His Body Martial Soul, the Spirit Eyes, reached a whole new height at that moment.
His spiritual power continued to climb.
Dai Huabin, who had been placed in the corner, saw it happen.
His eyes widened as he stared at the scene in disbelief.
How was this possible?
He refused to believe it!
Why had he, who possessed memories of the future, lost to someone who had none?
As these thoughts surged through his mind, Dai Huabin's face gradually twisted, becoming grotesquely distorted.
His teeth ground together with a grating sound, and his nails dug deep into his flesh, drawing faint traces of blood.
At last, his endlessly rising spiritual power reached a certain level and stopped completely.
The Sea of Consciousness within Huo Yuhao underwent another tremendous change.
The Lake of Life appeared in his Sea of Consciousness, and two landmasses, one modeled after the Star Dou Great Forest and the other after the Far North, took complete form one after another.
Snowy mountains, volcanoes, lightning-filled valleys, forests, and other elements appeared one by one across the two landmasses.
"Spirit Sea Realm."
Huo Yuhao murmured to himself.
In the world of Peerless Tang Sect, spiritual power had not been divided into levels.
Aside from him, there were not even many Soul Masters who relied on spiritual power.
But judging by what he had just felt, his spiritual power had reached the Spirit Sea Realm of The Legend of the Dragon King era.
As for how many points of spiritual power he had, he did not know.
But it was enough for this era.
Now, Huo Yuhao had a more important matter to deal with.
He turned his head, his gaze falling on Dai Huabin, who was staring fixedly at him.
The duchess was the sort of person who could not be woken up.
When Dai Huabin's gaze met Huo Yuhao's deep, sky-blue eyes, he trembled instinctively.
A glint of cold light in those eyes seemed to pierce his entire body, leaving him ice-cold from head to toe, without a trace of warmth.
Huo Yuhao's sky-blue eyes changed color, turning gray.
Dai Huabin could even sense the breath of death from those gray eyes.
That breath of death was no illusion; he could truly feel it.
All he heard was Huo Yuhao murmuring a chant he could not understand.
The faster the chanting became, the more he could feel the reality of the world of death. His soul seemed to be separating from his body.
It would not have been an exaggeration to say his soul was leaving its shell!
Suddenly.
An eerie, deathly silence fell over the room.
The deathly silence grew so intense that Dai Huabin felt as though his body were submerged in icy corpse water.
Weeping, wailing, and venomous whispers burrowed into Dai Huabin's ears, layer upon layer.
"What are those sounds?!"
Dai Huabin clutched his head and covered his ears, trying to shut the sounds out.
But the sounds seemed to possess an innate, bug-level talent for passing through walls. No matter how Dai Huabin covered his ears, it did no good.
"Ah!!!"
The sounds were breaking down Dai Huabin's mind, bit by bit.
"S-so cold."
A surge of chilling Qi rushed into her body through the soles of her feet, jolting the duchess awake. She shot upright, feeling as though something had touched her.
It was not ordinary ice elemental power. As the duchess, she had encountered a few ice-attribute Soul Masters.
How could she put it? This feeling was like...
The duchess shook her head. She could not keep thinking about it.
If she kept thinking about it...
"Speaking of which, where am I? Weren't those bastards from the Body Sect taking turns tormenting me, and Huo Yuhao throwing me into a corner like trash...?"
The duchess looked around and was stunned by what she saw.
A gray-black haze surrounded her, the sky hung low, and there was no warmth at all.
This was not the world or the surroundings she knew.
The duchess looked around in panic, her body trembling uncontrollably from the Yin Qi.
"Huabin?"
"Son, where are you?!"
She wanted to call for help, but there was no one nearby.
The duchess tried to steady her trembling feet, but they shook so badly that she could not take a single step.
She did not even have the courage to take one step.
Suddenly.
A hand reeking of decay burst from the earth and seized the duchess by the ankle.
"Aah!!!!!!!" The duchess's face changed drastically, and she let out a piercing scream.
Elsewhere, Dai Huabin was walking along a pitch-black road.
"Where is this?"
"Am I going in circles because of a ghost?"
Dai Huabin ran toward a light ahead of him, but every time he was about to reach out and touch it, the light moved away again.
"Welcome death..."
"Only death is the final destination for you and your mother!"
The voice echoed constantly through the spaces occupied by Dai Huabin and the duchess.
The duchess was entangled by the hand that had burst from the earth. She tried to pull her leg free, but by now she had lost all her strength.
She could only let the decaying hand wrap itself around her body.
Coupled with that terrifying echo.
Snap!
Her breath stopped.
The duchess had been frightened to death.
"Gate of the Undead, open!"
Huo Yuhao swept his hand, and a white gate descended from the sky.
The white gate appeared before both Dai Huabin and the duchess.
The gate opened, and a powerful suction threatened to draw in everything around it.
Dai Huabin's and the duchess's bodies convulsed violently at the same time.
The white gate before them was drawing the Yang Qi from their bodies, bit by bit.
Their bodies had lost all strength to support themselves.
Dai Huabin and the duchess fell to the ground at the same time, like dried corpses.
Their eyes were full of confusion. They did not know where they were going, what they were thinking, who they were, or what their names were.
The sound of hoofbeats flooded Dai Huabin's and the duchess's ears.
The sound seemed to be coming from behind the gate.
The sound drew closer and closer, and they could see with their own eyes skeletal warhorses emerging from the white gate before them.
On the warhorses rode ranks of knights clad in deathly gray armor. They wore helmets that concealed their true faces.
The only thing visible inside each helmet was a faint golden flame of the soul.
Death Knights.
And all of them were at the Soul Emperor level.
One knight, who appeared to be of a somewhat higher rank, dismounted from his warhorse.
He looked expressionlessly at Dai Huabin and the duchess, who lay trembling on the ground.
He waved a hand, and the other Death Knights obeyed.
They picked up Dai Huabin and the duchess and threw them into the Gate of the Undead.
The Death Knights rode their warhorses back into the world of the undead.
The gate closed again, and the surroundings changed back into Huo Yuhao's original room.
But the gate, which should have closed, did not disappear.