Chapter 628 - 373: Primordial Chaos Qi
Kong Xia lost consciousness and closed her eyes in despair.
Zou Feng, naturally, showed no mercy. He extracted all the poison from her body and swiftly began its Refinement and absorption.
The bit of resentful soul poison from before wasn’t even an appetizer. Even after its Refinement, the benefits it provided Zou Feng were extremely limited.
As for comprehending the poison’s mysteries and learning to use it himself, that was even more of a pipe dream.
But by performing Refinement on Kong Xia, none of this was a problem anymore.
This was a Dao Foundation Realm Late Stage White Impermanence. The poison in her body had already completely fused with her Skills.
He just needed to complete the poison’s Refinement to grasp the rudiments of a Skill.
It was worth mentioning that during his time in the Jade Dragon Marketplace, Zou Feng hadn’t just been hunting Tribulation Cultivators.
Through some shady channels, he had actually managed to buy several low-level Skills from the Yama Underworld.
To Zou Feng, these Skills were basically useless on their own.
But if he practiced them a little, fused them all together, and added the resentful soul poison obtained from his current Refinement, it shouldn’t be a problem to comprehend a modified Underworld Skill suited for himself.
"Ugh... ugh..."
Kong Xia whimpered weakly a few times, and her body went completely limp in Zou Feng’s arms.
After Zou Feng drained all her poison, her Life Force was completely depleted along with it.
The forced Refinement that Zou Feng used was inherently fatal to other Poison Cultivators.
On the List of Gods, Kong Xia’s name vanished, which meant she was truly and utterly dead.
Just as Zou Feng was about to toss her aside, a sudden, inexplicable stabbing pain shot through his head.
Immediately, it was as if Zou Feng was pulled into an Illusion Realm again, and the scenery around him changed rapidly.
Before long, he found himself in a "courtroom" that was incomparably gloomy and radiated a terrifying pressure.
It was as if he had suddenly become an unpardonable criminal, dragged before this court to be judged.
Although Zou Feng was somewhat surprised by such a bizarre scene, he wasn’t entirely unprepared.
He knew that killing a regular Impermanence would get him ’marked.’ Now that Kong Xia, a White Impermanence, was dead, the corresponding ’mark’ would naturally be upgraded.
Still, Zou Feng hadn’t expected the ’mark’ for killing a White Impermanence to come with so much pomp and ceremony.
The next moment, directly in front of him, a giant-like "Judge" appeared, looming indistinctly within a sudden plume of black smoke.
Zou Feng knew, of course, that a Judge of the Yama Underworld was actually a Golden Core Realm Tribulation Cultivator.
And Kong Xia must have been under the jurisdiction of this very Judge.
From within the black smoke, a pair of blood-red eyes locked firmly onto Zou Feng.
The gaze seemed to carry a kind of ocular Skill, meant to strike fear into Zou Feng’s heart and scare him to death.
However, it was completely useless against Zou Feng.
Kong Xia’s death had allowed the Judge to briefly establish a connection to this place and take the opportunity to spy on Zou Feng.
But that wasn’t all. The Judge, having identified Zou Feng as Kong Xia’s murderer, then picked up a brush and wrote something with flamboyant, calligraphic strokes in a small booklet on the desk.
’Ugh, is he writing my name down in his "Book of Life and Death"?’
’Just to leave a mark? Why all the theatrics?’
Zou Feng was quite disdainful of this. In any case, as long as the Celestial Hearing Tower wasn’t breached, no Golden Core Realm Tribulation Cultivators could ever hope to get in.
In other words, the Tribulation Cultivators currently being hunted everywhere by the Pinnacle Celestial Immortal Sect were, at their highest Realm, only at the Dao Foundation Realm Late Stage.
After all, if a Golden Core Realm Tribulation Cultivator really did manage to sneak in, the situation would be handled very differently. The Pinnacle Celestial Immortal Sect’s main headquarters would be alerted and immediately dispatch reinforcements.
What Zou Feng found most amusing was that while this Judge was putting on a show of writing his name in the Book of Life and Death, he was unaware that he himself had just appeared on the List of Gods.
At that moment, a new name had appeared on the List of Gods: Liang Bu.
’My List of Gods is absolutely superior to that so-called Book of Life and Death.’
In reality, the whole thing seemed more for show. Zou Feng didn’t believe it could cause him any substantial harm from so far away.
Its actual effect was probably less useful than the resentful soul poison.
Sure enough, after the Judge finished his act of writing a few strokes in the Book of Life and Death, the Illusion Realm could no longer be sustained.
It could be said that it came and went in a flash.
Zou Feng had performed the Refinement of Kong Xia. Combined with his prior Cultivation of the External Pill Immortal Refinement Dao to the Great Success Realm, his own Realm had now, without a doubt, broken through to the Dao Foundation Realm Middle Stage.
He was certain of this because he once again saw a different scene within his sea of consciousness.
Previously, when he advanced to the Dao Foundation Realm, he had climbed a ’stairway’ and leaped through a ’heavenly gate.’
But after successfully leaping through the ’heavenly gate,’ Zou Feng had no idea what lay beyond it.
This was quite normal. After all, during the Early Stage of the Dao Foundation Realm, one wasn’t supposed to see anything.
But upon reaching the Dao Foundation Realm Middle Stage, the scene behind the ’heavenly gate’ gradually became visible.
It was a special world filled with ’Primordial Chaos Qi.’
The reason he immediately named these drifting, unstable gases Primordial Chaos Qi was because Zou Feng instinctively felt that this stuff was the very source qi that had gradually formed at the beginning of the universe.
Neither the Eastern Earth Immortal Realm nor any other strange Outer Realms had existed since time immemorial.
Initially, they were all born from a sea of chaos and gradually evolved into their current state.
The birth of life itself was a similar process.
Immortal Cultivation was about becoming a higher-level life form, which inevitably required recreating this process in a more detailed and refined manner.