Chapter 106: Soul Departing Dream

The inlaid Origin Crystal on the Lightless Sword had come from a metal-type Demonic Emperor. It possessed the innate ability to control metal, and under Su Chen’s and Patelocke’s changes, it had developed an ability akin to devouring metal. It could directly absorb metal in order to strengthen itself.

Su Chen was facing a bunch of beasts with bones made of metal. They were incredibly powerful, and most shockingly of all they gathered in large groups.

Even Spirit Burning Realm cultivators would have been forced to retreat when faced with a group of unkillable creatures like these.

However, Su Chen’s Lightless Sword was their kryptonate. The sturdy metal supporting their bodies was absorbed by the Lightless Sword, resulting in them dying immediately.

Su Chen didn’t stop for a moment and continued to jab his sword at the other demons.

In terms of speed, these creatures couldn’t compete with Su Chen, who had both Whitetower Teleportation and the Violent Wind Wings.

As he unfurled his wings, he slashed through a number of creatures at the same time, causing them to burst open. He absorbed their bones, then used Whitetower Teleportation to appear behind another small clump of creatures. The Lightless Sword in his hand slashed through the air again.

Any of the creatures cut open by the Lightless Sword would have their bones absorbed by the Demonic Beast Origin Crystal.

The Lightless Sword couldn’t absorb all of the metal from cutting open the creatures, but its powerful control abilities and its greedy appetite made it not want to stop absorbing the Origin Energy. As a result, the absorptive properties of the sword were still present even when the sword was not in physical contact with the bodies of the creatures. As a result, the liquid metal spurting from the wounds of these creatures flew through the air in glittering streaks towards the Lightless Sword.

It almost appeared as if the bisected creatures were blossoming. The sight was incredibly spectacular.

The streaks of metal gradually turned into a spring, gathering at the tip of the Lightless Sword.

As Su Chen swung the broken sword, the “blood” spurting from the demons glowed even more brilliantly as they howled in pain, eventually collapsing due to being drained of their strength.

Su Chen’s speed only grew, causing the stream of metal flying towards the sword to grow in size. The scene was hard to describe in words.

Those creatures weren’t complete idiots. When they saw that they were being sliced apart, they began to feel fear, and they turned and scattered.

The creatures might have relied on passing gas to advance and retreat, but they weren’t slow in the slightest. A thick cloud of white smoke hung in the air as their figures began to fade off into the distance.

Even though Su Chen did his best to try and slaughter them, half of them still managed to get away.

Su Chen felt that this was a great pity.

Even though these creatures didn’t have much metal content in their bodies, this metal was extremely rare due to its sturdiness. A fist-sized chunk of this metal was worth as much as half a ton of pure Stargold.

Even though Su Chen didn’t care that much for money, this kind of precious metal that was extremely hard to buy even with money was very important to him.

After killing nearly a hundred fifty of these creatures, Su Chen had managed to earn back what he had lost and more. He would probably be able to use Flowing Gold Blade at least a few more times.

Unfortunately, he was still far short of reaching a higher tier for this Arcana Technique.

As such, Su Chen decided to continue chasing after them. Even if he wasn’t able to reach the Ninth Ring after harvesting all of the metal from the creatures, these creatures were a rare combination of quality and quantity.

By relying on his completed map and his teleportation abilities, Su Chen flew through the spatial region, hunting as many of these strange creatures as he could.

There were more than five hundred of them at first. Of these five hundred, Su Chen killed one-third of them, and then he managed to kill another hundred or so after they started to flee. All told, Su Chen had managed to kill about half of them. The remaining creatures could only do their best to true and hide, making it much harder for Su Chen to find them.

But he didn’t mind. This place was so large, anyways; as long as they didn’t run out of the tree itself, he would have plenty of time to search for them.

His current objective was to find the core of Jade Clearmist’s hidden treasure stores.

Suddenly, Su Chen spotted something interesting behind one of his clones.

Thankfully, the “cooldown” on his Light Shaking Phantom had come. His figure flickered as he teleported himself to that clone.

Before his eyes was a small group of palaces. Above these palaces hung a massive spatial fissure, dividing the palaces into two.

“Using spatial fissures to expand the spatial realm probably resulted in instability, right?” Su Chen knew that his guess was more or less accurate when he saw this.

This realm was Jade Clearmist’s masterpiece, without question. His ambition was too great and his pursuits too great in number, resulting in his failure. Even the secret realm itself was filled with danger.

Now, it seemed that this palace complex of hers had been damaged by these spatial fractures, and the piles of rubble scattered everywhere seemed to indicate that these palaces had been destroyed or looted before.

There probably wouldn’t be any of the thousand-year-old medicines he had been hoping to find. As long as he was able to find some things that the void creatures weren’t interested in, though, like knowledge, he would be satisfied.

When Su Chen realized this, he began to fly towards the palace complex. As he was descending, however, he suddenly felt a strange sensation in his heart.

“Hm?” Su Chen glanced up at the sky, seemingly thinking of something.

Then, he chuckled. “It’s him? He found his way over here quite quickly.”

As he spoke, he walked into the palace.

Far away from this palace complex.

A cloud floated calmly through the air.

Li Daohong was sitting cross-legged on it. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open as he said, “I’ve found the core region, but it seems that some Harpies beat us to it. It’s the guy that I had a little argument with a few days ago.”

“No matter who they are, they shouldn’t even dream of defiling our sanctified objects!” Night God Sun said.

“It’s as you say. I will go and try to stop him,” Li Daohong said.

An instant later, he entered his calm state yet again. At the same time, Night God Sun unfurled his sleeves, motioning for the cloud to speed up.

When Su Chen entered the palace, he was greeted by a bunch of crumbling walls.

Even though this place didn’t look like it contained anything valuable, Su Chen still confidently advanced.

Just as he was walking along calmly, he suddenly felt a strange sensation in his heart.

It was as if there was something speaking softly to him in his ear.

Su Chen spun around quickly but didn’t see anything.

Su Chen frowned. The quiet voice seemed to still be there.

Not only so, but the voice had become even clearer.

It was as if there was someone quietly laughing at him, but that laugh also contained a very sinister undercurrent.

Next, Su Chen saw something floating towards him out of the corner of his eye, carrying with a light fragrance. It was as if some beautiful woman was gesturing at him, sending this gentle waft of perfume in his direction.

“This little demonic clown must be fake,” Su Chen harrumphed and ignored it

A moment later, however, the demonic illusion suddenly howled piercingly, appearing to take on physical substance as it bit at him.

Su Chen stood there motionless, gathering his consciousness energy and attacking.

Consciousness techniques were the most effective against illusion targets.

With how powerful Su Chen’s consciousness was, he was able to easily blast that ethereal target to smithereens.

However, more of these creatures began to appear, constantly shrieking and howling as they circled around Su Chen, giving off an incredibly sinister vibe.

“Illusion realm?” Su Chen immediately became suspicious.

But when had he fallen into an illusion realm? He hadn’t seen anyone near him just moments ago; his consciousness was powerful enough to ensure that this was the case.

What was happening?

An idea suddenly surfaced in Su Chen’s mind, and he quickly came to a realization of what had happened.

“Li Daohong……” he muttered.

Su Chen understood that this had to be due to Li Daohong’s interference.

The Li Clan’s Dream Beauty Bloodline was the weakest of the seven imperial families in terms of direct combat strength, but it also possessed a number of unique abilities that could be used outside of the battlefield.

For instance, users would be able to unleash attacks from long distances and cause a person to fall into an illusion realm. This was exactly a skill that the Dream Beauty Bloodline conferred upon its users.

If he was currently experiencing an attack from a user with this bloodline, then he wasn’t in an illusion realm but in a dream realm.

Because the Dream Beauty was the ruler of nightmares.

Li Daohong had probably already pulled him into a dream realm and was constructing nightmares to deal with him. The Dream Beauty’s nightmares weren’t only used to scare people - they were a genuine threat.

But these nightmares wouldn’t actually end up killing the opponent, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that a person wouldn’t really die when they were killed by them.

If they did die to the nightmares, it would only be once in a dream. After they regained consciousness, they would return to themselves and would be fine.

But every time they died in that dream realm, their soul would have a slight bit eaten off, eventually resulting in them going into a daze.

If a person remained in this kind of situation for a long time, they would eventually die from having their soul completely devoured.

Of course, the rate at which this took place was extremely slow.

The Li Clan had managed to use nightmares to kill someone before, but it had taken three years for them to torment an Origin Qi Scholar to death.

Yet this Origin Qi Scholar had been a low-tier one. If they wanted to try and kill a high-tier Origin Qi Scholar, it probably would have taken them even longer.

As such, the Li Clan didn’t rely on this tactic alone to kill their opponents.

More often than not, they would tunnel into a person’s thoughts and begin to alter them.

For instance, the person could develop favorable or fearful feelings towards the Li Clan through these dreams. Seeds of hate or of love could be planted and reaped at a later date.

This had happened before in the Li Clan’s history. Their matriarch, Li Xiangchen, had assumed the identity of a famous courtesan and sowed the seeds of fear in many powerful experts during her travels. When she encountered these powerful opponents in the future, they would be unable to take advantage of the opportunity to kill her. Just when they were confident that they could kill her, these seeds of fear would manifest in an intense way, causing their consciousness to collapse. Even though there were some experts who were able to eventually fight back the influence of this fear, they were easily dispatched by Li Xiangchen during that process.

And the Dream Beauty Bloodline could not only plant seeds of fear, but also of love, or submission, etc. Over time, this imperceptible influence would cause others to submit, resulting in an effect similar to that of the Slyheart Zhu Clan’s bewitching techniques. In addition, there was no restrictions on the use of these skills. The only flaw was that this process took a long time - on the scale of many years to control a single person - and that the process could actually fail. But as long as a person was patient enough and was willing to broaden their net, it was entirely possible to gain a group of loyal supporters over the span of a few years.

This was how Li Daohong had obtained his sacrificial warriors.

As such, even if the Dream Beauty Bloodline’s combat power was the weakest, they could do as they pleased if they were given enough time.

Li Daohong was currently using this Soul Departing Dream on Su Chen.