Yang Kai stood somewhere in Dragon Cave Mountain, his brow deeply furrowed. His entire body was drenched in blood, he looked a wretched mess, and he was staring blankly at a spot not far ahead with an expression of bewilderment and disbelief.
On the ground in front of him yawned a massive crater. Scattered around its edges were countless chunks of flesh — a truly horrifying sight.
This was clearly the aftermath of Xie Li's self-detonation.
But Yang Kai simply couldn't believe what he had just witnessed!
Why would Xie Li choose to self-detonate? Even if he harbored the deepest grudge, he didn't seem like the sort of person who would sacrifice his own life just for revenge. Moreover, their fight had only just begun — did he really have zero confidence in his ability to win?
Only someone driven to a dead end would choose such an extreme measure to drag their enemy down with them. Otherwise, what was the point of self-detonating if the enemy survived? It would only bring pain to those close to you and joy to your foes.
Yang Kai instinctively suspected this was some sort of trick on Xie Li's part — that everything he'd just seen was an illusion.
But the enormous crater and the violent energy shockwave he'd felt moments ago could only have been produced by a cultivator of that level self-detonating. There was no faking that. And in the range of his Divine Sense, Xie Li's aura had completely vanished. He really was gone.
Have you lost your mind? Yang Kai cursed inwardly, a flicker of lingering fear passing through his eyes.
A Return to Void Stage Two powerhouse self-detonating just three to five zhang away — that terrifying energy had swept outward. If Yang Kai hadn't sensed something wrong and prepared in advance, he really would have been dragged into the grave with him this time.
The Artifact Spirit Fire Bird and the purple shield had formed two layers of defense, which had managed to reduce the blast's power to roughly sixty percent. Even so, when the shockwave hit, Yang Kai had felt like a lone canoe tossed about in a storm at sea, on the verge of capsizing at any moment.
Fortunately, his physical body was extraordinarily tough, and his Gold Blood possessed powerful restorative abilities. At the critical moment, he had even torn open a spatial rift to swallow most of the remaining shockwave.
His appearance was certainly wretched, but there was nothing seriously wrong.
In other words — Xie Li had died for nothing!
Yet Yang Kai's brow remained tightly furrowed, without a trace of elation. He had a nagging feeling that something was off.
Unless Xie Li's brain had rusted shut, there was no way he would have made such a foolish choice. Xie Li had always served as a steward of the Shadow Moon Hall, with impressive cultivation. Such a man was undoubtedly shrewd — he would never use self-detonation as an attack.
Yang Kai couldn't make sense of it no matter how hard he tried.
And when he thought back to the change in Xie Li's expression right before the detonation, his confusion only deepened.
Just as he was at a complete loss, another anomaly occurred. From within the massive crater, a piece of flesh that had belonged to Xie Li suddenly squirmed in a bizarre manner, and a streak of blood-red light shot out from it.
At the same time, four or five identical blood-red lights shot in from every direction. Their positions corresponded exactly to where the Xie Family Saint King Realm cultivators Yang Kai had killed earlier had fallen.
The moment these blood-red lights appeared, they all converged on Yang Kai's position. Their speed was extraordinary, and they were completely silent.
By the time Yang Kai noticed, they were already right in front of him!
His expression changed. Though he didn't know what these blood-red lights were, he could sense their strangeness. He extended a finger, and a Haotian Shield materialized before him, blocking the way. Then the Gold Blood Threads across his body quivered, slashing toward the lights.
Sharp whistling sounds filled the air as the razor-sharp Gold Blood Threads cut through the lights hundreds of times in an instant.
But only one — the weakest-looking one — was dispersed, revealing its true form: something resembling a silkworm cocoon. Its body had been sliced into countless pieces and dissolved into the air as if it had never existed.
The rest shot toward him even faster.
Yang Kai's face contorted with shock. He quickly tried to pull back, but the lights were faster still. In the blink of an eye, they had reached the Haotian Shield. The dense, solid shield was like nothing to them, offering no resistance whatsoever.
Several blood-red lights flashed once and plunged straight into Yang Kai's mind. Even his Divine Sense defenses couldn't stop them in the slightest.
This is bad!
Yang Kai's expression darkened. He immediately closed his eyes and retreated his consciousness into his Sea of Consciousness. The next moment, his Soul Spirit Body manifested within that inner sea. He looked around and quickly spotted the intruders.
They were identical to what he had just seen — cocoon-like objects, blood-red in color, hovering silently at a certain point above his Sea of Consciousness.
When they noticed Yang Kai's gaze, they all burst with light, then began converging toward the center. In the blink of an eye, several of these bizarre cocoon-like objects merged into one.
A somewhat familiar aura emanated from within.