Devouring Soul Emperor

Chu Qingyun struck out with his palm.

BOOM!

An immense force and Primordial Power instantly crashed down on the Level 5 Martial Spirit.

Caught completely off guard, the Martial Soul Power and Primordial Power that constituted his body were violently shaken by the palm strike. With a PUFF, he coughed up a mouthful of Martial Soul Power.

"You..."

The man turned, staring at Chu Qingyun in disbelief.

But Chu Qingyun only offered a cold smile. He closed the distance and gently pressed another palm, infused with Devouring Power, against the man’s body.

The Devouring Power erupted instantly.

In a moment, all of the Level 5 Martial Spirit’s Primordial Power and Martial Soul Power were devoured completely, vanishing as if into thin air without a single trace left behind.

When dealing with people from the Martial Soul Hall, Chu Qingyun never showed any mercy.

He had seen with his own eyes how these members of the Martial Soul Hall came to be.

Behind every single member of the Martial Soul Hall was the corpse of a human being. Some were even innocent children who knew nothing of the world.

After finishing the man off, Chu Qingyun returned to the previous battlefield.

The battle was already nearing its end. As Chu Qingyun emerged from the forest, he saw the last Level 5 Martial Spirit from the Great Xia die, besieged by three Level 6 Martial Spirits and a crowd of Level 5 Martial Spirits from the Martial Soul Hall.

The Examiners all knew that the Martial Soul Hall could convert human Martial Artists into their own kind.

That was why they would all rather die in battle than be captured alive by the Martial Soul Hall.

Looking at the dozens of bodies strewn haphazardly on the ground, Chu Qingyun let out a soft sigh. ’Just a moment ago, they were full of ambition, ready to become Sect Disciples. In the blink of an eye, they’re all dead.’

’The path of the Martial Dao is truly this cruel...’

After the battle concluded, the Level 6 Martial Spirits of the Martial Soul Hall busied themselves with searching the corpses, plundering the wealth of the Examiners.

The Martial Spirits of the Martial Soul Hall also needed to cultivate and required resources like Primordial Stones and Primordial Spirit Liquid.

And these Examiners, each a top genius from their respective commanderies, naturally carried many good things on them. They were, of course, fat sheep in the eyes of the Martial Soul Hall.

While the Level 6 Martial Spirits did the looting, the other Level 4 and Level 5 members could only watch from the side, not daring to join in.

Chu Qingyun, however, didn’t just stand there idly. He wandered around the battlefield and actually managed to find two Tier Four Martial Souls that had not yet completely dissipated!

He certainly wouldn’t miss such an opportunity. He quietly activated his Devouring Martial Soul and consumed the two Tier Four Martial Souls.

A Tier Four Devouring Martial Soul needed several days to devour Martial Souls of the same tier, so Chu Qingyun paid it no mind for now and set the matter aside.

After the Level 6 Martial Spirits had looted all the bodies, they ordered them to be buried and then led the group deeper into the forest.

Chu Qingyun did nothing and silently followed them.

The group of several hundred from the Martial Soul Hall traveled through the forest for over half an hour before reaching their camp.

Calling it a camp was a stretch; it was really just a large, flat clearing made by felling some trees in the forest.

Here, some of the more fastidious members had even built things like wooden huts.

Most, however, simply roughed it, resting directly on the ground or in the trees. In any case, they were all experts at the Martial Spirit Level, so they didn’t fear catching a cold or getting sick.

Outside the camp, a person who was clearly a leader, accompanied by several Level 6 Martial Spirits, was waiting for them.

The man looked to be in his early twenties, around twenty-three or twenty-four, with a somewhat thin build.

But looking from a distance, Chu Qingyun frowned slightly. He got a faint sense of familiarity from that leader.

’Have I seen him before?’

Filled with doubt, Chu Qingyun paid a little more attention to the leader, who was also a Level 6 Martial Spirit.

The closer he got, the clearer that sense of familiarity became, yet he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he felt this way.

But he was certain that he had never seen this person before.

"How did it go?" the Level 6 Martial Spirit leader asked, his cold gaze sweeping over the few Level 6 Martial Spirits in front.

Those Level 6 Martial Spirits were clearly quite afraid of him.

"Reporting to Lord Ming, this time, a total of one hundred and thirty-five Examiners came from this dynasty. We killed sixty-nine of them. The rest all fled towards Black Blood City."

A Level 6 Martial Spirit stepped forward and answered respectfully.

"You let half of them get away?" Lord Ming’s brows twitched, clearly displeased.

The Level 6 Martial Spirit shuddered in fear and quickly said, "Lord Ming, these Examiners are all the top geniuses of a dynasty, and they’re all at the Earth Spirit Realm! We already did our best to intercept them, but if they were determined to flee, there was nothing we could do. Of course, if you had acted personally, Lord Ming, not a single one of them would have escaped!"

"Hmph. If I could act as I pleased, what would I need a bunch of useless trash like you for?" Lord Ming snorted, then turned and entered the camp with the few Level 6 Martial Spirits behind him.

After Lord Ming left, the people around Chu Qingyun all breathed a sigh of relief.

Everyone dispersed, going off to find a spot and do their own thing.

Chu Qingyun didn’t know what this "Mu Han" he had transformed into was supposed to be doing at this time, so he chose the safest option: he jumped onto a large tree at the edge of the camp to rest.

But while it was called resting, he was actually using his high vantage point to survey the situation in the Martial Soul Hall’s camp.

There were over a thousand Martial Soul Hall members at the Earth Spirit Realm gathered here. Most of them stayed within the camp, but individual Earth Spirit Realm members would also occasionally enter from the outside, while others left. They were likely scouts gathering intelligence nearby.

After watching for a while, Chu Qingyun leaned against the tree and closed his eyes to rest.

He planned to make his move at night.

「Night fell.」

Except for a few people assigned to guard duty who patrolled the vicinity of the camp, almost all the Martial Soul Hall members in the Earth Spirit Realm were asleep.

But at that moment, Chu Qingyun’s eyes snapped open.

’Shadow Martial Soul!’

With a silent cry in his heart, Chu Qingyun noiselessly unleashed his Shadow Martial Soul.

Previously, at Tier Three, when he unleashed his Shadow Martial Soul, it was just a small ball of shadow in front of him.

But now that it had advanced to Tier Four, a silent shadow, wide enough for two people and over two meters tall, emerged from behind Chu Qingyun.

In the pitch-black night, one would not be able to see this shadow at all without looking very closely.

After the Shadow Martial Soul advanced to Tier Four, its Soul Technique also changed from "Stealth" to "Shadow Splitting Clone Skill"!

However, even though the Stealth Soul Technique was gone, it didn’t mean Chu Qingyun had lost his ability to hide his figure in the dark of night.