It was a single word spoken with relative quietness, but it may as well been a loud curse in the ears of Li Fenghai!

It was a special soul skill that affected the very depths of a person’s soul. The Soul Anchoring Technique!

This was the first time Bai Yunfei used the soul skill, and on a Late-stage Soul King to boot!

Thanks to Berserk Mode, Bai Yunfei was now as strong as a Late-stage Soul King. This was incredible in itself, but there was a slight flaw to it. Bai Yunfei was strong considering his strength and soulforce due to Berserk Mode, but the strength of his own soul was not of the same level. Compared to Li Fenghai who was twenty years or so his senior as a Late-stage Soul King, Bai Yunfei’s soul was just weaker.

However!

There was something aiding Bai Yunfei when he used the Soul Anchoring Technique. For the first time since he used it, the Soul Sentinel Scarf had a faint pulsation of energy emit from it! Before, Bai Yunfei would use the Charm Bracelet’s additional effect for a pseudo-soul attack and the Soul Sentinel Scarf would usually aid in its strength, if by barely. Never had the Soul Sentinel Scarf have a reaction like this to a soul attack!

+12 Additional effect of the Soul Sentinel Scarf: 200% Increase in spirit-based attacks.

A drastic elevation of strength like this was outstanding, and that led to a great deal of fortune for Bai Yunfei. Now, Bai Yunfei’s soul was strong enough to compare with Li Fenghai and thus how his Soul Anchoring Technique was able to spearhead through Li Fenghai’s mental defenses!

Furthermore, Bai Yunfei had one more factor that led to his great success: timing. He had activated the Soul Anchoring Technique at the right time when Li Fenghai was still surprised about his new strength!

It was about a moment between when Li Fenghai teleported onto the scene and when he was hit with the Soul Anchoring Technique, but after that moment, the man was completely transfixed! He stood straight to attention and his eyes looked listless!

A transparent bubble covered his entire person a moment later like a capsule before he too, was whisked away into thin air just like Gui Wei had been!

Bai Yunfei’s eyes flashed with light as he reached a hand up into the air. “Xiao Qi!”

“Coming!” Xiao Qi chirped in response. Swooping down, his eyes made contact with Bai Yunfei before the both of them disappeared into thin air!

Left where Bai Yunfei was standing was just a small black stone now. Before it could fall from the skies, Long Lan grabbed onto the stone before retreating with the permafrost mastiff to stand alert for anything else.

......

Within the Core World.

Somewhere in the Core World, Li Fenghai came tumbling out from empty space to fall onto the ground. His body trembled once as the Soul Anchoring Technique wore off, allowing Li Fenghai full control of his body once again. The very first thing he did as soon as he resumed control was to erect a barrier of black energy around his person.

It was a defensive measure that’d allow him some time to scan the area. To his immediate shock, this place looked nothing like where he used to be!

“An illusion?”

The idea of being stuck in an illusion was the very first thing to come to his mind. But when the black energy around him didn’t seem to register anything, he thought twice about it. “It isn’t an illusion? Then this place is...”

His eyes suddenly caught sight onto a single person and bird standing just under a kilometer away.

“Bai Yunfei!”

Li Fenghai’s eyes narrowed instantly at the sight. As soon as he saw the man, his right hand flew up to fire a black bolt of energy at him!

“Eh?!”

The black bolt of energy didn’t even travel far before Li Fenghai gave a small start. Confused, he stared at the bolt, unsure of what to make of it.

The bolt of energy he sent was barely as thick as the arm of a newborn baby and barely as fast as normal. He could tell that this attack wasn’t as strong as he’d normally be capable of...

Normally, he’d fire off a bolt of energy and allow for it to pull in on the elemental darkness in the area to fuel itself and grow even stronger and faster. It’d be over for any normal person if they were hit by it, and the bolt of energy would normally overtake anyone in speed if they tried to outrun it.

But this bolt of energy had already traveled for several hundred meters without at all increasing in size than when it started out. It looked like it wasn’t even pulling in any energy at all...

Though slower than expected, the bolt soon arrived in front of Bai Yunfei shortly afterwards. Narrowing his eyes, Bai Yunfei used the Flash Step to widen the distance just enough for the bolt to pass by his clothes.

But that wasn’t all to the bolt of energy. When it passed by Bai Yunfei, Li Fenghai bent the same finger the bolt came out from.

Having caught sight of that action, Bai Yunfei immediately surrounded himself in a bonfire of intense elemental fire.

When Li Fenghai bent his finger, the bolt of energy followed suit and turned to fire back at Bai Yunfei’s back! It impacted against the elemental fire barrier Bai Yunfei had at full force with the majority of it evaporating after impact, but a tenth of the bolt still managed to make it through to hit Bai Yunfei on the back!

“Hmph!!”

Bai Yunfei snarled at the pain from the impact. His internal organs were groaning under the pain as a sliver of the black energy drove itself into his body. It looked as if the black energy was trying to spear straight through him!

It didn’t look like there was a scratch from where the black bolt slammed into his armor, but Bai Yunfei’s face paled a bit after it hit him. He stumbled back several steps before steadying himself.

“He’s fine?!”

Seeing Bai Yunfei merely stumble after being hit by his move was stunning to Li Fenghai. This move—while seemingly simple at a glance—was actually a heaven-tier soul skill! It was known as the ‘Soul Piercing Shadow Arrow’ and could pierce through a person’s soul after they were hit to inflict massive damage to it! But Bai Yunfei looked as if a mosquito had bitten him at the very most and not at all worse for wear.

“Xiao Qi, you should get back.” Bai Yunfei warned his companion as he circulated his soulforce in preparation to battle the enemy.

The move had actually done a small number to him, much to Bai Yunfei’s surprise. Luckily, he had the Soul Sentinel Scarf protecting him for the most part, so the move didn’t do too much damage to him other provide a potential worrying moment if Li Fenghai had decided to follow up on that move.

“Let’s test out just how powerful the Core World is!”

Eyes flashing with vigor and without fear of the Late-stage Soul King in front of him, Bai Yunfei dove straight into battle at once!

He raised his right hand to face the palm towards Li Fenghai. The Ardent Sun Glove on it began to light up with an intense amount of light before firing off a twenty-meter large fireball at the other person!

Whether it was the time to materialize or the firing speed, the fireball had been faster than what Bai Yunfei expected! The second fireball he shot was already catching up with the first, and in no time at all, nine fireballs had been fired in total!

“Hmph!”

An Early-stage Soul King or even a Mid-stage Soul King might’ve been intimidated by such a sight, but Li Fenghai was neither. He raised his right hand where a small ball of dark light was forming. The ball soon started to pick up in rotational speed as more and more elemental darkness gathered within it. But even as more energy gathered, the size of the ball remained the same. Waving his hand, the ball of dark energy flew off towards the nine star-like fireballs.

As small as the ball of darkness was in front of the tremendous fireballs, a strange sight occured when the two opposing elements clashed against one another!

“Blip...”

There was a blipping sound as the black ball made contact with the fireball, and the moment when it did, a hole started to expand over the surface of the fireball. Soon, it over took the entire fireball into the hole as if absorbing and devouring it!

The second fireball was coming in to impact against it right after the first. Like the first, the second fireball was absorbed into the black ball. Then the third, and the fourth...one by one, the small black ball was taking in every single fireball on its way towards Bai Yunfei!

Realizing the danger of this ball, Bai Yunfei waved his right hand to have the Cataclysmic Seal come forth to protect him from harm!

“Boom!!”

When the black pearl-sized ball slammed against the Cataclysmic Seal, a mighty explosion erupted in between the two! The Cataclysmic Seal shook all over from the explosion before being sent whirling back towards Bai Yunfei.

Bai Yunfei’s eyes widened at the amount of force that had been in the blow. Though he had managed to nip both attacks in the bud, the fact that there could still be this much power in one of them was beyond what he expected. This attack was miniscule in size, but its power was far too strong for a Mid-stage Soul King to handle.

On the other side, Li Fenghai hadn’t any of that contemptuous look from before after he broke apart Bai Yunfei’s attack. Instead, he had a calculative glare on his face.

“Something is...wrong with this place!” Li Fenghai thought to himself. “Is this some sort of array to inhibit my elemental darkness? History has shown several such arrays before, but it seems improbable that Bai Yunfei would know any one of then, let alone use them. We were the ones to bring him here, there shouldn’t have been any time for him to place an array either. So what is going on here...”

A giant mountain a hundred square meters in size broke Li Fenghai from his thoughts. Looking up, he could see the mountain starting its descent down to squash him!

“And this soul armament is strange as well...” Li Fenghai thought to himself as he teleported back several hundred meters to dodge. But even though he managed to dodge the Cataclysmic Seal, a streak of violet light was already whistling towards him!

He narrowed his eyes. Li Fenghai knew that this was a flying sword that was coming at him. Waving his right hand, a black beam of light flew out from it to come into contact with the incoming Heaven’s Thunder. There was a clanging sound as the two streaks of light rebounded off one another. Within the black of streak had been a longsword of his own.

Li Fenghai took back the sword into his hand and stared strangely at it for a moment. Then as if realizing something was amiss, he swung his right hand around so that the sword would protect his back! There was a second clanging sound and an explosion of violet light before whatever it was that attacked his back dissipated—a mirror image of the Heaven’s Thunder had been sued to attack Li Fenghai!

The mirror image of the Heaven’s Thunder was followed up by the Fire-tipped Spear. Sneering, Li Fenghai brandished the jet-black longsword in his hand and swung it to send the Fire-tipped Spear backwards.

“As expected of a crafter, he has too many soul armaments. And strange ones at that...”

But even as he was observing the Fire-tipped Spear as it floated by Bai Yunfei’s side, Li Fenghai was already starting to gleam with anticipation. If he could kill Bai Yunfei, then these things would be his.

“The fact that you can use a soul skill to elevate yourself to the levels of a Late-stage Soul King was not in my calculations.” Li Fenghai stated. “But you can’t keep it up forever. The backlash will tear heavily into your body, do you really think it wise to be doing these probing attacks?”

Bai Yunfei gave him a non-committal curl of the lips. “Fine then, we can skip the probing attacks and move on to the real battle...”

He waved his hand to store away teh Cataclysmic Seal, Fire-tipped Spear, and Heaven’s Thunder into their space rings, much to the shock of Li Fenghai. Then, he raised his right hand up to point at the sky.

“Fire.”

Only one word was spoken, but it felt like that one word was a command of some kind to let all things loose. The part of the skies where he pointed at suddenly started to tremble before fire started to appear near his finger. It exploded in intensity before quickly reaching the levels of an ocean of fire to seemingly try to burn away at the world!

“Damn!!”

The might of his own move seemed to be surprising to even Bai Yunfei. Excited by what abilities he had, Bai Yunfei coughed once before swinging his finger into the direction of Li Fenghai!

“Whoosh....”

A palm composed entirely out of fire fell down from the ocean of fire when Bai Yunfei pressed his own palm at Li Fenghai. It was several hundred times larger than a regular palm and was traveling fast enough to threaten to smash Li Fenghai into the ground if he didn’t act now!