Spirit Realm

All by himself, Qin Lie moved directly toward the area of raging thunder and lightning.

Behind him, Song Tingyu and Zhang Sheng had already stopped quarrelling, and Feng Yiyou and the rest had gone silent. Everyone’s eyes were glued to his back.

Cold light emerged in the eyes of the Celestial Artifact Sect martial practitioners as all of them secretly sneered in their minds.

It was as if they considered Qin Lie a goner.

Song Tingyu, Xie Jingxuan, and Du Xiangyang all wore indifferent expressions on their faces and weren’t very worried about Qin Lie. They knew that Qin Lie was skilled in the power of thunder and lightning, and that he had just tempered his soul with it.

Of all the people in the Graveyard of Gods, Qin Lie would be the one person who would be safe and sound within a storm of raging thunder and lightning.

Song Tingyu and the others were well aware of the fact that Qin Lie had no equal when it came to enduring the attacks of thunder and lightning on one’s soul. Even the martial practitioners of Terminator Sect, who were proficient in the power of thunder, couldn’t compare.

In light of this, all of them were quite relaxed.

“Zzt zzzt zzt! Boom boom boom!”

Bolts of lightning violently flashed in every direction as thunder furiously rumbled. The lightning bolts mingled together to form countless connections between the sky and the ground, increasing in ferocity and intensity.

A specific area with an incredible amount of of thunder and lightning gradually came into Qin Lie’s field of view and slowly grew clearer.

An enormous, bowl-shaped hole with a vast quantity of thunder of lightning intertwined at its lip became visible. Blindingly bright bolts of lightning as thick as water buckets crisscrossed like giant vines, rising directly from the earth of the Forbidden Land of Thunder and reaching into the heavens.

At a glance, it was as if a waterfall of lightning were descending from deep within the clouds and collecting in that abyssal hole, forming a lagoon.

It also looked as if a tornado of thunder and lightning were continuously twisting and clashing, rotating as it went straight into the clouds.

This thunder lagoon covered an area of about sixty five square meters and was connected to the heavens by lightning. The surrounding lightning coiled around it, forming a ferocious thunder barrier.

As Qin Lie stood beside the thunder lagoon and carefully looked around, he could feel his skin constantly spark with electricity. He knew that the power of thunder gathered at the top of this thunder barrier was enough to shatter and extinguish the soul of a Netherpassage Realm martial practitioner.

Qin Lie turned around and looked behind him.

Feng Yiyou and the rest of the people from Celestial Artifact Sect wore cold expressions, traces of excitement flickering through their eyes.

It seemed as though they were secretly expecting something to happen.

Puzzled, Qin Lie calmed himself as he tried to release his soul consciousness.

A strand of soul intent flew out from his Soul Lake and silently touched the thunder barrier.

“Zzzt!”

Sparks of electricity splashed from the top of the thunder barrier as his soul intent attempted to merge with it.

Then, out of nowhere, Qin Lie’s eyes lit up and he immediately sensed something he wasn’t familiar with. Only then did he realize just how marvelous the Third Stage of Heavenly Thunder Eradication was.

If a martial practitioner of Terminator Sect that was proficient in thunder spirit arts wanted to use their soul consciousness to feel out the thunder lagoon by touching the violent thunder barrier, their soul intent would have instantly been annihilated.

Their soul intent definitely wouldn’t have been able to survive the violent fluctuations of thunder and lightning.

And this would have only been the case for martial practitioners proficient in thunder spirit arts.

If a member of Celestial Artifact Sect, Du Xiangyang, or one of the others had sent strands of their soul consciousness out to touch this thunder barrier, theirs would have been annihilated even faster.

Only Qin Lie’s soul consciousness was capable of surviving something like that. His soul consciousness had endured thunder and lightning assaults, gaining a thunder imprint through that baptism. In addition to that, his True Soul had been electrostatically tempered, and his soul origin contained the power of thunder and lightning.

Furthermore, since his soul consciousness and soul origin had the same type of energy and source, his soul consciousness was able to touch the thunder barrier without harm. It entered the barrier like a river meeting the sea.

In all of Terminator Sect, only one person was capable of and would dare to temper their soul with thunder and lightning in a similar way—Forefather Terminator. He was probably the only other person who could use his soul consciousness to observe this place.

“The Forbidden Land of Thunder is definitely a blessed land for me! I can control it even better than Ye Yihao could control the Forbidden Land of Wood!”

The corners of Qin Lie’s mouth rose, a happy smile appearing on his face. He released a few more strands of soul consciousness that probed the thunder barrier like invisible tentacles, attempting to further investigate the mysterious nature of the thunder lagoon within.

“Eh?” Qin Lie’s head turned all of a sudden.

Inside of the barrier formed from ferocious thunder and lightning, Qin Lie’s strands of soul consciousness could feel something other than the terrifying power of thunder that acted as a thick curtain sealing the thunder lagoon.

Closing his eyes, he sat down beside the thunder barrier and began to carefully examine it.

The thunder barrier resembled a tornado made up of violently twisting lightning. This made the magnetic field inside of the barrier extremely chaotic, releasing extremely distorted waves of energy.

There shouldn’t have been any physical things or other fluctuations inside the field that the barrier surrounded.

However, the strands of Qin Lie’s soul consciousness that had flown inside of the barrier encountered several urns filled with bone ash. There were a total of fourteen urns, each of which had the unique mark of Celestial Artifact Sect on it—the word “furnace.”

The fourteen bone ash urns were semi-translucent, and released a dark, icy glow reminiscent of moonlight. The material they were made of was unknown as they were neither gold nor jade.

Of these fourteen, nine of them each had a soul cluster sealed inside.

They were the True Souls of nine Netherpassage Realm martial practitioners!

The fourteen urns which constantly glowed, ignoring the twisting, turning lightning and thunder that whirled around inside of the thunder barrier.

However, a faint wave would occasionally move back and forth between them. It was clear that they were connected in a mysterious way.

The waves released by the nine bone ash urns that contained True Souls were especially intense, as if the True Souls were constantly being prodded. It seemed like the purpose of the urns was to make the True Souls go insane until they ultimately exploded.

“Th-this is…” Qin Lie’s expression went cold.

Since he was also an artificer, one that could personally forge Terminator Profound Bombs, he was knowledgeable about many terrifyingly powerful spirit artifacts.

The fourteen bone ash urns which casually flew around the interior of the thunder barrier were most likely artifacts similar to the Terminator Profound Bomb, an explosion type spirit artifact. The difference, however, was that these urns didn’t use the explosive power of thunder and lightning, and they weren’t crafted from spirit materials of those kinds.

Instead, the main component of these spirit artifacts were souls!

Souls would be sealed into the bone ash urns and then constantly be tortured by vicious fluctuations of energy so that they would enter a crazed state.

The souls within each urn would ultimately self destruct, increasing the explosive strength of the urn.

Each urn would store the power of a soul’s explosion, and the sudden and complete release of that power was an extremely terrifying prospect.

Perhaps this power would be enough to tear the thunder barrier apart!

Qin Lie understood Celestial Artifact Sect’s plan. The bone ash urns had definitely been put here by Feng Yiyou, and the nine souls imprisoned with them were probably the “allies” who had been recruited by Celestial Artifact Sect just like they had recruited Qin Lie’s group. These so-called “allies” were merely sacrifices.

Yet Feng Yiyou had no idea about Qin Lie’s proficiency in the power of lightning and thunder. He also didn’t know that Qin Lie’s True Soul had been tempered with thunder and lighting, and that his soul consciousness could penetrate the thunder barrier and search for information.

As a result, Feng Yiyou had not been the slightest bit concerned about someone discovering the secret within. Feng Yiyou was probably gloating silently, waiting for Qin Lie to die to the thunder barrier and have his True Soul sealed within a bone ash urn as another sacrifice.

“So that’s how it is.” Qin Lie understood the entirety of Feng Yiyou and Celestial Artifact Sect’s plans.

Now he knew why they weren’t in a hurry to recover their soul consciousness and check the traps that Feng Yiyou had placed. Qin Lie concentrated his soul and consolidated his dispersed wisps of soul consciousness.

Having put all the pieces together, Qin Lie slowly used his soul consciousness to pass through the thunder barrier and fly deeper into its depths.

When he did, he suddenly sensed several faint soul fluctuations, making him extremely excited.

The numerous souls that the fluctuations came from were extraordinarily ancient, devoid of memories, consciousness, or residual thoughts. They were just a cluster of pure, flawless souls that, like a pool of crystal clear water, contained no impurities.

Qin Lie knew exactly what this meant—these soul crystals might be of the highest grade possible!

When he had been hunting spirit beasts with Xie Jingxuan in the past, Liang Zhong taught Qin Lie about soul crystals.

Soul crystals and spirit stones were similar in function. While spirit stones contained spirit energy, soul crystals contained soul energy.

Higher realm martial practitioners were more attracted to the possibility of obtaining soul crystals that could nourish their soul since they could be of enormous benefit to their cultivation.

From the Netherpassage Realm onward, martial practitioners also had to cultivate their True Souls. Every realm after it represented a qualitative growth of the soul.

Improving the quality of a soul was many times harder than increasing spirit energy and also much slower. There were many ways to increase spirit energy, but very few ways to improve the quality of a soul.

Soul crystals were one of the few ways in which one could improve the soul. These crystals originated from the souls of powerful beasts and living beings which, after being refined, could be condensed into a crystal that contained their soul energy.

If a soul crystal wasn’t pure, their insides would be muddled with impurities or residual memories. Even soul consciousness could linger. Therefore, impure soul crystals were a lot of effort and trouble to use and also required the user to cleanse themselves twice after each use. It would waste a lot of time and energy.

Soul crystals devoid of memories, consciousness, and residual thoughts, however, were truly precious.

Like drinking water, a True Soul could directly use this kind of soul crystal. Energy extracted from such a soul crystal would be absolutely pure.

If a Netherpassage Realm martial practitioner were to use such a pure soul crystal to nourish their True Soul with soul energy, breaking through to the next realm definitely wouldn’t be a dream.

“I’m afraid that, in this world, only thunder and lightning this violent could possibly refine soul crystals this pure!”

Qin Lie examined the pure soul fluctuations coming from the thunder lagoon and was certain that there were soul crystals inside of it. This realization immediately made him jump for joy.

At this time, the soul consciousness he had released already began to show signs of fatigue.

Qin Lie gradually retracted his soul consciousness without venturing deeper into the thunder lagoon. After all, he was in no hurry to fight the thunder spirit.

Qin Lie stood up, opened his eyes, and turned around to look at Celestial Artifact’s Feng Yiyou and those beside him.

“This place is too dangerous. I’m afraid I can’t think of any way to enter. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to cooperate.” Qin Lie’s expression was solemn as he shook his head and sighed. “Let’s give up here, Du Xiangyang.”

“Okay. If it’s too dangerous, let’s forget about it,” Du Xiangyang agreed, nodding his head.

He knew that Qin Lie had definitely discovered something.

“Let us take our leave. We will withdraw and entrust this area to our friends from Celestial Artifact Sect for exploration.” Qin Lie began to walk away.

“Young Sect Master!” Zhang Sheng raised his head, his eyes cold and dark.

The other martial practitioners of Celestial Artifact Sect all looked at Feng Yiyou, killing intent clearly cascading from their bodies.

“My friends, don’t be in such a hurry to leave!” Feng Yiyou shouted.