Who the hell are you trying to pressure?

"Brat..."

The Soul Saint's voice came from beneath the shattered skull, hoarse and low, carrying rage suppressed to its absolute limit.

He braced both hands against the wall on either side and pulled his body out of it inch by inch.

Rubble rolled off him, hitting the ground with dull thuds.

Black flames ignited around him again, fiercer and more violent than before.

He straightened, and the Seventh Soul Ring beneath his feet abruptly lit up.

Black light shot into the sky, enveloping the entire courtyard.

The light was as thick as ink that would not dissolve, carrying a suffocating sense of pressure.

Seventh Soul Skill, Martial Soul Avatar.

The skeleton swelled again at that moment. Its already three-meter-tall frame grew wildly, surpassing five meters in an instant.

Its bones thickened, strange black patterns surfacing on every one of them like some ancient incantation.

The Skeleton Blade in his hand enlarged as well. Bone spurs stood erect along its blade, and the skull at its hilt opened its mouth in a soundless howl.

The Soul Saint's immense might swept outward like raging waves on a furious sea.

The courtyard's plants swayed wildly under the pressure, their leaves rustling down like rain.

The trellis groaned beneath the unbearable weight, and fine cracks spread across the bluestone paving.

The Soul Saint stood at the center of that black pillar of light, the eerie green ghost flames in his skull's eye sockets locked on Lu Ren.

His voice came from beneath his headpiece, like muffled thunder rolling through his chest:

"You dared break in here and cause trouble. All of you will die here!"

Lu Ren watched him with an indifferent gaze.

Those words made him very uncomfortable.

Especially coming from a Soul Saint threatening them with murderous intent.

And so, Lu Ren raised his hands slightly, as though resisting the pressure surging toward him.

"Who the hell are you trying to pressure?"

The Soul Saint sneered.

Putting on an act.

Before absolute strength, any pretense was futile.

With his Martial Soul Avatar active, even Soul Saints of his own level had to avoid his edge.

A mere Four-Ring Soul Ancestor, even if he was a little stronger, how could he possibly...

His thoughts stopped abruptly.

Because he saw Lu Ren form a strange hand sign before his chest.

It was a gesture he had never seen before, resembling neither the opening stance of a Soul Skill nor the motion used to activate a Soul Tool.

It looked more like some ancient ritual, a symbol of power from another system that was utterly out of place in this world.

"Domain Expansion."

"Malevolent Shrine."

The instant the words fell, the Cursed Energy and Soul Power churning around Lu Ren exploded outward. His hands remained fixed in their sign, while the Cursed Energy and Soul Power pouring from him fused perfectly at that moment, forming a visible membrane of light that spread outward with him at its center.

Everything changed wherever the membrane passed.

The courtyard vanished.

The vines, the bluestone paving, the walls, the sky overhead-everything was covered and replaced the instant that membrane swept past.

In their place appeared a space bizarre beyond measure.

Beneath their feet lay shallow water, clear to the bottom, yet nothing beneath it could be seen.

The water was as still as a mirror, reflecting the outline of a building.

That building stood right behind Lu Ren.

It was a shrine.

An ancient, strangely shaped shrine, bearing an exotic style that did not belong to this world.

At the edges of this space, where the courtyard walls should have been, a translucent barrier now stood instead.

Beyond the barrier, darkness swallowed everything. Nothing could be seen.

This was an independent space completely isolated from the outside world, as well as the domain of an Innate Cursed Technique-the embodiment of Domain Expansion, an absolute barrier that manifested the caster's inner world in reality.

The Soul Saint stood rooted to the spot.

He looked down at the water beneath his feet, then up at that strange shrine, before finally settling his gaze on Lu Ren.

The boy still held his hand sign, standing in the middle of the water.

"What... is this..."

The Soul Saint's voice was as dry as sandpaper scraping stone. His Martial Soul Avatar remained active, his five-meter-tall skeletal body radiating powerful pressure.

But within this space, that pressure seemed suppressed by something, becoming sluggish and stagnant, no longer able to spread freely as before.

He felt an unprecedented fear.

Lu Ren stood directly before the shrine, his bearing strikingly like that of a god.

The Soul Saint's five-meter-tall skeletal Martial Soul Avatar was as insignificant as an ant before that shrine.

The immense pressure granted by his Seventh Soul Skill dissipated like foam beneath the suppressive power of the domain's rules. Even the circulation of Soul Power within him became sluggish beyond measure, as though thick mud had been poured into him.

"W-what the hell is this thing?!"

The Soul Saint repeated the question, roaring in terror.

Gripping the Skeleton Blade with both hands, he frantically drove the Soul Power remaining inside him, trying to slash at the shrine.

To slash at the boy standing before it.

But he discovered that an invisible force held his movements firmly in place.

Raising his hands felt like dragging an immense weight.

Taking a step felt like sinking deep into a mire.

Moving every inch of bone required ten, a hundred times his usual strength, and that restraining force continued to grow, as though an invisible hand had gripped his entire body in its palm and was slowly tightening.

"Could it be... a domain-type Soul Skill?"

The Soul Saint's voice came from beneath his headpiece, hoarse and trembling.

Though he could not understand the principles behind this space's construction, the significance of that shrine, much less what this damned place actually was, he still possessed the discernment of a high-ranking Soul Saint.

He recognized the nature of this power.

A domain.

This was a domain!

Domains were the most costly, rarest abilities in the Soul Master World.

They were even rarer than Hundred Thousand Year Soul Skills, more precious than supreme-grade Soul Bones.

A threshold countless Titled Douluo could never reach in their entire lives, the power of domains that most geniuses dreamed of but could never obtain.

He had only heard how powerful domains were, but had never imagined-or rather, never had the opportunity to experience firsthand-what one looked like when truly unleashed.

To think it possessed such overwhelming power.

Enough for a Four-Ring Soul Ancestor to make him, a Seven-Ring Soul Sage with his Martial Soul Avatar active, feel such an intense threat of death.

Lu Ren floated before the shrine, his hands forming a sign. The blood-colored markings around his right eye had spread to his temple, writhing faintly in a blood-red glow like something alive. His gaze fell upon the Soul Saint through those markings.

Indifferent.

Ice-cold.

Like a god of death holding dominion over life and death, looking down upon an ant about to be crushed.

The rules of Malevolent Shrine took full effect at that moment.

Within Malevolent Shrine's Innate Cursed Technique, attacks took the form of slashes.

But those slashes themselves were divided into two entirely different types.

The first was "Dismantle."

These were continuous ordinary slashes. There could be one, or countless, or they could surge ceaselessly like a tide and blanket everything like a storm, completely drowning the target in a torrent of slashes.

The second was "Cleave."

A lethal strike whose power adjusted according to Cursed Energy output, crushing all before it like rotten wood with a single blow.

The strength of the slash depended on the amount of Cursed Energy the caster poured into it in that instant. The higher the output, the greater its power.

And whether "Dismantle" or "Cleave," now that he possessed Itadori's abilities, both kinds of slashes carried the same special ability.

Soul Slash.

This damage acted directly upon the soul, bypassing the body's physical defenses to a certain extent and striking the soul itself.

Every slash that landed brought not only bodily wounds, but damage to the soul as well.

Every slash was equivalent to enduring a full-power soul shock from Huo Yuhao, and was even more terrifying.

Because Huo Yuhao's soul shock was a single burst, whereas Malevolent Shrine's Soul Slashes were an endless succession of attacks.

Every second, every instant, new slashes formed, and within the domain, every one of his slashes was guaranteed to hit.