Desolate Devouring Art-Chapter 1382 - Soul Runes

Chapter 1382 - Soul Runes
The entire city consisted of ancient halls, broad streets, withered trees, and dried-up rivers, but not a single trace of life remained.
Liu Wuxie had seen dead trees revived before, yet the trees here felt fundamentally different. It was as if some mysterious force had sucked every last drop of life essence from them, leaving nothing behind but husks.
Over the past few days, thousands of cultivators had been pouring into this place.
"That's strange. People have clearly been here before, so why didn't anyone discover Ancient Loulan City?" Liu Wuxie wondered as he stood amid the crowd.
The appearance of the three red suns had warped the layout of the Blood Fiend Battlefield. The sudden emergence of the mysterious passage and the resurfacing of Ancient Loulan City remained veiled in mystery.
"Could the three red suns have forced Ancient Loulan City to reemerge?" someone nearby speculated, though uncertainty colored his tone. Very few people had ever ventured so deep into this region.
"It should be a spatial misalignment," a pinnacle Void Realm cultivator said slowly. "The three red suns must have triggered massive crustal shifts on this planet, forcing Ancient Loulan City to rise from deep underground."
Liu Wuxie silently nodded to himself.
He had seen brief mentions of Ancient Loulan City in the Heavenly Dragon Sect's books, but he had no personal memories of it. Even in the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm, records of the Loulan race were scarce, as they had always been exceedingly rare.
Even the Heavenly Dragon Sect's texts contained only scattered fragments about the city, with no detailed accounts of its rise or destruction.
The Loulan race had only existed for roughly a hundred years before vanishing without a trace, disappearing before the outside world could even grow familiar with them.
"Could the Loulan clan be a race from outside the four astral domains, drawn here when a clash between two worlds opened a space-time passage to the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain?" A bold speculation occurred to Liu Wuxie.
He wondered whether the recently appeared wormholes had dragged his senior brother and the missing cultivators into the world of the Loulan race. However, he quickly shook his head and dismissed the idea as pure conjecture without any evidence to support it.
He pushed those thoughts aside and swiftly altered his appearance, drawing on the disguise techniques he had learned from He Yingwu. As long as he didn't fight, his aura would stay hidden, and even experts from the Grand Unity Sect wouldn't recognize him.
At the same time, he activated the Ancient Breath-Concealing Art, allowing his presence to meld seamlessly into the surroundings.
A moment later, a completely different figure stood where he had been—a nondescript middle-aged man, from facial lines to bearing.
Right then, Elder Shi stepped into Liu Wuxie's line of sight. The three forks in the mysterious passage had clearly all led into Ancient Loulan City; they merely opened into different regions of the underground ruins.
Liu Wuxie drew in a deep breath and walked deeper into the city, forcing himself to move at a measured, unremarkable pace. If he were to use his movement techniques, he would almost certainly draw the old monster's attention.
When Elder Shi stepped into Ancient Loulan City, he was just as stunned by the sight. However, with cultivators flooding in from all directions, he quickly lost any clear sense of where Liu Wuxie had gone.
"Damn it!" Elder Shi roared, swinging his fist in fury as murderous intent surged from his body. He had been a step away from killing Liu Wuxie, only to watch him slip through his fingers.
"Liu Wuxie, I know you're here! We've already sealed the exit—you have nowhere left to run!" Elder Shi bellowed, his voice echoing through every corner of Ancient Loulan City.
His sudden shout made countless cultivators turn toward him in confusion.
"Liu Wuxie? Is that the same person who took first place in all four events of the Myriad Race Ceremony?" many whispered as they stared at Elder Shi.
Most cultivators in the Blood Fiend Battlefield had already heard about the Myriad Race Ceremony and Liu Wuxie's notorious name.
"That old man looks like a Grand Unity Sect elder, so this shouldn't be a mistake. I didn't think Liu Wuxie would be here, too. I heard he carries countless secrets and heaven-defying fortune. If we capture him alive and seize his fate, everything he has could become ours."
Greed flickered in many pairs of eyes. They no longer craved only astral crystals; they now wanted Liu Wuxie himself.
They were stunned when they first heard of his achievements in alchemy, martial arts, spiritual arrays, and talismans. Many here had also participated in the Myriad Race Ceremony.
"If we can get our hands on his mythical arts, we'll be able to sweep through our peers the same way he did," someone murmured. "He slaughtered peak Primal Origin cultivators while he was only at the second-level Primal Origin Realm. Who else in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain can do that?"
"I heard Liu Wuxie cultivates an extremely overbearing technique that surpasses every other cultivation method in the astral domain," another added. The phenomena he triggered during his cultivation had spread like wildfire, and only a transcendent technique could produce such phenomena.
The crowd began scanning their surroundings, hoping to pick him out, but even after searching for a long while, no one found any trace of him.
By then, Liu Wuxie had already slipped into one of the ancient halls and frowned as his gaze landed on the runes carved into the walls.
"Soul runes... these are actually soul runes!" he exclaimed under his breath.
When he had taught Xu Lingxue and the other women how to engrave martial souls, he had used this very type of rune. Runes themselves fell into many categories—those used in talismans, spiritual arrays, forging, and alchemy.
Soul runes were rarer than all the rest. He had only learned them by sheer chance; he had fallen into a cave and discovered the method for creating martial souls there.
In the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm, cultivators had long since let the art of martial souls slip into oblivion, and he had only managed to grasp a small fragment of it. In its proper form, the art allowed one to carve on one's soul energy, tempering and strengthening it.
The runes etched into the walls were indeed soul runes, though time had blurred them, making their patterns hard to discern. Liu Wuxie recognized them only through instinct and experience.
"Did martial souls originate from the Loulan race? They appeared once in the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm, but almost no one knew who they really were..." he muttered in disbelief as he withdrew his hand from the wall.
If he could master the complete art of martial souls, he could engrave powerful martial souls to bolster the Heavenly Dao Society's strength. Their cultivation base was still lacking, but martial souls could compensate for that gap.
Xu Lingxue and the others were only at the Transcendent Realm, but if he could engrave martial souls at the pinnacle of the Void Realm for them, they could still contend with experts at the higher levels of the Void Realm.
Right now, he only understood fragments of the art, enough to work with astral beasts' primordial spirits; he remained helpless against mighty astral beasts with primordial spirits too formidable to bind.
If he ever mastered the complete art, he would even be able to use soul energy to shackle the primordial spirits of Void Realm beasts.
For the moment, it remained nothing more than a distant thought. Countless ages had already buried the art of martial souls, and he could already imagine how difficult it would be to restore it.
He cut his thoughts short and summoned the Ancestral Tree, letting its roots of perception spread out to search for astral crystals. He needed an enormous amount of them; with enough resources, he could break through to the higher levels of the Primal Origin Realm and perhaps even step into the Void Realm.
After a dozen breaths, the Ancestral Tree sent back its feedback, revealing a place of dense spiritual energy roughly ten miles away. Liu Wuxie followed its guidance and quickened his pace.
The Ancestral Tree remained one of his most significant advantages, as its sensitivity to spiritual energy remained unmatched. When he stepped out of the ancient building, he immediately noticed that the number of cultivators in the city had increased drastically.
Many had already spread the news of his presence through Communication Talismans. In just a few short hours, the number of cultivators in Ancient Loulan City doubled. Moreover, more and more people were pouring in.
Ten miles wasn't far, and the journey took him only about fifteen minutes. When he arrived, he slowed instead of rushing and stared at the scene before him in confusion.
"Are there astral crystals here?" he wondered. If not for the Ancestral Tree's guidance, he would have assumed it was a mistake.
The surroundings were nothing but rubble and collapsed ruins. Liu Wuxie activated Ghost Eye, and the scene before him shifted dramatically. Deep beneath the ruins, he spotted a strange metal box with soul runes etched across its surface.
"Interesting," he murmured, then began to dig. The metal box lay roughly six meters below him, buried under layers of broken stone.
He didn't dare use the Dragon-Grasping Hand here and could only rely on his physical strength to excavate. When a few cultivators passed by, they glanced his way and smirked.
"What's that brat doing, digging like a rat?" several cultivators jeered with laughter.
Liu Wuxie ignored their mockery and kept digging steadily. Soon, a narrow pit was made, and a faint wave of energy seeped out from within.
The laughing and jeering cultivators fell silent at once and exchanged uneasy glances. They could all feel the energy leaking from the hole he had opened.
As soon as Liu Wuxie glimpsed the black box, he thrust his hand toward it and unleashed a powerful suction force, dragging it into his grasp before the others could react.
Age had badly corroded the container, and through its eaten-away gaps, he could see astral crystals packed tightly inside. The box itself wasn't large, roughly a meter long and eighty centimeters wide, but it could still hold about five hundred astral crystals.
Judging from its construction and the traces left around it, Liu Wuxie reached a bold conclusion: the Loulan race had probably intended to ship these astral crystals away, but something had happened, leaving the crate buried here instead.
With a casual wave of his hand, he stored the entire box in his interspatial ring and left the inspection for later. Even without counting, he knew that he had just obtained five hundred astral crystals—a staggering harvest.
"Hand over those astral crystals!" three cultivators shouted as they rushed over from a dozen meters away. Their cultivation wasn't high; each of them stood only at the pinnacle of the Primal Origin Realm.
The first wave of people to enter this place had all possessed formidable strength, because ordinary Primal Origin Realm cultivators hadn't dared to set foot here.
When Ancient Loulan City appeared, however, it practically drew in every human on the Blood Fiend Battlefield. Regardless of their cultivation, they all flooded into the underground city, hoping to claim a share of its treasures.
The three attackers didn't hesitate. They struck at once, hoping to finish the fight quickly while no stronger experts were nearby. If a Void Realm cultivator found the cache, they knew they wouldn't stand a chance—five hundred astral crystals were enough to drive almost anyone mad with greed.
A torrent of murderous intent flared in Liu Wuxie's eyes. He hadn't gone out of his way to cause trouble, but these three had chosen to come for him. Since they had made that choice, he didn't mind killing them.