Chapter 5918 - 5919
“Soul Devourer, do you really think I don’t know what you’re thinking?”
Zhan E took a few steps back, coldly watching the Soul Devourer struggling frantically in his chains, his gray-white eyes utterly calm.
“Feigning allegiance, you’re actually using the Evil Path Palace to recuperate. Once you return to your peak, the first one to turn against you will probably be me, won’t you?”
His tone was flat, as if stating a perfectly ordinary fact. “After all, if the Soul Devouring Demon Art is to advance further, it needs to devour even more powerful divine souls… and my divine soul, cultivated through ten thousand years of reincarnation, is a tempting tonic for you, isn’t it?”
The Soul Devourer’s struggling movements faltered.
Because Zhan E was right.
That was indeed his plan: first, to use the Evil Path Palace for protection to recuperate; once he regained his strength, he would seize the opportunity to devour Zhan E’s divine soul, seize control of the Evil Path Palace, and then who in the Twelve Heavens would be his match?
“What a pity, what a pity.”
Zhan E shook his head, raising his withered hand to form a complex and eerie hand seal in the air. “I have lived for ten thousand years, and have seen more conspiracies and schemes than the souls you have devoured. From the moment you stepped into the Hall of Evil, I saw through your intentions clearly.” ”
Rather than raising a tiger to cause trouble, it’s better to…”
He pressed his hand seal downwards! ”
Refine it into a puppet!”
“Boom!!!”
The floor of the hall cracked open!
Countless bone bricks shattered and flew, revealing a bottomless, enormous crater in the center of the hall.
At the bottom of the crater, a pitch-black bone door, hundreds of feet tall, slowly rose. It was a door forged from the fused skulls of countless living beings, each skull’s eye sockets flickering with grayish-white flames.
The surface of the door was engraved with twisted and writhing reincarnation runes, which crawled and rearranged on the bone surface like living creatures, emitting a terrifying suction force that distorted the entire space of the hall—
the Gate of Reincarnation!
“No!!! Zhan E! I’ll haunt you even in death!!!”
The Soul Devourer roared in utter despair, struggling frantically, his fleshy wings flapping desperately, even forcibly growing new flesh from his severed arm in an attempt to tear the chains… but all in vain.
The nine chains of reincarnation tightened abruptly, dragging his demonic body up and hurling it like a piece of cargo towards the wide-open Gate of Reincarnation!
“Boom!!!”
In the center of the gate, a gray-white vortex tens of feet in diameter suddenly appeared.
The vortex was so deep it seemed to lead to another universe, and what flowed within it was not matter or energy, but… rules.
The most fundamental rules about life, death, and reincarnation.
The moment the Soul Devourer’s broken demonic body touched the vortex, it was torn apart and swallowed by an irresistible force.
His screams abruptly ceased, like a wild beast whose throat had been choked.
The Gate of Reincarnation slowly closed.
The runes on the bone gate returned to calm, only the gray-white flames in the eye sockets of the skulls on the surface of the gate seemed to brighten slightly.
Silence returned to the main hall.
Zhan E walked to the Gate of Reincarnation, his withered hand gently pressing against the cold bone surface, his eyes closed as he sensed it.
After a moment, a cold yet satisfied smile curved his lips.
“The Land of Reincarnation… truly profound.” …
Within the Gate of Reincarnation.
The Soul Devourer’s consciousness gradually cleared amidst the endless fall.
His soul, pierced and torn apart by the chains of reincarnation, should have succumbed to chaos in extreme pain.
But some external force of rules forcibly maintained his clarity of consciousness, allowing him to fully experience every trace of pain, every moment of despair.
He opened his eyes and saw this world.
It was a space entirely composed of gray and white tones.
The sky was gray and white, devoid of sun, moon, and stars, only a thick layer of gray and white clouds that seemed to press down.
The earth was gray and white—cracked soil, exposed rocks, withered vegetation…everything was stripped of color, leaving only a deathly gray and white.
The spiritual energy flowing in the air was also gray and white, an energy form he had never encountered before.
Cold, deathly, and possessing an absolute sense of order, it was the complete opposite of the chaotic, greedy, and devouring characteristics of the Soul Devouring Demon Art he cultivated. What
chilled him most was the omnipresent suppression of rules in this world.
Here, the Soul-Devouring Demon Art, which he had painstakingly cultivated for millennia, operated at a speed more than ten times slower. Each time he mobilized the demonic flames, it felt like struggling in a viscous swamp.
His divine sense was compressed to within a hundred feet of his body; beyond that, even things visible to the naked eye were perceived as nothingness.
Even his sense of time was distorted.
He felt as if he had been falling for a very long time, long enough for mortals to experience dozens of cycles of birth, aging, sickness, and death, yet when he looked up, the gray sky was still far above, the distance undiminished.
“I must… leave…”
The Soul-Devouring Venerable gritted his teeth, his remaining will driving his shattered divine soul in an attempt to regain control of his body.
He could feel that the wisp of chaotic sword energy at the severed arm was being suppressed in this world, its erosion slowing considerably.
But in contrast, the excruciating pain of his divine soul being torn apart became increasingly clear.
Although the nine chains of reincarnation had disappeared, the wounds they left behind remained. His divine soul was like a leaky bucket, constantly losing the very foundation that constituted his self.
Finally, after a fall that felt both eternal and fleeting, he touched the ground.
There was no impact, no tremor, like a feather falling on water, eerily gentle.
The Soul Devourer struggled to his feet and looked around.
He stood on a desolate plain stretching to the horizon.
The greyish-white soil extended to the very edge of his vision, blurring into the greyish-white sky at the horizon.
Scattered across the plain were twisted, withered trees, their trunks barkless, only smooth, bone-white surfaces, their branches reaching towards the sky like ghostly claws.
Deathly silence.
Absolute deathly silence.
No wind, no insects chirping, no flowing water, even his own heartbeat was so faint as to be almost inaudible.