A strong shudder ran through Nie Tian as he stared at Armes, flabbergasted. “Son of the Stars?”

According to Armes, in the eyes of the outsiders, the value of a Son of the Stars was far greater than that of the Domain of the Falling Stars.

How was this possible!?

Even though he had had a feeling that the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace was very powerful, and that their headquarters probably stood in prosperity somewhere in the boundless starry river for thousands of years, or even longer.

However, why would a single person they chose be even more important than the entire Domain of the Falling Stars?

Armes’s face was filled with seriousness and respect as he said, “Kid, you probably have no idea of what a Son of the Stars is because your cultivation base doesn’t allow you to fully refine the fragmentary star marks you’ve obtained yet. If you can make it out of here alive and refine those fragmentary star marks after entering the Worldly realm, you might understand what it means to be a Son of the Stars of the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace.

“But unfortunately, you won’t have the opportunity to do that, because your life has come to its end!”

With these words, Armes once again spit out a mouthful of blood as three clusters of cyan light shot out of his eyes and the prismatic crystal between his eyebrows.

As wisps of blood merged with the clusters of cyan light, they once again turned into three Soul Burning Seals.

However, unlike before, this time they vanished into thin air right after coming to form.

Before Nie Tian could figure out Armes’ intentions, three of his Heaven Eyes were suddenly hit by the Soul Burning Seals.

He instantly lost contact with them.

At the same time, he sensed that Armes’ three Soul Burning Seals didn’t dissipate after destroying those three Heaven Eyes of his, but instead, they went on to search for the other Heaven Eyes.

“Now that I’ve learned about your status, I finally understand what those small things you deploy in the vicinity are,” Armes said with a cold face. “As I think about it now, only Sons of the Stars are able to wield soul power at the Greater Heaven stage. This is why the legacies of the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace are so powerful, and why the Sons of the Stars are so formidable.”

BANG! BANG!

As Armes spoke, Nie Tian’s other Heaven Eyes exploded one after another, as they were apparently found and destroyed by the Soul Burning Seals.

As a result, Nie Tian suddenly lost the images of his surroundings that reflected in his mind through those Heaven Eyes.

He knew that it wouldn’t be long before the other outsiders came from other parts of the island to surround him.

Armes alone was already hard to deal with. If his helpers arrived, Nie Tian would be in a very unfavorable position.

Armes laughed sinisterly. “I’m not letting you escape this time! Killing you will ensure the rise of my clan from among all the other Phantasm clans! We can even forget about retaking the Domain of the Falling Stars!”

“Dark Soul Ward!” With these words, the prismatic crystal between Armes’ eyebrows suddenly blossomed with bright cyan light. One drop of blood after another merged with the cyan light, and rapidly morphed into a magical restrictive ward that enveloped a very large area around him.

In Nie Tian’s eyes, heaven and earth within a two kilometer radius suddenly darkened. A gruesome and suffocating feeling quickly crept up on him.

With a cold snort, he summoned star power and cast a short-range Starshift.

BOOM!

He rammed hard into an invisible ward, a twisting agony coming from his mind as he did.

He felt as if his soul were being torn from his fleshly body.

Half of him was already through the ward, but the unbearable pain forced him to shrink back.

It seemed that Armes’ Dark Soul Ward allowed him to confine souls to certain area. If he forcibly charged out of the ward, his soul would be ripped from his body and kept within the ward.

Considering his current cultivation base, he was far from being able to separate his soul from his body. The forcible separation would instantly result in his death.

Furthermore, Armes was a Phantasm. Their bloodline talents perfectly agreed with the use of their profound soul power.

Even if he were able to separate his soul from his body, once his unprotected soul was exposed before Armes, Armes would annihilate it without any hesitation.

Suffering the agony from his soul, Nie Tian could only shrink back into the ward.

At this moment, he could already hear the other outsiders’ vague shouts in the distance.

𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He instantly realized that the other outsider races had answered Armes’ summons and were converging on him from all directions like a flood.

Their shouts were filled with excitement and ecstasy, as if they had discovered an extremely precious treasure.

“Is this because they learned that I’m a Son of the Stars?”

he thought to himself.

With an icy expression, Nie Tian channeled soul power from the nine fragmentary stars in his soul into his eyes as he gazed at the invisible ward.

Then, as sparks of starlight started to flicker in the depths of his eyes, he was able to see the Dark Soul Ward which should have been invisible.

It was a thin, dark-gray ward dotted with scattered spots of blood-colored light, which looked like tiny bugs resting on the ward.

Armes paced slowly towards Nie Tian, and took his time to say, “If you had entered the Worldly realm and transformed your soul, my Dark Soul Ward probably wouldn’t be able to keep you from escaping with that escape magic of yours. However, since you’re still at the Greater Heaven stage, your soul can’t be separated from your body. There’s no way you can escape from my Dark Soul Ward!

“You might as well just quit trying to escape and embrace your death!”

Nie Tian laughed. “Do you really think you can keep me here?”

With these words, sparkling, emerald green tree branches flew out of his ring of holding one after another, giving rise to whooshing sounds. They quickly spread out in the air in a certain formation before plunging vigorously into the solid ground.

Some of them were planted into the ground within the Dark Soul Ward, while others ended up on the other side of the ward.

From this, Nie Tian realized that Armes’ Dark Soul Ward had no restrictive effect on soulless objects.

The seventy-two tree branches instantly formed the powerful spell formation that the Floragrims had used to protect their ancestral land.

A dark-green ward spread out over Nie Tian’s head like an very large umbrella opening.

Countless mysterious tree patterns swam about within the dark-green ward, as if they were the souls of the Floragrim monarchs, trying to protect their descendants.

As soon as the dark-green ward was formed, it crossed and shattered Armes’s Dark Soul Ward as if it were made of paper.

As Armes’s Dark Soul Ward exploded, Nie Tian could very well put his tree branches away and leave with a Starshift.

However, he didn’t.

He took out his Sound Stone and whispered into it, “You can come over now. The outsiders are not as powerful as we expected. I’ll take some of them myself. The rest are yours.”

He hadn’t had such strong confidence before, but after he had consecutively broken Armes’ Soul Burning Seals and Dark Soul Ward, his confidence soared. He now believed that, with the help of the other young chosen ones, they would be able to beat these outsiders, who plotted to take the Domain of the Falling Stars.

Armes gasped with astonishment. “What?!”

With blood spilling from the corner of his mouth and eyes wide, he looked rather miserable and in a lot of pain.

As the Dark Soul Ward, which he had formed with his newly-awakened core bloodline talent, was torn to shreds by Nie Tian’s dark-green ward, he instantly suffered a serious backlash.

In fact, at this moment, after taking numerous hits from Nie Tian and having his Soul Burning Seals and Dark Soul Ward destroyed by Nie Tian, Armes had already suffered different degrees of injuries to both his body and soul.

With a disbelieving look in his eyes, he gazed at the dark-green ward and the mysterious tree patterns swimming in it, and quickly recognized the spell.

“Since you so strongly want me to stay, I will!” Nie Tian said with a vicious smile as he sensed rich wood power being channeled to him from his surroundings by the spell formation.

He took a few steps backwards and sat down directly under the center of the dark-green ward, where he started to absorb the rich and pure wood power.

With the misty green aura pouring down on him, he recovered the wood power he had consumed during his battle against Armes at an alarming rate.

As drop after drop of liquidized wood power came to form at the bottom of his vortex of wood power, he found that the weariness from his previous battles against Armes was completely eliminated.

At that moment, Abreu and Tago finally arrived.

“Brother!”

“Lord Armes!”

However, they were shocked to see the horrible condition Armes was now in. Apparently, he had not only overconsumed his power, but also sustained serious injuries.