Chapter 633 – The Soul Furnace Fails to Burn, Dragons and Serpents Rise from the Earth - Part 2

At the edge of the world, dragons and serpents rose from the earth.

When calamity struck like this, the Eastern Sea wouldn’t stand a chance. Just like the Nine Flame Tribe’s army of wolf riders, just like the Human Emperor, once they appeared, they swept aside all resistance.

And yet...floating calmly in midair, wasn’t Li Yuan himself a calamity?

This time, it was disaster meeting disaster.

The twelve golden avatars stood like a circular wall of divine sentinels.

The ghost tide flowed like water, surging and crashing in every direction.

And before long, not a single monstrous beast remained, the Ghost Gate King.

The once-churning ghost tide settled into a still, frozen tsunami, casting a vast black shadow that stooped forward, its hunchbacked form crouched low, face twisted and half-turned, silently waiting by the gate.

Anything that tried to crawl out of the gate was swallowed whole by the shadowy figure squatting silently in front of it. One bite, gone.

Li Yuan unleashed twelve crimson lotus petals, aiming to destroy the ancient door once and for all.

But as expected, the petals struck the door without leaving even the faintest mark.

Meanwhile, Meng Xingxian and the others returned, just as third and fourth rank cultivators began arriving to form a new perimeter around the area.

Of course, with someone like Li Yuan as their leader, it was clear none of them would ever need to actually lift a finger.

“Han Feng,” Li Yuan suddenly said, turning slightly. “Can you search the memory again?”

She had done it before, back when she was only at the second stage of the Earth Soul Realm. She’d managed to extract the memories of one of those monstrous tadpoles. Now that she had advanced to the fifth stage, even if the entity inside was more dangerous, her success rate should theoretically be higher.

“If you agree, then for the next two entries into the Hall of Life, you won’t have to take shifts. You’ll have uninterrupted time to study the painting.” He paused, then continued with a calm promise, “When we explore the depths of the Hall of Life in late autumn, you’ll stay by my side. If danger comes, I’ll be the first to shield you.”

This was precisely what Han Feng had been worried about. If she suffered spiritual damage now, it could affect her ability to comprehend the painting later or even prevent her from making the journey altogether.

But with Li Yuan’s assurance, it felt like a bargain well worth taking.

After only a brief hesitation, she nodded and said, “Yes, Alliance Leader.”

Li Yuan nodded back, then looked down at the strange, decaying gate. He was just about to summon one of the ghost beasts for Han Feng to probe when suddenly, a dull pounding echoed from deep within the gate.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

The sound was heavy like a hammer slamming into a drum made of soulstuff, echoing directly into the marrow of one's being. Every cultivator who heard it, even the fourth ranks, turned pale as paper. Their blood began to boil, as if it would explode from their veins.

These weren’t amateurs. Every one of them had mastered the power of their personal domains. Their source blood flowed thick as mercury. In the Great Zhou, they’d be considered apex powerhouses.

But now, they couldn’t even bear the weight of a sound.

Li Yuan sighed and waved a hand. “Fall back, all of you.”

The trio that had only just regrouped immediately scattered again. The other gathered cultivators, who had shown up as if punching a timecard, turned and fled just as quickly.

It wasn’t that they were incompetent. This was simply beyond their pay grade..

And those who

weren’t

outclassed? Li Yuan had already dealt with them, casually, like swatting flies.

THUMP... THUMP... THUMP...!

The pounding from within grew louder. The flow of ghost beasts ceased completely.

And then, it emerged. A massive mass of blood and flesh squeezed its way through the gate.

At a glance, it resembled a colossal black ram. Atop the beast sat a deformed humanoid figure, warped beyond recognition.

The man sat sideways on the ram’s back, limbs dangling loosely. Then, without warning, the ram’s skin began to split open.

One after another, the cracks yawned wide, each revealing an eye beneath. Clouded, disordered eyes. Watching. Blinking. Unblinking.

The scene unfolding before them looked like something straight out of an eldritch horror.

Li Yuan watched with a grave expression.

He didn’t need anyone to tell him that this was the Black Ram King, one of the Six Beast Kings. But even so, this thing...it wasn’t the original Black Ram King anymore.

Those demonic beasts were truly cursed. Not one had escaped this twisted fate.

What made Li Yuan’s brow tighten was the number floating above the mutated Black Ram King’s head, 4.5 million.

That kind of power was more than enough to kill him.

The monstrous ram staggered out from the gate, its movements slow and unsteady. Then it looked up and spotted Li Yuan in the sky.

And just like the others, greed flickered to life in every one of its grotesque pupils.

“BAHHHHHHHHHH!” It let out a shrill, chaotic screech.

Before Li Yuan’s eyes, the black ram and its rider both vanished.

In their place rose a blazing titan, an immortal figure made entirely of fire, hundreds of feet tall, blotting out the sky as it lunged toward him.

But before it could close the distance, the ghost tide born from the black lotus surged forward, wrapping tightly around the flaming giant’s ankle.

HISSS!!!

Sizzling and crackling rang out from where ghost met flame.

In the distance, Meng Xingxian and the others stood frozen, stunned into silence.

Most of the third and fourth ranks, those who’d never ventured into the Outer Region, had no idea what that thing even was.

But Meng Xingxian, Han Feng, and the former Sect Master recognized it instantly, a flame god!

A being of flame and legend, one that flickered in and out of existence, how could it manifest like this?

𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Li Yuan drew his hand back. Instantly, the twelve golden avatars scattered across the land turned into golden lotus petals and returned to orbit around him.

He stood atop the red lotus, both hands gripping the Blade of Severed Lifespans, gazing down at the flame god.

He hadn’t expected this. Not at all.

How could this thing transform into a flame god?

It was as if the end times had come, and reality itself was unraveling. The rules of the world no longer mattered. Beings that hadn’t appeared in ten thousand lifetimes were clawing their way into existence, exposing truths hidden in the deepest cracks of creation.

HISS! CRACKLE! BOOM!

Yin and Yang collided violently, oil and water, fire and shadow...unable to coexist, devouring one another in silence and screams.

And just when Li Yuan thought it couldn’t get any stranger, it did.

The flame god suddenly shifted again. The flames vanished in a blink, replaced by a grotesque mass of flesh bristling with eyeballs.

Then the flesh shifted once more.

This time, a massive, mountainous ghost emerged, its form layered over the pulsating meat, as if born from it.

Li Yuan’s senses were sharp. He was a master of Yin and Yang, able to detect the slightest ripple of either force. Any fluctuation, no matter how subtle, could not escape his perception.

But here, nothing.

The Yin and Yang energies erupting from this thing didn’t transition naturally. They didn’t flow from one to the other. They simply

appeared

, and then

disappeared

.

The blazing Yang of the flame god, it came from nowhere.

The suffocating Yin of the ghost, it, too, had no source.

It was like these energies had been conjured from thin air.

A flicker. A transformation. Flame god to ghost. Day to night. Light to shadow. All in the blink of an eye.

Then came the final twist.

“BAHHHH!” The Black Ram King, now fully mutated, broke free from the black lotus’s ghost tide, tearing loose and launching itself skyward.

The hulking ghost exploded outward, expanding like a storm cloud of death. In the midst of the screaming wind, it opened its gaping maw wide, ready to devour Li Yuan whole.

Li Yuan pulled back, and the twelve golden lotus petals spun with dazzling speed.

The red lotus, glowing with suppressive power, surged downward to crush the monstrous ghost.

As the red lotus descended, it unleashed its annihilating force. The towering ghost was yanked inward and compressed, shrinking by hundreds of times until it became the size of a normal ghost.

The lotus hovered at its center, exerting tremendous gravitational pressure, drawing the creature in like a black hole trying to erase its very existence.

Then the black lotus, momentarily shaken, snapped back into action. It surged up from below, engulfing the ghost entirely in a cascade of inky mist, attempting to devour it in turn.

At this level of battle, there was still skill, yes. But more often than not, it all came down to raw power.

Right now, Li Yuan and the mutated Black Ram King were locked in a vicious tug-of-war, an old-fashioned battle of internal force and spiritual might.

Li Yuan had expected a long struggle.

But to his surprise...it didn’t last nearly as long as he thought.

The mutated Black Ram King, for all its terrifying appearance and overwhelming power, turned out to be a paper tiger. It was fierce in the first few blows, but after being stopped, it rapidly started to falter.

From within the black lotus mist, muffled thuds rang out, growing fainter with each pulse.