Soul Heavenly Gold

This was the angriest Fu Yuan had been since he transmigrated. Over those tens of thousands of years, far too many branches of the human race had vanished, slaughtered to extinction. Young Holy Bodies, Divine Bodies, and human prodigies had been captured to have their blood drawn, their hearts cut out, and their souls carved apart.

And the ones who did it were humans. They had betrayed the fighting spirit and pride of their own race, casting aside their self-respect and their people. The so-called Carefree Manor was known to the world as the Ghost Domain.

The dead were ghosts, but they were nowhere near as wicked as the living.

The middle-aged Daoist shook his head and gave a bitter smile. How could he have known such closely guarded secrets? There were eight ranks of ghost envoys in Carefree Manor, and he was only of the fourth.

Above the ghost envoys were ghost generals, ghost kings, and ghost emperors. He was nothing but an insignificant pawn.

This so-called treasure site was merely a pretext, a cover for the search for blood puppets.

Shrouded in gray mist, where ten thousand streams converged, it should have been a genuine treasure site. Yet he had exhausted every means at his disposal without finding a single secret treasure.

He guessed that the beings who had entered before him must have taken them.

He had obtained the animal hide in a secret realm at an earlier checkpoint, then inscribed it with characters from the immemorial era to pass the fake off as genuine.

Ghost envoys were outer personnel of the Ghost Domain and had no access to the method of refining living puppets. The blue-robed poison puppet had been bestowed upon him by the ghost general above him. Their only responsibility was to find prey.

The tower-like man was brimming with blood Qi and had a powerful physique, making him ideal for refinement into a blood puppet.

The twin foxes delighted him even more. He had heard that the ghost king who had entered the World Road this time loved unusual things above all else. They would be enough to serve as his stepping stone to advancement.

He had laid a formation in advance, intending to seize the moment when the three were joyful and had let down their guard. Then he would control the blood puppet to strike with overwhelming force and subdue them.

A living puppet was worth several times as much as a dead one, and the same was true of a living person.

"How do you contact each other?" Fu Yuan asked.

"If I answer that question, can I live?" the middle-aged Daoist asked.

"You can suffer a little less." Fu Yuan waved his hand, and countless tiny spirit needles appeared.

"If I can lure a ghost general here, can I trade that for a chance to live?" A sinister smile appeared on the middle-aged Daoist's face, truly a frightening sight.

"Yes!" Fu Yuan agreed.

After the two struck their bargain, Fu Yuan recalled his imperial sword intent and let the middle-aged Daoist act.

He was not worried that the middle-aged Daoist might harbor sinister intentions. On the contrary, he looked forward to it. In the face of absolute strength, all schemes and plots were paper tigers.

The middle-aged Daoist took a black-and-white intertwined talisman from his storage bag. After writing some strange characters on it, he set it alight.

Any object capable of transmitting a message across a distance within the World Road was of no low grade.

In all of Great Luo, no more than five people possessed such an object.

With a thought, Fu Yuan unleashed the Emperor Sword Art. Nine golden streaks of Sword Qi whistled down, piercing the middle-aged Daoist's body. Countless spirit needles stabbed into him, sealing all his meridians and bone marrow.

Fu Yuan did not stop there. He used a soul secret art to form eighty-one invisible soul needles.

"You promised..." The middle-aged Daoist was terrified, but he could no longer make a sound.

"I naturally stand by what I agreed to." Fu Yuan smiled grimly. "For someone like you, death is a release."

With the double torment of body and soul, Fu Yuan intended to make him suffer a fate worse than death and regret being alive.

At that moment, in a cave a thousand li away.

Piercing screams rose and fell. Inside the cave lay another world: a vast pool of blood, a burning sea of fire, bone-chilling ice, a pill furnace giving off black vapor...

It was like the eighteen levels of purgatory. Living beings were used as ingredients, either refined alive into puppets or refined alive into pills of flesh and blood.

The organs that were dug out and the excess flesh and blood were frozen and kept as provisions.

"A voice transmission from Feng Si!" A gaunt old man, eating a wolf's heart raw with blood seeping from the corners of his mouth, looked surprised. One of the voice-transmission talismans beside him was flashing, tadpole-like characters appearing on it.

"Alone, suspected to be an emperor's son!" Thousand Winds Demon General finished reading, his face filled with fear.

"An emperor's son!" He repeated the words, his initial fear slowly turning to greed. This would be a heaven-reaching achievement, one that would let him ascend to heaven in a single step and earn that lord's favor.

In the valley, Fu Yuan's Double Pupils opened and closed as he searched for the Soul Heavenly Gold.

At the center where the ten thousand streams converged was a spring opening that plunged underground to an unknown depth. Fu Yuan extended his spiritual sense downward to its fullest. At three thousand meters, the sound of rushing water had not diminished at all; it still surged without end.

"Is there another world down there?" Fu Yuan murmured. He jumped into the spring opening and fell with the current.

Three thousand meters, five thousand, eight thousand... ten thousand... thirty thousand!

Light shone from thirty thousand meters beneath the spring opening. There really was another world down there.

The waters of the ten thousand streams converged here in a vast ocean of unfathomable depth.

The two ends of the ocean were opposites. At Fu Yuan's end, the ten thousand streams flowed into the ocean; at the other, the ocean divided into ten thousand branches, their waters flowing upward against the heavens.

The rock above the ocean had been polished over hundreds of millions of years, becoming as smooth as an enormous mirror.

"No wonder the water here never dried up, even after all those long years. So this is how it works." Fu Yuan marveled. This place could truly be said to outshine the craftsmanship of heaven.

"Now, let me see where the Soul Heavenly Gold is." His Double Pupils opened and closed as he searched the ocean.

A faint white light came from within the ocean and entered his Double Pupils. Fu Yuan slipped into the water and felt his soul leap for joy, like a wanderer returning home from afar.

The water surged and churned, forming countless water dragons. Each one could leave an early-stage Nirvana cultivator battered and exhausted, and there were hundreds upon hundreds of them in the ocean. They surged at Fu Yuan from every direction, intent on crushing him.

"What a surprise, a piece of Heavenly Gold that has developed intelligence." Golden light flashed and enveloped Fu Yuan. However the hundreds of water dragons hammered at him, he remained immovable.

Soul Heavenly Gold that knew how to defend itself had most likely developed intelligence.

Ancient histories recorded many instances of Heavenly Gold developing intelligence. In both the immemorial and the chaotic ancient eras, there had been Heavenly Gold that completed its cultivation and proved its Dao to become an emperor.

Protected by the golden barrier of light, Fu Yuan continued deeper.

Countless currents gathered to form a colossal creature: a kun with a body tens of thousands of meters wide. It lunged at Fu Yuan, jaws snapping.

A strike like that would likely force even a cultivator at the sixth or seventh level of Nirvana to dodge and retreat. It had the power to shatter mountains and rivers, sunder the sky, and cleave rivers apart.

Pale golden light shone in his hand as he thrust it out, a hand that could pluck the stars and seize the moon. It collided with the giant kun, and their terrifying clash stirred up countless shock waves. Water spouts shot into the sky.

Perhaps sensing Fu Yuan's strength, the Soul Heavenly Gold exerted itself again. Another giant kun appeared, a full hundred thousand meters long and even more terrifying in its might.

"Break!" Fu Yuan grew solemn. The Spirit of Blood appeared, and he struck with both hands. The Star-Plucking Hand displayed its full might as he met the two giant water kun head-on.

Boom! Boom!

After holding out like that for dozens of breaths, Fu Yuan unleashed his power again and smashed them apart by force, then continued his descent.

"You, bad person, leave now." A childish voice rang out. It was neither speech nor a voice transmission, but communication between souls.

Fu Yuan marveled. As expected of Soul Heavenly Gold, its control over the soul was so skillful that it far surpassed his own at present.

"Bad person, don't come any closer! Go away!" Sensing that Fu Yuan had paid no attention, the Soul Heavenly Gold was nearly frantic enough to cry, its little childish voice trembling.