Chapter 47
To willingly make contact with the fox avatar, a thing whose strength matched an Upper-Tier Emperor Realm expert.
Worse, it wasn’t ordinary energy, it was resentment, born of bloody intent and a Spirit soul.
A Lower-Tier Human Emperor like her couldn’t mount a defense against that, one touch of those red flames and her body and mind would erode away, she wouldn’t last seconds.
What is he thinking? The less she understood him, the deeper in she was, terrified, she gritted her teeth and charged in after him.
She braced for a brutal battle and was already working out how to help, Soren left her dumbfounded all over again.
Violent demonic energy compressed to a single point, and he threw one sudden punch.
The energy took the shape of a dragon and swept away everything in its path, fist force cracking space into fine seams, the blow erased the fox’s raking claw and its entire upper body.
As the head, meters across, dropped toward the ground, he finished it with a kick that blasted it into a sky full of ice shards.
The whole exchange flowed like water, one punch, one kick, only two moves.
Soren flipped the Strategy Encyclopedia and activated Devour.
In less than half an incense stick’s time, he drew every scattered wisp of bloody intent and soul resentment into his body, raging red flames sheeted over him.
They couldn’t harm him, they sank in bit by bit, the intent and resentment working straight into his bloodline and soul.
Energy on that scale wrought a startling change, his blood essence strength at least doubled.
His soul power climbed faster still, until his Middle-Tier Demon Emperor body carried soul power to rival, even surpass, an Upper-Tier Demon Emperor’s.
When Soren first arrived in this world, he had inherited the previous host’s demon blood essence, but the body was his own, so the inheritance had been closer to refining it, that capped his bloodline at Premium.
After devouring a Spirit Ancestor’s blood essence, his bloodline now sat at the Supreme level, the tier above Premium, the strongest there was.
Lysara had been strung tight the entire time, his overwhelming power moved something in her.
That welling admiration nudged her loyalty upward, intimidation raised loyalty fastest, but a changed view of him could raise it too, Ethel had proven that, so the uptick didn’t surprise him.
[Master has devoured the bloody intent spilling from the seal and the resentment-breeding Spirit Soul, the seal has resumed normal operation.]
[The earlier loosening cannot be restored for now.]
[The Spirit soul had wholly turned to resentment and was devoured without a trace, only a portion of the Spirit Ancestor’s blood essence, absent its soul, remains within the seal.]
[At Middle-Tier Demon Emperor strength, devouring the remnant soul and bloody intent of a Lower-Tier Spirit Ancestor may cause a degree of backlash.]
[It is not enough to pose a threat.]
Soren did feel something off, the vast Spirit Soul he’d devoured fed back into him, soul power soaring, and with it rose a wave of wicked heat.
The Alluring Fox was, as the name promised, a clan that sowed chaos through charm and seduction, swallowing a Spirit Soul that size in one gulp was never going to come free of side effects.
He didn’t panic, Lysara was standing right there.
He gave her a look, for a moment she thought she must have misread it, strange as it was, she didn’t dare delay, a brief pause, then a decisive nod.
"Mm."
Two hours later, Soren hovered silently in the void with his eyes shut, only when he could no longer detect the faintest abnormality in his body did he slowly open them.
Having perfectly devoured the Spirit Ancestor’s bloody intent and Spirit Soul, his aura had changed yet again, his pupils seemed to pierce the void like living lightning, radiating imposing, wicked intent.
One small movement, and comfort rolled through his entire body.
Below, Lysara was tidying herself, she changed into a long dress, smoothed her silken black hair. Adjusted her state of mind while she was at it.
She returned tactfully to stand behind Soren, a faint smile at the corners of her mouth, saying nothing.
Today’s test had felt different from before, she hadn’t found it so abhorrent.
Catching that subtle expression, Soren glanced at the strategy panel and found Absolute Loyalty flickering faintly.
He set the thought aside, following the Encyclopedia’s guidance, he formed an obscure hand seal, his demonic energy resonating with the seal inside the Dragon-Suppressing Stele, and opened an entrance leading deep underground.
The two walked in together, Lysara stayed on high alert, if restrictions or dangers sprang up, she would throw herself in front of Soren without hesitation.
Her strength fell far short of his, in real danger, she would amount to nothing but a meat shield, she had resolved that this was the meaning, and duty, of being kept at his side.
Besides, she had the Extreme Yin Holy Body, her Dao soul could not scatter and her body could not perish, even as a meat shield, she was the finest meat shield alive.
Beneath Black Dragon Mountain was not the mountain’s base in any ordinary sense, but a depth plunging tens of millions of meters below the horizon, the teleportation entrance carried them straight there.
The air hung murky, visibility barely a meter or two, fortunately, Emperor-realm experts could go without breathing for a very long time.
Soren listened, low, rumbling snores, and somewhere beneath them, the pop and gurgle of some liquid, the Heaven-Robbing Black Dragon’s uproar.
The two flew toward the snoring.
"Down here, we can only sense the seal’s fluctuations, not the dragon’s aura."
"If it woke right now and put in real effort, it could probably break through the seal," Soren murmured.
Soon they emerged into a massive underground space, laid out like a buried city, runic barrier lines webbed every corner, pulsing with white fluorescence that lit the whole cavern.
A black silhouette, some three hundred meters long, lay prone at its center.
That was the Heaven-Robbing Black Dragon.
Pitch black, armored in thick scales, scales sturdy enough to shrug off human martial skills and demonic techniques alike, damaging them would take the strength of a Middle-Tier Ancestor at minimum.
Soren knew its ferocious reputation, the race stood alongside the Ice Heaven Alluring Fox among the ten great Spirit clans of the Immemorial Era.