Trials of the Abyss

A blood-colored beast's eye split open with a crack in a region with scattered marshlands outside the Rock Bear's territory.

Whoosh!

It vanished into the depths of the marshlands with a flash of blood-red light.

Pang Jian and the Gray Ape appeared one after the other.

The moment he emerged from the beast's eye, Pang Jian grabbed his sword token and sent a message to Hu Yuanfei.

"The Fey King Black Stork's goal is to distract the Rock Bear," he informed. "They're here to capture my friend, Yuan Qi.

"Yuan Min plans to force my friend Yuan Qi to use an ancient Fey Race ritual to awaken his dormant bloodline.

"Senior Sister, the Great Feys' weaknesses lie in their souls. Dong Tianze and Zhou Qingchen can easily target and exploit this weakness with their extraordinary divine souls!

"I'm fine. I'm with Yuan Qi. The rest of you, be careful!"

Since they were all on the Sacred Soul Continent, messages sent via sword tokens were instant and real-time.

The sword token on Hu Yuanfei's waist hummed and she casually took hold of it while working with Dong Wenjian's talismans to slay a grievously injured Rank Eight Great Fey.

"We're fine here. We just fear Yuan Min will hold a grudge and send a Rank Nine Fey King our way," she replied. "We're not too concerned about the Rank Eight Great Fey. Our divine artifacts and talismans can handle them.

"But a Rank Nine Fey King is beyond us."

While Hu Yuanfei responded, Fan Chen and Dong Wenjian guided the Sword Boat through the air toward their carefully selected next targets.

They hunted down the Rank Eight Great Feys responsible for robbing and humiliating them one by one.

"Yuan Min won't dare step onto the battlefield as long as the Rock Bear is still there. Especially not without first determining his strength," Pang Jian assured."The Rock Bear will deal with any Rank Nine Fey King that dares to appear."

"I'll inform Elder Mu of our situation," Hu Yuanfei said.

Although this pair of senior and junior disciples were in separate locations on the Sacred Soul Continent, their sword tokens allowed them to communicate in real time.

"Your divine soul is like that of an Outer God, filled with divine consciousness." Yuan Qi gazed at Pang Jian in awe with his ice-blue eyes.

Then, he held the massive heart of the giant Black Elephant in one hand and swallowed it in a single gulp.

His bones crackled like roasting beans, and his massive frame grew before Pang Jian's eyes.

Devouring two Rank Eight Great Feys' hearts had caused Yuan Qi's body to grow larger!

The two Rank Eight Great Feys' hearts awakened the unrefined, dormant crystal bloodline chains within Yuan Qi's heart.

Ancient bloodline imprints, ancestral secret arts, and innate abilities emerged as arcane bloodline lightning and totemic images that etched themselves deep into his heart.

Before long, Yuan Qi's body had swelled by several dozen zhang!

"Come!" Yuan Qi pointed at his shoulder.

With a streak of black light, Pang Jian landed on Yuan Qi's broad, flat shoulder. He felt like he was standing atop a fortress draped in leather.

Meanwhile, shrill cries echoed from the depths of the marshlands.

"Capture the Gray Ape alive! Kill the human!"

A group of Fey Race, unaffiliated with Yuan Min but under another Fey King, arrived on human-made flying vessels.

A Rank Eight Astral Golden Armor Beast, Silver-Scaled Python, and Gale Eagle descended with a thunderous crash as the flying vessels approached Pang Jian and Yuan Qi.

"Our Lord is acting under the orders of the Fey King Yuan Min—" the Gale Eagle screeched. It was so deafening that it drowned out the subsequent words.

It then unleashed a barrage of dense wind blades, forming a storm spanning ten li that surged toward the towering Yuan Qi.

Yuan Qi stood firm.

"Yuan Min doesn't dare step into the Greencliff Mountain Range or face the Rock Bear head-on, even with the Dragon Lair Sect behind him." Yuan Qi scoffed. "The Fey King behind you is just another coward like Yuan Min!"

He clutched the Celestial Phoenix's bone, savage aura surging as he charged into the horde of Great Feys with Pang Jian.

The Celestial Phoenix's bone turned into a divine weapon in Yuan Qi's hands. He infused it with his icy blood essence, with each slash unleashing a river of icy light.

Rank Seven Lesser Feys were caught in the icy radiance and instantly frozen into sculptures.

They shattered into icy shards with a sharp crack.

The storm formed from hundreds of wind blades swirled around Yuan Qi's massive body, but only managed to leave shallow scratches on his towering frame.

Yuan Qi grinned sinisterly, eyes flashing with fierce light as he casually hurled the Celestial Phoenix's bone in his hand toward the Rank Eight Gale Eagle.

The Celestial Phoenix's bone pierced its heart mid-flight.

Whoosh!

The bone returned to Yuan Qi with a heart skewered on its sharp tip.

"Our race once reigned supreme in the Abyss! Even before the four legendary Fey Gods, a mighty giant ape once stood tall, ruling over all the Fey Race!" Yuan Qi roared, devouring the heart before resuming his rampage.

Yuan Qi's bloodline awakening had pushed him to his full potential, making him stronger than the Rank Eight Great Fey on the Sacred Soul Continent.

However, unlike the Scarlet-Eyed Demon Wolf, Yuan Qi was still in the early stages of the Rank Eight.

Bloodlines were divided like the cultivation realms of the human race—with early, middle, and late stages.

Yuan Qi's bloodline was only in the early stages of Rank Eight, meaning his bones, meridians, and inner organs were not fully tempered.

For Great Feys, the fastest way to increase their strength was to slay their peers of the same rank and devour their hearts!

The Fey Race had advanced their bloodline using bloody, savage practices since the beginning.

When he devoured the third heart, Yuan Qi's already massive frame grew to a staggering two hundred zhang––doubling his original size!

A natural layer of thick ice armor formed as his bloodline awakened further.

Yuan Qi's ferocity turned even more terrifying as he lunged at the larger Astral Golden Armor Beast.

The Astral Golden Armor Beast was in the late stage of Rank Eight and was five hundred zhang in length, resembling a small golden mountain.

Its massive body radiated dazzling golden light and its eyes gleamed like brilliant stars.

Although Yuan Qi was slightly smaller, the icy armor enveloping his body had made his aura more imposing than before.

As Yuan Qi circulated the cold energy in his meridians, a radiant orb of icy light emerged from his chest.

Thousands of icy blades, spikes, and shards exploded from the orb, engulfing the Astral Golden Armor Beast.

Roar!

Yuan Qi swung the Celestial Phoenix's bone.

The Astral Golden Armor Beast's metallic body, as sturdy as forged steel, was slashed open with bone-deep cracks.

Fresh blood spurt like a geyser, shooting straight into the sky.

Pang Jian stood on Yuan Qi's shoulder and watched the brutal battle unfold. He was amazed to see glittering lights within the Astral Golden Armor Beast's blood.

It was like a miniature sea of stars pumped through the heart of the Astral Golden Armor Beast.

Whoosh!

Pang Jian glided gracefully through the air, positioning himself below the Astral Golden Armor Beast and allowing its blood to drench his entire body.

When he activated the Qi Nurturing Divine Cauldron Art, the pure stellar energy in the glistening lights flowed into his dantian.

The stars in his dantian brightened, shining with dazzling brilliance.

Yuan Qi used the Celestial Phoenix's bone to decapitate the Astral Golden Armor Beast and extracted its heart from its body with a low growl.

Although initially planning to consume the blood himself, Yuan Qi, having noticed the peculiar changes in Pang Jian, generously tossed the heart toward him instead.

"For you!"

Yuan Qi went on to attack the Silver-Scaled Python.

The heart was shaped like a star and emitted a gentle golden glow. It exuded a thick, bloody aura and was more than ten times larger than Pang Jian.

The vast amounts of refined blood essence within the heart were condensed into tiny crystalline fragments that resembled stars in the sky.

He watched as the heart soared to its peak and started to fall.

Unsure of how to utilize the heart, he simply plunged himself and the Abyssal Demon Sword straight into it.

The overwhelming stench of blood when the Abyssal Demon Sword pierced the heart almost made Pang Jian retch.

Forcing himself to endure the nausea, he entered the Rank Eight Great Fey's heart and activated the Qi Nurturing Divine Cauldron Art.

Then, drawing on his understanding of stellar techniques, he guided the tiny crystalline fragments of the Astral Golden Armor Beast's blood essence.

Pang Jian's knitted brows relaxed and a look of amazement appeared in his eyes.

The Rank Eight Great Fey's heart contained crystalline blood essence that not only held a large amount of stellar energy but was also imprinted with the Astral Golden Armor Beast's ancestral knowledge of the stars!

Generations of Astral Golden Armor Beasts had gazed at the vast starry skies from the First and Second Worlds of the Abyss, spending entire nights in quiet contemplation.

They would absorb the soft glow of starlight into their bodies, refining it into their meridians and internal organs while also further comprehending its profound mysteries through their hearts.

Once they comprehended the secrets of a star, a corresponding crystal bloodline chain would form within their hearts. Rank Nine Astral Golden Armor Beasts could then leave these crystal bloodline chains to their descendants.

Subsequent generations of Astral Golden Armor Beasts would naturally manifest these star-related crystal bloodline chains after reaching a certain rank, eliminating the need for ancestral practices of stargazing and contemplation.

The Fey Race has the unique ability to pass down comprehended bloodline mysteries to their descendants, making written Fey Race technique manuals entirely unnecessary.

Once the bloodlines of later generations reach a certain rank, the secret arts and divine bloodline abilities that their ancestors mastered naturally manifest through their crystal bloodline chains.

The Fey Race is blessed in this regard as it means their legacies are practically immune to being lost.

According to Yuan Qi, the Fey Race in the Abyss all have incomplete bloodlines.

Divine bloodline abilities that are supposed to emerge at a certain rank remain dormant as if suppressed. This results in an incomplete inheritance! Pang Jian realized.

He could not help but feel that the foreign races of the Fifth World and the True Gods of the human race shared an unspoken agreement to suppress the growth of the Fey Race through the deliberate suppression of their bloodlines.

With incomplete bloodlines, the Fey Race became manageable for humans and foreign races of equivalent realms.

It even enabled cultivators like Pang Jian, Fan Chen, and Liu Youyu—cultivators with cultivation realms equivalent to a Rank Seven bloodline—to slay Rank Eight Great Feys with the help of divine artifacts.

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