Chapter 485: Let Me Ask You, Where Are the Divine Souls?!

Fang Xun turned around, staring in disbelief at Yan Jing standing across from him.

He never expected his whereabouts to be exposed.

"The Medicine Clan."

Yan Jing spoke softly. "The great clans of that era included the Ice Clan, the Fire Tribe, the Gold Clan, the Wind Clan, the Slumber Clan, and... the Medicine Clan and the Moon Tribe."

"They were roughly divided into three factions: the radicals, the conservatives, and those who chose to wait."

"The Slumber Clan, the Medicine Clan, and the Moon Tribe proposed waiting, and they ultimately won the support of the majority."

"As for the proposal to enter the God Storage Land, that was put forward jointly by the Medicine Clan and the Moon Tribe."

"Almost all the corpses of those who died in the God Storage Land turned into divine monstrous progeny. The higher their cultivation realm, the more certain this was. But yours didn't."

Yan Jing smiled.

"Bing Yao has no idea how I got your remains."

"I'm the only one who has seen your corpse."

"I'm quite curious why you left such a massive flaw."

"Even without me, other survivors from the broken era would have discovered your existence."

Hearing this, the shock in Fang Xun's eyes gradually faded. A moment later, the corners of his mouth twitched into a cold sneer.

"It wasn't a flaw. It was a coincidence."

"You think you can plan out everything in this world, but the truth is, nobody can predict what will actually happen when that day arrives. And this time, it was just a coincidence."

Yan Jing pondered this for a few seconds before realization dawned.

"You didn't expect humans to show up."

Fang Xun gave a cold laugh.

"Not just humans."

"There's also that bunch from the Inner World."

"To think they actually came in before the God Storage Land fully awakened. This is Fate."

"In my original plan, when the God Storage Land awakened, the only people in this Domain would be us from the broken era. Then, while those fools were busy brawling or forming alliances, I could fish in troubled waters."

"But then you arrived."

"With things as they were, as long as my corpse was discovered or 'picked up' by someone first, everything would become much simpler. Compared to stirring up trouble in a crowd, playing a dead man was obviously a much better identity."

"Is that so?" Yan Jing smiled. "But someone recognized the handwriting on that fake map you made."

Fang Xun laughed dismissively.

"You mean that lazy worm from the Slumber Clan?"

"He must have been the last one to wake up. Besides, even if he did recognize it, so what? Who could prove exactly which era I drew that map in?"

Fang Xun was telling the truth. When the man in the white silk saw the map back then, his subconscious assumption was that Fang Xun had drawn it during a brief period of wakefulness mid-slumber.

"Then why did you push as many people as possible into this place?"

Yan Jing looked at the Chaos region behind Fang Xun.

Whether it was the fake map from before or tossing the gravel man in just now, it all looked like an attempt to fill this Domain with lives.

"Heh."

Fang Xun chuckled coldly.

"Aren't you good at guessing? Why don't you take a guess?"

"A sacrifice?"

Yan Jing spoke. This time, Fang Xun's eyes narrowed. A trace of killing intent suddenly rippled through his previously calm aura.

Yan Jing smiled.

"Judging from the terrain, the entire God Storage Land is a massive sacrificial ground. It's scattered with broken divine souls and crawling with all sorts of divine monstrous progeny, and it's even said that a Deity was once buried here."

"What are you trying to obtain with a sacrifice?"

"Or rather, what is it connected to?"

The answer seemed obvious by now. The aura around Fang Xun began to rise, little by little.

From the Chaos zone behind him, streaks of ink-like energy surged into his body.

He spoke with a sneer. "This is something that should have been done thousands of years ago."

"We and the Moon Tribe discovered this place back then. For a clan with inherently weak combat strength like the Medicine Clan, our advantage over the others lay in our expertise with unorthodox methods."

"After discovering it and conducting a brief investigation, we quickly understood its true purpose."

"On the surface, this was a Deity's trial ground. But on a deeper level, it was a slumbering ground where Deities hid from disaster. Once we realized that, we immediately made the connection—"

"That a Deity might truly still be buried here."

"And as long as the correct sacrificial ritual was performed, we might be able to successfully resurrect them—or even steal their power."

As he spoke, Fang Xun's voice carried a faint tremble. He was shaking with excitement.

"After scouting the entire terrain, we formulated a rough plan. We tricked the heavenly prodigies of the various clans into coming in, pretending to let them slumber here. In reality, we were offering them as sacrifices to this Domain."

"If we could truly touch the power of a Deity, the Medicine Clan would skyrocket, immediately escaping our predicament to become one of the strongest existences in the Inner World... But, as I said, this world is always full of coincidences and... accidents."

He paused for a few seconds, anger and hatred flooding his eyes.

Even though a long time had passed, he still couldn't suppress his rage whenever he thought about it. The veins on his forehead bulged.

Yan Jing suddenly spoke up.

"Let me guess. Was it because the Moon Tribe stirred up trouble?"

Fang Xun froze. He stared at Yan Jing, his gaze even more incredulous than before.

Yan Jing smiled.

"Just a wild guess."

"...That damn bitch somehow learned of the Medicine Clan's plan ahead of time."

Fang Xun continued in a cold voice. "The Moon Tribe was weak back then. If she had tried a hard approach, it likely wouldn't have worked."

"But she didn't expose us either."

"Instead..."

His gaze fell upon the Chaos zone behind him, fury burning in his eyes.

"She used some method to take this piece of the Domain away!"

"The originally complete sacrificial terrain was suddenly missing a corner out of thin air!"

"If we had activated the ritual then, the chance of failure was infinitely close to one hundred percent!"

"Fortunately, the God Storage Land has its own ecosystem and can repair itself during the cycle of slumber and awakening."

"I waited year after year, until the God Storage Land had nearly fully awakened. I watched as the energy accumulated in this zone was about to max out, but they were also about to wake up."

"Left with no choice, I had to find a way to speed things up."

Yan Jing nodded.

"But now you're missing a lot of sacrifices."

Many survivors from the broken era hadn't died yet and were currently in his space.

Fang Xun gave a cruel smile.

"No, I'm not."

"I was short before, but not anymore."

With so many humans and Inner World existences dying here, he lacked absolutely nothing now.

Next, all he had to do was condense the divine souls.

This was the real reason he had spoken so much with Yan Jing—he was stalling for time.

Behind him, terrifying energy abruptly erupted, crashing into the sky. A pillar of light, pitch-black like ink, expanded outward. One by one, orbs of light floated up from all across the vast God Storage Land and sank into the pillar.

An indescribable pressure radiated from the light pillar.

Yan Jing felt his chest suddenly tighten. The intense, oppressive feeling caused his heartbeat to accelerate.

Fang Xun let out a furious roar and threw his arms wide.

The veins all over his body were entirely pronounced now. Gurgling black currents surged through his blood vessels, flowing throughout his body, and the whites of his eyes completely vanished. A faint, holy glow emanated from the back of his head, yet his facial features twisted. His face turned an ashen iron-grey, and fangs grew from his mouth. His lower half remained normal, but the muscles of his upper body began to balloon rapidly. Dozens of arms sprouted from his torso, some clenching into fists, some swaying, and some dancing.

This chaotic yet holy aura made his current appearance seem incredibly disjointed.

But without a doubt, he was exceptionally powerful right now.

Feeling the surging power within his body, he grew immensely exhilarated. He looked at Yan Jing across from him and laughed.

"I've waited far too long, so I don't mind waiting a few more minutes. What a pity. You've lost."

In the next instant, he lunged fiercely at Yan Jing.

Huo Tong had just grabbed hold of the figure that looked incredibly similar to Wu Xu's older sister when she felt a terrifying fluctuation ripple out from the distance. Her expression instantly changed.

She looked at the vast swathes of divine monstrous progeny in front of her. They all wore expressions of agony as they kneeled on the ground, roaring and howling. One orb of light after another emerged from their bodies and drifted toward the distant pillar of light.

Every divine monstrous progeny that lost its divine soul immediately collapsed to the ground, turning into a pile of black ash.

"What's going on?!"

Huo Tong stared at the distant light pillar in disbelief, completely failing to comprehend what was happening.

Over the years, her consciousness would occasionally wander through the God Storage Land, but she never expected such an anomaly to occur in that Chaos region.

"Urgh... Ahh..."

Right at this moment, the woman she was holding also fell to her knees and began screaming wretchedly.

What should she do now?

Huo Tong attempted to channel energy into the woman's body, doing her best to keep the divine soul from scattering. Yet despite trying all sorts of methods, it was to no avail. Any energy that entered the woman's body was like water pouring into a bamboo hat—not a single drop could be retained.

"What do we do now?"

Huo Tong turned around and looked at Wen Xu.

But Yan Jing didn't answer. He didn't know what to do either.

At this moment, his mind was mostly focused on the other side.

Finally, a few seconds later, an orb of light flew out from the woman's body.

Huo Tong's face was filled with disappointment. Originally, she had wanted to figure out exactly what happened back then, but now it seemed that would be impossible.

However, in the very next second, something entirely unexpected occurred.

The woman who had lost her orb of light didn't turn to ash like the others.

Instead, she suddenly trembled. Then, under Huo Tong's shocked gaze, she stood up from her embrace.

"Where... where... where..."

The woman had actually begun to speak.

Her eyes were vacant, her face a sickly iron-grey, and black-purple lividity marked her limbs. She had clearly been dead for a long time, yet she was now speaking in a hoarse voice, just like a normal woman.

"Over... over there... over there..."

She looked toward the distant pillar of light as she spoke.

Immediately after, she walked briskly in that direction.

Huo Tong hurried forward to grab the woman, but the moment her hand caught the woman's arm, a look of shock flashed through her eyes.

The woman's strength was shockingly immense. Huo Tong used almost all the physical strength in her body, yet she still couldn't hold the woman back.

Fortunately, Wen Xu walked over at that moment. He grabbed the woman's arms with both hands, finally managing to bring her to a halt.

Strangely, the moment Wen Xu touched her, all the strength in the woman's body seemed to drain away in an instant.

She turned her head rigidly, looking at Yan Jing in his Wen Xu identity. Then she reached out, pulled Yan Jing into a full embrace, and gently stroked his head.

"Right here... right here... Found you..."

In the Great Prison, inside a certain cell, a slender figure was half-lying on a bed, flipping through the book in her hands.

Suddenly, her eyes flashed.

As if realizing something, she tossed the book aside and closed her eyes. Surges of Sorcery Energy flowed around her body.

A few seconds later, she slowly opened her eyes. However, the confusion in them had not dissolved; instead, it had deepened. She muttered softly, "How could this be?"

"You're distracted?"

Looking at Yan Jing across from him, whom he had just knocked back several meters, Fang Xun laughed in incomprehension.

"At a critical juncture like this, you're actually getting distracted?"

"Don't tell me you've accepted your fate?"

Yan Jing nodded.

"Sorry."

He really shouldn't have been distracted.

It was just that being suddenly hugged by a corpse made him a bit uncomfortable.

"Time to get serious. Let me eat an apple first."

He controlled his facial muscles and swallowed the apple in his hand almost in a single gulp.

Billowing black mist flowed out from his body.

The faint glow radiating from him seemed to transform into some kind of flowing chi beneath the shroud of the black mist, and the space around him directly warped. His strength at this moment was simply too formidable; every casual movement he made challenged the limits of this lost world.

"Come!"

He spoke softly, and his figure instantly blinked forward, crashing into Fang Xun across from him once again.

This time, their collision was like two high-speed mountains smashing into each other. The ground was instantly blasted into a massive crater, sending dust flying.

The two figures continuously exchanged blows, and the entire God Storage Land began to shudder violently.

Above the Glacial zone, cracks spread one after another. The originally permafrost river began to show signs of melting under the friction.

Among the valleys, the fiercely surging winds were instantly thrown into chaos by the commotion, like children who had been trapped in the valley for years finally running wild.

At the peak of the volcano, plumes of scorching air erupted from the crater. The magma bubbled with a gurgle, beginning to rise.

The strength of Fang Xun opposite him was the most formidable Yan Jing had encountered since entering the God Storage Land. It was primarily that pitch-black energy, which seemed to grant him extreme physical strength. Yan Jing now completely let loose, frantically drawing upon the power within his body. Every inch of his muscles exploded with a thunderous roar. This was a rare opportunity to adapt to his new strength, and he refused to let it slip by.

As for Fang Xun, although he kept secretly cursing Yan Jing's freakishness, his heart remained rather composed.

He was on the defensive. He only needed to wait until the pillar of light fully collected those scattered divine souls; there was no need to fight to the death.

Therefore, even though his insides were being battered to a pulp by Yan Jing's strikes, he remained incredibly calm.

Just like this, a minute or two passed.

The situation between the two gradually began to change.

Fine beads of sweat slowly began to appear on Fang Xun's forehead.

He was already growing exhausted. Even with the support of a Deity's power within his body, the physical pain was ultimately unavoidable. But what made him feel fear was that Yan Jing across from him was actually growing more and more vigorous as he fought.

The punches and kicks he threw landed with greater force each time, striking vital points with more and more Precision.

Fortunately... the pillar of light behind him should be finishing its absorption soon.

He watched as fewer and fewer orbs of light rose into the air, knowing that everything was about to end.

His heart pounded, and joy flashed in his eyes. In that momentary lapse of attention, Yan Jing struck his vitals several times in a row, causing him to cough up large mouthfuls of fresh blood.

"You can't lose focus, you know."

Yan Jing sighed, seeming somewhat dissatisfied.

"What the fuck do you know?!"

Fang Xun could no longer suppress his inner excitement. He ran toward the pillar of light, extending his dozens of muscular arms as if to pull the pillar into his embrace. This was the true power of a Deity. Even if it had fallen, even if it was fragmented, it was still a Deity.

But when he touched the pillar of light, he froze.

Because the divine souls inside the pillar were far fewer than he had imagined.

"How is this possible?"

"How is this possible?!!"

He began frantically searching around the pillar of light like a madman.

Yet there were no signs of any divine souls leaking out, nor were any more divine souls rising from the ground.

"Where are the divine souls?! I'm asking you, where are the divine souls?!!!"

He looked at Yan Jing.

Yan Jing's face was calm.

"They were eaten."

"Bullshit! How the fuck could you eat divine souls? And even if you could, how could you possibly eat so many!!!"

Fang Xun was practically delirious now. He charged up to Yan Jing, grabbed him by the collar, and roared.

"I don't know either. But someone really can eat a lot."

Yan Jing spoke lightly.

Somewhere unknown within his body, the Fear Bird let out a loud burp and contentedly narrowed its eyes.