The Soul-Devouring Insects, an ancient exotic species, had been cultivated by Yang Kai for a long time now, and had even been nourished once with a rare treasure like the Insect-Carving Stone. The power they could unleash today was incomparable to what they had possessed in the beginning.
They could now easily devour the Divine Sense of Holy King Realm cultivators and even cause significant interference to Return to Void Realm experts.
However, Yang Kai rarely deployed them. For ordinary enemies, he could kill them effortlessly, and for truly powerful foes, the Soul-Devouring Insects couldn't accomplish much either. As a result, they were called upon very seldom under his command.
That didn't mean the Soul-Devouring Insects were useless. Their true strength lay in large-scale slaughter.
And right now, they were perfectly suited to the task.
What the Soul-Devouring Insects loved to devour most was the power of Divine Sense. Lu Ye could only blame his own misfortune — the soul-sealing secret technique he had refined using his own powers was virtually unstoppable under normal circumstances, but this time he had run headlong into the very things that countered him. The World-Destroying Demon Eye and the Soul-Devouring Insects — was there anything that wasn't the nemesis of the Myriad Poison Evil Gu?
In the blink of an eye, the swarm of Soul-Devouring Insects flew right up to their target. Even while bathed in the World-Destroying Golden Light, the blood-red cocoon had merely struggled weakly. But the moment the Soul-Devouring Insects appeared, it began trembling uncontrollably, as if it had encountered its natural predator.
The Soul-Devouring Insects paid no heed to its terror. Under Yang Kai's control, they surged toward the Myriad Poison Evil Gu en masse.
Crack, crack, crack — sounds like something being gnawed apart echoed through the void.
The Soul-Devouring Insects arrived quickly and departed just as fast. In mere moments they retreated along the same path, heading back toward the Seven-Colored Treasure Island. The Myriad Poison Evil Gu, which had been enveloped in the World-Destroying Golden Light moments before, had vanished without a trace.
It had clearly been devoured clean.
Yang Kai swept his spiritual sense through his consciousness, confirming that no hidden dangers remained within his sea of consciousness. Only then did he nod slightly and release his Soul Spirit body.
Meanwhile, more than two hundred li away from Dragon Cave Mountain, in the Xie family headquarters, a young man who had been sitting cross-legged in meditation — one with a delicate, refined appearance — suddenly paled and spat out a mouthful of blood mist, his face filled with shock and disbelief. He blurted out, "How is this possible?!"
This man was none other than Lu Ye.
He was clever — or perhaps simply cautious by nature. He had not participated in this assault on Dragon Cave Mountain at all, choosing instead to remain behind at the Xie family headquarters, calmly awaiting news. After all, if the plan succeeded, his presence wouldn't matter; and if it failed, his going there wouldn't help either.
With this reasoning, Lu Ye had watched from a safe distance the entire time.
But just now, an inexplicable pang of dread had struck him — one of the Myriad Poison Evil Gu he relied on most had been destroyed! This particular Evil Gu had been planted on Xie Li of the Xie family, and it had cost Lu Ye considerable effort. After all, Xie Li was a Return to Void Realm Stage Two expert, and secretly tampering with him without detection was no simple feat.
To accomplish it, Lu Ye had even sacrificed a sliver of his Origin Soul Essence.
Now that his Origin Soul Essence had vanished, its master naturally suffered a degree of backlash. The injuries were not severe, but not light either — a month or two of recuperation would be required.
Lu Ye's expression twisted ferociously in an instant. Something that was supposed to be foolproof had gone wrong. And from the faint traces of information the Myriad Poison Evil Gu had relayed before being destroyed, the one responsible was Yang Kai himself.
As for what method he had used, Lu Ye had no way of knowing. No matter how powerful his secret techniques were, he could not peer into the conditions within Yang Kai's sea of consciousness.
"Good, good, good!" Lu Ye let out a low, sinister laugh. "This seat has underestimated you. A mere Holy King Realm cultivator managing to wound me — it seems I won't be bored in the future after all. Interesting."
He muttered to himself for a moment before his expression turned dark and cold. He snorted again: "A bunch of useless trash — incapable of achieving anything but always managing to ruin things. If this seat hadn't seized a new body and started cultivating afresh, why would I ever have needed them? It seems this place is no longer safe to stay. Very well…"
As he spoke, Lu Ye rose to his feet and slipped away from the Xie family headquarters without a sound, vanishing in a random direction.
Though he held the title of Young Master of Flowing Cloud Valley, he couldn't care less about it. After seizing a body and returning to Flowing Cloud Valley, he had already brought the entire valley under his control. To cultivate his dark arts, ninety percent of the valley's disciples had been sacrificed in blood rituals — even the relatives of the body he now inhabited had not been spared.
Flowing Cloud Valley was now essentially deserted. He had no intention of going back.
As long as he had his methods, the Dark Star was vast enough for him to go anywhere he pleased. The priority was to find a suitable location to recover his cultivation. As for Yang Kai — there would come a day when he settled that score. He still refused to believe that the treasure had been refined by Yang Kai. After all, Yang Kai's cultivation was far too low; even a Void King Realm expert would need several years to refine something like that.
He must have hidden it somewhere!
That was what Lu Ye assumed, but he could never have imagined that Yang Kai possessed a heaven-and-earth treasure like the Warm Divine Lotus! Yang Kai truly did not have the ability to refine the object, but the Warm Divine Lotus had absorbed it instead. It was precisely by absorbing the vast energy within that mysterious crystal that the Warm Divine Lotus had evolved in one leap to its final seven-colored form, granting Yang Kai the secret art of lotus manifestation.