After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

The ghost general possessed him.

A high-level combatant from the underworld stuffed a fragment of his soul into the body of this conglomerate executive, remotely overseeing the battle from two different planes.

It was certain that the mere mention of the Fifth Hall would make any cultivator in the mortal realm go weak in the knees.

Zhou Ran didn't loosen his grip at all; instead, he tightened his grip segment by segment.

The thing inside the shell is not on the same level as the previous patrolling evil spirit.

The Ghost General, in the underworld, would be a powerful military commander with the authority to lead 30,000 troops.

If it were to unleash its full power with this body, he, with his peak Foundation Establishment foundation, wouldn't be entirely confident he could withstand it.

"A stowaway who has been resurrected in another's body."

"Don't even mention you, a nobody like me. Even if the Fifth King of Hell himself stood here, I'd still rip out his tongue!"

His five fingers suddenly clenched tightly.

The cracking sound of cervical vertebrae breaking echoed far and wide in the open underground.

Richard's eyes bulged outwards, his limbs twitched twice, and he slumped down like a hanging noodle.

Once the physical body shatters, the anchor point for its dwelling is severed.

The possessed ghost general's remnant soul let out a shriek.

A thick cloud of black gas spewed out from Richard's seven orifices, twisting into a distorted face in mid-air.

It wasn't Richard's face.

It was a hideous ghostly face resembling a bronze judge's mask.

As the black mist swirled, the sense of oppression suddenly increased to a whole new level.

The three-colored dantian in Zhou Ran's dantian jumped heavily.

This is the true skill of the Ghost General.

With the shackles of the physical body gone, the origin of the underworld was completely released.

Two eerie green flames on that ghostly face were fixed on Zhou Ran's position, and the corners of its mouth were split open to the sides.

"Ants".

Have you witnessed my power?

Before Ghost General could make any move...

A beam of icy blue light burst forth from the Gathering Yin Banner.

Li Zhiyao's spirit emerged from the banner, her face as white as wax, her ten fingers forming an ancient Yin Law hand seal.

"The Seventh Volume of Yin Laws: Soul Capture."

A dark blue chain appeared out of nowhere from the void, piercing through the Ghost General's soul.

The Ghost General roared in fury, and the black energy around him exploded into a ball.

The chains hummed taut, their links leaving afterimages as they vibrated at high frequencies.

Li Zhiyao bit her tongue, spitting out her blood, stubbornly refusing to let go.

The tug-of-war lasted less than two breaths.

The chains broke one by one.

The Ghost General's soul transformed into a streak of black light, cleaved through the spatial barrier, and darted into the crack beneath the altar, disappearing in the blink of an eye in that void starry sky.

Ran.

But it wasn't completely cleaned up.

Li Zhiyao opened her palm.

A wisp of struggling black soul thread was pressed between his fingers.

A fragment of soul torn from the Ghost General's body.

She sealed the soul threads into the Yin-gathering Banner, causing her soul light to dim by more than 50%, and she swayed precariously, almost falling apart.

Zhou Ran placed Richard's corpse on the ground and stared at the Gathering Yin Banner.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Shut up."

Li Zhiyao's voice was so weak it was almost unrecognizable.

"This remnant soul contains fragments of the Yin Laws of the Fifth Court, which will be useful in the future."

Zhou Ran didn't waste any more words.

He stared at the direction where the Ghost General had disappeared deep in the crack, his brow furrowed into a vertical line.

The pressure that guy released the moment he shed his skin was at least at the late Golden Core stage.

If they really fight with their lives on the line, even the Primordial Overlord Body might not come out on top.

But it didn't intend to kill.

Something just didn't feel right from beginning to end.

Richard and his gang laid out such a grand scheme, layer upon layer, from Feng Bancheng to Davis, all to drive him to Yuan Gu's side.

If you really want him dead, why go through all this trouble?

"You finally thought of that."

Li Zhiyao's voice trailed off.

Zhou Ran scoffed:

"The Origin Bone only recognizes the bloodline of the Primordial Wilderness."

For four thousand years, the underworld has tried countless methods, but to no avail.

They need my hands.

"So the Holy Radiance Consortium has been nothing more than a puppet on the surface from beginning to end."

"Not just conglomerates."

Li Zhiyao paused for a moment.

"The fact that the Ghost General was present to supervise the battle but did not personally participate indicates that someone had given him a death order."

I won't hurt you, at least not until the source bone is pulled out.

"You still have some use to them."

Zhou Ran looked down at his left arm.

The black and gold unicorn pattern flowed slowly in the dim light.

Utility value.

He knew perfectly well that this was a dead end.

From the moment I stepped into Mangshan, every step I took fell within a grid drawn by someone else.

Once the source bone is removed, the seal shatters, the cracks begin to expand outwards, and the boundary between the Yin Realm and the Void Realm only becomes increasingly blurred.

This is exactly the show that the rebel army from the underworld was waiting to see.

But he had no other way.

The Primordial Overlord Body is stuck at the second level, and it cannot gather any of the four essential elements that are missing in the Dantian.

Without consuming this source bone, the Overlord Body cannot pass the threshold of the third level.

He couldn't even reach the third level of the Overlord Body, let alone the Core Formation stage.

"I knew it was a trap."

Zhou Ran pulled his hand out of his pocket, his left knuckles cracking loudly.

"But the bait in the trap is real."

He took a step toward the source bone.

"After eating the bait, smash the cage."

This isn't the first time I've done something like this.

Li Zhiyao didn't try to persuade her any further.

She knew this man's temper all too well.

Or rather, she's just like her reckless brother.

The soul's shadow dissipated, retreating back into the depths of the Gathering Yin Banner to heal its wounds.

Zhou Ran glanced at Xiao Rou.

Xiao Rou immediately understood, and a large number of milky white Listening Wind Gu flew out from her sleeves, pouncing on the corpses on the ground.

The soft, crunching sound of bones and flesh being gnawed on sent a chill down my spine.

In less than the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, not even a scrap of clothing remained on the ground.

The Gu worms have greatly increased in strength and will surely be of help to me in the future.

On the white jade altar, the grayish-white Primordial Bone still throbbed, exuding an ancient, pungent aura.

Zhou Ran strode up the white jade steps.

The finger was less than half a foot away from the bone.

Ah Ning, who had been silent all along, suddenly let out a strange cry.

It was a sound that no human could make.

It was the sound of a wounded wild beast struggling to breathe from the deepest part of its throat before it died.

Her eyes had lost all their sparkle.

The whites of his eyes were filled with a dull, grayish color, the veins on his forehead bulged, and he was gagging out air with a hoarse sound.

What's even more sinister is the change in her body.

The oppressive aura emanating from a mortal with absolutely no spiritual power was already comparable to that of a Foundation Establishment Peak cultivator unleashing their full power.

The death curse buried on her body took effect.

Ah Ning was never a stepping stone.

She is a living bomb with mental chains.

When the source bone was within reach and Zhou Ran had cleared away all the surrounding obstacles, the instructions buried deep within her subconscious were forcibly awakened.

There is only one instruction.

We will spare no expense to seize the Source Bone.

Anyone who gets in the way will die.

Having completely lost her sense of self, Ah Ning was pulled to her feet by an unseen force.

Gray runes spread from her forearm to the surface of the shovel, and the surface of this ordinary iron entrenching shovel was covered with a layer of annihilation law that did not belong to this dimension.

The shovel blade sliced ​​through the air, leaving a dark, twisted afterimage.

Ah Ning kicked her legs hard, causing cracks to appear in the white jade floor tiles.

His entire body transformed into a gray blur, piercing straight into Zhou Hou's heart.

This attack was imbued with the power of annihilation at the level of laws.

Even the slightest touch would be devoured by that annihilating power, leaving not a trace of flesh or soul.