Desolate Devouring Art-Chapter 1384 - Refining the Soul

Chapter 1384 - Refining the Soul
Fiery tensed under the pressure of the two tianlin souls. Even after a million years, each remnant still held perhaps a ten-thousandth of its peak power, and that alone felt suffocating. From that pressure alone, Fiery felt certain that, at their prime, these tianlins had stood at the Quasi-Immortal Realm.
"Let's wait and see," Liu Wuxie said quietly.
He still didn't understand why the tianlins' souls had chosen to appear before him and Fiery; their motive eluded him as well. Countless cultivators had sent their soul energy into the statues, yet the tianlins had only responded to Fiery.
Had it not been for Fiery's presence, Liu Wuxie believed he wouldn't have seen them at all. The two light spheres circled the strands of their soul energy again and again, like a pair of fish swimming around each other.
Around them, cultivators who had withdrawn their soul energy wore lingering fear on their faces.
"These two monsters are bizarre. Their soul fluctuations are terrifying," many experts muttered under their breath.
"What exactly are they? How come they aren't in the Classic of Mountains and Seas?"
The Classic of Mountains and Seas was an ancient compendium that cataloged demonic, astral, and divine beasts, yet no one had ever seen creatures like those depicted in these statues.
Each statue had an oversized head, razor-sharp teeth, a curved horn, thick hooves, and a swollen belly like a colossal ox. Most unsettling of all was the crescent mark on their foreheads—anyone who stared at it felt their soul sea tremble.
After circling for a long moment, the two light spheres suddenly shot forward and entangled themselves with Liu Wuxie and Fiery's soul energy.
Fiery screamed as his soul strand tore free of the statues and shot back to his body. Liu Wuxie felt the same jolt of release—only for one of the light spheres to dive straight into his soul sea.
He reacted instantly. The Soul Forge Art flared to life, and the Heavenly Dao Book snapped open in his soul sea.
As he had suspected, the invading soul tried to seize control of his soul sea the moment it entered. Before it could anchor itself, however, the Heavenly Dao Book erupted with dazzling golden light, pressing down on the intruding will and pinning it in place.
Fiery wasn't so lucky. With no equivalent treasure guarding its soul, it could only fight the invading tianlin soul with pure will.
"Fiery, find a way to refine that strand of soul energy. It'll benefit you greatly," Liu Wuxie sent through a soul transmission. He couldn't interfere inside Fiery's soul sea; Fiery had to overcome this trial alone.
"Got it!" Fiery answered. Its aura immediately sank into stillness.
On the outside, Fiery looked as though it had fallen into a deep sleep. In reality, the qilin cub had forced its body into hibernation to prevent further soul depletion and focus all its energy on its soul sea. That was how the qilin clan often broke through—by sleeping.
The light sphere inside Liu Wuxie's soul sea slowly unraveled. A vast river of memories poured through his consciousness, filling every corner of his soul sea. He shuddered to think what might have happened if he hadn't possessed the Heavenly Dao Book.
He closed his eyes and absorbed everything. Within three breaths, he finished refining the fragment and fully digested the tianlin's memories. New characters appeared on a blank page within the Heavenly Dao Book, recording an unfamiliar lineage.
"So this is the tianlin clan..." Liu Wuxie murmured.
From what he saw, tianlins were incredibly similar to qilins. The difference was that tianlins fed solely on soul energy; they belonged to a class of soul-devouring beasts.
The tianlin clan had appeared at around the same time as the dragon clan, making them older than the qilin race itself. Strictly speaking, the tianlin clan could be considered the ancestors of qilins.
No wonder the two tianlin souls had rushed over the moment Fiery released its divine sense. If they had succeeded in seizing Fiery's body, they could have been reborn.
The memories were fragmented, but one scene appeared clearly—the loulan race moving cart after cart of goods through the gate, guiding their families through it one after another. However, none of them ever came back.
"So the loulan race migrated into the sevenfold heaven," Liu Wuxie muttered.
At that moment, his soul sea pulsed as though it were breathing. A mysterious power rippled outward from its depths.
The wisp of fate power he had sensed once before had appeared again.
The last time it emerged was when he refined Wisdom Stones. As he refined the tianlin soul, his soul sea swelled and solidified. His soul strength surged until it rivaled experts at the seventh-level Void Realm.
If he fought using only soul techniques, ordinary seventh-level Void Realm cultivators would struggle to fight him. Of course, no Void Realm expert would be foolish enough to abandon martial arts to fight him with pure soul energy.
"Where is this fate power coming from?" Liu Wuxie frowned.
He still couldn't determine how this power formed. All he could sense was a faint guidance from somewhere in the dark, but he had no idea where it originated.
"The soul suppression has become weaker!" several cultivators around the plaza exclaimed.
They had no idea Liu Wuxie and Fiery had just refined the tianlins' remnant souls. They only felt the pressure from the statues fade rapidly.
Without that suffocating soul pressure, people began to approach the massive gate once more.
"This is strange. There's nothing behind it. Does it really lead to the sevenfold heaven?" someone muttered.
With the pressure gone, several cultivators tried circling the gate. Each time they walked past it, they would reappear on the other side. There was nothing behind it—no corridor, no hall, nothing.
The sevenfold heaven above still flickered between illusion and reality, and no one could tell whether it truly existed.
"Who cares? We'll know once we go in."
They had all come too far to turn back now. No one wanted to retreat empty-handed.
None of them noticed the large group of blood fiends gathered at the edge of the plaza. Drawn by the appearance of Ancient Loulan City, the blood fiends had poured in as well.
Instead of attacking, they quietly observed the sevenfold heaven. They had never seen this city before, despite having lived in the Blood Fiend Battlefield for countless years.
Liu Wuxie quietly checked on Fiery. The qilin's soul sea remained stable. As long as Fiery could successfully refine the tianlin soul, he was confident it could step into the Void Realm.
With his own soul sea vastly expanded, Liu Wuxie found his perception clearer than ever. Ghost Eye had evolved as well. Most importantly, he now felt confident that, with a well-timed sneak attack using Soul Fire and the Soul Spear, he could slay a fifth-level Void Realm expert.
A cultivator at the third-level Void Realm walked up to the mysterious gate and pressed his palm lightly against it. With a low creak, the gate swung inward, revealing a world beyond that was completely different.
Torrents of energy roared out as soon as the gate opened. Even so, Liu Wuxie still couldn't determine whether the world inside was real or just an illusory construct.
The crowd hesitated. No one dared to rush in first. Once they stepped through, would they be able to return?
Liu Wuxie waited as well. From the tianlin's memories, he knew the people of Ancient Loulan City had entered the sevenfold heaven and never returned.
It implied two possibilities—either the sevenfold heaven was a teleportation array of a far higher grade than ordinary interstellar arrays, allowing travel across worlds, or the sevenfold heaven itself was an actual world where the loulan race now lived.
For the moment, those were only his guesses. He still didn't know whether any of this tied into his senior brother's disappearance.
"What's there to be afraid of? You backing down now?!" someone shouted impatiently.
They hadn't come to the Blood Fiend Battlefield to sightsee. They wanted treasures. Now that they stood before the sevenfold heaven, turning around would be harder than marching forward.
After discovering the sevenfold heaven, everyone was itching to make a move for a long time, but no one wanted to take the risk first. The man who had spoken gritted his teeth and strode through the gate. The next instant, he vanished from sight.
"This..." The cultivators outside gaped. They tried sending him messages through Communication Talismans and other methods, but they received no response.
"If we don't go in, he'll take everything!" someone shouted.
Their statement shattered the stalemate. One after another, cultivators poured through the gate and disappeared like falling stars.
In the blink of an eye, over a thousand people had gone through. Liu Wuxie remained where he was, still choosing to observe.
Time passed quickly. Two hours slipped by, and more people entered the gate. No screams echoed from within, and the energy spilling from the threshold only grew denser and richer.
Only treasures could unleash such overwhelming energy. Drawn by it, more and more cultivators leapt into the unknown. The crowd outside dwindled.
Those who remained exchanged uneasy looks as they noticed the blood fiends hemming them in. If they were to retreat, they would have to get past the horde of blood fiends first. Few believed they'd make it out alive if they were to do that.
If most cultivators had stayed, they would have stood a chance. However, the majority had gone into the gate, so the remaining humans would have to face the blood fiends with barely any numbers.
With no better choice, the last few human cultivators gritted their teeth and stepped through the gate as well.
Off to one side, the disciples and elders of the Grand Unity Sect huddled together, also wavering between caution and greed. The blood fiends crept closer, and the sevenfold heaven's secrets tugged at their hearts. They hadn't come here only to hunt humans; the lure of this place also drew them.
"Elder Shi, do we go in?" some disciples asked. They were eager. If they could seize a few treasures inside, they might catch up to Liu Wuxie in cultivation.
"Go," Elder Shi said, making up his mind after a short glance around. Most of the human cultivators had already disappeared into the gate.
Before stepping forward, he sent a message back to the Grand Unity Sect, ing the appearance of Ancient Loulan City. Soon, news would spread through the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain soon, drawing even more experts here to search for fortune.
Liu Wuxie watched indifferently as the Grand Unity Sect disciples disappeared into the gate one after another. The blood fiends had already closed in, releasing their own auras. Several powerful blood fiends turned their scarlet eyes on Liu Wuxie, clearly attracted by his rich energy.
Time to go,
Liu Wuxie thought.
He knew he couldn't fight all the blood fiends here alone. With no hesitation, he stepped into the mysterious gate.
The blood fiends staring at him cast a strange gaze at him, seemingly pitying him. Then, they followed and entered the gate as well.
Passing through felt like walking through a thin veil of mist. The world outside and the world inside were nothing alike.
Outside, they had seen flowers and trees. Inside, Liu Wuxie found himself standing on ruined land beneath a sky of heavy, oppressive clouds. The pressure was so intense it felt hard even to breathe.
When he looked up, he saw six more layers of heaven suspended above this one, each higher than the last. Together, the sevenfold heaven seemed to stretch to the peak of the universe.