Arthur stopped short. The confusion in his eyes burned away, replaced by a fierce heat.
Even the stubborn cowlick at the crown of his head seemed to perk up.
A Spirit King–level evil Soul Master.
He quickly measured himself against that level and gave a small nod, unable to hide the spark of excitement in his voice. "It's worth a shot."
A Spirit King without spirit armor was, for him right now, just right. Not out of reach. Not too easy. A perfect match.
Seeing the look on his face, Su Wuyan's smile widened. He clapped Arthur on the shoulder. "You don't get chances like this often. Real combat. And I'll be there. Nothing's going to happen to you."
"When do we leave?" Arthur didn't ask anything else. That was the only thing he cared about.
He had trained without pause for years, day after day. Every sparring partner he'd ever faced had been a teacher or an elder. He had always said he wanted to hunt evil Soul Masters, but he had never fought a real one before. Not someone at the Spirit King level.
Arthur's eagerness softened Su Wuyan's gaze. "We're leaving now," he said. "Every second an evil Soul Master stays alive is a waste of air."
He rested a hand on Arthur's shoulder. With a single thought, his will stirred.
The light around them bent inward, collapsing toward a single point. In the next instant, both of them dissolved into drifting specks of light and scattered into the wind.
The shaded lane fell silent again. It somehow seemed darker than before.
At that same moment, far away at the entrance to Arthur's dorm building, Gu Yue, who had been waiting quietly, frowned.
She turned toward the path leading back to the dormitory.
A powerful aura had just swept past, then vanished. At the very least, Titled Douluo level.
If Gu Yue were not a divine being rebuilding her power from the ground up, her current cultivation would not have been enough to sense it at all.
She lowered her head slightly. Strands of hair slipped forward, veiling her delicate features and hiding her eyes, making her expression impossible to read.
Almost to herself, she murmured, "What was that?"
Silence followed.
A second later, the air rippled faintly, and Ditiān's voice reached her. "My Lord, it was Arthur's elder. He has taken Arthur away."
She said nothing.
Arthur and Tang Wukong trained together every day, though always after their separate sessions. Tomorrow was one of their rare days off, so Gu Yue had come early, planning to wait for Arthur and invite him out for a walk around town.
She hadn't expected this.
Fine. She would handle something else instead.
"Ditiān." A sharp glint flashed in Gu Yue's eyes. "From now on, keep constant watch on Tang Wulin."
"Track everything he does. If anything seems off, report it immediately."
Before Ditiān could answer, her tone cooled further. "Be careful. Don't let him fool you just because he seems weak."
"He carries the aura of another King."
"My Lord… you mean that one?" Ditiān's voice trembled with shock. How could Tang Wulin possibly bear that great one's aura?
"It is what it is." After observing him for so long, Gu Yue was certain. Every now and then, Tang Wulin would leak traces of the Golden Dragon King's aura.
So faint they were almost impossible to detect. And yet undeniably real.
To anyone else, it would be like a grain of sand lost in a river. But to her, the Silver Dragon King, it burned like a bonfire in the middle of the night.
Long ago, the Dragon God had split into two, becoming the Golden and Silver Dragon Kings. Of the two, the Golden Dragon King had been sealed immediately by the God-Kings of the divine realm.
Only Gu Yue had managed to break free and escape into the mortal world.
So how could Tang Wulin possibly carry the Golden Dragon King's aura?
Unless he had some connection to the divine realm.
Her eyes narrowed as she drew on the Dragon God's vast intellect within her.
The Tang surname. A spirit soul of Blue Silver Grass. A link to the divine realm.
A name surfaced in her mind.
The Sea God Tang San, who had ascended to the divine realm twenty thousand years ago.
Could there be a connection?
Tang San… Tang Wulin.
Another figure flashed through her thoughts.
Tang Wutong.
Tang Wulin. Tang Wutong.
A quiet laugh slipped from her lips. "So that's it."
A cold light flickered in her eyes as she forced down a surge of anger. Because of Tang Wutong, the spirit beast realm had lost its sacred beasts.
And now… what was Tang Wulin planning?
Tang San. Hmph.
---
Tianhai City.
Night settled in, thick and heavy.
A sea wind carrying the sharp tang of rust pushed through the shattered windows of an abandoned factory on the southern outskirts of East Sea City.
Liu Jin crouched beneath the shadow of a shipping container, his back hunched. His thin, dry fingers kept rubbing the dark violet paper in his hands.
The edges were crumpled and worn from being handled too many times.
Reflected in his eyes were three cold characters: Blood Summoning Rite.
Three years ago, he had been a proud young prodigy at Tianhai Academy. His spirit soul, the Azure Flame Vine, could draw power from all growing things. His teachers and elders had talked endlessly about the bright future ahead of him.
Then a failed spirit soul fusion triggered a violent mutation. The Azure Flame Vine had twisted into what it was now: a Rotbone Scythe wrapped in strands of black.
There had always been something slightly off about his spirit soul. The flawed fusion had ignited the change.
The Azure Flame Vine turned into an evil spirit soul and began to resist him. His cultivation stalled completely. Everything he had once reached for slipped out of sight.
The admiration in people's eyes turned into caution, even disgust. It tore through the last scraps of his pride.
And just when he had sunk into despair, when he had nothing left, someone had slipped out of the shadows and handed him a way to grow stronger again, along with a forbidden technique.
The Blood Summoning Rite.
"The Blood Summoning Rite… trade living souls for power." Liu Jin swallowed and muttered the words under his breath, repeating the instructions he had been given.
That mysterious figure had told him to record every detail of the sacrifice.
Using me as a test subject.
He had once been a genius. He could tell that this Blood Summoning Rite had been altered. Incomplete. Intentionally stripped down.
Reading between the lines, he could glimpse what it must have been originally.
A massive sacrificial ritual steeped in extreme evil.
And clearly not yet perfected.
Otherwise, that person would never have handed it to him to test and document.
Fine.
Liu Jin didn't care anymore. All he wanted was power. Power beyond anything anyone had ever seen. He wanted certain people to pay.
His gaze drifted across the heaps of scrap metal and landed on a hunched figure not far away.
A boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, wearing a washed-out shirt faded nearly white. His arms were wrapped tightly around a worn, graying backpack. Liu Jin had been watching him for a while. The boy had come to the city searching for a relative.
Now he slept against the shipping container, a faint smile on his lips. Probably dreaming about finding the family he was looking for.
Something stirred in Liu Jin's chest. His fingertips trembled.
He remembered the first time he went to take his Soul Master assessment. The same feeling of clutching hope in his heart, wearing the new clothes his mother had bought him.
The hesitation lasted only a second before he crushed it.
There was no road back for him.
And this wasn't even his first target. What was there to hesitate over?
He slowly straightened, light on his feet as he stepped toward the boy.
"Don't blame me," he muttered hoarsely into the empty factory. "Blame the world that shut me out first."
His right hand rose soundlessly. The Rotbone Scythe appeared in the darkness, its black chains swaying without any wind, glowing faint green in the moonlight.
"Well. This just got interesting."
A sudden voice rang out from directly above.
"Who's there?"
Liu Jin jerked his head up, but saw no one. He looked toward the portion of the factory roof that had long since collapsed.
In the moonlight, a massive spear wrapped in golden light came plunging straight down at him.