C1209 Are You Kidding Me?

In the grand palace on the Lower Continent of Zekrica, Denise held her wand, her eyes sparkling with starlight that flowed in a mysterious pattern, exuding a profundity that echoed the orbits of the stars.

She opened her arms wide, adopting a pose that seemed to embrace the heavens and the earth, while a soft, radiant starlight gathered at her heart. This heart, marked with enigmatic bloodlines, was the core of power for extraterrestrial beings and the crystallization of bloodline essence. Denise could feel the bloodline chains stirring within her, like serpents awakening from a millennia-long slumber, on the verge of unveiling their true wonders.

After a considerable time had passed, Denise, as if emerging from a beautiful dream, set her wand aside and gazed at the empty bottle on the crystal table. Her exquisite face radiated with delight and gratitude.

"Hart..." she whispered softly.

"Your Highness, how are you feeling? Is there any discomfort?" Dogget, the towering eighth-level Starborn warrior, stepped out from the shadows of a pillar, his eyes filled with concern. "You must understand, even within the Shadowkin, there are no pharmacists capable of enhancing bloodlines! The man who left with Elena is surely deceiving you. You can't trust him entirely."

"No, you're mistaken," Denise replied, her smile unwavering. She shook her head with conviction and lifted the empty bottle from the table to inspect it for any remaining drops.

Ensuring not a single drop was wasted, she licked her lips and exclaimed, "The potion Hart brewed for me has been incredibly beneficial in activating and enhancing my bloodline! Having experienced it firsthand, I can profoundly sense the magical power within it! Uncle Dogget, get ready to celebrate!"

Dogget looked on, astonished. "It's truly effective?"

"Absolutely!" Denise replied, her hands fluttering with excitement. She glanced at the luminous moon and declared with pride and confidence, "Perhaps by the time my father, Leo, and Elder Beru arrive in Zekrica, I will have fully realized my eighth-level bloodline!"

The thought of reaching the same bloodline level as the heaven-blessed prodigy brought an even brighter smile to her face.

Dogget was finally taken aback, unable to comprehend how the so-called pharmacists of the Shadowkin had suddenly become capable of aiding other races in elevating their bloodlines.

"Your Highness, there's a peculiar matter I need to bring to your attention."

Dogget shook his head, dismissing thoughts of the apothecary, and gestured toward the crouching Starbeast with a grave look. "In the past week, both my lord and I have been unable to make contact. As you're aware, we communicate with our lord through other domains and Starbeasts."

"However, those Starbeasts that assist us in relaying messages have been unresponsive."

The Starborn eighth-level expert furrowed his brow, sensing an ill omen.

Denise, too, was taken aback.

The vast distance between Zekrica and the Chaotic Stars Realm, ruled by her father, was too great. Even the gaze of an eighth-level Starbeast couldn't bridge such a distance to deliver messages accurately.

Communication was possible only with the aid of little worlds within the Domain and other Starbeasts.

Dogget's inability to reach his father through the local Starbeast suggested a disruption in at least one of the little worlds along the way.

A single disruption meant messages couldn't be sent, severing the connection.

After a moment's consideration, she reassured him, "Don't be overly concerned. We're in Kuvrepros, and with Leo and Beru on patrol, no one would dare stir up trouble right now."

"Your Highness, as you know, Zekrica currently harbors four Solar Spirits of the Everlands. I fear that their adversaries might track them here," Dogget remarked with caution.

"I've considered that possibility," Denise acknowledged, pausing briefly. "I'll speak with them and suggest they remain in Zekrica until my father and Leo have arrived."

Dogget breathed a sigh of relief, smiling. "That would be ideal."

His concern was that if Rong Xun and Xie Bin's group were to depart, their enemies might choose that moment to descend upon Zekrica, leaving them unprepared to respond.

But if Rong Xun's group stayed, bolstered by his own combat prowess and the Voidfarer, he felt confident in facing any trouble.

Little did he know, Xu Jingyao's true target was Leo, and he had meticulously plotted this, even enlisting the help of a Unbound Stage cultivator in secret.

There were multiple instances.

...

The remains of the Starborn had been reduced to heaps of ashes, leaving a landscape scorched black as far as the eye could see. The towering palaces lay in ruins, and the Starbeast that had been tasked with sending messages had its skull impaled by a sharp blade, its eyeballs shattered into crystalline dust.

"Something's gone terribly wrong in Kuvrepros, and it's serious," Elena said as she rolled the powdered remnants of the Starbeast's eyeball in her palm. She gazed toward Zekrica, where the moon appeared to have shrunk to a fraction of its size. "Yu Yuan, Denise is going to die, along with Leo, Senior Beru, Pattinson, and everyone else I brought to Zekrica."

Yu Yuan pondered in silence, not responding right away.

"Hehe, as long as you're alive, that's all that matters, right? Why bother with the rest?" The fiend possessing the Starbeast, its neck adorned with a dark red Bracelet of Holding that had swollen in size, alternated between sarcasm and mockery. "Shura girl, isn't it nice to be alive? Why seek death?"

The Bracelet of Holding had been taken from a cultivator of the Sunlit Order whom he had poisoned. Claiming it for himself, he had only slightly refined it before wearing it around his neck as a trophy of war.

The dilapidated warship hung suspended in the sky above the torn wall. Inside the cabin, Chen Qinghuang lay in a deep slumber, showing no inclination to awaken.

Lately, the Songbird Queen had stopped requesting the Soul Amplifier, yet her periods of sleep had grown longer. Both Yu Yuan and Elena sensed that she was likely processing something through her sleep and that if she truly wished to awaken, she could do so in an instant. Her continued slumber indicated that the current events were not worth her attention.

"To aid them, we have only two options," Yu Yuan finally said after a moment's contemplation. "We can either try to contact Beru and Leo to share the information we've gathered, or we must head back to Zekrica—and quickly."

"Kuvrepros is vast, and without a specialized Starbeast to communicate with, finding Beru and the others is like searching for a needle in a haystack," Elena lamented. "We've already scoured three Domains, and all the Starbeasts we found were destroyed. Plus, there are limitations to the communication range of a Starbeast's eyes."

She unraveled the enigma for us.

"We have no choice but to return to Zekrica," Yu Yuan said with a sense of resignation, casting a glance at the motionless wrecked warship.

He was concerned about what would happen to Chen Qinghuang if they returned at this moment.

"Wait!"

The fiend possessing the Starbeast cut off their conversation, eyeing Yu Yuan skeptically. "I don't care what you decide, just leave me out of it. Xu Jingyao wielding the Flame Spear is trouble enough, not to mention the Unbound cultivator sneaking around..."

"Look, if you're eager to die, by all means, go back. I, for one, plan to live many more years!"

Having fed several times, his devil soul had significantly strengthened, and he was itching to break free from Yu Yuan and go their separate ways.

The idea of Yu Yuan willingly returning to the Zekrica that had once confined him was utterly disagreeable to him.

"You don't get a say," Yu Yuan retorted coldly.

"Really?"

"That's right."

Their back-and-forth escalated, and the tension between them intensified.

Whoosh!

The refined Starbeast, with a swift leap, pounced like a streak of lightning.

Yu Yuan, ever the strategist, flashed a wicked grin. "I've been expecting your betrayal!"

The sword sheath landed in his palm in an instant. With a mere thought, his Soul Power, vitality, and spiritual energy surged through his arm bone and veins, triggering the Nine Celestial Slashes.

"Moonfall Strike!"

A series of crimson sword lights, each imbued with a peerless sword's will, relentlessly targeted the ensnared Starbeast.

The relentless barrage of sword light caused the fiend-possessed Starbeast's sturdy body to fissure with fine cracks, followed by a low roar from the fiend.

Seven vividly colored, venomous streams burst forth from the Starbeast's body, transforming into seven ghostly streaks of lightning.

This was the fiend's weapon of doom!

"I always knew this day would come."

Yu Yuan was not alarmed but rather delighted. He nonchalantly called forth the Serpentflame from his Cosmos Ring. The prepared colorless liquid cascaded from the furnace's Serpentflame, which gently rotated, releasing a fine misty rain.

A colorless drizzle enveloped the area where Yu Yuan and Elena stood, falling upon the seven venomous rivers below them. As the rain touched the serpentine streams, a light smoke began to rise, hissing as if the very essence of the poison was being neutralized, dissolving in mere moments.

The once vibrant rivers of poison rapidly evaporated, shrinking as they reached toward Yu Yuan. Unmoved, he stood with an icy smirk playing on his lips, the Serpentflame furnace suspended above his head. He spoke with a detached air, "The very poison you use to regain your strength was refined by me and poured into the caverns below. You emerge, harvesting poisonous flora and consuming venomous insects from Zekrica, but who knows their nature better than I?"

"Do you find it amusing to attempt to corrode me with your so-called refined poison?"

His laughter grew louder.

"Three hundred years ago, you were fortunate not to be in the Rainbow Ocean, for I would have found you. You would have understood my power, just like Peach Madam understood the soul-corroding Blighttoxin. Do you truly believe yourself to be invincible, a mere Terra Fiend born of the Rainbow Ocean?"

"The profound meanings of poison I mastered in the late period of my past life, the poison pills I crafted, are beyond your wildest dreams."

"You think your venom can kill me? Are you trying to make me laugh?"

Yu Yuan remained as steadfast as a mountain.

The seven streams of poison, thin as a child's arm, continued to billow smoke from the Starbeast's body. The fiend's cries of agony rose from each stream, desperately receding back.

"The colorless fluid in the furnace, I call it Ethereal Potion. Should it solidify into a pill within the Everlands, it would be known as the Ethereal Antidote Pill. Should you ever return to the Everlands or the Rainbow Ocean, inquire about the significance of the Ethereal Antidote Pill."

With those words, the diminished venomous streams retreated back into the Starbeast's body. The fiend, its vitality severely weakened, slumped in defeat, silent and crestfallen.

Yu Yuan shook his head, sighing with a mix of frustration and pity, "Truly foolish."

"Did you use poison on him?" Elena asked, astonished.

Yu Yuan nodded in confirmation.

Elena's expression took on a peculiar cast. "Then how could he dare to do such a thing? Isn't he a Terra Fiend? The Terra Fiends of the Everlands, just like the Star-Spawned Terrors from the extraterrestrial realms, are adept at soul-based assaults, aren't they?"

The Starbeast's gaze grew even more forlorn at her words.

Back in the underground cavern, the fiend's soul attack had seeped into Yu Yuan's Mindscape and was utterly decimated by the Wraithbinding.

How could he possibly dare to employ his Mind Magic to wreak havoc in Yu Yuan's mind again?

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