Wooooo……
As the wailing sounds echoed, faint points of milky-white and dark crimson light began to flare up across the battlefield.
These points of light were intensely bright, and some even bore the blurry outline of a human face at their center. The surrounding Wizards cried out in alarm—for they recognized among them the spirits of their own loved ones and friends!
"Souls! This is a magical array specifically targeting the souls of the fallen!"
A Wizard in the distance immediately shouted, "Such an enormous range, and it's indestructible… I feel like I've seen this somewhere before…"
These milky-white and dark crimson points of light seemed to be drawn by an immense force, streaming one after another toward the blood-colored barrier at the array's center.
Sssss!
The moment the soul-fragments touched the blood-colored barrier, they melted into it as if water merging with milk.
The blood-colored barrier accepted everything without discrimination—whether the soul of an apprentice or that of a full Wizard, whether a Dark Wizard or a White Wizard—it absorbed them all in vast quantities.
As more and more souls were consumed, the blood-colored membrane gradually darkened, until at last it transformed into a massive, dark-crimson defensive grand array.
"Targeting souls! This is magic explicitly forbidden by the White Wizard Alliance! And he dares to harvest the souls of Wizards?! This is the gravest possible sacrilege!!!"
A white-bearded Wizard's eyes turned red with fury. Just moments ago, he had watched with his own eyes as the soul of the person he loved was swallowed by that sinister barrier. Even without thinking, he knew that whatever Leilin was collecting these souls for, it could not possibly be anything good.
"Destroy it! Now!"
The sinister black array sent a chill through every Wizard on the battlefield. Neither Dark Wizards nor White Wizards wanted their souls to be wrenched from their bodies after death and put to some unknown use.
A barrage of ice arrows, fireballs, eerie soul magic, and radiant light-system spells hammered down on the rune-covered structure like bombs.
BOOM!
Under the Wizards' combined assault, the structure was quickly reduced to ash, but the black runes remained, branded deep into the void itself. Even the residual shockwaves from the clash between two Second-rank Wizards could not scratch them.
"I remember now! This is the Myriad Spirits Grand Array: the Rite of Hades!!!" the Wizard who had first recognized the array's function shouted again.
"Even in the ancient era, this was classified among the forbidden arrays! It absorbs the soul energy of every combatant killed within its boundaries, and because it receives a sliver of Hades' protection, it cannot be destroyed before the array's duration expires…"
"I've heard of this array too! But wasn't it supposed to be lost forever?"
The surrounding Wizards ceased their attacks and stared at the dark-crimson barrier at the heart of the Four Seasons Garden with fear in their eyes.
The colossal black array rumbled on ceaselessly, drawing in torrents of souls and feeding them into the barrier. This bizarre spectacle was enough to make even the magical creatures outside the barrier hesitate in their advance.
The entire battlefield fell silent. Dark Wizards and White Wizards alike—even the two Second-rank Wizards locked in combat—split off a fraction of their attention to watch the blood-red barrier's every movement.
Inside the blood-red barrier.
Leilin gazed at the silvery-white flame in his hand, a smile forming on his face.
"Power," he murmured softly.
The Judgment Eye contract with Coben—he had never intended to honor it from the very beginning. Everything he had done was for this very thing in his hand!
The promise of guaranteed admission to the Night Tower had been nothing but a smokescreen. Placing himself under another faction's protection—how could that ever compare to relying solely on himself? Freedom and satisfaction came only from one's own strength.
As for the Judgment Eye contract? In Leilin's eyes, it was nothing but a joke.
Using a solution distilled from the Filth Bird's feathers, he had easily wiped away every trace of the contract's binding marks from his body.
Though the Filth Bird feather solution existed in only a single dose, Leilin possessed plenty of Hallucinatory Void Flowers. These flowers possessed a truly wondrous property: through simple processing, they could simulate the composition of virtually any complex substance. It was precisely because of this that they served as an indispensable core ingredient in many ancient potions.
After the Giant had delivered the Filth Bird feather solution to Leilin with eager anticipation, Leilin had confirmed the item's authenticity but refrained from using it immediately. Instead, leveraging the Chip's capabilities, he had meticulously recorded the solution's complete composition.
Then, through repeated experiments and the Chip's atomic microscope to assist him, Leilin had successfully used the Hallucinatory Void Flower's unique properties to replicate the exact composition of the Filth Bird feather solution.
What followed was the natural course of events.
Possessing the Formation Spirit's seven-star authority, Leilin had quietly inscribed the runes of the Myriad Spirits Grand Array across various structures throughout the grounds, laying the groundwork for today.
And the array rune patterns and energy-point layout for the Myriad Spirits Grand Array had been obtained from the Book of the Great Serpent.
According to the records of the Eye of Comoin, for Leilin to break through to the Second-rank Warlock, he would need to burn a vast quantity of Spiritual Power to stimulate his advanced Meditation Method into a breakthrough, and in doing so, drive his own advancement forward.