Spirit Realm

Clumps of cold, white flames that looked like there were souls inside them floated out of Xuan Luo’s chest.

His face suddenly turned slightly blurry while the cold flames were moving.

Xuan Luo seemed to be vanishing slowly from Qin Lie’s soul perception.

In fact, a strong soul presence started to emanate from the floating flames. It clearly was Xuan Luo’s unique soul signature.

It was as if Xuan Luo had transferred his soul into the cold flames through some sort of secret art.

It didn’t take long before Xuan Luo’s body lost all soul activity.

However, the cold flames moving towards Qin Lie were brimming with it.

“Whoosh whoosh whoosh!”

The cold flames looked like eerie ghost faces as frosty sparks came off their bodies.

It was as if the dark world had been transformed into the chilly Icestone Abyss. It was incredibly cold.

“Ice Explosion Art!”

At the distance, Xuan Luo’s soulless body suddenly uttered in an indifferent, icy voice.

“Watch out!” Liu Yang couldn’t help but shout out a warning.

It was at this moment the cold flames around Qin Lie suddenly condensed into balls of ice.

The translucent ice balls rotated quickly as countless divine characters suddenly shone like stars from the inside.

A mysterious mark suddenly came into existence.

“Bang!”

Then, the ice balls exploded into pieces.

Tens of thousands of sharp icicles flooded the area Qin Lie was in like a rainstorm or icy meteors.

“Swoosh swoosh swoosh!”

An ear piercing noise tore through the world. It was space itself was being cut apart.

Pale white light screens that looked like fragments of space surrounded Qin Lie.

The wide attack hadn’t reached him yet, but it felt like the icicles had pierced him and turned him into a cactus.

It felt like it was his irreversible fate to be killed there and then. 

“Heavenly Thunder Eradication: Nine Thunder Blast!”

Threatened, Qin Lie summoned the lightning pool water stored inside his meridians.

Blue lightning as big as a child’s arm began slithering around his torso.

At the same time, violent balls of thunder started forming around his chest, head and arms.

The thunder balls exploded in an instant.

“Boom boom boooom! Booom!”

Lightning kept gathering itself and exploding all around Qin Lie. The world rumbled and shook under their might.

The innumerable flaming ice chunks continued to fly towards Qin Lie as the thunder roared.

All nearby Darkness Family and Profound Ice Family martial practitioners moved out of the way to avoid being caught by the deadly energies.

“Crackle!”

“Crack crack!”

Both lightning and ice kept ravaging the area for some time. The resulting flashes concealed Qin Lie’s figure from view.

However, his soul was clearly present...

“Every icicle Xuan Luo had fired at Qin Lie contained his Ice Soul energy. This bloodline ability can easily permeate into the air, the flesh, and even the soul through the Ice Explosion Art.” Gan Xing said in a low tone, “Qin Lie’s body and soul was probably invaded by the frost concept of Xuan Luo’s Profound Ice Family bloodline even before the icicles could reach the body, planting the seeds of despair and helplessness. A weak-willed person wouldn’t even be able to summon the will to fight.”

“The Ice Soul has… infinite uses. As the most famous bloodline ability of the Profound Ice Family, the Ice Soul is compatible with nearly every bloodline secret art or latent ability their family has.” Cang Ye added quietly, “Xuan Luo has become a lot more dangerous ever since he awoke the Ice Soul. Even I may have to pay a price to beat him as he is.”

She paused for a moment before looking at Gan Xing. “You should start working on yourself. Neither Xuan Luo nor Qin Lie are inferior to you in terms of bloodline abilities or strength, so they’ll surpass you very soon if you keep lazing around like this…”

Gan Xing rubbed his nose, let out an awkward laugh and nodded at her response. He didn’t try to offer a retort.

Beside him, Wu Sha, Liu Yang, and Yan Feng looked slightly surprised.

Cang Ye was saying that Qin Lie and Xuan Luo would surpass Gan Xing—but only if he didn’t put effort into his cultivation.

So... was she saying that neither Qin Lie nor Xuan Luo was a match for Gan Xing now?

Yan Feng and the others looked thoughtful.

“Gan Xing is probably hiding his strength, or Cang Ye wouldn’t have given him such high praise.”

They thought to themselves as their recognition of Gan Xing’s strength was renewed.

“Qin Lie is doing fine,” Cang Ye said calmly with unfathomable eyes. “I told you that he mostly used world spirit energy back when he and I fought for the first time, didn’t I? So his spirit energy can’t be too far behind his bloodline energy.”

“You’re saying… that we should never view him as a simple bloodline warrior.” Gan Xing came to realization.

“Sister Cang Ye, I heard from a clansmen that a mixed-blood’s bloodline strength will be weaker if they focus on the other aspect of their powers, right? Also… I heard that they almost never awaken powerful bloodline abilities, right?” Wu Sha spoke up suddenly.

Liu Yang was also wearing an astonished look after Wu Sha’s words had brought up old memories. “The seniors of our clan always instruct the mixed-bloods with purer blood to give up on their original power and focus solely on strengthening their bloodline. They only allow those with overly impure blood to cultivate other powers and diminish their bloodline power as a result. The way they explain this is that a mixed-blood is physically and mentally incapable of strengthening both their bloodline power and other powers in unison, right?”

Gan Xing fell into deep thought as well.

“Logically, that is the case. However… our Spirit Realm mixed-blood is obviously different from the normal mixed-bloods we know,” Cang Ye said indifferently.

Her eyes were colored with deep doubt. She too was confused by Qin Lie’s unusualness.

Most hybrids between the God Race and other races couldn’t even awaken their God Race bloodlines.

Those that did normally couldn’t obtain powerful bloodline abilities or ascend their bloodline power to higher ranks either.

Ultimately, it was because a mixed-blood’s bloodline could never be purer than a pure-blooded God Race warrior’s.

An impure bloodline meant that the cultivator couldn’t awaken a powerful ability or enter the Chaos Blood Realm with their souls. As a result, they couldn’t improve their strength quickly.

However, Qin Lie not only had recovery and Flame World, he even had ignition, an ability that many pure-blooded clansmen didn’t have.

The fact that he could unleash the Ring of Burning Sun proved that he had entered the God Race’s Chaos Blood Realm and learned their bloodline secret arts as well.

This meant that his blood was incredibly pure and he hadn’t neglected to temper his bloodline power.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the spirit arts he learned from Spirit Realm were a lot weaker than his bloodline powers.

However, not only was he at the Nirvana Realm right now, he possessed multiple types of spirit energies. Moreover, they were all powerful and extraordinary in their own way.

Cang Ye also knew a secret no one else present knew—that Qin Lie was capable of refining blood essences since a long time ago.

Most God Race clansmen could only refine blood essences when they reached rank eight.

But Qin Lie was clearly proficient at using blood essences when she last fought him. At the time, he was only at rank six.

She was stunned by Qin Lie’s unusualness then.

In her opinion, Qin Lie was a complete mystery. That was why she had wanted to obtain a drop of Qin Lie’s blood essence so badly back at the chaotic streams of space. She wanted to know the secrets he hid.

“His spirit energy is as powerful as his bloodline powers, and he can refine blood essences… just how many secrets is this fellow hiding?” she thought quietly to herself.

It was around this time the ice and lightning and Qin Lie slowly disappeared.

Qin Lie appeared while being coated in blood.

His skin looked like they had been whipped by something thin and painful. There were countless needle-sized holes in his body as well.

Right now, he looked similar to Xuan Luo in terms of terrible appearances.

The cold flames had all disappeared. Xuan Luo’s body started to emanate soul activity once more.

He looked at the wounded but steady Qin Lie from afar. His mouth suddenly twitched once.

“Alright, enough!”

A dark, frigid voice rang from the entrance of the secret realm. A pitch black shadow suddenly appeared from the thick cloud of abyss devil energy.

“If you have so much strength to waste then use it on the high rank Abyss Devils you find later. If the two of you still wish to keep this up, then…” He looked at Qin Lie and Xuan Luo before snorting coldly. “You can opt to skip this expedition entirely! After all, what’s the point of sending two heavily wounded people into a secret realm? You’ll only be a useless burden to your teammates!”

The group of youngsters fell silent. No one dared to spare a useless word in this situation.

Cang Ye looked regretful as well. She apologized of her own accord, “It’s my fault, Lord An Yun. I’m sorry.”

“Take care of this mess and stop creating new ones, you hear?! Oh right, Ming Xu and Hao Jie have already arrived, and they’ll probably be showing their faces here very soon. You will not start another fight in my presence!” said the Darkness Family expert named An Yun.

“I understand.” Cang Ye dared not raise a retort. She bowed her head and replied obediently.

“Mn.” An Yun nodded in satisfaction before vanishing into the darkness once more.

From the start to the end, An Yun was just a shadow to Qin Lie. He never even saw his true face before the man vanished back into the darkness.

“Ming Xu and Hao Jie are coming…” Gan Xing smiled bitterly.

“I hope they would settle down a little.” Even Cang Ye looked a bit worried.

Many people felt pressured when they heard that Ming Xu of the Light Family and Hao Jie of the Bloodthirst Family were coming.

Liu Yang had gone over to support Qin Lie. She said, “Ming Xu and Hao Jie are probably even more difficult to deal with than Xuan Luo.”

“Oh.” Qin Lie answered indifferently.