Sword and Bone protect Glazed Tile? Evil Eye: Heh heh heh, let me capture Ning Fengzhi first! [3.4K]

Evil Eye had come during Lu Changqing's slumber, when their land bordered the Sun Moon Continent.

He belonged to the Evil Eye Tyrant Clan from the Sun Moon Continent.

After taking human form, Evil Eye had joined Xuan Zi, who was likewise a hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast in human form. His Martial Soul was his original form, the Evil Eye Tyrant.

He had cultivated all the way to level 96.

After arriving on the Douluo Continent, he had learned this information through soul searches.

Bibi Xi snorted.

"These native gods and their successors certainly have their abacuses clacking. Do they really think a Divine Core will let them overturn heaven and earth?"

Had the random intelligence from the Sky Screen Livestream not exposed Bibi Dong's commencement of the Rakshasa God Trial back then,

Bibi Xi and the others would never have known.

"We must not be careless."

Xuan Zi's expression grew more serious.

"Although the Soul Masters of the Douluo Continent know nothing of the Soul Tool system, this continent has passed down its heritage for tens of thousands of years under the Divine Realm's protection. Its foundations are not as simple as they appear.

"The ancient formations guarding the great sects, that old fellow Qian Daoliu's Angel Divine Power at Spirit Hall, and the Ferocious Beasts hidden deep within the Star Dou Great Forest are all variables."

Xuan Zi took the Douluo Continent very seriously.

To a considerable extent, he overestimated it.

Xu Yu's expression turned solemn, and he bowed.

"Xuan Zi, have you come to the Vast Sea Fortress in person for a special mission?"

"His Majesty has ordered me to travel into the heart of the Douluo Continent."

Xuan Zi spoke gravely.

"I will personally visit Dragon-Slaying Pass, Heaven Dou City, and even the Star Dou Great Forest.

"I will uncover every strategic route through the continent's terrain, the true state of its forces, and the weaknesses of its hidden experts.

"I will pave the way for our army, so that we not only win this war, but win it cleanly."

Although they already had Evil Eye, Xuan Zi still had selfish aims.

He wanted to find an opportunity on the Douluo Continent that would let his Soul Power break through to level 99.

For that, he had to go himself.

Xu Yu immediately took a dark-gold metal token and a translucent jade slip from his storage Soul Tool ring, presenting them to Xuan Zi with both hands.

"Xuan Zi, this is the Shadow Token, a class-nine presence-concealing Soul Tool newly developed by the empire's Ministry of Works.

"Worn on the body, it can completely conceal fluctuations in your Soul Power and blood vitality.

"Even a level-99 Peerless Douluo would find it virtually impossible to detect you unless they came within ten paces."

Xu Yu explained.

"The jade slip contains a map of the entire Heaven Dou Empire compiled by the Military Secretariat over the past fortnight, along with the coordinates of the overt sentry posts and hidden watch posts outside Dragon-Slaying Pass."

Xuan Zi accepted the token and jade slip, casually tucking them into his sleeve.

"Well done."

Just then, an array disc in a corner of the command room suddenly gave an extremely faint hum.

Xu Yu's gaze sharpened. He strode to the disc and touched its central core crystal.

Dim light flickered across the crystal screen, revealing the residual trail of an energy fluctuation.

"What happened?"

Bibi Xi asked with a frown.

Xu Yu examined the data carefully and spoke gravely.

"A quarter of an hour ago, the detection screen thirty li southwest of the fortress perimeter picked up an external probe of spiritual power.

"The other party's spiritual power was exceptionally tenacious, with an intensely sharp edge and a bloody, murderous presence.

"The initial probe triggered the fortress's defensive countermeasures. The class-nine spiritual barrier shattered and dispersed it."

Killing intent blazed in Bibi Xi's eyes.

"Another Heaven Dou Empire spy?

"How dare they pry into the fortress! I will immediately take a Soul Tool hunting squad and skin this rat alive, then tear out its tendons!"

"Wait."

Xuan Zi raised a hand to stop Bibi Xi.

Xuan Zi closed his eyes. His vast spiritual power spread outward, instantly locking onto the direction of the lingering fluctuations.

A moment later, Xuan Zi opened his eyes, a mocking sneer curling his lips.

"It isn't a Heaven Dou Empire spy."

Xuan Zi spoke slowly.

Xu Yu froze.

"Who is it, then?"

"That bloody presence, brimming with overbearing destructive force, is not something an ordinary Soul Master could possess."

Xuan Zi spoke mildly.

"According to what I know of the Douluo Continent,

"there is only one person in the world who possesses this Divine Slaughter's Domain presence and can condense his spiritual power to a level approaching the peak of Titled Douluo."

Bibi Xi's pupils abruptly contracted.

"Clear Sky Douluo, Tang Hao?!"

"In all likelihood, it is him."

Xuan Zi nodded as he spoke.

"Spirit Hall is hunting him everywhere, and the Heaven Dou Empire also considers him a menace.

"He has brought his son Tang San, the one with Twin Martial Souls, to furtively investigate the fortress perimeter. He certainly hasn't come to join the Heaven Dou military."

Xu Yu ventured a guess.

"If he isn't heading to Dragon-Slaying Pass to enlist, then coming to the Vast Sea border at a time like this...

"Could he be planning to cross the sea to the Xuanwu Continent?"

"Clever."

Xuan Zi sneered.

"Storm clouds are gathering over the Douluo Continent. Spirit Hall is powerful, and the empire is plagued by internal disputes.

"Tang Hao knows he has nowhere to stand, and now he sees the two worlds have connected.

"He most likely intends to take a desperate gamble and slip into our Xuanwu Continent to seek opportunities, or lie low for a while."

Bibi Xi gave a vicious laugh.

"He spurned the road to heaven and came knocking on gateless hell!

"Xuan Zi, I will mobilize the fixed-shell Soul Cannon batteries immediately and blanket every southwestern coastal beach, blasting these two homeless curs into ash!"

"We must not beat the grass and startle the snake."

Xuan Zi shook his head, his gaze unfathomable.

"Though Tang Hao is a Titled Douluo, he carries severe old injuries. He is already a grasshopper after autumn and cannot stir up any great waves.

"As for his son Tang San, he is even less significant.

"Let them through."

Bibi Xi looked puzzled.

"Let them go to the Xuanwu Continent?

"Wouldn't that be releasing a tiger back into the mountains?"

"Releasing a tiger back into the mountains?"

Xuan Zi laughed heartily, as though he had heard the greatest joke in the world.

"The Xuanwu Continent is the home foundation of the Ancestor and His Majesty. Experts gather there like clouds, while the Holy Spirit Cult and the great Soul Tool sects spread a net across the heavens.

"With just the two of them, father and son, they will be like two blind insects caught in a spiderweb on the Xuanwu Continent. What waves could they possibly stir up?"

Xu Yu understood and chuckled softly.

"You mean that keeping them alive might give us a more interesting pawn in the struggles among the Douluo Continent's factions?"

"Exactly."

Xuan Zi took a bite of the roast chicken in his hand, then turned and walked toward the fortress gates.

"Not only must you refrain from intercepting them, have the patrol deliberately expose a small opening near Rocky Strait later. Let them cross safely.

"Once they think they have escaped certain death and enter the heart of the Xuanwu Continent, the Holy Spirit Cult will naturally give them a proper welcome."

Understanding dawned on Bibi Xi. He bowed with his hands clasped.

"Understood. I will order the patrol to adjust its route at once!"

Xuan Zi never broke stride as his figure gradually faded amid distorted light and shadow.

"Guard the fortress well and stockpile ammunition."

"The day I completely uncover the weaknesses of the Heaven Dou Empire's hollow shell will be the day both worlds change masters."

Dragon-Slaying Pass.

Atop a cliff, a figure stood silently in the shadows.

From his commanding height, Evil Eye surveyed the camps and beacon towers stretching for dozens of li below.

Hundreds of thousands of Heaven Dou soldiers were moving heavy catapults, chevaux-de-frise, and rolling logs. Armored cavalry patrolled as scouts crisscrossed the area.

A mocking smile curled Evil Eye's lips.

"Using ordinary iron and wooden stakes to defend against a Soul Tool army. How pitifully primitive."

On the Sun Moon Continent and in the Xuanwu Empire, even an ordinary Soul Tool regiment, equipped with linked Defensive Soul Tools and class-six fixed-shell Soul Cannons,

could raze this so-called impregnable pass in an instant.

Evil Eye looked past the forward defensive line toward the gold-roofed command tent at the fortress's center.

Outside the tent, three figures stood facing the wind.

The man in front was refined and gentle, dressed in white robes and holding a jeweled scepter.

The old man to his left was withered as a skeleton, his black robes snapping in the wind.

The old man to his right had silver hair falling to his shoulders and stood with his hands behind his back. A sharp, fierce sword hum faintly echoed around him.

Ning Fengzhi, Gu Rong, and Chen Xin.

Evil Eye narrowed his eyes. Beneath the fringe over his forehead, the vertical pupil of his original form glimmered with a dark green light.

The master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, the pinnacle of support-type Soul Masters.

Evil Eye rapidly calculated.

Xuan Zi was right. Though the Douluo Continent's system is malformed, the amplification multipliers of its support-type Soul Skills are truly astonishing.

One Ning Fengzhi can make those two old fellows' strength surge by several tenths out of nowhere.

Chen Xin is already at the peak of level 96. With the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda's enhancement, his combat strength would approach level 97.

Gu Rong could also cross the threshold into level 96.

But what if Ning Fengzhi were gone?

The greed and killing intent in Evil Eye's eyes steadily intensified.

Ning Fengzhi's own Soul Power is only level 79, and his body is utterly fragile.

Under these two men's inseparable protection, he seems as secure as a fortress of metal with a boiling moat. But once I seize an opening...

If I capture Ning Fengzhi alive and carry him away tonight, I can not only completely cripple the Heaven Dou Empire's top combat power at Dragon-Slaying Pass,

but also use him as a hostage to force Sword and Bone to surrender without a fight, and even make the entire Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect hesitate to strike the rat for fear of breaking the vase.

Evil Eye sneered, his figure gradually fading into a wisp of smoke.

"Natives of the Douluo Continent, tonight I will show you what a truly formless nightmare is."

At midnight, in the central army's command tent at Dragon-Slaying Pass.

Large tallow candles burned quietly on the table.

Ning Fengzhi rubbed his aching brow, his eyes resting on the spread-out map of the Vast Sea Fortress's defenses, his brow tightly furrowed.

The tent flap stirred, and Sword Douluo Chen Xin stepped inside, his expression calm.

"Fengzhi, it is late, and the dew is heavy. You should rest."

Ning Fengzhi sighed and set down his vermilion brush.

"Uncle Jian, the Vast Sea Fortress fell too quickly.

"Though Marshal Ge Long is deploying troops and assigning commanders, His Majesty Xue Ye keeps sending orders to engage the enemy.

"As for Spirit Hall, Xue Qinghe has yet to send a reply, and Bibi Dong's thoughts are unfathomable.

"Our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect has staked everything on retreating to Dragon-Slaying Pass. One careless move could plunge us beyond redemption."

Chen Xin spoke calmly.

"When soldiers come, send a general to stop them; when water comes, pile earth to block it.

"Old Bones has personally inspected every spatial node within fifty li of Dragon-Slaying Pass. No disturbance from a Spatial Soul Skill can escape his perception.

"As long as you remain safe, with Old Bones and me here, even if the Xuanwu Empire's marshal comes in person, he can forget about setting half a step beyond Dragon-Slaying Pass."

Gu Rong's hoarse, peculiar laughter came from outside the tent.

"The old scoundrel is right.

"Fengzhi, you worry too much.

"I just laid another three layers of bone-prison restrictions around the command tent. Even a fly entering would be ground into pulp by spatial turbulence."

Ning Fengzhi shook his head with a laugh.

"With both of you uncles here, of course I feel reassured.

"But the Xuanwu Empire's methods are strange and unpredictable, nothing like Spirit Hall in the past. We must not be careless in anything."

Chen Xin nodded slightly.

"Old Bones, it's time to change shifts."

"Stay here and look after Fengzhi. I'll go to the battlements at the pass and take a look at Ge Long's troop movements."

Gu Rong raised an eyebrow.

"Go on, go on. You wear that dead man's face all day-even Fengzhi gets annoyed looking at it."

Chen Xin ignored Gu Rong's teasing. His figure flickered, turning into a streak of sword light that shot out of the tent.

Gu Rong folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a pillar of the Command Tent, closing his eyes to rest.

Not long after Chen Xin left the Command Tent.

The light inside the Command Tent abruptly warped.

It was not that the light had dimmed, but that it was being forcibly devoured by an indescribably terrifying power.

Behind the desk, Ning Fengzhi's heart clenched violently, and an unprecedented sense of dread instantly enveloped his entire body.

Before he could even cry out, a ghastly white speck of light the size of a needlepoint suddenly lit up in the center of his forehead.

Evil Eye's figure emerged from the void like a ghost, and the third, vertical eye on his forehead snapped open.

A level ninety-six mental-type Super Douluo, with a hundred-thousand-year Evil Eye Tyrant Martial Soul as his true form.

"Soul Detonation."

A sharp spike of mental power completely bypassed the physical and Soul Power defenses Gu Rong had placed around the tent and drove viciously into Ning Fengzhi's sea of consciousness between his brows.

Ning Fengzhi let out a muffled groan. His pupils instantly lost focus, the scepter in his hand fell, and his entire body slumped limply toward the desktop.