Desolate Devouring Art-Chapter 1383 - Sevenfold Heaven

Chapter 1383 - Sevenfold Heaven
The three cultivators shot toward him with terrifying speed, closing in from three directions. Any ordinary person would have found it impossible to break through such an encirclement.
Their combined aura at the pinnacle of the Primal Origin Realm surged like a tidal tide, sweeping up rubble from the ground. The rocks shattered into dust under the pressure and vanished into the air.
They clearly intended to kill him in one strike. Sinister grins twisted their faces; five hundred astral crystals could sustain their cultivation for a long time, and they had already decided Liu Wuxie would not walk away from here alive.
"Trash like you dares to stand out?" Liu Wuxie snorted. He didn't bother to move, simply thrusting his palm forward.
His palm strike shattered their attack. The aura they had pushed out collapsed instantly, unable to withstand the force roaring from Liu Wuxie's hand. None of them understood how a single palm had easily obliterated the combined might of three peak Primal Origin experts.
The pressure bored down on their shoulders like three mountains, crushing their resistance.
With a crisp
crack
, the first man burst apart in mid-air, exploding into a rain of blood that filled the air with a thick metallic stench.
A heartbeat later, the second and third followed, shattering under the same force until even their bones vanished. Anyone who came searching later wouldn't find so much as a fragment of them.
......
Of the more than one hundred experts from the Grand Unity Sect, five stayed outside to guard the entrance while the rest poured into Ancient Loulan City.
The compasses in their hands began to tremble as soon as they entered, the needles spinning violently whenever they brushed against Liu Wuxie's aura. As long as Liu Wuxie fought or released his energy, the Thousand Divination Art would drag his position out into the open.
"Over there!" Elder Shi barked and led several elders toward the ruins where Liu Wuxie had just made a move. By the time they arrived, however, the battlefield lay silent. Only fragmented spiritual fluctuations lingered. Liu Wuxie had already slipped away.
"Damn it! He escaped again!" An elder from the Grand Unity Sect slammed his palm into a broken wall, sending dust and bricks flying as he ground his teeth in rage.
Compared to the treasures in Ancient Loulan City, they cared far more about killing Liu Wuxie. As long as he lived, the Grand Unity Sect would never be able to lift its head in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain.
"He can't have gone far! Spread out and search!" Elder Shi roared.
The Grand Unity Sect cultivators scattered like a net being cast, splitting into small teams of three as they began a meticulous sweep of the city.
Ancient Loulan City sprawled endlessly across the underground world. Liu Wuxie moved quickly through crumbling streets and broken plazas, weaving a path through toppled pillars and collapsed halls.
He summoned the Ancestral Tree several times along the way, but the feedback he received never led him to astral crystals. Instead, an endless tide of deathly energy seeped up from the depths of the ruins, so thick it almost felt tangible.
"This is strange. If the loulan race really lived here, where are their remains?" he muttered.
He activated Ghost Eye and scanned the surroundings, but he didn't see a single skeleton, not even the faintest trace that ought to have remained after a million years. It felt as if someone had deliberately cleaned this place of all bodies.
"A sevenfold heaven just appeared in the Ancient Loulan City! It's bizarre—everyone's rushing over!"
Liu Wuxie halted when a group of cultivators dashed past, about fifty meters away, their voices raised with excitement as they headed deeper into the city's center.
"Sevenfold heaven?" Liu Wuxie frowned.
Rumors claimed that people divided heaven into nine levels, with a supreme realm above them all, yet someone had declared that a sevenfold heaven had appeared here. Curiosity stirred in his chest.
When he looked around, he saw streams of cultivators from every direction, all moving in the same direction. He increased his speed and followed. If the sevenfold heaven hid the secrets of Ancient Loulan City, he had no intention of missing it.
A few hours later, more than five thousand cultivators had gathered on a vast stone plaza. Above it, seven layers of worlds floated, stacked one atop another like translucent veils—the so-called sevenfold heaven.
Each layer showed a different landscape—a sea of wildflowers, boundless forests, towering mountain ranges, tranquil lakes, howling deserts, and more. The scenes wavered between illusion and reality, and no one could say for sure whether they were truly there.
A solitary gate stood on the first level, etched with strange patterns: no halls, no palaces, no streets—just that one gate.
Two colossal beast statues flanked it. Liu Wuxie had never seen the likes of them before. They reared up on all fours, baring their fangs and claws, eyes fixed forward.
A terrifying wave of soul energy poured out from them, so oppressive that even cultivators at the pinnacle of the Void Realm dared not move too close.
Anyone who wanted to enter the first level had to pass through that gate. Several people had already attempted it, only to be blasted back by the soul energy. Those who tried to brute-force their way in flew out spitting blood.
When Liu Wuxie studied the gate, an odd sensation crept over him. It felt as if someone had placed the door at the boundary between worlds, and stepping through it would mean stepping into a completely different heaven and earth.
He couldn't put that feeling into words, and he didn't recognize the runes carved along the frame, either.
The gate stood ten meters tall and three meters wide, its proportions utterly unlike those of human architecture. He examined the two statues more closely, digging through the memories of both his current life and his past as an Immortal Emperor, but he still couldn't identify them.
Inside the beast pouch, Fiery suddenly jerked awake. The qilin cub lifted its head, pupils contracting as it stared through the fabric toward the statues before letting out a low growl.
"Fiery, you recognize them?" Liu Wuxie asked quietly.
Fiery, a descendant of the ancient qilin, had already grown strong enough to rival cultivators at the pinnacle of the Primal Origin Realm. As it grew, bloodline memories buried in the depths of its primordial spirit gradually awakened.
Divine beast inheritance worked very differently from human inheritance. When divine beasts give birth, they would infuse a portion of their memories into their offspring and seal them deep within the soul.
As their descendants grew, those inherited memories would awaken bit by bit, ensuring that their race's inheritance would never be severed.
A newborn divine beast carried echoes of the first of its kind, while a newborn human came into the world like a blank page.
Over the years, strange images and fragmented scenes had been surfacing in Fiery's mind, all left by its parents.
"Tianlin," Fiery blurted, staring at the statues. The word rolled out of its mouth almost on instinct.
"Tianlin? Qilin? Are you related?" Liu Wuxie's eyes narrowed as a bold guess took shape in his mind.
Humans often placed qilin statues as guardians before their gates, whether in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain or the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm. They symbolized longevity, peace, and prosperity, an auspicious beast that dispelled evil and suppressed baleful energy.
Liu Wuxie knew all of that, but he had never heard of a beast called "Tianlin."
"I don't know the exact details," Fiery replied. "I only know they were born at the beginning of heaven and earth. They're vicious by nature and obsessed with devouring soul energy."
"Devour soul energy... and soul runes surround this place. That explains a lot." Liu Wuxie's gaze sharpened. "The loulan race must have imprisoned these tianlins to guard the gate."
It was still speculation, but Fiery's bloodline memories gave his guess some weight.
"Big Brother, I don't think they're completely dead," Fiery added. "It feels like something suppressed their souls."
Liu Wuxie's expression turned solemn. Just the residual soul pressure from the two statues already prevented anyone from approaching the gate. If the tianlins truly woke up, the consequences would be disastrous.
No one could cross the gate precisely because of the two beasts' soul pressure. Otherwise, the crowd would have stampeded into the sevenfold heaven long ago.
"Can you try communicating with them?" Liu Wuxie asked. "Since your bloodline remembers them, there must be some connection."
Since Fiery learnt of their existence from their memories, there had to be something special about them.
Countless strange races had appeared when heaven and earth first formed, so he found it curious that Fiery's memories contained only tianlin, not the others.
"I can try," Fiery answered, though uncertainty flickered in its voice. It cautiously released its soul energy and attempted to make contact with the two statues.
Liu Wuxie didn't seek entry to the sevenfold heaven just for adventure. He mainly wanted to verify his guess: if the loulan race had sealed tianlin souls using the art of martial souls, then he could almost confirm that martial souls originated from the loulan race.
As soon as Fiery's soul energy touched the statues, a bizarre scene unfolded. Countless lines of light surfaced, forming intricate patterns that tangled around Fiery's soul and bound it tightly.
Fiery immediately cried out for help to Liu Wuxie. The patterns linked together like constellations in the sky. All around them, cultivators who had released their soul energy to probe the statues experienced the same thing. Their soul strands sank into the patterns and could no longer find a way back.
"What a terrifying soul world! I can't find the path out!" several cultivators exclaimed, faces paling.
Their only safe option was to sever the connection, abandoning the soul energy trapped inside. If they were to stubbornly push deeper, the web of patterns would drain them dry sooner or later.
The change came so suddenly that even Liu Wuxie froze for a heartbeat.
He had initially planned to rely on Fiery to communicate with the tianlins, not to trigger such a phenomenon. One after another, cultivators lost their nerve and cut off the link to their soul strands. Then, they sat down where they stood to endure the backlash and recover.
In the blink of an eye, more than ninety percent of the people present had sunk their soul energy into the statues. Even those at the pinnacle of the Void Realm were no exception. All of them felt as if they had fallen into an invisible soul web and couldn't break free.
Fiery's soul energy drained rapidly. If it didn't sever the connection soon, its soul sea might suffer permanent damage.
"Fiery, cut it off," Liu Wuxie ordered, frowning.
"Wait!" Fiery suddenly called out, voice shaking.
Two spheres of light appeared before its soul strand, floating like a pair of eyes in the dark.
Liu Wuxie drew in a deep breath and sent his own divine sense into the statues as well. If Fiery faced a real threat, he would shoulder it together. At worst, he would lose a portion of his soul energy—an acceptable price.
He followed the trail of Fiery's soul and soon saw the two light spheres. They halted when they sensed him, hanging in the void as if they were staring straight at Liu Wuxie and Fiery.
For a brief moment, the two sides faced each other in silence.
Most of the other cultivators had already cut off their soul strands and dropped to the ground, focusing on restoring what they had lost.
Liu Wuxie and the two spheres of light both held their ground.
"These are the tianlins' souls," Liu Wuxie murmured.
He could now confirm that the two light spheres were the remnants of the tianlins' souls. Time had eroded their memories, leaving behind only a sliver, but the pressure they released still shook the soul.
Fiery had judged correctly. The tianlins weren't truly dead. Their bodies had long since perished, yet the loulan race had imprisoned their remaining souls within these statues to guard this place. Even those remnants radiated power so intense that cultivators at the pinnacle of the Void Realm couldn't approach.
Liu Wuxie suspected that in their prime, even Quasi-Immortals couldn't withstand them.
As for why those tianlins' souls appeared before Fiery, he could only assume that Fiery's bloodline aura had drawn them over. The two light spheres represented the last fragments of two ancient tianlin souls.
"Big Brother, what do we do now?" Fiery asked anxiously.
The pressure those souls exuded weighed heavily on it. Unlike Liu Wuxie, Fiery hadn't tempered its soul with the Soul Forge Art and didn't have the Heavenly Dao Book guarding its soul sea.
Liu Wuxie, protected and strengthened by both, felt only a fraction of the burden weighing down on Fiery.