A World Worth Protecting

There was no roaring, no reply. There were only… twin glows, crimson and filled with madness, that gradually lit the darkness inside the cavern. They were… the eyes of the Night Immortal King!

There was a blackish tinge to the red. It lacked the clarity of purple, and instead had a certain murkiness to it. The eyes showed no intelligence. They revealed the violence of a feral beast as they stared unblinkingly at Wang Baole, as if he had something that held their obsessive attention, something that they couldn’t turn away from.

Wang Baole’s eyes were calm. He lowered his head and stared straight into the Night Immortal King’s eyes. Man and corpse, one outside the cave and one concealed in the cave’s darkness, stared at each other.

The scene would make a bizarre painting indeed!

Time flowed slowly. Thirty minutes passed. The activation of the moon’s engines and the growing tremors spreading across the moon had agitated the Night Immortal King. Wang Baole’s appearance seemed to have intensified that agitation. The Night Immortal King’s breathing grew heavier as the prolonged eye contact continued. A low, threatening growl began to emerge from the cave.

Wang Baole stared into the Night Immortal King’s eyes as he listened to the latter’s threatening growl. He could feel waves of spirit energy, cultivation that had belonged to the Night Immortal King’s former living self, stirring inside the Night Immortal King. Wang Baole’s assessment… placed the Night Immortal King’s cultivation at the Soul Conduit realm.

Without a semblance of intelligence and left with only instinct, the Night Immortal King clearly couldn’t unleash his true former Soul Conduit realm cultivation despite having awoken. His last two awakenings had resulted in a catastrophe, but those disasters had been within the bounds of the Federation’s control. The damage had been kept to the minimum. This might have something to do with the chains on the Night Immortal King, which were sealing his true strength.

“Well, that’s quite a disappointment.” Wang Baole sighed. He must truly possess great potential. He had trembled like a fool at the sight of the Night Immortal King mere years ago, but now, he felt like he could overpower the Night Immortal King.

He’s still something we could use during battle. Wang Baole shook his head slightly in disappointment as he stepped towards the cave. In the next instant, he was racing into the cave. The Night Immortal King’s eyes flashed with violence as soon as Wang Baole entered the cave. The Night Immortal King lifted his head and howled, causing fierce winds to whip the air. He raised his right hand and sent it swiping at Wang Baole.

The Night Immortal King was enormous, his finger the size of Wang Baole. His hand shot out and was about to seize Wang Baole when he vanished with a sudden teleportation, evading the Night Immortal King’s giant hand while appearing in the deepest part of the cave, where he finally saw the Night Immortal King’s gargantuan form.

Green-colored seals decorated the Night Immortal King’s body, which bristled with unreleased violence and brutality. The sight was enough to send most Nascent Soul realm cultivators reeling back in terror. Wang Baole was clearly not most Nascent Soul realm cultivators.

Armed with the Thearch Armor, the unique capabilities of his Stellar Nascent Soul, and the bizarre power of his demonic eye, Wang Baole could kill a Soul Conduit realm cultivator with relative ease. What more the Night Immortal King, who was a mere corpse.

Having evaded the Night Immortal King’s swipe, Wang Baole got up close and personal with him. He wasn’t interested in the Night Immortal King but the nine heavy chains imprisoning the latter. The origins of the chains remained mysterious. In the Federation’s records of the Night Immortal King’s fall, the chains had already existed then. They had sunk deep into the moon’s core and bound the Night Immortal King to the moon.

A chain that could fuse with a satellite must be crafted from extraordinary material and possess incredible power. Wang Baole considered the possibility of extracting the chain and refining it. It might become a valuable artifact that could pose a threat to Daoist You Ran.

With a side-step, he avoided another furious swipe from the howling Night Immortal King and appeared behind the latter. He was less than a hundred feet from the chains, and he inspected them carefully.

His findings sent his pupils contracting in shock. His head began buzzing loudly, and his breathing stopped momentarily. Then, his form blurred as his avatar materialized and stepped away from him. It raced towards the chains. Upon their sudden collision, bursts of red lightning bolts exploded from the chains. The lightning bolts seemed to possess sentience. They surrounded Wang Baole’s avatar instantly, then blew up. Despite his avatar’s resilient form, it was overpowered by the explosion. It shuddered and began showing signs of degradation.

The signs of degradation continued even after the avatar managed to free itself and retreat back to Wang Baole’s side. Its hair was fully white, its body aged and wrinkled. It was as if it had been drained of life and vitality and had aged suddenly.

Wang Baole gasped at the sight, shock flooding his system. The chains… were not only immensely powerful, but they were familiar as well!

They’re like the chains on the Never-Ending Clan battleship, the chains that bound the fearsome beasts and forced them to drag the wooden logs that moved the millstone! Wang Baole narrowed his eyes and stared at the chain in front of him. Then, he turned abruptly towards the Night Immortal King, his eyes glimmering with a solemn light.

It’s impossible that someone who has to be kept in check by such chains is only at the Soul Conduit realm. There must be something I overlooked! Wang Baole narrowed his eyes and began circling the Night Immortal King quickly, studying the latter carefully. It didn’t take long before he saw three healed scars on the Night Immortal King. They were almost impossible to spot underneath the fully regrown flesh and blood.

One was on the back of the Night Immortal King’s head, another was right over his heart, and the last was on his dantian!

There were plenty of other scars like those in other locations, but these three left a deep impact on Wang Baole after a closer inspection.

They don’t look like injuries inflicted during battle… they look like the result of someone ripping into flesh with their bare hands while he was unable to fight back! There was a dark look on Wang Baole’s face. Someone else might not have so quickly realized what had happened, but not Wang Baole. The three wounds reminded him of what had happened to him on the moon, when his Dao Foundation had been torn out of his body.

Perhaps the exact same thing hadn’t happened to the Night Immortal King, but the differences lay in degree and not in the nature of the action. Both of them had something ripped out of their bodies! The wounds had been the result of that!

“Taking his brain, digging out his heart, and destroying his Dao. What viciousness! How much did the person hate the Night Immortal King?” Wang Baole muttered. His gut feeling told him that this was some dark art that stole one’s power. His eyes were filled with a mix of emotions and pity as he looked at the Night Immortal King. The Night Immortal King’s cultivation, while he had been alive, must have been incredibly powerful. That must be why even after the theft of his brain, heart, and Dao, he was still at the Soul Conduit realm!

The perpetrator didn’t seem to stop there. After taking both brain and heart and destroying his Dao, they also imprisoned the Night Immortal King with chains that could drain his vitality. They drove the chains deep into the Night Immortal King’s body so that the Night Immortal King can’t heal himself. That’s strange. Why would someone do that to a person who’s already dead… unless the Night Immortal King isn’t dead at all? Wang Baole’s eyes widened at that thought. His breathing quickened as he examined the Night Immortal King again. He began to spot what was amiss. The green seals on the Night Immortal King’s body… was another form of curse!

There’s only one explanation for that. The perpetrator couldn’t destroy the Night Immortal King completely because of some reason, and they were worried that the Night Immortal King would recover from his injury. That’s why they used a mix of means to imprison the Night Immortal King… though that still doesn’t explain the Night Immortal King’s current state… Wang Baole frowned. Then, after a while, a flash of light flickered in his eyes. He dodged another swipe from the howling Night Immortal King, retreated a couple of steps, then muttered to himself.

“Who cares. Night Immortal King, I’m going to see for myself whether you still possess a God Soul!” Wang Baole’s eyes turned completely black. His Dark Fire surged out as he unleashed the Dark Art. His demonic eye materialized as the power of the Dark Art rippled outwards. It fluttered open and gazed at the Night Immortal King.

The agitated Night Immortal King shuddered, and Dark Fire enveloped him instantly. Wang Baole had transformed into a guide for lost souls. His eyes pierced through the curse binding the Night Immortal King, into the latter’s body, where a wisp of dark, murky soul remained!

Feral, barbaric, and without any intelligence—a wild beast’s pure instinct. That was the soul that Wang Baole glimpsed!

This is a newborn soul, not the true soul that belongs to the Night Immortal King! The uninitiated might not have discerned that, but Wang Baole was a Dark Child who had been taught the Dark Art, a mystic art that had originated from the past Heavenly Dao era. He could see things in souls that ordinary people could not.

Wang Baole fell into a brief bout of silence. He wasn’t about to give up now. He shut his eyes, then pressed his hands together in a series of hand seals. He bit the tip of his tongue, spilling a mouthful of blood. Then, with a wave of his right hand, he unleashed a spell that gave his Dark Fire a sudden, temporary boost in power. Wang Baole opened his eyes suddenly. When he looked at the Night Immortal King again, he could finally see a concealed wisp… that would have been undetectable if not for his Dark Art—the Night Immortal King’s soul!

The low mumblings of the soul rippled outward as his eyes locked onto the soul!

“Zi Yue, my dear wife, why did… you do it…”