Chương 100: Where Is His Soul? (3/3)

Shi Yan simply stood there, his breath rattling through clenched teeth. His hands rested loosely by his sides, fingers barely curved, tendons visible beneath the steel-plated gauntlets. His posture remained as immovable as a mountain peak enduring a corrosive storm, boots grinding fractionally deeper into the bone dust with each minute shift of weight.

Time seemed to dilate, stretching thin as warm taffy pulled across ice. The horrific, alien intent invaded his physical system like freezing oil seeping through cracks in stone.

Beneath the cold iron of the mask, Shi Yan's jaw locked with enough force to threaten the enamel of his teeth. The muscles along his mandible bulged, cords of tension rising beneath the skin of his neck.

Tastes like sucking on a rotting battery dipped in formaldehyde, he cursed inwardly, suppressing an overwhelming, instinctive biological urge to violently dry-heave. His throat convulsed once, twice, fighting the reflex.

A low, vibrating groan tore its way up from the base of his throat, slipping through his gritted teeth like steam escaping a failing pressure valve. The sound echoed dully inside the iron mask before dissipating into the gray mist swirling around his head.

His pupils dilated rapidly, black expanding to devour the cold steel-gray of his irises. The whites of his eyes flashed with a sudden network of strained red capillaries, thin scarlet lightning spreading from the corners toward the center. The initial invasion was a shock to his central nervous system—like a bucket of liquid nitrogen being pumped directly into his jugular vein, flash-freezing the blood from the inside out.

His physical body initiated an immediate, violent immune response. His [Physique: 55] flared to life like an engine roaring into emergency overdrive. His heart, a massive, hyper-efficient biological pump tempered by the System's constant reconstruction, began to hammer against his ribs like a siege engine battering a fortress gate.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

The percussion reverberated through his sternum, vibrating against the damaged ribs beneath the gambeson. The sheer friction of his boiling, heavily oxygenated blood brushing against the sub-zero temperature of the invasive mist caused a horrific, localized cramping effect throughout his chest cavity. It felt as though iron bands were tightening around his lungs, squeezing with every heartbeat.

Hold the line! Red veins began multiplying in his sclera like cracking ice as he commanded himself, forcing his trembling hands to remain open and unclenched at his sides. His fingers twitched involuntarily, knuckles whitening beneath the gauntlets, but he held them still through sheer force of will.

Do not panic. Panic spikes the heart rate. Panic opens the capillaries. Let the system process the hazard.

He felt the freezing, invasive pressure of the Jiuli Fiend's will slide deeper into his body, moving past the throat and into the chest. It felt less like a gas and more like a phantom serpent made of jagged, microscopic ice, slithering forcefully down his windpipe with the texture of crushed glass dragged across raw nerve endings.

It moved with hungry, predatory purpose, blindly digging its ethereal fangs deep into his anatomy, desperately searching for the Qi flow that probably reached to the three Dantians to bite into and corrupt. The sensation was invasive, violating—like surgical instruments probing through living tissue without anesthetic.

He just had no choice beside this… barbarian tactic.

His vision blurred at the edges, frost patterns spreading across the inner surface of the mask's eye slits. Breath came in shallow, controlled pulls—each inhalation a calculated risk, each exhalation a small surrender.

Across the cavern, the Jiuli Fiend loomed beside the forge like a nightmare hammered out of old war-myth and bound in chitinous plates. Shadows pooled in the hollows of its massive frame, cast by the dim phosphorescent glow still flickering from the venting mechanism.

Its body bore six actual arms arranged in three pairs: the upper limbs still gripping the blackened meteor hammer and prehistoric bone club, weapons that seemed to drink in what little light remained; the middle pair hanging near the giant rusted tongs, iron flakes still clinging to the corroded metal; and the lower, soot-caked pair flexing beneath its swollen torso like auxiliary forge-limbs bred for bellows and butchery alike.

Each movement caused the stitched leather apron to creak, the petrified faces sewn into its surface twitching with residual animation.

Meanwhile, from its vantage point across the cavern, the Jiuli Fiend felt the exact moment the mist breached Shi Yan's internal defenses. A profound, shuddering wave of anticipation ran through the creature's massive frame, chitinous plates grinding against one another with the sound of stone scraping stone.

"Drink deeply!" one of the voices upon the apron cried out in sheer, sadistic ecstasy, trembling with the thrill of the imminent harvest. Dark fluid dribbled faster from the speaking mouth, spattering onto the shell-anvil below.

"The shell is breached! The fortress walls have crumbled! Seize the throne!" Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The other intact faces joined in a chorus of overlapping whispers and shrieks, their dead eyes weeping tar-like tears that steamed faintly in the frigid air.

For the Jiuli Fiend, this was not merely an attack; it was a profound sensory extension of its own consciousness—an intimate invasion more complete than any physical strike.

The mist acting as the phantom serpent was composed of its own fragmented soul, distilled resentment given form and hunger. As the mist slithered into the human's throat, the Fiend's consciousness expanded, riding the ethereal vapor directly into Shi Yan's internal architecture like a parasite burrowing through fresh meat.

It was a sensation of intoxicating, immortal-like voyeurism. The Fiend felt the scalding heat of Shi Yan's blood rushing past its phantom form, a furnace-hot river that should have been impossible in a body exposed to such profound Yin-cold. Steam rose where the phantom coils brushed against arterial walls.

It felt the astonishing, terrifying density of the man's muscle fibers—so tightly woven and perfectly conditioned that they felt closer to tempered steel cables than organic human tissue. Each fiber hummed with coiled potential, like drawn bowstrings waiting to release.

Such perfection, the Fiend marveled internally, its consciousness gliding deeper down the esophagus and toward the chest cavity. The sensation of touching this vessel sent ripples of greedy satisfaction through its scattered awareness.

Never have I tasted a vessel so exquisitely hardened. The bones are like pillars of obsidian forged in Heaven's fire. The marrow teems with a vitality that rivals the ancient beasts of the old world….

This is not a human! This is a masterwork of biological violence—a weapon shaped by forces I cannot name! Once I sever the soul, this indestructible armor of meat and bone shall be mine to pilot for ten thousand years.

As the Fiend's consciousness navigated the internal darkness of its prey, it prepared for the standard procedure of soul eviction. In its millennia of existence—spanning dynasties risen and fallen, sects dissolved into legend—the anatomy of a cultivator was an absolute, unchanging universal constant. The Dao of Heaven dictated form; all who cultivated followed the same sacred architecture.

First, the mist must slide into the central meridian channel, the entity recited in its mind, following the rote methodology of spiritual parasitic takeover that had succeeded countless times before. From the central hub, I will chart the pathways of the Twelve Regular Meridians, clogging the gateways with Yin-frost to freeze the flow of Qi. Then, the phantom serpent will dive low, breaching the sea of the Lower Dantian.

The Dantian was always the grand prize—the treasure vault of every cultivator's existence. In the Fiend's ethereal vision, a Dantian usually appeared as a blinding, radiant sphere of golden or azure light—a miniature sun hoarding the stolen essence of Heaven and Earth, compressed and refined through decades of arduous cultivation. This was the mark of a high-ranking cultivator, a beacon of power visible even to spiritual senses.

If the cultivator was low-ranking, the Dantian would still appear as an empty space filled with a sea of Qi, glowing bluish-white like captured starlight. But regardless of their rank, the Dantian would always be present as the cultivator's foundation—the wellspring from which all strength flowed, the anchor that bound body to spirit.

I will wrap my phantom coils around that brilliant sun. I will inject my ancient grudge into the glowing core, poisoning the Heavenly Laws within with the corruption of ten thousand murdered souls.

The cultivator's Divine soul, intrinsically tethered to that core like an infant to the womb, will scream in agony as the corruption spreads. The connection will shatter like brittle glass struck by a hammer. The soul will be violently ejected from the vessel, cast adrift into the Netherworld to become my food, and the empty, pristine house will finally belong to me.

It was a flawless, undeniable law of the cosmos—truth carved into the bones of reality itself. Form required Spirit. Spirit required Qi. Qi required the Dantian. To destroy one was to collapse the entire structure. The Heavens had ordained it thus since the First Age.

In a normal cultivator, this serpent of grudge would locate the Dantian within breaths, poison the circulating Qi with Yin-corruption, shatter the Dao heart like striking a cracked bell, and immediately sever the host's connection to their own vessel. The body would become an empty shell, a masterless puppet waiting for its new occupant.

But as the phantom intent coiled violently through Shi Yan's chest, desperately seeking the central meridian hub that should have been as obvious as the sun at noon, it found absolutely nothing.

The Fiend's consciousness paused, flickering with a brief spark of ethereal confusion. The phantom serpent stilled, coils tightening as if listening for something it could no longer hear.

Where...?

It pushed the phantom serpent deeper, sweeping left and right through the torso in frantic, searching spirals. It searched for the bluish rivers of Qi that ought to be surging through the meridians, supplying the body with spiritual essence like water flowing through irrigation channels.

There were no meridians.

There was no ethereal river of bluish light. No luminous channels carved through flesh. There were only physical veins, pumping ordinary, scalding red human blood—mortal blood, bereft of even the faintest trace of spiritual refinement.

Impossible. Is he so weak in cultivation that even his meridians have not yet opened? But then how does he possess such monstrous physical strength?

The Fiend's intent frantically cascaded downward, plunging toward the space beneath the navel where the foundational Dantian—the inner space to store vast Qi—must absolutely, unequivocally exist. Every creature that walked the path of immortality possessed one. It was the first truth taught to disciples, the first gate opened by novice cultivators.

It hit a wall of dense abdominal muscle, packed tight as forged iron.

There was no glowing sphere. There was no internal sea of spiritual essence. There was no hollow space where power could gather and condense. Only flesh. Only bone. Only the mundane architecture of a mortal body.

Impossible, the Fiend's consciousness reeled, the phantom serpent practically thrashing inside Shi Yan's abdominal cavity in a state of rising desperation. Its coils scraped against organs, searching, probing, refusing to accept what its senses reported. Impossible! The laws of Heaven do not permit this!

Where is the lower Dantian? If there is no lower Dantian, perhaps the middle Dantian? Or the upper Sea of Consciousness?!

The intent snapped upward, rushing wildly up the spinal column like a drowning man clawing toward air. It bypassed the chest, ignored the lungs, and forced its way directly into the center of Shi Yan's mind, seeking the upper mental Dantian where the foundational soul—the Divine Spark, the very essence of human identity—sat upon its throne of consciousness.

The serpent burst into the Sea of Consciousness.

And it plunged headfirst into an abyssal, terrifying void.

There was no shimmering golden soul. There was no Dao Heart beating with the rhythm of Heavenly Law. There was no connection to the Heavens. There was no throne. There was no light—not even the dimmest flicker of spiritual flame.

There was simply an infinite, crushing, suffocating darkness that possessed no beginning, no end, and no laws that the Fiend could even begin to comprehend. It was emptiness so absolute it felt like drowning in the space between stars—vast, cold, and utterly indifferent to existence itself.

The phantom serpent recoiled, its ethereal substance shuddering violently.

"Where...?" a lone, horrified whisper leaked from the center of the Jiuli Fiend's stitched apron, the absolute certainty of its victory suddenly fracturing into a million pieces. The voice cracked, stripped of its earlier triumph.

"Where is the core? Where... where is the soul?!"

The other faces joined in ragged disbelief:

"No Dantian—"

"—no meridians—"

"—no cultivation foundation—"

"—what manner of creature—"

"—defies Heaven's architecture?!"

It found no shimmering sea of vast spiritual energy. Not even Qi flowing between the twelve hidden meridians? Not even the three core Dantians?!