Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

Behind the sealed doors of the great hall, the air was soon filled with the demonic spirit’s terrified shrieks.

Ye Feng’s eyes blazed with a crazed light. As if possessed, he tore into the demonic spirit’s body with his teeth. Even when it retreated into his arm, he bit through the flesh of his own hand and crushed his fingers between his teeth.

Ye Feng sat slumped against a stone pillar, his disheveled hair hanging over his face and his mouth full of blood and viscous strands of demonic qi.

An unreadable light flickered in his eyes, and he murmured icily, “This body will only ever have one master! Think you can take over my body? You’re free to come and try!”

The demonic spirit’s panicked screams echoed back. “No! Stop! If he finds out I haven’t taken over your divine soul, he’ll kill you! Stop eating me! You’re insane! Insane!”

The demonic spirit had every reason to be terrified. It had fused with Ye Feng’s arm, and that arm was its body. When Ye Feng chewed through his own finger bones, he was chewing through the demonic spirit’s flesh. It could feel Ye Feng’s teeth grinding every fragment of its body apart, a sensation so vivid that it reached the very core of its being.

Sometimes the demonic spirit couldn’t even tell which of them was the actual demon.

Worse still, Ye Feng’s Yin Hellfire could refine the demonic spirit’s core demonic qi. Every piece Ye Feng devoured whittled away at the demonic spirit’s foundational power. It might appear to control thirty percent of Ye Feng’s divine soul, but at this rate, the demonic spirit was afraid that eventually Ye Feng would tear out its divine soul and start gnawing on that too.

Recently, the demonic spirit had been enduring this torment every day. At times, it wondered if it would be better off dead.

Ye Feng ignored the demonic spirit’s pleas entirely. Through the tangled mess of his hair, he stared down at the jade slip on the ground. He knew what was coming. Sha’s plan to drag him into the mire had already begun.The meaning behind Sha’s words to Song Zhi’ang was clear. When Ye Feng carried out his missions, he would have to murder everyone in his path, sparing only the five people named on the list. The factions they belonged to would face widespread slaughter, and countless lives would be lost.

Ye Feng tore at the flesh of his arm like a wounded beast. Tears welled in his eyes, though even he did not know why. He knew that refusing the task meant death, but he had also realized something else: Sha might be deliberately courting death. Even Sha’s death might be part of his plan. Ye Feng still had no idea what purpose lay behind it.

The despair in Ye Feng’s eyes slowly hardened into resolve. He rose and picked up the jade slip. When he stepped through the palace doors, his right arm had been stripped to bare bone, with only a few thin strands of flesh still clinging to it.

Song Zhi’ang was leaning against the doorway. She looked at him and asked softly, “Have you… really made up your mind?”

Ye Feng stared at her coldly. “If not for you, he would already be dead.”

Song Zhi’ang opened her mouth but said nothing. She straightened and walked toward the rear mountain, glancing back at Ye Feng one last time. Complicated emotions seemed to flicker in her beautiful eyes, but she did not offer a single word in her defense.

She simply turned her head and murmured, “We leave in an hour.”

Then she looked down at her snow-white hands and murmured as though to herself, “Once they’re stained, no amount of washing will ever get them clean…”

Ye Feng’s eyes widened. He understood what she meant.

Even so, he still resented Song Zhi’ang for using the Ancient Soul Lamp to save Sha and spirit him away. As far as Ye Feng was concerned, everything had begun with her.

Ye Feng sighed quietly and gritted his teeth. With only one arm remaining, he finally took a slow, difficult step to follow Song Zhi’ang. As he looked down, he seemed to see bloody footprints stretching ahead of him, his own feet coming to rest in the small impressions.

He did not need to leave a second trail. He only had to follow the one the woman ahead of him had already made.

Song Zhi’ang’s voice drifted back to him. “You only need to keep the demonic spirit under control. I’ll do the killing.”

Her voice held neither joy nor sorrow. There was no emotion in it at all.

Ye Feng jerked his head up and stared at her back. For some reason, he suddenly found himself wondering what her motivations were.

His eyes gleamed, and his right eye turned pitch black. In the same instant, the skeletal remains of his right arm regenerated completely. The demonic spirit now dared only to scream and curse inside Ye Feng’s mind. The moment he raised his arm, it backed down.

Ye Feng lowered his arm and followed Song Zhi’ang as though nothing had happened. The vital force coursing through him grew stronger as the demonic spirit’s power increased.

He frowned. If this continued, the demonic spirit would eventually consume his divine soul. His gaze strayed toward Song Zhi’ang, and he sighed inwardly. To remain lucid and keep the demonic spirit from taking control, he had to fend off its constant attempts to devour his divine soul. His only way to suppress it was to devour it first.

That was also how he had survived the Dungeon Abyss. As long as he kept refining the demonic spirit’s power and making it his own, the demonic spirit could not overpower his consciousness.

***

The void rumbled without end.

After venting his rage for a long while, Li Guanqi finally let out a long breath. He stood in the empty void, panting heavily. Everything within a ten-thousand-zhang radius had shattered, and scattered bolts of lightning still crackled through the debris.

He took out Ye Feng’s life jade slip once more and noticed that the crack had disappeared. The demonic qi clinging to its surface, however, now covered almost a third of it.

Li Guanqi held the slip gently and whispered, “Hang in there, Brother!”

When Li Guanqi and Meng Wanshu returned to the Gu clan’s estate, not a sound could be heard. Even the surrounding volcanoes, normally spewing fire and smoke, had been enclosed in layers of barriers that let no sound escape.

Six figures sat in a circle around the pill-refining cauldron, surrounded by ring after ring of blazing flame barriers.

As Li Guanqi listened to the senior alchemists whispering nearby, he pieced together what was happening. The five alchemists were working together seamlessly, with many onlookers openly praising Xiang Huaizhi’s extraordinary skill.

Suddenly, Meng Jiangchu swayed, his face pale. He fumbled for a pill and swallowed it, but the movement startled the others.

The auras of Guo Feng and Jiang Qizhi erupted in unison as they fought to stabilize the flames within the cauldron. In contrast, neither Xiang Huaizhi nor Gu Changsheng reacted. The flames before the two remained perfectly steady.

The white-haired Han Yuan’s expression changed abruptly—something like a ghostly shriek sounded from within his flames. In an instant, dozens of spirit liquid orbs he had previously extracted turned to ash.