Fast!
The enemy’s movement had simply been far too fast for Bai Yunfei to catch even considering his False Soul King level!
“Bang!!”
He barely had enough time to bring both arms up to his right before a tremendous force slammed into them and knocked his entire person away!
The right arm, which had been the area most heavily affected by the blow, was so numb now that Bai Yunfei could barely hold onto his Fire-tipped Spear. His entire body was trembling and reeling from the blow with his face a flushed-red color. Bai Yunfei came to a stop several dozen meters away as he tried to steady himself. But before he could calm himself completely, a sneer echoed through the air and struck at his soul hard enough to nearly force him to fall to the ground.
A soul attack!!
The other person was using a soul attack! And the worst thing was that Bai Yunfei’s Soul Sentinel Scarf didn’t even activate its effect against it!
It took a moment before the warm sensation of the Soul Sentinel Scarf’s energy washed through Bai Yunfei’s mindspace and flushed out the dizziness from him. But that was a moment too long, and Bai Yunfei realized with a start that another attack was already on its way!
The man didn’t chase after Bai Yunfei after his fist connected with him. He instead flipped through several hand seals with great enough speed to finish off the sequence by the time Bai Yunfei was back on his feet. The soulforce in his body pulsated wildly once again, and then a hair-raising roar could be heard behind him!
The one who roared wasn’t the hooded man, but…the armored entity behind him!
The entire body of the armored entity shook uncontrollably when the man finished the last hand seal. As if being stimulated by power, it bent its head back and roared loudly before disintegrating!!
But it wasn’t a complete disintegration. Only the outer layer was stripped away to reveal a three-meter tall skull made of bones completely black in color!
The black skull was made entirely out of condensed elemental darkness. Despite its artificial construction, the details to its body were very lifelike and the blood-red lights that were its eyes were bone-chillingly eerie. As soon as it was free from its armor, the skull opened its jaw and charged straight for Bai Yunfei!
Bai Yunfei was still reeling from the after-effects of the soul attack onto him when the skull was charging. Given hardly any time to recover, Bai Yunfei only realized the skull was coming when he felt a strange gust of wind assault his face!
As agile as he was with the Wave Treading Steps, Bai Yunfei was nowhere fast enough to dodge this skull. Eyes widening in surprise, he was only able to wave his left hand to have the Cataclysmic Seal form a barrier around him while striking out with the Fire-tipped Spear in his right.
“Whoosh…”
A gust of wind blew onto him with a sound reminiscent to a ghost wailing and turned the area dark in light. Not only did Bai Yunfei’s spear fail to hit its target, but his barrier was also starting to sizzle when the black smoke from the skull touched it. Sizzling as if it was being burned away by a corrosive substance, the barrier soon revealed a small hole in its layering!
“Pop…” There was a popping sound as the barrier shattered, leaving Bai Yunfei defenseless as the black energy swarmed in to engulf him!
From the outside perspective, anyone watching would’ve seen Bai Yunfei be ‘swallowed’ up by the maw of the black skull!
Rather than stop when it swallowed Bai Yunfei, the skull continued forward to bring him along for the ride to the ground!
“Boom!!!”
There was a mighty crash as the skull came crashing down into a pile of stone dozens and dozens of meters down below. The black energy dissipated away to reveal a twenty-meter area of black smoke wisps and destruction. Amongst the destruction, Bai Yunfei’s body was slammed into the ground with cracks running everywhere in the ground around him due to the impact. Stones flew everywhere, but whenever they touched at the black energy, they immediately disintegrated into powder!
“Ugh…” From the middle of the stone pile, Bai Yunfei couldn’t help but grunt in pain. He felt like he was in some sort rotten pile of sticky liquid with how the black energy was sticking to his skin and burning at it. The impact brought enough pain to his body that it hurt to even move, and the black smoke was also doing work by counteracting his elemental fire and soulforce!
The power of elemental darkness had that kind of terrifying ability to nullify or lessen the effects of soulforce!
“Damn!!”
Bai Yunfei was furious with how he was being treated by the enemy. His teeth were gnashed together as he tried to force his soulforce into action.
“Bang!”
Fire burst out from his body like a raging bonfire, a faint sliver of purple light crackling within it.
The sudden explosion of elemental fire drove away from the nearby wisps of elemental darkness. In some places where the elemental darkness was corroding away the surrounding environment, Bai Yunfei’s fire was burning it away at an even faster rate to leave behind black ashes.
“Ha!!”
Bai Yunfei roared. The fire around his body exploded in size again in accordance with his roar. Like a wave of water surging against the shore, the fire exploded outwards with enough force to shake even the earth. It transformed all that it contacted into cinders and ash and struck against the black energy surrounding Bai Yunfei with enough force to dispel it once in for all.
This explosion of fire to dispel the elemental darkness had forced Bai Yunfei to use up half of his remaining soulforce. The flames receded back towards Bai Yunfei like a tide, causing Bai Yunfei to shake slightly at the effort. The Violet Soul Ring on his right hand flashed once with light before the stockpiled soulforce inside it flooded Bai Yunfei’s body and stabilized him.
“What?!”
He hadn’t even a moment after that to rest when Bai Yunfei realized that the enemy was doing something and immediately turned to look.
As Bai Yunfei was calming himself down, he turned his head to glare at the enemy above him. When he turned his head, however, Bai Yunfei realized something strange.
His line of sight with the enemy had something strange in the peripheral vision. A single stone was currently in the middle of the path between them both.
It was a stone that had been sucked towards him when his flames were reabsorbed back into his body, a stone about the size of an egg and the shape of a seal.
His explosion of elemental fire had disturbed practically every stone with five meters of him. Either they were pushed farther away from him or drawn closer and turned straight to ash, but not a single stone was left intact after the tongue of his flames touched them. But here there was, a single stone that was completely fine and normal!
This was an incredibly abnormal, but strange, situation…
Even more importantly, Bai Yunfei felt something within the Soul Sentinel Scarf stir when he looked at the stone!
Eyes glinting with suspicion, Bai Yunfei lashed out with his left hand to grab hold of the small stone.
He didn’t store it away into his space ring when he came into contact with it. The moment his fingers touched it, Bai Yunfei’s entire body shook with absolute joy!
That was because several notifications were running through his mind when his fingers first made contact with the stone…
“……”