Chapter 467: 467 Soul Clipping
Chapter 467: 467 Soul Clipping
At this instant, the time flow speed around seemed to have slowed down thousands of times. Xia Feng clearly sensed his soul cracking like porcelain, with wisps of pink light flowing out along these fine cracks, filling his eye sockets and submerging his narrowed black pupils.
“Ant.” A cold, indifferent pronouncement echoed. With a soft hum, his soul body completely dispersed, turning into specks of spiritual light that overflowed from his hollow shell. His vacant, dead eyes looked up towards the dim sky, his corpse falling heavily onto the iron chain bridge.
As the body fell, a radiance lit up between his eyebrows, and specks of flowing light overflowed, scattering like loot dropped from a monster around the corpse, along with the corpse of Princess Mei Ling, Yi Nanxi. Peach Blossom Star Lord’s light form quietly condensed directly above Xia Feng’s corpse. With hands behind his back, he hovered in the air, his divine eyes sweeping indifferently over the corpse’s state before closing to quietly sense the surroundings.
After receiving the humiliating memories that Huaze Tuo had suffered before their marriage, Peach Blossom Star Lord realized this human possessed some kind of B-grade spirit artifact capable of resurrection, but with limitations on its revival scope and duration. Based on his experience, spirit artifacts of this level would have significant restrictions, not only in usage count but also in reviving within ten seconds at most.
“Rumble!!!” Peach Blossom Star Lord waited quietly, observing the surroundings as the entire Candle Fire Rock Land continued to tremble. Lava surged like a tsunami, rising to shroud the sky, then rapidly vaporized into wisps of red mist, dissipating into the air. The red lines connecting the rock land to the Blood Throne also snapped one by one. As the man’s Noh mask lifted and he slowly rose, the rocks of the entire land seemed on the verge of a terrifying collapse, cracking into countless fissures.
“Buzz—!!!” Ri Nuo stepped forward from the throne, unleashing a dark, black surge that spread for over a thousand miles, as if breaking free from shackles. His aura began to climb steadily, his messy white hair cascading down his back dancing in the air, and a strange red light flickered from the eyes of his ferocious Noh mask.
Peach Blossom Star Lord ignored Ri Nuo, waiting for ten seconds. While observing the vast Calamity Demon Sea, he scanned the surroundings with his mind, but detected no signs of any new souls being born. With his powerful abilities, he didn’t need to see with his own eyes; as long as a new soul was born within his range of perception, it would not escape his scan. Even if an ant hid perfectly, it would be immediately detected the moment its soul revived, leaving it nowhere to hide. However, with ten seconds having passed and no movement, that foolish ant must be truly dead, with no possibility of revival.
Thinking this, Peach Blossom Star Lord’s slightly suspicious gaze swept towards He Jianzhu in the distance, then lowered to Yi Nanxi beside Xia Feng’s corpse. Yi Nanxi’s eyes were still rolled back, her cold and beautiful little face frozen in a state of bliss from before death.
Humiliating memories surged into Peach Blossom Star Lord’s heart, but his expression hardly changed. To overcome this final lifetime’s love tribulation, revenge was only the first step; he needed to learn to accept hardship and understand it. Only by seeing through this love tribulation could he achieve something.
Lost in thought, Peach Blossom Star Lord looked up, his indifferent gaze falling upon the dark, colossal tower that pierced the clouds before him, and the Heart Calamity Demon Blood that was still condensing at its base. After experiencing trials in nine lifetimes, he had collected a considerable amount of Heart Calamity Demon Blood, but he never expected to find someone here who had collected even more. Furthermore, there was not only demon blood but also a divine object like the Refining God Tower.
“What, Your Excellency, do you intend to break the agreement?” Ri Nuo’s deep, calm voice echoed. The light form hovering in mid-air slowly turned, its divine eyes narrowing within the swirling light of its face. They had indeed reached an agreement just now; Peach Blossom Star Lord had telepathically conveyed that as long as that human was killed, he would immediately leave. Ri Nuo naturally had no objections.
However, verbal agreements were meant to be broken. A trace of mocking killing intent flashed in the peach blossom eyes of the light form, and an ancient red light also ignited in the eyes of the black-clothed man’s ferocious Noh mask.
“Boom!!!” As their gazes met, the area stretching for thousands of meters twisted and exploded like a car thrown into a shredder, emitting a piercing hum. Streams of multicolored light rays shot wildly through the distorted space. However, the nine long bridges made of iron chains, the Blood Throne, and the Refining God Tower remained intact, suspended in the void.
The Faceless Ones on the iron chain bridges huddled with their heads in their hands, while the White Mask muttered things like “I’m going to die,” and “Father, please be gentle.” The Spider Man and Bone Snake Man, along with a few scattered survivors who had been captured, hid among the Faceless Ones with terrified expressions. He Jianzhu, suspended before the Refining God Tower, watched this world-shattering battle with a calm gaze in her beautiful eyes.
As for Xia Feng, he had exited the Nirvana state of the Vermilion Bird Demonic Armor and used the Body Snatching and Transformation technique to possess He Jianzhu’s soul.
Even as a clone, He Jianzhu’s mental power was vast. The moment Xia Feng possessed her, it was like crashing into a towering wall reaching into the clouds; he couldn’t invade her soul at all, let alone usurp it. However, Xia Feng hadn’t intended to usurp He Jianzhu in the first place. His goal was merely to temporarily attach himself to her to extend his revival time.
According to the information regarding the spirit robe transmitted by Miss Jian Zhu earlier, he discovered that the Body Snatching and Transformation technique was highly compatible with the Vermilion Bird Demonic Armor, capable of greatly compensating for the Demonic Armor’s ten-second Nirvana limitation. Under normal circumstances, after ten seconds, if he didn’t choose to revive, he would be forcibly revived on the spot, his soul and physical body reshaped. But with the Body Snatching and Transformation technique, he could temporarily exist as consciousness attached to the soul of a trustworthy person. When he wished to truly revive, he could disengage from that person’s soul, and the Vermilion Bird Demonic Armor would continue to help him reshape his spirit base and physical body.
Of course, even with this, he would still be unable to evade detection by near-god level existences like Peach Blossom Star Lord. So, Xia Feng exploited a bug. When the Vermilion Bird Demonic Armor revived, it would reconstruct his spirit substance (consciousness → mental power → yang energy), then his spirit base, spirit particles, and finally his physical body, in that order. The moment he attached himself to He Jianzhu’s soul and his ‘mental power’ was reconstructed, He Jianzhu used her ‘cutting and splicing’ ability to piece his ‘spirit substance that had not yet formed yang energy’ onto her own spirit base, thereby interrupting his revival. However, Xia Feng did indeed survive by virtue of He Jianzhu’s yin energy and spirit base.
This was precisely the ability of He Jianzhu that Xia Feng found most terrifying. Not only could she cut and splice spirit robes, but she could also cut and splice physical bodies, spirit particles, spirit bases, and consciousness—effectively transferring a person’s overall strength (excluding spirit artifacts) to another person out of thin air. However, He Jianzhu told him that such splicing also had a time limit; the maximum a clone could achieve was thirty minutes, after which restoration was necessary. Through this miraculous method, he had forcibly stalled Xia Feng’s Vermilion Bird Demonic Armor revival process between the reconstruction of his mental power and yang energy, placing him in a state of being neither alive nor dead.
He was dead because after forming consciousness and mental power, he had not formed yang energy, which is the fundamental basis for soul existence. He was not dead because Xia Feng had merged with He Jianzhu, becoming a second consciousness within her soul and thus possessing yin energy.
In a sense, he had become a woman.
