txolops Chapter 706 The Scattered Demon Master! Recognizing a Master?
Chapter 706 The Scattered Demon Master! Recognizing a Master?
Chen Fan's sword tip was pressed three inches from the one-armed cultivator's throat, remaining motionless. He didn't immediately thrust it in, but simply stared quietly into the other's eyes.
In his view, although this person was insane, he was still at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage.
Having survived in this desolate place for so many years, his understanding of this space far surpasses that of the map in Yuan Lingzi's jade slip.
If he could subdue him, the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks. Moreover, subduing a Nascent Soul cultivator at the Great Perfection stage as a servant would be a great help to Chen Fan when he returned to Tiannan and fought against the Zhao Kingdom's pursuers after leaving this place.
"We'll give you two choices," Chen Fan said calmly. "First, hand over your lifeblood and acknowledge us as your master. We'll take you away from here, and you'll serve us for a hundred years. After that, you'll be free. Second, we'll send you on your way now."
The one-armed cultivator remained silent for a long time after hearing this, a complex look flashing in his crazed eyes. He looked down at the sword tip pressed against his throat, then looked up at Chen Fan, and suddenly let out a hoarse and strange laugh.
The laughter started low, gradually became sharp, and finally turned into a near-manic laugh that echoed endlessly in the void.
"Accept you as my master? Hahaha!"
The one-armed cultivator laughed so hard his whole body trembled, his missing yellow teeth peeking out from his laughter. "Boy, who do you think I am? When I roamed the Boundless Sea, your ancestors weren't even born yet! I'd rather die in this godforsaken place than acknowledge a junior in the late Nascent Soul stage as my master!"
Before he finished speaking, his demonic energy surged suddenly. Ignoring the sword tip pressed against his throat, he condensed a pitch-black demonic blade in his right fist and slashed down at Chen Fan.
This strike was more violent than any of his previous strikes. He poured all the remaining demonic energy in his dantian into it, and the eerie green demonic flames on the blade swelled from three feet to over ten feet in length.
Chen Fan frowned slightly, and Eleven thrust forward with the momentum. The sword tip pierced through the one-armed cultivator's protective demonic energy, passed through his throat, and emerged from the back of his neck.
At the same time, he raised his left palm, and the power of the fusion of immortals and demons condensed in his palm. He then struck the demonic blade that was slashing down from above.
The demonic blade shattered inch by inch before his palm, turning into countless black fragments of light. The one-armed cultivator froze on the spot, a muffled groan escaping his throat, before his body slowly slumped to the ground.
Chen Fan drew his sword, Eleven, its tip pointing diagonally at the ground. He stared at the corpse for a moment in silence. He hadn't intended to kill this man, but since the other was determined to die, he wouldn't force him.
With his left hand forming a hand seal, the Black Soul Banner flew up from behind him, its surface suddenly unfurling, with dark red blood light flowing across it.
A wisp of pitch-black soul floated out from the corpse of the one-armed cultivator, and the outline of the soul could still be vaguely discerned as his appearance in life!
He was a burly old man with a stern face, completely different from the emaciated, skeletal corpse.
Chen Fan used the Black Soul Banner to collect the soul into the banner, then sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and activated the Soul Searching Technique.
The soul of the one-armed cultivator struggled violently within the black soul banner, but it quickly calmed down under the dual suppression of the soul-searching technique and the black soul banner.
Fragments of incomplete and disordered memories flashed through Chen Fan's mind like a revolving lantern.
This person's Taoist name is Sanmo Shangren, and he was the strongest person in the Boundless Sea a thousand years ago.
He possessed the cultivation of a Nascent Soul cultivator at the Great Perfection stage, was a successor of the Heavenly Demon Path, and once had thousands of demonic cultivators following him. A thousand years ago, he was invincible in the Boundless Sea, and even the then-ruler of the Zhao Kingdom had to give him some respect.
In the Demon Abyss Island area, everyone knows the name of the Scattered Demon Master; even an old demon like Li Jiuyuan was once his subordinate.
When Chen Fan saw this memory, his heart stirred slightly. Back when he was disguised as Gui Muzi and mingled among demonic cultivators on the Boundless Sea Demon Abyss Island, he had indeed heard several old demonic cultivators mention the name of the Loose Demon Master.
When those demonic cultivators spoke of this person, their tone was full of nostalgia for that era a thousand years ago, saying how formidable the Scattered Demon Master was back then.
How did he single-handedly subdue the three major demonic sects of the Boundless Sea, and how did he suddenly disappear without a trace one day, leaving behind a mystery that no one can solve to this day?
It turns out he was trapped here.
A thousand years ago, when the Scattered Demon Master was searching for opportunities in the depths of the Boundless Sea, he accidentally entered a spatial rift and was directly transported to the core area of the Chaotic Sea.
With his formidable cultivation, he managed to break through the spatial turbulence on the outer perimeter and eventually landed in this underground ruin.
However, he did not have Chen Fan's golden bowl, so he could not move freely through the spatial rifts, nor did he have a detailed map for exploration like Yuan Lingzi. He could only bump into walls everywhere in this ruin, and survive by devouring other trapped cultivators.
Over the course of a thousand years, although his cultivation level did not decline much, his temperament was completely distorted by endless loneliness and despair.
Through the memories of the Scattered Demon Master, Chen Fan also saw the figures of other trapped cultivators in this underground space.
In various corners of the ruins, in areas where spatial rifts are relatively sparse, and on the edges of several restricted zones outside the riverbed, there are scattered no fewer than a dozen trapped cultivators.
These people come from different star systems, some of whom, like the Scattered Demon Master and Yuan Lingzi, were swept into this place by spatial turbulence.
Some stumbled into this area while exploring the chaotic seas, while a few even entered it intentionally in search of opportunities.
The weakest among them was at the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm, while the strongest had reached the peak of the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul realm, just one step away from the Half-Step Void Refinement realm.
In this desolate land, the longer one lives, the stronger one becomes, and the more twisted one's mind becomes. There are many madmen like the Scattered Demon Master who take pleasure in eating people; some of them are at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, and even the Scattered Demon Master avoids them.
Chen Fan engraved this information into his sea of consciousness, then withdrew his divine sense and opened his eyes.
The soul of the Scattered Demon Master had been completely refined by the Black Soul Banner, and along with millions of other souls, it floated and sank within the banner, becoming another source of soul power at the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage.
Then, he took off the storage bag from the waist of the Scattered Demon Master, whose original color was no longer discernible.
Upon closer inspection, the storage bag, made of some unknown material, remained intact despite being over a thousand years old. Chen Fan untied the seal on the bag's opening and emptied its contents.
The first thing that catches the eye is a pile of spirit stones.
Although the number of these spirit stones was not as large as Yuan Lingzi's batch, there were still hundreds of thousands of them. Most of them were mid-grade and high-grade magic crystals commonly used by demonic cultivators in the Boundless Sea, and a small portion were spirit stones used by righteous cultivators, whose grade had also declined.
Among them, a dozen or so dark red magic crystals were particularly eye-catching!
That was a top-grade magic crystal that was over a thousand years old. The magic energy inside was so dense that it was almost tangible, and even after a thousand years, it showed no signs of decay.
Magic crystals of this grade have long been extinct in the boundless sea; even in the treasure vaults of an old demon like Li Jiuyuan, one might not be found.