Inside the belly of the beast, Yan Zaizen fortified his concealment methods. With his physical body frozen by some unfathomable external power, he couldn't help but feel uneasy. Luckily, his law of mimicry was profound.
Those observing from the outside, be it the Celestial grey-robed female or the old man on Esi's look-alike ship, couldn't discover an inkling of his existence. However, he still remained cautious and patient.
Despite his frozen body, his soul bloodline continued to devour minute traces of the Yaoguai's essence. He could feel his insights into the laws relating to death and destruction increase all-around. Each of his law avatars that embodied even a hint of those laws glowed resplendently within his soul.
Slowly, he lost himself in the profound truths of the laws and embraced it wholeheartedly.
"!" Abruptly, he shivered as if a bucket of freezing water was splashed fiercely on his naked body. A chill, a very icy-chill and dense, innate, and almost unavoidable bout of fear struck him. This fear seemed to stem from every cell of his physical body, particularly his brain.
"What the hell?!" His emotions stirred as he halted his absorption process. The sensation continued to grow stronger and stronger until his body literally screamed with its entirety to do one thing: RUN!
However, his soul and dao were absolutely steady, creating this contrasting reaction between his body and his soul. Luckily, cultivators heavily relied on their souls as their bodies were disposable. An example of this was himself, his body and soul likely weren't created together. His body is the product of the Non-Universe while his soul was a fascinating and mysterious concoction of something or someone.
"What is happening outside to make my body...want to run…" As those words trailed in his thoughts, his lips turned a cold arch. The intense feeling of fear wasn't a product of his Prophetic Sense, but an instinctual desire as if meeting one's absolute nemesis. "So, it has arrived."
He calmed his body down, suppressing its instincts with his Dao Heart. He continued to absorb the contents of the Yaoguai, but this time, he intensified his speed. No longer did he go slows l, instead, he increased it by a thousand times! The pain was intense, his newfound dao soul being pushed to the brink, but he gritted his teeth and continued fearlessly.
Within his firm, resole and cold gaze was a glimmer of combat intent that could scare the very heavens itself!
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Outside, the grey-robed woman still maintained her soft and pure hand on the surface of awkward patches of scales and hair on the Yaoguai. Beneath her hood, she remained silent. An air of solemness quietly emitted from beneath her shadowy hood.
The old man also maintained his silence. They were both using their various methods to investigate the situation. In fact, the old captain had already exhausted all his perceptive means earlier but was simply re-attempting them. The grey-robed woman's earlier words and actions provoked various suspicions within him, doubts he couldn't shake.
The grey-robed woman softly sighed, "he can't be dead, but there's...his...haaa." One could hear immense frustration and sadness in the woman's voice, it was as if she had just lost a loved one. It felt lost and unwilling to accept the facts presented.
The old captain also had his suspicions and remained skeptical. The young man he had followed displayed immense talent and achievement in the World Law of Death. However, what he did was direct suicide and felt unreasonable. It was like a fully grown martial artist who had happened upon a lion decided to cut himself up to bite-sized pieces and deliver it to the lion without a fight.
It felt ridiculous beyond words.
If someone had told him this had happened, he would dismiss that person as quickly as rejecting the belief that he created the multiverse.
That was ridiculous beyond words!!
While they were deliberating on Yan Zaizen's fate, a skyship was approaching from the distance. It gave off an essence of time and death. The two turned their heads almost simultaneously towards the ship.
Both of which softly exclaimed in shock, but for very different reasons.
"They caught up so quickly?" The grey-robed woman said as she was thoroughly shocked. Her Thousands Temporal Clone Art wasn't something easily deduced. It contained an essence of truth amidst falsity intermixed with time distortions. Logically speaking, anyone at a certain cultivation base would be delayed for days while those below would undoubtedly be led astray.
"The Oneuli Empire? Why are they here...could I have been discovered? Impossible!" The old captain's expression darkened. His eyes started to reveal a dense and sinister killing intent as his wrinkled fists heavily clenched. The clenching of his knuckles was audible, resounding like smell bouts of thunder. He wasn't the only one experiencing such a shift in emotions. All the other crew members turned solemn and their gazes suffused with radical killing intent.
If Yan Zaizen witnessed this, he was surely be shocked by their reactions. He had never experienced such profound hatred in his lifetime.
Not once.
"Oneuli Empire?" The grey-robed woman muttered. She tapped the scales and hair of the Yaoguai a few times as if the frozen surface was a wooden desk. "Could it be Oneuli's Descendants?" Her words, if heard by the members on the skyship, would cause many of them to become shocked by her address.
Shrugging, she disregarded the new arrivals as she turned around. Even if they had some skill, she obviously felt very little threat or desire to connect. However, even if she didn't, doesn't mean the Oneuli Empire wouldn't.
As the black, ghastly skyship arrived, Park Ji-Hu, the Captain of the ship, leapt off the skyship and into the skies. His silver skin, bulky body with dense muscles, and handsome appearance gave off an odd feeling, especially with the light within his eyes containing an extremely sinister power. It was as if the death and progression of all living things were decided by a whim.
Park Ji-Hu surveyed the surroundings. According to Yi Seo-Jun, their target was currently at this area. However, as he arrived, he saw a concealed, unidentified ship, a grey-robed figure, and a frozen Yaoguai. This caused him to temporarily pause. His thoughts circulated, but in the end, his scan left him bewildered.
A voice emerged from the skyship, "It's here."
As that voice sounded, Park Ji-Hu turned to the skyship, nodded, and turned to the grey-robed woman. An image of her, albeit distorted by temporal fluctuations, were the images that confused them earlier. If it weren't for the fact that she was currently here before them, in the location where it was, he wouldn't have connected the thoughts.
However, he didn't immediately make a hasty assumption or conclusion. Instead, he calculated some matters briefly. Firstly, this woman they were chasing could be a competitor, only because she was a Celestial! A Celestial would have no need for it, so there's no way she was it.
His sharp, ghastly eyes turned towards the concealed skyship berthed not too far away. Those eyes squinted heavily with suspicion. Even with his cultivation base, he couldn't bypass the ship's defenses to inspect its crew...
After some thoughts, his posture grew straighter, and his aura surged wildly into the air, causing one's sense of time to go out of whack and their lives seemingly controlled by another's whim. It was incredibly stifling, and if anyone below the Heavenly Commander-level were to view this aura without protection, they would immediately collapse into dust, their lives fading away.
"All of you, I-"
SZOOM!!
A piercing beam of sharp, dark, and deathly light shot from the bow of the ship. This beam contained a thick, sinister aura of death. It was incredibly profound, containing hints of the sword, as if it could slice all life away with a single thought.
This beam of light was so sudden, so abrupt, that Park Ji-Hu could barely react in time. However, how could he, an expert at the (Minor) Heavenly Creation Realm be so easily killed?! Albeit a little late, he promptly retaliated with a defense. A shimmering wall of light infused with the laws of time and decay appeared before him. It didn't merely cover him, but it was three thousand meters in height!
The beam of light smashed heavily into the wall! A whooshing sound unexpected from the contact of two devastating powers echoed. It was as if the movement of time in the area was rapidly progressing, causing tempest winds to quickly emerged. Soon, a black and grey cyclone appeared, replacing the wall as the two powers intermingled very oddly.
Park Ji-Hu never expected his words had created an absolutely unimaginable misunderstanding! However, before he could decide further, a sharp black light pierced the cyclone nearly as instant as its formation has completed. This caught him completely off-guard, even more so than before.
"You…!" He wanted to say something, feeling somewhat odd that a fight between experts had just occurred without him stating his reason for being here. With a clenched fist surrounded by shimmering light, he punched out with a defying roar.
Whoosh!!!
The unexpected sound once more happened as the sword, death, decay, and time auras once more intermixed with each other.
The old man stepped off the skyship and soared into the air, he and every member of the crew. Their eyes flashed with such intense killing intent that the world quivered in fear!
The sheer amount of killing intent caused the grey-robed woman to be startled. However, before she could further analyze the situation, a resounding shout echoed in the air.
"KILL!!!!!!"
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