Hatred Fire scorched the soul, while lethal poison corroded the flesh.
Under this dual assault, even a seventh-stage powerhouse would find it difficult to withstand, let alone with the assistance of the death qi from Chen Zhou’s main body.
Tuoba Feng clearly sensed how troublesome this death qi and poison fire were. His bronze skin began to take on a gray, decaying hue, and the speed of his blade slowed.
But he still did not retreat.
His blade alone was no longer enough to block Chen Zhou’s attacks. Tuoba Feng took a deep breath, slammed his great blade into the ground, and struck the heavy stone coffin on his back with his palm.
Thump!
A dull, massive sound echoed, sounding like an ancient war drum.
The coffin lid did not open fully, only revealing a narrow slit.
In an instant, a surge of freezing cold air erupted from the gap.
Inside the slit, it was pitch black and bottomless.
As the black qi rolled, pale palms reached out from the darkness, gripping the edges of the coffin.
"Ooooh—"
Accompanied by low whimpers, countless ghosts surrounded by black qi crawled out of the coffin.
In the blink of an eye, nearly a hundred ghosts floated around Tuoba Feng, guarding him in a tight circle.
Chen Zhou looked at them; the ghosts were varied—men, women, old, and young.
Each of them had a solid form, exuding a chilling ghostly aura.
Every single malevolent ghost was entwined with heavy sinful karma, hardly weaker than Tuoba Feng himself.
Despite these ghosts bearing heaven-defying sinful karma, Chen Zhou did not sense even a shred of bloodthirsty or malevolent aura.
They were very clean.
Incredibly clean.
These ghosts did not have the hideous, distorted faces of typical malevolent ghosts; instead, their faces were serene.
They floated in the air, neither howling nor raging, and devoid of any resentment. They were like a group of silent guards, quietly protecting the man who carried the coffin.
'This is too strange...' Chen Zhou thought to himself.
How could such malevolent ghosts exist?
They were weighed down by deep sinful karma yet lacked even a trace of resentment. Though they possessed ghostly bodies, they showed no hint of ferocity.
Furthermore, the combat power of these ghosts was absurd.
With a slight scan, Chen Zhou discovered that every one of these ghosts was nearly at the sixth-stage. The leaders among them even radiated the aura of the second or even third transformation.
One had to know that in ordinary ghost-control techniques, the controller could usually only command ghosts much lower in stage than themselves.
Even the Great Elder of the Corpse Soul Sect, who claimed to be number one in ghost control, could only command malevolent ghosts two stages lower than himself.
Chen Zhou was the same. When he was at the sixth-stage, his ghost servants could only be strengthened to the fourth-stage. Now that he had reached the seventh-stage, his ghost servants could finally be elevated to the fifth-stage.
But Tuoba Feng, who was clearly only at the seventh-stage first symbiosis contract level, could simultaneously control nearly a hundred ghosts at the sixth-stage or even just a step away from the seventh-stage?
This defied all logic.
'Do these ghosts have sentience?' A guess flashed through Chen Zhou’s mind.
Because they had sentience, they didn't need to be forcibly controlled but simply followed orders?
But that didn't make sense either.
What kind of malevolent ghost with such heavy sinful karma would be willing to obediently obey someone, even going so far as to be driven to protect them?
Chen Zhou didn't have much time to think on the battlefield.
As soon as those ghosts appeared, they quickly tore through the Hate Prison Chen Zhou had laid down, allowing Tuoba Feng to break free.
Once freed, Tuoba Feng pulled his great blade from the ground.
With the ghosts protecting him, he temporarily insulated himself from the erosion of the Hatred Fire and lethal poison, charging at Chen Zhou once again.
The ghosts he summoned turned into streaks of black light. Coordinating with his blade strikes, they forced Chen Zhou’s ghost servants into a retreat, destroying more than half of them in an instant.
"Interesting."
Chen Zhou frowned.
He didn't want to drag this out any longer.
He had finally encountered a living person from the Western Region coming out of the Yellow Spring Crossing, and he wanted to capture him to ask about the situation there.
After all, the Western Region's Yellow Spring Crossing had ancient restrictions and was extremely difficult for outsiders to enter. That place was the source of the black spots, and the Eastern Region's current plight was all because of the Western Region.
But now it seemed this person’s tenacity far exceeded his expectations.
At this critical juncture, the Golden Buddha was clearly more important.
"Fine, I will investigate the Western Region's matters later."
"Let's finish this quickly."
Chen Zhou’s gaze turned cold, and he no longer held back.
He expanded his ghost domain to its maximum, and the space within the bone pillars instantly turned a tragic, decaying gray.
The ground surged as countless mounds of rotting soil covered the floor, and a terrifying death qi erupted.
Crack! Crack!
Within the defiled earth, hundreds upon thousands of pale bone hands burst through the soil.
Tuoba Feng had only made it halfway through his charge when his ankles were gripped tightly by two thick bone hands.
Under the erosion of the death qi, the flesh on his legs was assimilated by the death qi, withering and falling away to reveal stark white bone.
Tuoba Feng’s expression changed drastically.
At the same time, the malevolent ghosts he had summoned were also dragged down by the bone hands, like trapped beasts sinking into a swamp.
Under the torrential wash of Chen Zhou’s death qi, the ghostly forms began to tremble violently, gradually showing signs of ossification.
This was the ability of the Domain of Defiled Earth—anyone who died in this domain would have their soul denied rebirth and would instead belong to Chen Zhou.
Even ghosts were no exception.
Chen Zhou raised his hand, and the whisk appeared.
With a thought, the whisk instantly transformed into a giant judge's brush.
Chen Zhou tapped the air, activating the divine path authority of the Yin-Yang Decree. An ethereal judgment platform manifested above his head.
"You bear the weight of sinful karma; you shall face judgment by the decree!"
Chen Zhou’s voice was like heavenly law—cold and magnificent.
The deity began to pronounce sentence.
"Your crime is..."
Chen Zhou prepared to use the Yin-Yang Decree to directly pronounce the other party's crimes and ignite his sinful karma.
However, the Judgment Whisk began to tremble slightly. The tip of the brush hung suspended, unable to descend no matter what.
Chen Zhou’s brow furrowed.
He pushed his Law-Evaluating Eye to its limit, looking toward Tuoba Feng and the ghosts being ossified.
Black smoke billowed from them; they indeed carried heavy sinful karma, but Chen Zhou was actually unable to discern their specific crimes.
It was very similar to the unclaimed sinful karma absorbed by the steel fork.
Yet, this sinful karma was not entirely unclaimed. Causal lines firmly connected Tuoba Feng to every ghost, as if it were a brand they were born with.
'Not their fault, yet it is their sin?'
Chen Zhou was startled.
He even faintly felt that the whisk in his hand was resisting his judgment.
Artifacts possess spirits.
As a ceremonial vessel for rewarding good and punishing evil, the whisk had its own criteria for judgment.
Even if Chen Zhou forcibly ordered it, it would comply, but in its determination—this person was innocent.
If they were innocent, how could there be a judgment?
In that moment of Chen Zhou’s hesitation, the situation below changed abruptly.
Tuoba Feng, who had remained silent and enduring, seemed to sense that the ghostly forms around him were gradually dissipating under the erosion of the death qi. Panic finally appeared on his deathly face.
"No... You mustn't dissipate."
He suddenly began to struggle recklessly.
Splat!
To escape the confinement of the bone hands, he actually swung his blade and chopped off his own trapped feet!
Bone fragments shattered across the ground.
Tuoba Feng, having lost his feet, seemed unable to feel the pain. Having broken free of his shackles, he slammed onto the ground but did not stop even for a second, using his knees as feet to crawl forward.
Dragging two trails of blood on the ground, he frantically rushed to the front of the ghosts.
"Go back! All of you, go back!"
Tuoba Feng roared, opening his arms and using his broken physical body to shield those ghosts, resisting the erosion of the death qi for them.
With his body of flesh and blood, he clashed head-on against the death qi of the defiled earth.
Even as the skin on his back rotted from the death qi and blood flowed from his severed legs, he desperately protected all the ghosts, attempting to shove them back into the coffin.
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