As Xu Zhengyang walked the road to Azure Thunder Mountain, he could clearly feel a scorching heat rising from the ground. There was no trace of life around him, leaving the surroundings unusually deathly still, with even a powerful sense of oppression.
In particular, the higher he climbed, the more the ground changed from its original scorched black to a lustrous black. Clearly, these rocks had only become like this after countless lightning strikes.
An extremely sparse scattering of plants could just be seen along the way, but prolonged exposure to lightning had long since left them withered and charred. They held no vitality, only a heavy air of death.
Xu Zhengyang could clearly feel the Soul Devouring Carving Knife on him becoming extremely unstable. A sharp presence seemed about to burst out of it, and the knife itself seemed ready to attack everything around it indiscriminately.
Xu Zhengyang paid little heed to all this and continued climbing toward the summit of Azure Thunder Mountain.
The Soul Devouring Carving Knife was a renowned knife on the Carving Knife Ranking, and ranked very high at that. In the eyes of Soul Engineers, it was unquestionably a priceless treasure. Xu Zhengyang had spent two hundred thousand gold soul coins just to buy it.
Precisely because it was so valuable, and because of its peculiar nature, no one would bring the Soul Devouring Carving Knife somewhere with an excessively strong lightning attribute. Lightning naturally restrained evil, and if the Soul Devouring Carving Knife were destroyed, the loss would outweigh the gain.
Yet destroying the Soul Devouring Carving Knife was exactly what Xu Zhengyang wanted to do. Only Xu Zhengyang knew just how precious the gold of life used to forge it truly was. This was a supreme treasure that even Di Tian prized.
After a full hour of walking, Azure Thunder Mountain changed once more. Aside from the original scorching heat, threads of lightning had begun appearing on the ground, even making his body faintly tingle.
Fortunately, Xu Zhengyang had never stopped tempering his body all these years. In particular, throughout this past year of continuous forging, he had endured extremely high temperatures before the furnace, greatly improving his body's resistance and making his muscles exceptionally solid.
The abnormal movements of the Soul Devouring Carving Knife on him only strengthened Xu Zhengyang's resolve to carry out this undertaking, making him all the more determined to borrow the lightning between heaven and earth to destroy it.
When he reached the summit, the scene before him changed again. Dark clouds filled the entire sky, flashing with endless lightning, as though the end of the world had descended.
The summit did not look large, spanning only a few hundred meters, but the entire mountaintop seemed to resonate with the dark clouds overhead as it endured incessant lightning strikes.
At this point, Xu Zhengyang was also using every ounce of strength to hold on. Every bolt of lightning had at least the attacking power of a Soul King, and some were even no weaker than ten-thousand-year Soul Skills.
Fortunately, Xu Zhengyang had prepared in advance and had already removed his training weights. Relying on his keen reactions, he did everything he could to dodge each attack, even activating the Class 5 defensive Soul Tool on him at full power.
Even so, Xu Zhengyang knew very, very, very well that he could not remain on Azure Thunder Mountain's summit for long. After an incense stick's worth of time, his Soul Power would probably be exhausted, and his body would have exceeded its limits as well.
Especially now, Xu Zhengyang felt that even if he dodged the lightning strikes, the ground was still covered in lightning. His feet and muscles were beginning to go numb, and intense pain burrowed through his skin into his muscles and bone marrow.
Trembling, Xu Zhengyang took a wooden box out of his Soul Tool. Lying inside was none other than the Soul Devouring Carving Knife.
At that very moment, the lightning filling the sky seemed to sense something and let out terrifying roars, as though it had encountered some utterly loathsome arch-enemy.
At the sight of this terrifying scene, Xu Zhengyang's eyes filled with shock, but he also knew that if he could not evade it, he would probably die here on the spot.
Using all his strength, Xu Zhengyang hurled the wooden box into the sky. In just an instant, lightning blasted the entire box to pieces.
The Soul Devouring Carving Knife was fully exposed amid Azure Thunder Mountain's endless lightning.
At this moment, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife seemed to have fully unleashed its innate savagery, radiating a terrifying killing aura. Even from dozens of meters away, the sharpness it exuded made Xu Zhengyang feel as though his skin would be sliced through.
But before the Soul Devouring Carving Knife could react, endless lightning had already enveloped it. Bolt after bolt seemed to be drawn toward it, striking the knife without pause.
Lightning was the bane of all evil. Yet beneath this endless lightning, the Soul Devouring Carving Knife seemed to grow even fiercer. In particular, the patterns along the knife began lighting up one after another, and a black presence gushed from within it, forming the shape of an enormous skull.
Even from dozens of meters away, Xu Zhengyang could feel that this skull was filled with evil and terror. Its presence seemed capable of stirring the most primal fear within a Soul Master's body.
And this skull seemed alive. It actually let out a terrifying roar, and even the lightning surrounding it seemed to be gradually stained black.
Xu Zhengyang's eyes filled with astonishment. He had not expected the Soul Devouring Carving Knife to be even stronger than he had imagined, nor had he expected this evil presence to actually cause the lightning to mutate.
It seemed this was definitely no simple curse, nor even a simple sealing of evil power. The Soul Devouring Carving Knife was more like a living creature.
Xu Zhengyang could not help recalling how, in the original story, Mu En had merged his soul into the Golden Ancient Tree when he died. Perhaps the Titled Douluo Evil Soul Master who had forged the Soul Devouring Carving Knife had also reached an extraordinarily terrifying level of strength and had probably sealed his own soul within the knife as well. That would be why such a terrifying curse remained even after three thousand years.
In a sense, this Soul Devouring Carving Knife already counted as that Evil Soul Master's life-bound Soul Tool. It contained not only the Evil Soul Master's evil Soul Power, but even his evil soul, to say nothing of the fact that it was made of gold of life. Xu Zhengyang hardly dared imagine just how powerful this Evil Soul Master had been in life.
The enormous black skull and the lightning filling the sky contended against each other, neither side giving way. Even from far away, Xu Zhengyang could feel that terrifying pressure, as though true Titled Douluo experts were battling.
Unfortunately, no matter how formidable the Soul Devouring Carving Knife was, it faced the lightning of the entire Azure Thunder Mountain, the endless lightning within the dark clouds filling the sky.
In particular, with the appearance of this black skull, all the lightning on Azure Thunder Mountain seemed to have been provoked. The dark clouds overhead began gathering rapidly, and all the lightning began converging as well. A terrifying pillar of light shot into the sky, and even the lightning itself began gradually changing, shifting from its original pale blue to purple, with signs that its color would deepen further still.
Xu Zhengyang could faintly sense that, at this moment, the enormous black skull actually let out a great shout filled with hatred and endless defiance.