This was a huge lake, the surface shining with faint green colored light spots which made the whole lake extremely crystalline and clear, as if it were simply made up of the light itself.
“This must be it!”
Seein the lake, Ye Chen’s eyes brightened, but a curious look appeared on his face in the next moment. There were countless frightening Shadowless demons down in the underground crack, so he wondered how the people inside the pavilion knew that the Rootless Flowers and Shadowless Plants were growing here.
‘Perhaps the Life and Death Realm warriors were here themselves, eh? No way!’ Ye Chen shook his head on his own conjecture. Life and Death Realm warriors would not do these kinds of things for money for sure. ‘Then, perhaps it was the top rank master level warriors? Not that possible either…The evilness and brutality of the Shadowless Demons here are very well-known. If it were not for the fact that I knew that my slaughter and destruction sword intents could cancel out the power of the Shadowless Demons, I would not have come here either, not to mention a similar master level warrior.’
What Ye Chen could not know was that the Shadowless Demons in this region were just demon will projections of some powerful being. Normal characters would not have caught the owner of those Shadowless Demons’ attention, so they would actually be safer than he was. Only extremely powerful young warriors would become its prey. The fact that those powerful warriors’ bodies had only been taken over by normal demon wills while Gu Ping’s had been taken over by the main powerful being could prove it.
“The pavilion is so powerful, perhaps they had their own secret ways of doing things.”
Letting go of those questions he had no answers of, he lifted up his eyes and looked at the sky above the lake.
“Hm?”
His eyes flashed as Ye Chen saw a floating green flower a few hundred meters away from there. It was only a palm-sized flower, with only two flower petals looking like thin wings. Under the flower, where the root should be, were only two tentacles that were moving slightly.
“Come!”
Ye Chen recognized the flower to be the Rootless Flower that he had been looking for. His waved once with his right hand, and a suction power emerged.
It seemed as if it had sensed the threat as the two flower petals started to flap rapidly, trying its best to fight off the suction power. Meanwhile, the light dots below the flower rose up, forming a natural, light green blockage, blocking out Ye Chen’s power.
“Interesting!”
Letting down his right hand, Ye Chen stamped his feet onto the ground and his whole body shot out, arriving right in front of the light green protection layer.
“Break!”
He formed his right hand into a fist and a thunder lion appeared as he threw out a punch onto the layer.
Pop! Pap! Pop! Pap!
Thunder appeared on the light layer, which suddenly exploded and cracked open an area, allowing Ye Chen to shoot right through. Seeing that the Rootless Flower was about to land into his hands, the lake right below him scrambled. A long black shadow appeared out of nowhere, fast like lightning.
Ye Chen’s expression did not change as he pulled back his right hand and reached toward his waist. In the next second, a golden sword light appeared. With one flash, he managed to slice open the long black shadow. After doing all that, he did not stop; instead, he reached into his waist with his left hand. It was like a green dragon appearing out of the water or a poisonous snake coming out of its cave; he held onto the Rootless Flower that was trying to ‘escape’ and then fell back, avoiding another black shadow’s ambush.
On the shore, Ye Chen used his extreme rank jade box to contain his newly-gained Rootless Flower and put it inside his storage ring, then looked into that wave area.
Splash!
A mountain-like object appeared out of the water. Long black shadows surrounded the whole thing, eight of them in total. In the middle of the ‘mountain’ were two giant lanterns that were lit up brightly. Each one of them was the size of water tank, giving people a very intense pressurizing feeling.
It was a black octopus, a massive one at that. Its body was not round, but with angles and sharp edges. Colored patterns covered its body as well, looking bright and distracting. With no need to actually interact with the octopus, it was easy to tell by just judging based on its appearance that it was full of poison.
“Die, die, die!”
It spoke human language, but its voice was inhuman and extremely frightening, as if it could crawl right into one’s soul.
“It is you that will die!”
Putting his gold sword back into the scabbard, Ye Chen did not care for the black octopus at all.
Boom!
Ye Chen’s language had enraged the octopus, its water-tank-sized eyes shooting out an unbearably bright light while all eight tentacles of its started to dance in the air. It jumped at Ye Chen all of a sudden; its beast qi alone could crush a whole mountain. A circular wave of air pattern spread out at an extreme speed.
Lifting up both of his hands, Ye Chen looked extra cold.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The next second, a light-beam-like sword qi shot out of all ten of his fingers. They overlapped on each other, looking like a massive blue colored web. The black octopus was traveling quickly and it directly crashed into the web, causing the sound of countless sharp swords cutting tough rocks to be heard. At that moment, the octopus’ body was full of wounds, and three of the eight tentacles were cut off; they had then been shattered by that horrifying sword qi tornado.
It looked like it was shocked at Ye Chen’s power, letting out a frightened cry as its body shrank and sank down into the lake as quickly as a lightning bolt. But, because of its extreme sinking speed, all of the lake water around it shot ten meters high like an iron bucket.
The light spots had the effect of blocking out soul power detection. Ye Chen waited for a long while, but the octopus did not appear again. After knowing that it was scared of him, he could not help but chuckle out. However, his smile froze on his face soon, because he had heard an air-slicing noise that sounded like it was from death itself. He turned his head and saw a couple of Gu family’s warriors, although their eyes were rolled up. The leading man was indeed Gu Ping, who was emitting an evil vibe; however, he was looking normal somehow.
“These people had their bodies stolen?” Ye Chen could tell the strangeness immediately.
“Let’s go!”
As Gu Ping waved his hand, all of his top warriors rushed out at Ye Chen, who was a hundred meters away. Meanwhile, a huge number of blurry human shadows were mixed within the group of Gu family warriors, preparing to attack when the moment came.
A cold smile appeared on the corner of Ye Chen’s mouth as he lifted up both of his hands again.
“Sword qi tornado! Full power!”
In each breath’s worth of time, each finger of his would shoot out dozens of light-beam-like lotus heart sword qi. So, with ten fingers added up together, there were hundreds of light beams being shot out. They looked like stars in the air, covering all ten of them together.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
Ting! Ting! Dang! Dang!
Some of them wore top rank defensive equipment, while some others took out top rank shields. There were another half of them who did not have top rank protection, so their bodies were punctured through by the sword qi millions of times, causing them to fall down onto the ground.
“Destruction Fist!”
Gu Ping moved emotionlessly; he took one step forward, and the ground below him cracked open as he threw out a fist toward Ye Chen, who was standing right in front of him. Its fist power contained the destruction profound.
The lotus heart sword qi was shattered, so Ye Chen took out his gold sword, waving out a bent gold sword qi that clashed with Gu Ping’s fist power.
Boom!
It was like a massive firework bursting in the sky. That intense blast wave spread out in the area, causing a lot of Gu Ping’s warriors to be blown away. The mental power it contained had scared a lot of those human shadows into screaming hysterically and clearing out a huge area.
“Destruction Fist! Eight movements!”
Gu Ping had a cold light shining in his eyes as his body shook once, and seven surreal shadows appeared in mid-air. Added with his original self, there were eight of them in total. Eight Gu Pings threw out a Destruction fist each toward Ye Chen at the same time, that powerful blast wave making the space get twisted.
Ye Chen took a deep breath while his whole body turned into a black shadow, traveling in between the gaps of the fist attacks. Midway, a lot of blurry human shadows seized this opportunity to attack, trying to block his movements. However, Ye Chen had his intense slaughter and destruction sword intents, so the blurry human shadows could only slow him down slightly.
“This brat would become the perfect vessel for me! I cannot let him get away!”
The voice coming out from the deep end of the underground was sounding a bit hurried; he had never seen a sword art martial genius with two different element sword intents. Compared to Ye Chen, Gu Ping was nothing.
“Double sword style!”
Arriving right in front of Gu Ping within a second, Ye Chen held the gold sword in his right hand and the emerald green longsword in his left. The two swords crossed in front of him, throwing out the most powerful sword attack toward Gu Ping. The two beams of sword lights combined together into a cluster of inky blue thunder lightning ball that devoured Gu Ping immediately.
Boom!
The thunder and lightning were moving like a snake as Gu Ping’s whole body was blown away, bleeding all over. Ye Chen flashed his body to avoid the other Gu family warriors. He couldn’t help but frown while thinking to himself, ‘I have to finish this quickly. Something is not right here.’
With that thought in mind, he put both of his swords back into their scabbards and then took out his half-step extreme rank great sword.
Wooo!
The sword body was like a beam of electric light; he stabbed it out once, and the sword speed continued to increase. Reaching to the end, it had almost completely ignored the physical distance in between.
Swoosh!
In a flash, Gu Ping’s throat was stabbed through, and his eyes lost their shine immediately.
“So close!”
In that critical moment, that blurry human shadow shot out of Gu Ping’s body, so it was not touched by Ye Chen’s sword attack. If it had gotten hit by the slaughter sword intent within the attack, it would have been severely wounded for sure.
“Explode!”
The remaining Gu family warriors surrounded Ye Chen and a bright light suddenly shone from their bodies before they exploded aggressively. The blasting qi layered over one another, capable of wounding most of Sea of Souls Realm master level warriors. Moreover, defense was Ye Chen’s weakness, so a danger alert flashed past his mind like never before. He performed his rarely-used Green Lotus Sword Art, and his sword light turned into a green lotus which protected him within while he rapidly augmented his protective Zhen yuan layer, trying to block out the exploding power.
Boom!
That deep underground crack almost caved in, causing the huge mountain above it to develop a huge mark.
“Huh! I hope you do not die. If you do, then that would be a waste.” This exploding martial art was actually not Gu family’s exclusive secret martial art. In fact, it actually belonged to the owner of the Demonic will. His Demonic will could steal someone else’s bodies and also explode it. That could cause a great damage to the enemies, and it would not backfire and wound him at all, since there was no mental power involved; it was just a pure Zhen yuan explosion.
The light disappeared, revealing the bleeding Ye Chen. He was barely standing, his sword plunged into the ground to help him keep his balance.
“Haha! He is not dead! But, even if you are not dead, your body has been wounded badly, and your soul must be really weak and vulnerable right now. What a perfect moment to steal your body!”
Countless blurry human shadows moved and jumped toward Ye Chen.
Ye Chen used his slaughter and destruction sword intents to flick away the power of the incoming blurry human shadows. But, the momentary weakness of his soul had caused his sword intent to weaken as well. If he wanted to perform his undying body art, it would burn out a lot of Zhen yuan of his, which would need special pellets to replenish. But right now, he did not have the time to take the pellets at all. With his body wounded severely and his soul being so weak as well, the current Ye Chen was his weakest self of all time.
Right at that moment, the most powerful human shadow appeared out of Gu Ping before jumping toward Ye Chen. Without too much of a blockage, it managed to crawl into his body. However, at that critical moment before it could successfully take over Ye Chen’s body, the brightest possible mental shine blossomed from within his body, and an elder’s shadow appeared. If one looked closely, one could tell that it was indeed the Dragon King of the Dragon God Heaven Palace.
‘He!’
The Dragon King’s mental projection yelled, and an invisible mental power spread out, causing all of the blurry human shadows to disappear completely.
“What! Rank seven mental power!”
A shocked voice arose from the deepest end of the underground crack.
