Ghost Immortal

Lei Jian formed a hand seal, and the Bagua mirror rotated, shooting out a golden beam of light that struck the ghost claw.

The moment the beam of light collided with the ghostly claw, it emitted a hissing sound like a branding iron hitting water.

The golden beam of light burned a hole in the surface of the ghost claw, but the ghost claw was so huge that the beam of light could only block one finger.

The remaining four fingers circled around the beam of light, grabbed the edge of the Bagua mirror, and exerted force suddenly.

"Snap!"

A thin crack appeared on the Bagua mirror.

Lei Jian's expression changed drastically. He bit his tongue and spat out his blood essence, which splattered onto the cracks in the Bagua mirror.

A golden light shone from the edge of the crack, barely stopping it from widening.

But the power of the ghost claw continued to increase, and the golden light on the Bagua mirror dimmed at a visible speed.

"I'll do it!"

The Taoist priest with four eyebrows suddenly appeared from the side, his peach wood sword flying out of his hand in a slash.

The talismans on the sword burned completely, and the sword itself transformed into a golden fire sword, slashing at the mist giant's wrist.

The wrist was severed by the fire sword, and the mist connecting the ghost claw was burned away by the flames. The ghost claw lost control, fell from mid-air, and dispersed back into black mist, drifting back onto the giant's body.

But new mist quickly emerged from the severed arm of the Mist Giant, reforming into a ghostly claw.

This time, the ghost claw no longer grabbed at the Bagua mirror, but instead struck at the chest of the Four-Eyebrow Taoist.

Master Si Mei didn't have time to sheathe his sword, so he could only cross his arms to protect his chest.

The moment the ghostly claw struck his arm, he was sent flying like a kite with a broken string, his back slamming into the ruins of the mountain god temple, completely collapsing the already crumbling earthen wall.

"Master!" Qiu Sheng and Qiu Lan called out at the same time.

"Leave me alone!" The four-browed Taoist priest struggled to his feet from the pile of rubble, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were even more ferocious than before.

"This thing is Zhang Xuanye's life essence core; two hundred years of resentment are all condensed in the mist. No one can defeat it in a one-on-one fight! Gu Zhenren, are your ghost generals ready?"

Gu Zhenren directly inserted his hands into his own chest.

His ten fingers pierced the flesh of his chest, the fingertips touching his ribs.

The ribs are engraved with Gu patterns, which correspond to the Gu core of the Ghost Gu Puppet.

He scratched the Gu pattern with his fingernail, and his essence blood gushed out from the Gu pattern, turning into dozens of blood lines that shot towards the mountain walls around the valley.

After the bloodline disappeared into the mountain wall, pieces of rock peeled off, revealing the ghost puppet hidden inside the mountain wall.

These puppets were previously sealed inside the mountain wall by the Gu Master using a secret technique, and have been waiting for the right time to be activated.

Forty or fifty ghost puppets jumped down from the mountainside and surrounded the mist giant.

Three of the most robust ghost generals charged ahead, their Gu cores throbbing wildly in their chests, injecting Gu energy into their meridians and causing their already enormous bodies to swell to over ten feet in size.

The demon generals spread their arms and pounced on the mist giant from three directions.

Their fingernails are coated with a special poison from the southern border, which has a strong corrosive effect on the souls of living beings.

The Mist Giant is formed from fragments of souls, and Gu poison is its nemesis.

The three ghost generals simultaneously grabbed the mist giant's arms and back.

The poison seeped into the mist through the fingernails, making a hissing, corrosive sound.

The mist giant let out a deafening roar, which was mixed with the screams of countless people.

The sacrificial souls trapped in the mist are rapidly dissipating under the corrosive influence of the poison.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Gu Zhenren closed in, condensing a fist-sized dark green Gu pill in his right palm.

This is his natal Gu core, containing two hundred years of Gu technique cultivation, and it is also his last trump card.

He pressed the Gu Pill against the chest of the mist giant. The Gu Pill exploded the moment it touched the mist, turning into countless tiny Gu worms that burrowed into the depths of the mist and launched a full-scale attack on Zhang Xuanye's life soul core.

The mist giant shrank continuously as it was attacked by the Gu worms and the ghost general.

The outer mist was completely devoured by the Gu worms, revealing the core of the life soul at its deepest point.

A fist-sized, dark red ball of light appeared on the surface, revealing Zhang Xuanye's face in his youth.

"Now!"

Lei Jian roared and released the final seal on the Bagua Mirror.

The Bagua patterns on the mirror detached from the mirror and formed a huge innate Bagua array in the air.

The array diagram spun rapidly, each hexagram transforming into a golden pillar of light that shot towards the core of the life soul from eight directions.

The core of the soul was struck simultaneously by eight beams of light, producing a crisp sound like porcelain shattering.

Countless fine cracks appeared on the surface of the light sphere, and Zhang Xuanye's face was distorted and deformed in the cracks, changing from gentle and refined to ferocious and terrifying.

But Li Feng noticed a tiny dark spot at the core of the light sphere.

The dark spot was only the size of a pinhead, and its color was darker than the surrounding fog, almost pure black.

Under the bombardment of the light beam, the dark spot not only did not shatter, but instead absorbed the spiritual energy in the light beam.

"Something's not right!" Alarm bells rang in Li Feng's mind.

"His life essence core has two layers; the outer layer is fake!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the outer shell of the Soul Core exploded.

Countless fragments transformed into sharp mist arrows, shooting out in all directions.

The three ghost generals who were closest were unable to dodge and were riddled with holes by the fog arrows, their massive bodies crashing to the ground.

Gu Zhenren was also hit in the chest by the mist arrow, and his whole body flew backward, the blood spurting from his mouth drawing an arc in the air.

After the core of the life soul exploded, the tiny dark spot, no bigger than a pinhead, expanded rapidly.

From a needle tip to a grain of rice, from a grain of rice to a pigeon egg, from a pigeon egg to the size of a fist.

During the expansion process, an extremely pure black light surged from inside the dark spot.

Yin energy that is pure to the extreme, or even yin energy at the level of the primordial spirit.

The black orb hovered in mid-air, slowly rotating.

The surface of the sphere of light was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the terrified expressions of everyone present.

Inside the sphere of light, one could vaguely see the outline of a human figure sitting cross-legged.

The human figure gradually became clearer, revealing the appearance of a young Taoist priest. This was Zhang Xuanye's true form.

"For two hundred years, I have dismantled my life soul and integrated it into the array's core, absorbing the resentment of the Five Hells and the yin energy of the earth's veins day and night."

Zhang Xuanye's voice came from the sphere of light.

The deep, metallic resonance sounded like the tolling of a bell rising from the deepest part of the earth.

"All the resentment, obsession, unwillingness, and pain of everyone are my sustenance. For the past two hundred years, have you thought I was waiting for the opportunity to achieve immortality through corpse liberation? No, I was waiting for my own soul to be tempered to the primordial spirit realm."

The ball of light exploded with a roar, and black flames spread in all directions.

Wherever the black flames passed, the rubble and debris on the ground were silently crushed into dust, the vegetation withered instantly, and even the air was drained of all moisture.

The ghost puppets surrounding the valley were swept by the light and flames, and were blown away like paper lanterns, crashing into the mountain wall and breaking into pieces.

As the flames faded, Zhang Xuanye stood in the open space.

His body was not a phantom formed from condensed mist, but a real body of flesh and blood.

His skin was as white as jade, and his features were refined and elegant, exactly like the young Taoist priest in the rubbing.

But his eyes were pure black, with no whites, just pure black.

Countless tiny runes flowed in his eyes, each rune representing a kind of resentment. The sacrificial souls trapped in the Five Elements Guiding Array were all refined into his eyes.

"The Nascent Soul stage." Lei Jian's voice was hoarse, and his hand holding the Bagua mirror was trembling slightly.

"He didn't cultivate the Corpse-Dissolving Immortal, but rather the Astral Spirit. He buried himself underground for two hundred years, using his physical body as a cauldron, resentment as firewood, and his life soul as an elixir, forcibly refining his primordial spirit."

Zhang Xuanye smiled and gently drew a line in the air with the tip of his right hand.

A black crack extended from his fingertip. The space at the edge of the crack, like torn cloth, rolled up to both sides, revealing the dark purple void turbulence inside.

"Space Tear".

The Taoist priest with four eyebrows turned pale.

"This is a spatial divine power that can only be used by those at the Nascent Soul stage."

The black crack spread rapidly toward the five people, its front end forking like a venomous snake's tongue, splitting into five branches that bit out in five directions.

Li Feng grabbed Qiu Sheng and rolled him to the side. The crack grazed his back, silently cutting a foot-long tear in his Taoist robe.

There were no signs of burning or corrosion at the edges of the crack.

Matter that comes into contact with the spatial rift is wiped out of the world without leaving even ashes.

Gu Zhenren was a beat too slow, and his left arm was grazed by the crack.

He groaned as his entire left arm disappeared at the elbow, the cut smooth as a mirror.

There was no bleeding, and not even pain.

Nerve endings were also erased.

It wasn't until three breaths later that the blood vessels and nerves at the cut surface reacted, and a wave of excruciating pain surged up, causing him to kneel on one knee, with cold sweat pouring down his forehead.

"Do it!" Gu Zhenren gritted his teeth, pressed his remaining right arm against the severed wound, and roared at Li Feng.

Without hesitation, Li Feng immediately dispatched Gao Feng.

A dark gray figure flew out of the small cauldron and rapidly expanded in mid-air.

It took less than a breath for a tiny figure to swell from the size of a palm to more than ten feet in size.

The moment Gao Feng landed, the ground beneath his feet cracked from the invisible aura of evil.

The pebbles were swept into the air by the force of the air, forming a turbid whirlwind of pebbles around him.

He roared to the sky, and the demonic energy contained in his howl caused the vegetation within a radius of thirty feet to wither and turn yellow instantly.

The few remaining old trees at the edge of the valley trembled under the impact of the evil energy.

The fungal spots on the tree bark fell off like startled insects, struggled for a few moments on the ground, and then stopped moving.

A demon in the early stage of the Golden Core realm versus a corpse-dissolving immortal in the early stage of the Primordial Spirit realm.

Two top-tier beings from different cultivation systems clashed head-on on the ancient post road beneath the Five Old Peaks.

Gao Feng launched the first attack.

He pushed off the ground with both legs, creating a crater more than ten feet deep beneath his feet.

Like an iron-gray meteor, it crashed into Zhang Xuanye. The ghostly fire on his right arm expanded rapidly during the flight, spreading from his arm to his whole body, and condensing into a ghostly green flame armor around him.

This collision used pure force.