Chapter 480: Breaking the Facade

“Don’t be in such a hurry to leave, we can continue negotiating. You mustn’t give up halfway.”

Feng Yiyou frowned, his expression deteriorating severely. He looked at Qin Lie, confusion surfacing in his eyes.

Qin Lie was actually unscathed?

Feng Yiyou had been paying attention to that area the entire time. He saw Qin Lie take a seat next to the thunder barrier and had even witnessed Qin Lie release his soul consciousness.

To his knowledge, if anyone touched the the thunder barrier with their soul consciousness, it would instantly be reduced to ash. There was no way of escaping it.

In addition to that, the thunder barrier could even adjust to the owner of the soul consciousness and assault them with terrifying thunder and lightning.

In other words, Qin Lie should have already been blasted to death by the violent energy that pouring from the thunder barrier.

His soul should have also been instantly absorbed by those bone ash urns, converted into a sacrifice.

Feng Yiyou sensed that something was definitely amiss.

He wanted to know what had happened to Qin Lie why he was safe and sound.

“Let’s head over there. I wish to discuss how profound this place is with you.” Feng Yiyou walked over to Qin Lie.

Qin Lie had initially prepared to turn away, having told them the he wanted to leave with Du Xiangyang, Song Tingyu, and Xie Jingxuan, yet he couldn’t help but stop his feet when he saw Feng Yiyou approaching.

He had stopped right next to the thunder barrier.

Du Xiangyang and the two others suddenly looked at Qin Lie, their eyes questioning whether or not they should head over as well.

Qin Lie shrugged, signaling that it didn’t matter.

Only then did Du Xiangyang and the others move closer.

In just a few moments, the seven martial practitioners of Celestial Artifact Sect and Qin Lie’s group arrived next to the thunder barrier.

“Your name is Qin…?”

𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

“Qin Lie.”

“Oh, Qin Lie.” Feng Yiyou nodded, barely taking note of his name just then. "I saw you sense the barrier with your soul consciousness earlier. Did you find anything? Everyone here can have an open conversation, and we might be able to find a way to pass through the barrier that way. What do you say?”

“I didn’t find anything. My wisp of soul consciousness was exterminated by thunder and lightning the instant it entered.” Seeing that Du Xiangyang and the others had arrived, Qin Lie hurriedly informed them. “The three of you must not attempt to do this. The thunder and lightning here… they’re deadly. If you don’t want to die, it would be best if you didn’t carelessly release your soul consciousness.”

Du Xiangyang, Song Tingyu, and Xie Jingxuan were all frightened.

When they came over, they had released their soul consciousness out of habit and prepared to investigate the profoundness of the thunder barrier.

The moment they heard Qin Lie say that it could be deadly, they no longer dared to be careless.

“You released a wisp of soul consciousness and had it enter the barrier?” Zhang Sheng’s face was one of confusion.

The martial practitioners of Celestial Artifact Sect all wore expressions of suspicion, finding his testimony to be strange.

They had spent a very long time studying the thunder barrier. Of the people that came before Qin Lie’s group, every single one that released so much as a strand of their soul consciousness had been instantly annihilated.

Every person who attempted to explore the thunder barrier would immediately be killed by the violent thunder energy within.

There was no exception to this!

Yet, after Qin Lie released his soul consciousness, he was still standing here alive and well. This clearly made no sense.

“I tried earlier and realized that there’s really no way to breach this barrier. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can be any help.” Qin Lie wore a look of regret. He sighed, then helplessly declared, “I believe it’s time for us to leave.”

“Can’t we have a calm, peaceful negotiation?” Feng Yiyou’s expression became grim.

“We really can’t be of any help to you,” Qin Lie said with a shake of his head, announcing their intention to leave.

“Young Sect Master!” Zhang Sheng shouted.

Feng Yiyou pondered for a moment, then suddenly said, “I’ve explained just how profound the Graveyard of Gods is to you, told you so many secrets, yet you suddenly want to leave? Isn’t that a little too inappropriate?”

“Too inappropriate?” Du Xiangyang smiled. “What’s inappropriate?”

“I refuse to have told you people so many things for nothing in return.” Feng Yiyou became even less polite than before. “Since you’ve have learned about all of that, you must participate. You suddenly want to leave? That’s no longer possible!”

Qin Lie chuckled. “Now you’re forcing others into becoming your allies?”

“Young Sect Master, since the easy way didn’t work, why don’t use the hard way? Stop wasting your breath on them already!” Zhang Sheng smiled coldly.

The other five martial practitioners from Celestial Artifact Sect had looked rather humble earlier. Upon seeing that they were about to break the friendly facade they had put up, the eyes they were looking at Song Tingyu and Xie Jingxuan with promptly filled with lust.

Zhang Sheng included, the eyes of the six people revealed an immoral light. Their gazes were like the venom released by a snake, rushing toward the bewitching bodies of the two women.

“Heh… it needs to be said; although they hail from Copper rank forces, these beauties sure are excellent. Even in the Land of Chaos, women with such top tier beauty and body figures are extremely rare finds.” One of them took the initiative to tease them.

“It would definitely be a waste if they died too quickly. Right, Young Sect Master?” Zhang Sheng laughed dryly. He subconsciously licked his lips, intense lust flowing out of his eyes.

Feng Yiyou frowned, but did not speak up.

It looked like he was about to let the vulgarity of his subordinates loose.

The moment they saw Feng Yiyou’s attitude, Qin Lie and Du Xiangyang instantly understood. They knew that this short period of peace had already disappeared.

Song Tingyu and Xie Jingxuan’s faces both turned ice-cold. A sharp, cold glow radiated from their charming eyes. The two understood that a bloody battle was about to unfold.

“Qin Lie, I shall ask you one last time. What did you discover inside?” Feng Yiyou snorted coldly.

“I discovered fourteen bone ash urns and nine sealed souls. Those nine souls were chaotic could explode at any moment,” Qin Lie said with a grin. He couldn’t be bothered to waste his breath on Feng Yiyou either. “Are we supposed to become four new souls to be sealed in those urns?”

“How did you find out?” Feng Yiyou face twisted into a grave expression.

The other martial practitioners of Celestial Artifact Sect looked at Qin Lie in shock, their expressions turning grim as well.

“You think I’d tell you?” Qin Lie wore an indifferent expression.

“I know what that is! It’s the Consecutive Soul Splitting Formation!” Du Xiangyang shouted harshly. “By using fourteen artifacts to seal fourteen souls, the artifacts force the souls into a frenzied state. Once the souls are pushed to the utmost limit, they’d explode at the same time, instantly erupting with terrifyingly destructive power! You’ve been attempting to breach the barrier this entire time, but you just don’t have enough sacrifices! We’re the sacrifices you’re looking for, aren’t we?”

Song Tingyu and Xie Jingxuan’s expressions changed.

Nine people before them had apparently fallen for Feng Yiyou’s scheme already, and after their bodies were disintegrated, their souls were absorbed by the artifacts.

These bastards from Celestial Artifact Sect had essentially been searching for nearby martial practitioners non-stop, and with the pretense of becoming allies, would lure people in by revealing the profoundness of the thunder lagoon. Those people would then be murdered, turning them into sacrifices for their artifacts.

“Feng Yiyou! You’re undeniably evil!” Flames of fury burned within Du Xiangyang.

“You have truly exceeded my expectations.” At this moment, Feng Yiyou wasn’t sending so much as another glance in Du Xiangyang’s direction, but was instead sizing Qin Lie up. “I’m very interested in the mysteries dwelling within your body. I’m not going to let you die too quickly.”

After a moment of consideration, Feng Yiyou indifferently issued orders. “Kill Du Xiangyang first, then you can capture the two girls alive. I’ll give you six hours with them once they’ve been captured. After six hours, clean them up as best as you can and have their souls thrown into the thunder barrier. As for this Qin Lie… I want you to imprison him and store his memories with a Memory Fragment Crystal. I want to know what he’s gone through!”

“Please be at ease, Young Sect Master. We’ll definitely deal with everything properly!” Flames of lust burned in Zhang Sheng’s eyes. He licked the corners of his lips again, pointed at Song Tingyu, then said, “I like this girl, she suits my tastes!”

“You have six people, while they only have four. There shouldn’t be any problems,” Feng Yiyou impatiently said with a wave of his hand. “Deal with them quickly. With the addition of the four of them, we’re still lacking a soul. There are still matters for us to attend to.”

“Yes!”

A fierce light shone in the eyes of Zhang Sheng and the other five Celestial Artifact Sect martial practitioners. Surging with killing intent, they retrieved their spirit artifacts from their spatial rings. The place was suddenly filled with the dazzling light of treasure as exquisite, eye-catching spirit artifacts appeared one after another.

The types of spirit artifacts that were present included machetes, swords, long spears, silver tridents, shields, and bone pikes. All of them had been forged by master artificers of Celestial Artifact Sect, and every single one of them seemed to be around Earth Grade One and Two. All of them had exquisite, refined spirit patterns that carried dense spirit energy fluctuations.

As expected of Celestial Artifact Sect, they were indeed the richest and most lavish force in the Land of Chaos.

Zhang Sheng alone was wearing dark azure spirit armor. This spirit armor was engraved with a turtlesnake pattern and flashed with a dim, azure glow.

He held a spirit artifact in each hand, a shield and a pike. The spirit energy that poured from his body had a fascinating resonance with the shield and pike, as though the spirit artifacts perfectly complemented the spirit art that he cultivated.

The other five people wore unique spirit artifacts as well, with each of them wielding one or two spirit artifacts each. Intense spirit energy fluctuations continuously emanated from their bodies.

“What the hell! Using their spirit artifacts to suppress people, they’re bastards of Celestial Artifact Sect alright!” Du Xiangyang cursed in a low voice.

“The thunder and lightning fluctuations here are extremely turbulent!” A loud roar suddenly resounded from a distance.

“Such dense thunder fluctuations. The thunder spirit of the Forbidden Land of Thunder is definitely here!” Yu Men’s voice rang out.

The expressions of Feng Yiyou and his men instantly changed.

Qin Lie was also stunned.

“There’re people here. Investigate them with the token!” Yu Men of Ten Thousand Beast Mountain commanded.

“Zzng zzng zzng! Whoo whoo whoo!”

Strange whistling sounds rang out from a few of the tokens at Qin Lie’s and Song Tingyu’s waists. The same thing occurred in a few of the at Feng Yiyou’s waist.

“Heh! Things have gotten interesting.” Niu Shaojun laughed dryly.

Yu Men and the crowd accompanying him had also slaughtered several martial practitioners. They had many tokens on them—

—just like Qin Lie and Feng Yiyou over on this side.

In using their tokens to investigate, it caused a chain reaction of whistles to erupt from the tokens with Qin Lie, Feng Yiyou, and the rest. They immediately understood that subtle implications of the situation.

With the appearance of Ten Thousand Beast Mountain’s Yu Men and his group, the two groups of people that were originally going to start trading blows abruptly stopped.

After a few minutes, Yu Men, along with Niu Shaojun and the rest of the Ten Thousand Beast Mountain martial practitioners, rushed over, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

“Feng Yiyou!” The moment Yu Men arrived, he grinned strangely, and an intense desire to do battle flowed from his eyes.

Both Ten Thousand Beast Mountain and Celestial Artifact Sect resided in the Heavenly Fissure Continent. As the most talented members of the two forces’ younger generation, Yu Men and Feng Yiyou had fought many times, both out in the open and in secret.

Whenever, it often meant a new battle would take place. There hadn’t been a single exception to this in many years.

“Du Xiangyang! Qin Lie!” When Niu Shaojun came over, he was momentarily stunned. Then a strange, sinister smile spread across his face as well.

“Eh? You people know each other too?” Zhang Sheng clearly surprised.

“Indeed! Of course we know each other!” Niu Shaojun smiled coldly as he retrieved a Ten Thousand Beast Mountain token from his waist. Using his mind consciousness to contact another person, he said, “Situ Tong, you can come over here now.”

“Situ Tong!” Feng Yiyou’s expression went ice-cold.