Chapter 573: Help Me, Fellow Daoist Bai!
As Bai Xiaochun went about his flame conjuring, eight days went by....
Meanwhile, some distance away, Zhou Yixing was flying along through the air, his hair disheveled, coughing up blood.
Chasing him was a group of more than a hundred savage giants.
“You people push things too far!!” Zhou Yixing howled in frustration. Bai Xiaochun had asked him to bring back 100,000 souls, but with his cultivation base sealed, that was an almost impossible task. Although he was actually in late Core Formation, he had never recovered completely from the labyrinth, and that meant that the five percent of his cultivation base he had access to gave him battle prowess roughly equivalent to early Foundation Establishment.
At one point, he had considered taking advantage of his relative freedom to flee. However, he soon discovered that if he went too far away from Bai Xiaochun, the restrictive spell inside of him would begin to show signs of detonation. As such, he had no choice but to abandon such thoughts of fleeing, and continue to curse Bai Xiaochun even more than before.
At one point, he realized that he was being stalked, or perhaps even hunted. Just when he had turned to flee, he found that a group of savage giants had appeared to block his path. He fought and killed some, but their numbers continued to grow until he was virtually surrounded. As of that moment, he realized that he was like a weak animal being assaulted by vicious predators.
Because of the dangerous crisis, he finally resorted to using a secret magic to break free, something that drained him of some of his life force but gave him a huge burst of speed. Unfortunately, his use of the secret magic only got the savage giants more interested in him, and they began to dog him relentlessly.
Zhou Yixing couldn’t have been more frustrated. If his cultivation base wasn’t sealed, then he would never have let these Foundation Establishment giants off the hook. He would have cut them all down with a mere thought.
But now, his soul power was sealed, and most of his magical techniques were unusable. The predicament had tears leaking out of his eyes as he realized that if the giants caught him, he would definitely die.
“I'm a master necromancer!” he shouted. “How dare you do this to me!!” Even as Zhou Yixing’s voice rang out, two soul blades suddenly screamed through the air toward him, a powerful attack that slammed into him and sent him staggering to the side, coughing up blood.
The more than one hundred savages behind him were all completely focused on chasing him, and there were even two soul cultivators with them, who were eying Zhou Yixing as if he were some sort of treasure.
However, once they heard him call himself a master necromancer, their expressions flickered with hesitation. A similar reaction could be seen among the savages.
“Necromancer?” one of the soul cultivators said. “His soul power fluctuations are weak, so even if he's a necromancer, we should still be able to take him. But what if he's hiding his true cultivation base level? What if he's really in Core Formation, but injured? That means that if we don't kill him now, we could be bringing a huge disaster on us in the future....”
After a long moment of hesitation, the two soul cultivators exchanged a glance, and then one of them called out, “If you’re really a master necromancer, then make some seven-colored flame! Then we’ll believe you. In fact, we’ll even offer an apology and give you some gifts of compensation!”
Zhou Yixing was instantly more frustrated than before. He had no seven-colored flame on him, and because his cultivation base was sealed, he couldn't conjure any. Having no way to prove who he was, he simply roared in fury and then used his secret magic to flee again.
To see Zhou Yixing flee actually left the two soul cultivators feeling quite relieved.
“How dare he impersonate a necromancer!!”
“He can’t get far. Chase him down! If we kill him, the current crisis our Blackmountain Tribe is facing can be solved! Besides, he's injured and only in the Foundation Establishment stage. He’s a gift from the hell-emperor to our Blackmountain Tribe to help us pass this difficult time!!”
With that, they began to chase after him again.
The chase continued, with Zhou Yixing using all the power he could muster to flee. Soon, he was so angry and tired that he felt like he was going to explode.
“I hate people named Bai!” he cursed inwardly. “Everyone in the world named Bai is on my hate list now!!! I kindly told him that eleven-colored flame was very hard to summon. If he wanted to ignore my warning, fine, but why did he have to get so angry when he failed!?
“If it weren’t for him getting pissed off and forcing me to go find souls, I would never be in this situation!”
More and more enemies were joining the chase, giving the infuriated Zhou Yixing no other choice than to continue to use his secret magic to race back toward Bai Xiaochun in the cave, coughing up blood the entire time.
This was a day that Zhou Yixing would never be able to forget for his entire life. Only by repeatedly drawing on his life force to fuel his secret magic was he able to stay alive. By now, some of his hair was turning white, revealing the true price he was paying to flee.
Eventually, he caught sight of the barren mountain where Bai Xiaochun was located. Never could he have imagined that he would be so overjoyed at the prospect of returning. Tears leaking out of his eyes, he looked back at his pursuers and shouted, “You people just wait!”
The two soul cultivators, and the giants they led, got a bad feeling when they looked at the mountain that was Zhou Yixing’s destination, but didn’t stop chasing him. The soul cultivators even gritted their teeth and performed incantation gestures to unleash a joint soul power attack.
Instantly, two soul blades appeared, each one a dozen meters long or more. Even as they appeared, they fused together, becoming a 30-meter long weapon. At the same time, the savages howled in fury, causing streams of qi and blood to erupt from their bodies, a black mist that merged with the soul blade, causing it to grow even larger. By this point, it was fully 150 meters long as it slashed toward Zhou Yixing.
As a result, the two soul cultivators were significantly drained, and the more than one hundred savages all had ashen faces. And yet, they were looking toward Zhou Yixing with keen anticipation.
“Tribal secret magic!!” Zhou Yixing exclaimed, shocked. Wracked with anxiety, he coughed up eight mouthfuls of blood as he again unleashed his secret magic, narrowly staying ahead of the soul blade as he shot toward the mountain.
“Help me, Fellow Daoist Bai!!” he shouted. At the same time, the 150-meter long soul blade bore down on both Zhou Yixing and the mountain itself, clearly moments away from reducing everything to dust!
Bai Xiaochun’s three clones were still out collecting souls, so his true self sat alone inside the cave on top of the mountain. Currently, a vicious expression could be seen on his face; his hair was wildly disheveled, and his eyes were completely bloodshot, as if with madness.
Right in the middle of his palm was a tongue of ten-colored flame, into which he was feeding a seemingly endless stream of vengeful souls. He was completely and utterly focused, and didn’t dare to allow himself to be distracted. His eyes were bloodshot, and he didn’t even know how much time had passed. All he knew was that his repeated failures had come at incredible cost. Because of all that, he had no idea what was happening outside the cave.
“This time it's definitely going to work. It has to!!” The ten-colored flame gobbled up all the souls, and an eleventh color was just about to appear in the flames, when all of a sudden, the flame destabilized. Bai Xiaochun’s face fell, and he quickly performed an incantation gesture with his left hand and then pushed his finger into the flame.
However, the flame only flickered more wildly, and then powerful fluctuations began to roll out of it that caused Bai Xiaochun’s expression to flicker.
It was in that moment that Zhou Yixing’s scream reached his ears, as did the howling of the more than one hundred savage giants.
Then, all such sounds were drowned out by the massive explosion which occurred when the ten-colored flame completely destabilized and detonated!
Shrieking, Bai Xiaochun shot backward, pulling out his Eternal Parasol to protect himself as the entire mountain shook violently!
Before the soul blade could even reach the mountain, the top blew off, and massive flames shot out in all directions!
Flaming rubble and even lava spewed out, completely destroying the soul blade as if it had never even existed.