The burial site from ninety-three years ago, where Shi Yan's Life Seal blasted into the bodies of two Heavenly Corpses, caused a strange mutation in them, as if awakening an intelligence, establishing a peculiar link between him and these two corpses. Afterwards, he meditated for a long time before grasping the profound utility of the Life Seal, understanding that the connection between the two Heavenly Corpses and himself was entirely due to the Life Seal residing within their forms.
Years later, encountering these two Heavenly Corpses again, to deepen their bond, he struck them once more with two Life Seals. This time, the seals incorporated the power of his vital essence fused with three major life forms, and their peculiar effects seemed even stronger!
As the Life Seals entered the bodies of the Heavenly Corpses, his soul established an even more profound connection with them; he could even sense the affection emanating from the corpses. The two Heavenly Corpses stood before him, their vacant, hollow eyes gradually manifesting a glimmer of human dependence, staring blankly as if awaiting a command.
An incomparably wonderful sensation. Shi Yan felt he could command and manipulate these two Heavenly Corpses at will.
He tentatively projected a wisp of divine thought and extended his hand toward the disciples of the Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven opposite them. As expected, the two Heavenly Corpses suddenly shot forward like two man-eating demonic beasts, lunging straight toward the disciples in the opposite mountain cavern, their corpse aura lingering thick, their momentum astonishing.
Shi Yan was overjoyed, flying into the Magnetic Annihilation Field. Within the field's crushing power, he controlled a small pocket of stillness and placed Yin Hai’s corpse within it.
Inside the Magnetic Annihilation Field, absorbing the vital essence from Yin Hai's body, Shi Yan floated in the center of the Dead Silent Mountain Range. Due to the field, Yin Hai’s body remained suspended, hovering motionlessly behind him.
Although the Magnetic Annihilation Field existed, it was nearly invisible to the naked eye. To the martial artists of the Corpse God Sect and Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven, Yin Hai's silently suspended corpse appeared profoundly eerie, sending a chill deep into their souls.
Within the Magnetic Annihilation Field, Shi Yan coldly flew toward the opposite mountain cavern, once more activating the vortex within his body, feeling surging power flood his frame. He suddenly focused his mind and plunged directly into the Blood-Patterned Ring.
"Come out!" His full strength erupted instantaneously; Shi Yan's aura soared to the heavens as he roared explosively. Through his recent period of enlightenment, he knew that to summon that mysterious giant sword, his physical body needed immensely robust strength.
Only when the power within his body accumulated to a certain degree could he command the mysterious greatsword. Indeed.
As his power condensed to a certain threshold, causing his meridians to swell and ache, the mysterious giant sword hidden deep within the Blood-Patterned Ring finally flew out once more. Grasping the greatsword with one hand, a violent, sucking force instantly drained the power from his body.
As his physical energy rapidly dissipated, the sealed, strange eyes on the body of the mysterious giant sword began to open, one after another. Every time an eye cracked open, the malevolent aura exuded by the mysterious greatsword intensified!
Like an ancient titan dormant for eons, it was slowly crawling out of the endless abyssal darkness, intent on swallowing this world whole. Holding the mysterious greatsword, Shi Yan's primary soul trembled.
His Sea of Consciousness became as clear as a mirror, illuminating every energy fluctuation around him. Every wisp of divine sense in his Sea of Consciousness seemed to turn into a mirrored facet.
He didn't need to expand his divine sense to see the energy fluctuations within the bodies of the surrounding martial artists! The direction and trajectory of the energy flowing through the bodies of the martial artists, in his sight, became astonishingly clear and distinct!
He could perceive any martial artist the moment they released a technique or mobilized the power within them! Shi Yan's eyes suddenly shone bright as icy stars, glittering brilliantly.
The world in his view instantly transformed. The ethereal wisps of Heaven and Earth spiritual energy in the air, the dense corpse qi beneath the surrounding mountains, the vital essence of plants and trees—all manner of cosmic energies seemed to suddenly spring alive, visible to the naked eye.
An incredibly marvelous realization! Holding the greatsword, it felt as if through the opened eyes on its surface, he had broken through all fog and miasma, seeing the true essence of this world clearly.
Simultaneously, an evil aura flowed up through the hilt of the sword, entering his Sea of Consciousness, as if merging with his primary soul. A desire to annihilate all living beings arose uncontrollably from the depths of his heart, an urge impossible to erase!
Unless all life was slain, this desire seemed destined never to cease! His crimson eyes filled with the madness of bloodlust and brutality.
Driven by that terrifying evil desire, he couldn't help but roar to the sky, like an apocalyptic demon from hell, fully unleashing his boundless wickedness. The azure firmament abruptly changed color.
Fan Xiangyun froze, hastily employing various illusory mental realms again, attempting to shake Shi Yan's will and plunge him into an inescapable maze. However, the hypnotic martial skills of the Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven, driven by the Soul of the Mind, seemed to lose all effect the moment they touched Shi Yan's eyes.
The mental fluctuations of the illusory realms were instantly extinguished by the murderous brutality flashing in Shi Yan's gaze. They failed to disturb Shi Yan's core resolve, not even for a single second!
Fan Xiangyun was horrified. She was born possessing a Mind Martial Soul that could bewitch hearts.
Aided by this soul, she could not only easily master all the mesmerizing martial arts of the Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven but also amplify their strange power several times over. Over the years, relying on her unique Mind Martial Soul combined with the Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven's illusory secret arts, countless arrogant and powerful martial artists had fallen under her influence—either becoming her subordinates or being easily slain when their minds faltered.
Yet Shi Yan, whose actual cultivation was only at the Nirvana stage, repeatedly shattered her mental miasma. After acquiring the mysterious giant sword, Shi Yan gained complete immunity to the Mind Martial Soul, no longer affected in the slightest.
This sudden turn of events shocked Fan Xiangyun pale. Losing the efficacy of her innate talent martial soul was an unimaginable blow to her confidence; it stunned her so completely that she couldn't summon the courage to charge forward and engage Shi Yan.
The Earth Sovereign, after a moment of shock, finally rose from the ground. Clutching a white paper fan, he ascended into the sky, birds fluttering all around him.
With a raised hand, a longsword of yellow crystal materialized in his palm. A hundred-meter-long beam of scarlet-yellow sword light erupted from the Yellow Dragon Sword.
The light condensed and extended, transforming into a yellow dragon a hundred meters long, covered densely in scales. Countless birds dove and burrowed into the yellow dragon, instantly filling it with the energy of various birds.
The yellow dragon writhed and twisted its body; its scales shot out multi-colored beams of light, its aura blazing, pouncing toward Shi Yan. Concurrently, Qing Ming let out a sharp cry, finally issuing an order to the Corpse King.
The three-meter-tall Corpse King roared toward the sky, its howl shaking the heavens and causing the very mountains of the Dead Silent Range to tremble with its cry. Amidst the howling, the Corpse King shot into the air and spat out five orbs of light containing the power of the Five Elements.
These five massive orbs coalesced in the void, forming the Five Elements Heaven Shroud, capable of binding all living things, surging upward from Shi Yan's feet. With the hundred-meter yellow dragon and the Five Elements Heaven Shroud manifesting, the winds and clouds of the desolate island shifted, and the perpetual dark clouds overhead seemed to react, slowly pressing down as if the sky were collapsing.
Shi Yan held the mysterious giant sword and glanced up at the dark clouds. He noticed countless corpse worms wriggling within the clouds, absorbing the terrifying corpse qi rising from below.
Controlled by the Corpse King, the worms devoured and tore at each other, forming more corpulent corpse worms; each newly formed worm was ten times larger and possessed several times the inherent power. Millions upon millions of corpse worms wriggled and consumed each other, creating thousands of fat, maggot-like snow-white creatures, still coated in a disgusting, sticky white slime.
They echoed the Five Elements Heaven Shroud from above and below, aiming to bind him from all directions. Motionless within the Magnetic Annihilation Field, Shi Yan felt the various energies within his body pouring madly into the mysterious giant sword.
Only when one-third of the eyes on the body of the mysterious greatsword had opened did the sword cease absorbing the energy from his body. At this moment, Shi Yan finally swung his sword, cleaving toward the hundred-meter-long yellow dragon.
"Chik! Chik!
Chik!" Fissures suddenly ripped open in the void near the mysterious greatsword, resembling countless evil eyes. A malevolent power originating from another dimension instantly surged into the greatsword.
The mysterious greatsword suddenly pulsed with a blood-red light. The void above the desolate island seemed to transform into a sea of blood, and the opened third of the greatsword's eyes instantly turned blood-red.
An extremely evil aura of destruction emanated from the greatsword as the center point, scattering outward in sticky beams of crimson light in all directions. These beams of blood-light acted as if they possessed their own life, striking with extreme precision toward the disciples of the Corpse God Sect and Yin Yang Grotto-Heaven lingering near the cave openings on the edge of the Dead Silent Mountain Range.
Upon impact, the disciples cried out shrilly as their bodies rapidly dissolved, instantly melting into pools of foul-smelling blood. Martial artists at the Nirvana realm endured slightly longer; the dissolution slowed after the blood-light pierced their bodies, but they suffered far greater pain.
No energy seemed capable of stopping the blood-light's corrosion; they could only delay it temporarily, and after enduring immense agony, they too turned to blood. Martial artists at the Celestial rank reacted much faster.
As the beams of blood-light flew toward them, they cried out and fled, narrowly dodging disaster. Beams of blood-light splashed out from the mysterious greatsword.
Any martial artist touched by the light, whether quickly or slowly, dissolved into a pool of blood. Their vital essence remained in the blood, irresistibly drawn by Shi Yan's mysterious martial soul, surging furiously toward him.
"Hahahaha! Hahahaha!" Shi Yan suddenly threw his head back in a maniacal, fierce laugh.
Feeling the surging vital essence flood his body, he moved the mysterious greatsword in his hand. A terrifying blade of blood-light exploded from the sword, instantly splitting the yellow dragon in half.
Dozens of birds flew out from within the dragon, but they were instantly shattered by the evil power radiating from the blood-light blade, and the wisp of divine thought the Earth Sovereign had attached to them was directly annihilated. The birds vanished like thin smoke, suddenly gone.
Shi Yan swung his sword again, stabbing diagonally toward the heavens, seemingly punching a bottomless hole into the firmament. The countless corpse worms hidden within the dark clouds, not having exerted their full power, were swallowed by the massive aperture revealed in the sky, permanently lost in the spatial turbulence.
"This is power! Exhilarating!
Utterly exhilarating!" Laughing wildly, Shi Yan, like a possessed maniac, brandished the mysterious giant sword, shaking his head in the void, his expression growing increasingly frantic. Qing Ming, the Earth Sovereign, and the Empress—these three Divine Realm experts—stared dumbfounded at the raving Shi Yan in the sky, a sudden cold dread gripping their hearts.