained within this tentacle was incomparably rich.
Even a single mouthful would equal a hundred years of drinking Yellow Springs Dew in Slaughter City!
"Heaven is helping me!"
At the thought, the King of Slaughter burst into laughter.
"This must be a Million Years mutant Soul Beast buried deep underground!"
"Judging by its shape, it's probably the tail of some ancient earth dragon, or a mutated blood vine!"
In his view, this Soul Beast must have been sleeping underground and inadvertently extended part of its body into Slaughter City's Blood Pool.
To him, this was nothing short of a potent tonic falling from the sky!
As long as he drained its blood, he would definitely be able to suppress Tang Chen's remnant soul within him completely, and even break through the Asura God's restrictions in one stroke to become a true god!
"All of you, withdraw! Seal this place off!"
The King of Slaughter issued his orders to the enforcement squad behind him.
Once everyone had left, he could no longer restrain his greed.
With a mighty shout, the King of Slaughter unfurled a pair of enormous blood-colored bat wings from his back.
His entire body became a streak of bloody light as he lunged straight at the tentacle in the center of the Blood Pool.
"Blood Demon Devouring!"
The King of Slaughter roared, opening his mouth wide to suck out the supreme blood essence within.
Yet when he bit down, he failed to pierce even its defenses.
Not only that, his teeth snapped off.
Before he could react to the agonizing pain, the tentacle he had bitten drifted slightly in the breeze.
That one movement sent the King of Slaughter flying backward before he could even scream.
In midair, he spat out three great mouthfuls of black blood in succession, while the blood-colored bat wings on his back instantly burst apart into a cloud of bloody mist.
Boom!
The King of Slaughter slammed heavily into the rock wall beside the Blood Pool, leaving a human-shaped crater.
He slid out of the crater like a puddle of sludge, his entire body convulsing.
The Nine-Headed Blood Red Demon Bat parasitizing his body was letting out scream after scream.
"W-what kind of Soul Beast is this?"
The King of Slaughter lay sprawled on the ground, bleeding from all seven orifices, his eyes filled with horror.
That was not something he could absorb at all!
A single drop of that blood weighed more than a mountain!
Had he actually managed to swallow a mouthful just now, he would already have burst apart and died on the spot!
After recovering somewhat, the King of Slaughter struggled to raise his head and looked toward the center of the Blood Pool again.
By the faint red light within the Blood Pool, he carefully examined the tentacle, which was tens of meters thick.
He studied the natural branching at its tip and the texture of the keratin layer on its surface.
This was no Soul Beast's tail, nor was it a vine.
It was a damned whisker, an absurdly enormous whisker!
And once he understood what it was, the King of Slaughter's breathing stopped instantly.
His mind went blank.
A single whisker was tens of meters thick, piercing straight through the underground rock to hang inside Slaughter City.
Then how enormous must its owner's head be?
How vast must that body be?
Could all of Slaughter City have been built right beneath its lips?
At the thought that he had actually tried to suck this monster's blood, the King of Slaughter could not help shuddering.
That movement just now had not been the monster fighting back at all.
It probably had not even felt anything.
"Seal this place shut..."
Suddenly, the King of Slaughter scrambled away on all fours, stumbling and crawling toward the exit.
As he ran, he roared with every ounce of strength he had:
"Seal the bottom of the Blood Pool shut!"
"No one is allowed to take so much as half a step near that place again!"
"If anyone dares disturb that being, I'll exterminate their entire clan!"
Meanwhile, Gu Xian was still sleeping soundly.
He had absolutely no idea that one small section of one of his dragon whiskers had accidentally drooped into an underground cavern.
Much less did he know that a little bat had just tried to pluck his whisker, only to snap its own teeth.
Meanwhile, in the Far North.
Something strange had happened that day in this forbidden zone for life, which had been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.
A huge fissure suddenly opened in the layer of ten-thousand-year mystic ice at the deepest part of the core region.
An ice-blue spike, a hundred thousand feet tall, thrust straight out of the ground and pierced the clouds.
The two overlords of the Far North, the Snow Empress and the Ice Empress, rushed to the scene immediately.
Looking at the crystalline spike before her, the Ice Empress's eyes shone.
"Snow Maiden, we've struck it rich!"
"This must be supreme ice marrow that took hundreds of thousands of years to form!"
"As long as I absorb it, I'll definitely be able to pass my four-hundred-thousand-year heavenly tribulation with my eyes closed!"
Beside her, the Snow Empress frowned, about to point out that its shape was somewhat strange.
But before she could speak, the Ice Empress could no longer hold back and attacked.
"Ice Emperor's Wrath!"
With a mighty shout, the Ice Empress transformed her hands into enormous emerald-green scorpion pincers and clamped down hard on it.
She intended to break off a piece first for a taste.
However.
Clang!
A dull impact rang out.
When the Ultimate Ice that the Ice Empress was so proud of touched the spike's surface, it failed to leave even a white mark.
Not only that, the spike did not even sway.
Immediately afterward, a faint recoil rebounded straight at her.
"Pfft!"
Before the Ice Empress could even scream, she was sent flying backward.
She spewed a great mouthful of blood in midair and smashed through more than a dozen ice mountains before barely coming to a stop.
"What happened?"
The Ice Empress lay amid the shattered ice, her face filled with horror.
She was a four-hundred-thousand-year Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion!
Her all-out strike had actually been repelled by a piece of ice marrow, making her cough up blood?
The Snow Empress was startled by the sight too and hurriedly flew forward to examine the spike.
By the sunlight, the Snow Empress peered inside it.
At that glance, this Snow Maiden who had ruled the Far North for hundreds of thousands of years froze in midair.
Inside its translucent outer shell was no ice-attribute energy at all.
Instead, there were incomparably thick blood vessels.
Scalding blood gleaming with golden light flowed through them!
How the hell was this supreme ice marrow?
It was clearly a bone spike!
A barb on the body of some unknown creature!
Moreover, judging by the cross section at its base, this hundred-thousand-foot bone spike was merely an insignificant little segment on its back.
The Snow Empress sucked in a breath of cold air, her scalp tingling.
"Bing'er, forget it."
The Snow Empress turned her head, her voice carrying an unprecedented sense of helplessness.
"This isn't ice marrow at all."
"This is a living thing."
"Our entire Far North might well be on its back!"
Hearing this, the Ice Empress was utterly dumbfounded, even forgetting to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth.
Meanwhile, in the forbidden grounds behind the Pope's Palace in Spirit City.
The library.
Bibi Dong had been searching here for three days and nights without sleep or rest.
All around her, the floor was piled with ancient records and bamboo slips.
Ever since she had witnessed that Dark Gold scale and that ocean-like expanse of golden blood in the Star Dou Great Forest.
She had been unable to sleep at all.
Until she discovered exactly what that thing was, being pope left her feeling as though thorns were digging into her back.
"Nothing... there's nothing anywhere!"
Bibi Dong hurled the ancient book in her hand to the floor, her expression utterly grim.
Whether in the unofficial histories of the Heaven Dou Empire and Star Luo Empire or Spirit Hall's top-secret records spanning over ten thousand years.
She could not find even the slightest clue about a creature of such immense size.
Just as Bibi Dong was growing agitated, someone pushed open the library doors.
The Great Enshrined, Qian Daoliu, walked in with a dark expression.
Ever since that day in the Star Dou Great Forest, when he had struck its scale with his sword, only for the recoil to shatter his Angel Holy Sword.
This level-ninety-nine Limit Douluo seemed to have aged more than a decade overnight, losing all his former pride.
"Stop looking."
Qian Daoliu looked at the mess strewn across the floor and sighed.
"Great Enshrined, did you find something?" Bibi Dong abruptly raised her head.
Qian Daoliu shook his head.
He had scoured every ancient text, but found no records of any relevant Soul Beast.
A profound sense of helplessness seeped into Qian Daoliu's voice.
"Bibi Dong, face reality."
"This thing's existence probably predates even the Gods we worship."
"The Gods left no record of it, not because they didn't want to."
"But because even the Gods don't know it exists, or because even the Gods deliberately avoided it."
Hearing this, Bibi Dong slumped straight into her chair.
The unknown was the most terrifying thing of all.
Even against a true God, she would have the courage to draw her sword.
But facing a monster that not even the Divine Realm had any record of, that profound helplessness was enough to drive a person mad.
Elsewhere.
On the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest.
The night was deep, and a deathly gloom hung over Shrek Academy's campsite.
Yu Xiaogang lay unconscious in the tent.
Flender and Liu Erlong were tending to him, both shrouded in gloom.
Meanwhile, beneath a large tree outside the campsite.
Tang San had changed into a tight-fitting night outfit.
He touched the Twenty-Four Bridge Bright Moon Night at his waist; every Hidden Weapon inside was already loaded.
"Xiao Wu, wait for me. Your big brother will definitely rescue you."
A trace of grim resolve flashed through Tang San's eyes.
Without telling Flender or the others, he used Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track and slipped like a ghost into the darkness of the Star Dou Great Forest.
The Titan Giant Ape had taken Xiao Wu. He had to settle that score.
In his eyes, however strong the Titan Giant Ape might be, it was still nothing more than a beast.
As long as he used the Tang Sect Secret Arts along with various poison-coated mechanical Hidden Weapons, even if he could not kill his opponent, he could definitely catch him off guard and snatch Xiao Wu back.
As for whatever formation Yu Xiaogang had mentioned, or whatever super Soul Beast the others had spoken of.
Tang San did not want to bother with any of it now.
There was only one thought in his mind: save her.
Relying on Purple Demon Eye and Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track.
Tang San avoided quite a few low-level Soul Beasts along the way and reached the edge of the Star Dou Great Forest's inner ring after a few scares but no mishaps.
Yet the farther he went, the more Tang San felt something was wrong.
It was too quiet.
The Star Dou Great Forest, normally fraught with danger at every turn, was now so silent that not even a single insect could be heard.
Just as Tang San was about to venture deeper.
He stopped abruptly and immediately dropped prone in a dense clump of bushes.
Using Purple Demon Eye's night vision, Tang San looked ahead.
At that sight, his entire body froze.
In the clearing ahead, countless Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts lay packed densely together.
These overlords, normally fiercely territorial, were now like docile pet dogs, all lying obediently on the ground, not even daring to breathe heavily.
And at the very front of these Soul Beasts.
That figure resembling a black fortress was none other than the Titan Giant Ape who had taken Xiao Wu during the day!
Beside the Titan Giant Ape coiled an even larger monster with a bull's head and a snake's body.
"Sky Azure Bull Python..."
Tang San sucked in a cold breath.
These two hundred-thousand-year Ferocious Beasts had actually gathered all the high-level Soul Beasts in the forest.
Could they be holding some sort of Soul Beast assembly again?
Tang San's brows knitted tightly.
Before you continue