Chapter 1457 - The Power of Martial Souls

The Grand Unity Sect's sudden declaration of war left everyone utterly bewildered. The battle broke out without the slightest warning, and only a small number of onlookers could truly see what was going on.

The Heavenly Dao Society had laid its arrangements specifically against the Grand Unity Sect and the Divine Alchemy Sect. Once these plans fully took effect, the two sects would find themselves trapped in a nightmare. Liu Wuxie had many ways to bring them down, and he didn't need to slaughter them all to destroy them—that would be the crudest option. He could ruin them just as thoroughly by striking directly at their core.

The Grand Unity Sect had repeatedly tried to kill him, so he naturally had no intention of letting them fall easily. He would sever their revenue, bleed their resources dry, and unfold a series of schemes that would gradually grind the entire Grand Unity Sect into decline. Even the spectators could now discern Liu Wuxie's intention, to say nothing of Elder Yan and the other elders of the Grand Unity Sect.

As a result, the Grand Unity Sect understood that they had to kill Liu Wuxie at all costs, even if it meant staking their lives. No one believed the Heavenly Dao Society could mount any meaningful resistance against such a colossus.

As long as they locked Zhuge Ming and the other powerhouses down and kept them from intervening, the Divine Alchemy Sect and the Giant Spirit Hall would surely kill Liu Wuxie.

Yet the situation did not unfold as they had imagined. The Divine Alchemy Sect and the Giant Spirit Hall indeed drove Liu Wuxie to a critical point, and their combined strike had already closed in on him.

By the time their attack fell, Liu Wuxie merely uttered a single command, and over a hundred light spheres shot into the sky. Among them, Shen Tian's martial soul shone the brightest, bearing the cultivation of the Earth Immortal Realm.

"Not good!" Elder Yan and the others finally realized that something had gone terribly wrong.

Shi Yuan had previously mentioned that Liu Wuxie could control martial souls, but he had never said that Liu Wuxie could forge them. Back in the sevenfold heavens, Liu Wuxie had mainly controlled martial souls rather than creating them.

Although Liu Wuxie had, in fact, engraved martial souls before, no one had been present to witness it. Even when he later controlled Blackwind Beasts, it still wasn't the same as openly crafting martial souls.

"Let me show you the power of martial souls!" Liu Wuxie's voice echoed from within the Universal Gourd.

Everyone in the vicinity heard him clearly, but many cultivators looked utterly confused, as this was the first time they had even heard the term martial souls.

"What in the world are martial souls?" Many cultivators exchanged glances, most of them from the Spirit Martial Astral Domain. They knew almost nothing about the Martial Soul Art or about Liu Wuxie himself.

Just as everyone's curiosity about martial souls reached its peak, a thunderous explosion rolled through Nightmare City.

One martial soul after another detonated in sequence, each blast overlapping with the last, starting from Shen Tian's martial soul. The chain of explosions merged into a terrifying impact that swept across the entire plaza, the detonation of an Earth Immortal Realm existence whose power rivaled the pinnacle of that realm.

They were fortunate that this battle took place in Nightmare City; even a fight between Heaven Gaze Realm cultivators couldn't damage this place. In any ordinary city, the explosion of a single Earth Immortal would have been enough to obliterate half of it.

Even so, the shockwave still made Nightmare City tremble violently, and a vast black hole tore open in mid-air, its edges expanding outward in a rippling ring.

The cultivators from the Giant Spirit Hall reacted the slowest, and the black hole swallowed them on the spot. Their bodies dissolved into nothing, leaving not a trace behind, fully revealing how terrifying the detonation was.

Soon after, the remaining martial souls exploded as well. Their individual blasts lacked the sheer force of Shen Tian's martial soul, but there were so many of them that together they formed a power no one could ignore.

"Quick, fall back!" As the aftershock rolled outward, the cultivators watching from farther away finally understood how grave the situation had become.

"ARGH!" Even so, many Void Realm cultivators spat blood under the shockwave, and they survived only because their sect elders blocked most of the force for them.

As for those trapped at the very heart of the battlefield, their fate was far worse.

"Liu Wuxie, you'll die a miserable death!" roared an elder of the Divine Alchemy Sect. Yet before he could finish, his body vanished, leaving only his head behind. Moments later, even that remaining head vaporized into nothing.

The martial souls carried the power of True Samadhi Fire, and anything it touched simply vanished without a trace.

"Liu Wuxie, I curse you for eternity!" Feng He screamed, his severed head floating alone in mid-air. Although he had survived, his body had disappeared, and his twisted features contorted with agony and hatred.

"Devour!" The Universal Gourd suddenly unleashed a powerful suction force, swallowing the surviving elders of the Grand Unity Sect and the Divine Alchemy Sect, then began refining them in the flames of True Samadhi Fire.

Once these people were fully refined, every member of the Heavenly Dao Society would undergo a drastic transformation, and their strength would soar.

No one had expected the battle to conclude in such a fashion, not even Zhuge Ming and the others.

The Grand Unity Sect had sent five elders, yet aside from Elder Yan, every single one of them had vanished. Some died outright, while the Universal Gourd devoured the rest, leaving their odds of survival practically nonexistent.

As the True Samadhi Fire refined them, it drew out immense quantities of Earth Immortal Realm laws and poured them into Xu Lingxue and the others. Before long, Bi Gongyu, Lan Yu, Hu Shi, Han Feizi, Qiao Bian, and the rest all felt their cultivation surging upward.

Han Feizi and Qiao Bian had already been strong, having reached the second-level Void Realm, but nourished by the Earth Immortal Realm's laws, their cultivation skyrocketed even further.

The Universal Gourd held a vast ocean of origin yang energy that constantly nourished their bodies. In just a few minutes, several people managed to break through into the Void Realm.

Even Luo Hai's cultivation climbed to the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm, something he would never have dared imagine in the past. He knew very clearly that he owed his current achievements entirely to Liu Wuxie.

The black hole above Nightmare City finally closed after ten whole minutes, and the battle ended as abruptly as it had begun. Everyone had expected a drawn-out clash between the two sides, yet the fight concluded shortly after the martial souls appeared.

"The Martial Soul Art is even more terrifying than profound talismans, not to mention that the martial souls can think and fight on their own," the Divine Sun-Moon Palace finally recognized the crisis they faced. They understood that once martial souls entered the market, they might not be able to sell a single profound talisman. At the same price, martial souls would naturally be far easier to move.

Every sect already possessed techniques for crafting profound talismans, but the Martial Soul Art belonged solely to the Heavenly Dao Society, and that exclusivity made it genuinely terrifying. Anyone who wanted to buy martial souls would have no choice but to seek out the Heavenly Dao Society.

"No wonder the Grand Unity Sect is so desperate to kill Liu Wuxie. Even I'm tempted to kill Liu Wuxie before he can grow up. Such an opponent is too terrifying." The neutral sects couldn't help but regard Liu Wuxie with lingering fear in their eyes. Many of them secretly worried that he might choose to target them someday.

After all, even a Quasi-Immortal could not overturn the entire structure of the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain alone, yet Liu Wuxie had already done it. He had upset the balance of the whole domain and hadn't even left anyone a valid excuse to criticize him.

The Divine Alchemy Sect and the Giant Spirit Hall had lost all of their experts. As for the Grand Unity Sect, only Elder Yan remained, standing silently with wounds covering his body. He, too, had suffered grievous injuries in the explosions.

When Zhuge Ming, Elder Jian, and the others walked over, they stared at the battlefield in a daze. They could hardly accept that the Heavenly Dao Society alone had accomplished all of this.

Elder Yan had already fled. The Heavenly Dragon Sect had suffered almost no casualties, and with Zhuge Ming and Elder Jian joining hands, he would never have stood a chance. Running had been his first and only choice.

There were still about five days left before the month-long event ended, but the crowd had already lost interest in seeing anything else. Unsurprisingly, martial souls had become the centerpiece of this gathering.

Everyone could still accept the notion of array runes, blacksmithing runes, and talisman runes, since every sect already understood those systems, and such runes only elevated power by a single grade. But martial souls were different; they marked the beginning of a brand-new era, a world none of them had ever stepped into before. It felt as if a new gate had quietly opened before their eyes.

Cultivators from the Spirit Martial Astral Domain started departing one after another to report the events of Nightmare City. They needed to urge their sects to purchase as many martial souls as possible.

"Let's go," Liu Wuxie said. Only he stepped out of the Universal Gourd, as the others remained inside in seclusion.

Zhuge Ming quickly led the Heavenly Dragon Sect experts out of Nightmare City, wary that the Grand Unity Sect might launch another attack.

On the way back, the elders of the Heavenly Dragon Sect treated Liu Wuxie with the utmost respect. In Nightmare City, Liu Wuxie had slain several peak Earth Immortal Realm experts. Even if ambush played a part, the fact remained indisputable, and no one dared question his combat strength.

That said, martial souls worked best in ambushes. If enemies knew what was coming and made proper preparations, the effect would not be as devastating. This first appearance had caught the Grand Unity Sect off guard. Next time, things would not go so smoothly.

A few days later, they finally returned to the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain, and news of what had happened in Nightmare City spread like wildfire.

The Grand Unity Sect had suffered disastrous losses and flew into a towering rage. In retaliation, they dispatched large numbers of experts to attack the Heavenly Dragon Sect's branches across the astral domain.

The clashes between the two sects grew even fiercer, steadily escalating toward all-out war.

When Liu Wuxie returned to the Heavenly Dao Society, everyone began to emerge from the Universal Gourd one after another. After several days of secluded cultivation, their overall strength had transformed dramatically. They had seized a vast amount of resources from the Earth Immortals and now possessed overflowing reserves.

"Master, what are we going to do next? Though we managed to get a large order of Soul Pills, we only have a month. It won't be easy to refine a few hundred thousand pills in a month," Bi Gongyu asked once they gathered inside the main hall.

They didn't need to worry about rune orders, since they hadn't taken a single one back in Nightmare City. As for the Golden Cicada Pill, they wouldn't release it into the market anytime soon. That left producing Soul Pills to fulfill their order as their top priority.

"No hurry. How well are you at controlling the Universal Gourd now?" Liu Wuxie asked.

He had handed control of the Universal Gourd over to Bi Gongyu. With the True Samadhi Fire inside, refining tens of thousands of pills a day wouldn't pose any problem for him.

"I'm still trying to get used to it," Bi Gongyu said, looking somewhat ashamed.

"Get familiar with it as soon as possible. You have to refine twenty thousand Soul Pills each day, and the Heavenly Dao Society will be busy for the next six months. But once we get through those six months, everything will become much easier," Liu Wuxie said, deliberately adding pressure to push Bi Gongyu to master the Universal Gourd quickly.

If manpower became an issue, he could always borrow people from the Heavenly Dragon Sect.

"Master, we don't have enough spiritual herbs even if I can refine twenty thousand pills in a single day. We've only just taken control of the Sky Cloud Star and the Tranquil Meteor Star, and our people are still cultivating the spiritual herbs; we won't have a proper supply for at least a century," Bi Gongyu replied.

When the Heavenly Dao Society took over the two planets, they had converted them into vast spiritual herb fields. But spiritual herbs needed at least a hundred years to mature, and some even required a thousand years. The Heavenly Dao Society didn't have that much time.

"That is the second step of my plan," Liu Wuxie said with a devilish smile.