Spirit Realm

“Whoosh!”

The demonic cloud that flew away from Fagan’s territory suddenly stopped on a cold and empty wilderness.

Surging, it extracted and absorbed the Abyss Devil imprints in Gavin’s bloodline completely.

It even absorbed every last bit of soul energy and flesh and blood energy in Gavin’s body before discarding it.

Qin Lie’s devilized body slowly appeared from the demonic cloud. The brutality and bloodthirst in his pupils had slowly faded as well.

Qin Lie slowly regained clarity of mind.

“Swoosh!”

He dropped down from the sky and sat on an ice cold rock alone. Surprise suddenly entered his eyes as his one-level Soul Altar flew out of the corner of his eyes and grew bigger like a crystalline lotus seat.

The Soul Altar finally stopped in front of him.

There was a bright dot of purple inside his Soul Altar.

It was a purple crystal about the size of a fingernail.

“Yellow Springs, bloodline, the Nether River, the truth of death…”

Qin Lie seized the moment of clarity to study the changes in his Abyss Devil Race bloodline and isolate the truths of power of the Nether River for study.

Time passed quickly while he was fully concentrating in perceiving the minute changes inside his body.

He slowly canceled his devilized form.

A strange demonic cloud continued to hover quietly above his head like a black purple umbrella.

“Dead soul…”

An unknown period of time later, Qin Lie finally opened his eyes with renewed understanding.

The purple crystal that had merged with his Soul Altar carried a power of the Nether River in it. It was capable of controlling the wraiths and phantoms inside the Nether River.

The wraiths and phantoms of the Nether River were really a kind of dead soul—souls that had passed from the living.

Every living creature was born with a soul.

The soul was the most central imprint of life!

A soul had two forms: live and dead.

Most experts and races had deep awareness and understanding of the live soul. They were aware how to execute a live soul’s power or use it for cultivation.

The normal soul everyone knew of was the live soul. It was at the core of all flesh and blood lifeforms.

Out of all the races in the galaxy, the race that understood the live soul the most and had nearly figured out all of its secrets was without a doubt the Soul Race.

The Imperial Soul Monarch’s knowledge in this regard especially had reached unbelievable heights.

It was why there were rumors saying that the Imperial Soul Monarch had countless avatars, and that he could control any expert or race with the soul.

In terms of the live soul, the Imperial Soul Monarch was the indisputable champion in the entire galaxy.

However, the live soul was not the soul’s only form!

When a soul perished, it sometimes wouldn’t dissipate completely into nothingness.

Sometimes, a soul that died would transform into its other form, the dead soul.

Wraiths, phantoms, ghosts, banshees, spectres and more were in fact the forms a soul could take after it passed away.

They were collectively called the dead souls.

The dead soul was the soul’s other form and a unique lifeform. It was one of the world’s many expressions of energy.

There were countless races in the universe, and the number of experts who could cultivate and use the live souls were plenty.

However, there were very, very few experts who could actually understand, learn, cultivate, and control the dead souls.

The power imprinted inside the purple crystal was the power to control the dead souls.

It came from the Nether River, and the Nether River was a product of the dead Abyss Master!

The reason the purple crystal had caused him to hunt down the descendants of the Yellow Springs Monarch like mad was because Gavin, Capus and Bardeen’s bodies all contained a very small amount of laws governing the dead souls.

When Nine Springs transformed into Nine Purgatories, its new power was related to the dead souls as well.

To put it concisely, the Yellow Springs secret art studied by the Yellow Springs Monarch was just one kind of the many truths capable of controlling the dead souls!

It was because the Yellow Springs could actually be translated as the Nether River in the ancient language of the Abyss!

Gavin, Barden, and Capus were all the Yellow Springs Monarch’s direct descendants. That was why their bloodline carried hints of the dead souls’ truths.

“The Yellow Springs Monarch is the one who allowed his children to fight endlessly, extract, and absorb each other’s bloodline…”

Qin Lie suddenly trembled when he figured out part of the whole mystery. “I see! So that is how it is!”

He suddenly realized that the power of dead soul was an incredibly deep and profound study. Even the Yellow Springs Monarch might’ve only studied part of it.

When the Yellow Springs Monarch had licentiously sowed hundreds of descendants, he had also passed down his dead soul secret arts to his descendants in the form of bloodlines.

By allowing his descendants to murder each other, he was also allowing them to absorb each other’s bloodlines and make the fragmented power of dead soul whole.

An accurate description of the dead soul’s truths of power was thick books written in ancient language. Their contents were incredibly difficult to understand.

Although the Yellow Springs Monarch had obtained one of the many “ancient books” of the dead soul arts by accident, even he found it difficult to figure out all the secrets in a short time.

That was why he decided to tear off pages from this “ancient book” and pass it down to the hundreds of descendants.

Since his bloodline descendants would be high rank Abyss Devils, they possessed extraordinary intelligence since the moment of their birth.

Every one of his descendants held a “page” of the knowledge of the dead soul. It was one of the most important parts of their bloodline.

These hundreds of high rank Abyss Devils all had their own life experiences. In order to grow stronger and be acknowledged by their father, they did everything in their power to study the “page” they had.

They studied the contents of the “page” through battles, conflicts, and near death experiences.

Since the murderous rivalry only happened between the siblings, every time someone died the killer would obtain the victim’s core bloodline secrets.

This was how the Yellow Springs Monarch had used his hundreds of descendants to study, confirm, and develop the truths of power of the dead soul.

Among his descendants, there were three who had killed, collected, and studied a lot more “pages” than the rest of their siblings. They ultimately won the Yellow Springs Monarch’s recognition and became rank nine Lords of the Abyss.

The rest of them such as Diga and Gavin were still busy killing each other to obtain the other party’s bloodline.

In reality, they were just helping the Yellow Springs Monarch study the truths of power of the dead soul.

If there came a day where his descendants figured out every page in that “ancient book”...

It would probably be the last day of their lives.

The Yellow Springs Monarch might even kill all of the high rank Abyss Devils with his own hands and collect the fruits of his labor.

“I finally understand now…”

Qin Lie sucked in a deep breath and stared at the purple crystal inside his Soul Altar.

He knew that the reason he could figure out all this wasn’t because he possessed extraordinary intelligence or something. It was all thanks to this purple crystal.

In his opinion, this purple crystal was another “ancient book” that contained the power of the dead soul.

The Yellow Springs Monarch wasn’t able to finish studying his “ancient book” completely despite having become the monarch of this purgatory and spending endless time on it.

He even had to tear “pages” out of his “ancient book” and pass it down to his hundreds of intelligent descendants so that they could study them on his behalf.

It showed just how deep and profound the truth of power of the dead soul was.

“So, all this sibling murder and rivalry is just a cultivation method to you.”

Qin Lie stared at the gray sky above him with a gloomy expression on his face.

Now that he had regained his clarity of mind, he knew that the Yellow Springs Monarch must be aware of his existence.

However, that didn’t mean that he was any different from Gavin, Diga, or Capus to the Yellow Springs Monarch—in the end, they were all just tools to him.

“Maybe you’re watching me right now. Maybe it is even time for you to reap the fruits of your labor with me as your harvesting tool, isn’t it?”

Qin Lie let out a cold snort, and this time he touched the purple crystal with his soul consciousness out of his own accord.

He immediately went into a frenzy again after he had touched the purple crystal. His pupils instantly became filled with violence and bloodthirst.