Chapter 398: Letting go of the caught fish

Instead of pressing on with the attack, the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish retracted its barbels. Then, Yong Ke was ready to advance. But she had to think about Cao Yun behind her. Right now he was clearly fighting an inner battle. And she was absolutely certain that this battle would be decisive for the physical fight she was facing. Thus, she also decided not to push forward any further. Besides, the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish didn't seem to wish to fight any longer either.

That being said, it made her very uneasy. In her eyes, it proved that the demonic beast didn't think she was much threat. It was probably thinking that once the young man was dead, she would be next. However, she could see some traces of fear in the Wei Qi around the beast. As much as she wasn't taken very seriously by the giant fish, Cao Yun was. Even now, it was afraid of what the young man was doing. It was all the more reason to protect him.

At the same time, a terrible battle was being waged within Cao Yun's sea of consciousness. However, it was incredibly one-sided. The shadow of the Soul-Sucking Catfish couldn't do a single thing against the fiery arms of the bloody demon. After all, it was the fragment of the soul of a God-Monarch. Even weakened, few souls would have been able to rival with the Drop of Wrath. In fact, Cao Yun was almost certain that only a late Sage or maybe even an early Monarch could do so. Since he had never met anyone who had reached neither of those realms, he couldn't be sure. But no Spirit Warrior and thus no demonic beast could fight this within the realm of the soul.

The Soul Obsidian Nian Fish's mistake had been to try and attack Cao Yun within his sea of consciousness. But then again, it had no way of knowing about this. Almost any other Mortal Warrior would have been killed, having their soul ripped apart from their living flesh. Apart from a select few like Mei Hua, no one else could have resister this attack without external help like Yong Ke's clothes and weimao.

Now that Cao Yun was holding on to a part of the beast's soul, he would never let go. In fact, it was very similar to what Mei Hua had lived through with the Soul Weaving Cyrtophora who had tried to devour her soul. However, Cao Yun didn't intend to kill the demonic beast or even to destroy this part of its soul. Indeed, he didn't know whether this would alert Gu Song. Now he was absolutely certain that Gu Song was controlling this demonic beast thanks to a poison and to array formations created with the spirit stones within this cave. Most likely, a beast tamer had helped him set it all up. But since Gu Song was using poison, Cao Yun was almost certain that that beast tamer was no longer in the picture.

After all, the Wubei Sect, the Huang family and the Golden Flowery Fragrance Institute had gathered a lot of information. And they were still waging a powerful purge of all demonic cultivators. It was highly probable that that beast tamer had been used for other purposes and had been found out and killed. Indeed, beast tamers were few so it was unlikely for even Gu Song to keep a beast tamer all to himself. Of course, it was still possible for the beast tamer to have escaped the purge for now. In fact, it was possible that he would come back to Gu Song for help.

Right now though, Cao Yun had to assume that this wasn't the case. And hopefully, he would be done with Gu Song before such a potential return could occur. Although he had assumed another identity, Cao Yun didn't intend to keep it for long. His goal was to get rid of Gu Song. But he didn't just want to kill him. He wanted to extract as much information out of him as possible. Killing a 4th-grade Spirit Warrior would be difficult enough. But extracting anything out of his soul was insane.

Furthermore, extracting anything out of a demonic cultivator was a huge ordeal. Even Xiao Xuefeng had a hard time doing so against lower demonic cultivators. That being said, Cao Yun had thought a long time over this. And with this new demonic beast in front of him, he was more confident than ever. The slightest mistake could cost him his life. But he didn't plan to make any mistake. He would first gather as much intelligence as possible. Then, he already had several plans in mind to take care of Gu Song.

As long as he could confront him in a battle of souls, Cao Yun was certain he could win. There was still some danger, and he might not be able to extract everything he wanted. But at the very least, he knew he could destroy Gu Song's soul. The main problem was to force Gu Song to let his soul out. If he were to attack Cao Yun's body with his spiritual senses and his Spirit Warrior cultivation, Cao Yun would be killed almost instantly. Thankfully, he had the Spirit Condensation Barrier made by Sect Leader Xuan. Obviously, he didn't want to waste if he could avoid it. But this was an important element in his plan as it was a way for him to ensure his survival if things went south. He had other means to his disposal, but right now was not the time to think too much about them.

Right now, Cao Yun was meaning to create another trump card he could use. Since the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish could extract someone's soul from their living and conscious body, it might be a good thing for Cao Yun's purposes. Although Gu Song was more powerful than this 7-core demonic beast, there were ways for Cao Yun to make it useful. And for that, he needed to keep it alive. The first reason was to avoid Gu Song from detecting anything strange. But the other reason was because this demonic beast would be useful to Cao Yun. His plan had been to heavily injure it first, but it had failed as it was too tough.

Thankfully though, the demonic beast had been overconfident in its ability, which was a reminded for Cao Yun to avoid this kind of mistake against a powerful enemy like Gu Song.

Within Cao Yun's mind, Dian Mo knew exactly what the young man was doing. They had worked on seals for a long time, and Cao Yun was clearly trying to create such a seal within the soul fragment he had trapped. The demon of blood and liquid fire had now six arms like Axiu Qian when he had been using his full strength. However, it still only had one face with the eyes open. The other two faces were there but they looked like they were asleep.

As two arms were holding on to the tail and to the mouth of the catfish, Insight Writings were relentlessly attacking the shadow so that it was weakened more and more. At the same time, the other four arms were forming all kinds of mudra. Most of them had been taught to Cao Yun by Dian Mo himself. As much as he couldn't help Cao Yun when it came to human cultivation, the arts of the demons were very familiar to him as were array formations. As such, Cao Yun's knowledge about seals was probably above the knowledge of even demonic cultivators. In fact, he might be on par with powerful demons who had had accessed to the books and manuals left behind by Demon God Da Mo and his dynasty.

Yong Ke could feel it, but the Death Energy and the Ghost Energy that were stagnant in the cave were being focused on Cao Yun. On the other hand, the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish was feeling it very strongly. After all, it was sensitive when it came to souls and those two energies were corrupted forms of the souls he had ripped apart from the humans he had been ordered to kill.

Through 'Death Reeling' of the 'Death Verses', Cao Yun could control Death Energy. And since he had advanced his cultivation of the Seven Turbid Demons, related to his Po and thus to Death Energy, he was getting better and better at it. As the Death Energy was gathered within Cao Yun's sea of consciousness, he began to create a complex rune above the shadow of the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish. Before long, he began to engrave this rune within the soul fragment itself. As he was working on it, the Rune of Fire was also shining with a terrifying light and the seal formed by Cao Yun was like a brand burning the soul fragment.

Although it had failed to retract this part of its soul, the demonic beast was still connected to it and it could feel an intense pain. After feeling the morbid energies being sucked by Cao Yun's Bai Hui and this pain, the demonic beast couldn't stay passive any longer. Once more, it had been overconfident, thinking the young man would ultimately fail to overcome its soul fragment. Now, it was determined to kill the young man. Even if the woman were to injure it, it had to kill this existential threat!

With this primordial thought in mind, the Soul-Sucking Catfish let itself fall into the water. A powerful wave immediately drowned the cave. By reflex, Yong Ke manifested her Qi and froze everything around her and Cao Yun. Her long sword drew a large circle around them as she was lacerating the air. Everywhere her sword was passing, the very air turned so cold that it became visible for an instant and the water was instantly turned to ice.

'The Goddess Freezes the Heavens'!

Now, they were imprisoned in an ice sphere while the sound of the waves crashing against it echoed within. Then, a gigantic shadow engulfed the entire sphere of ice that cracked everywhere at once. Thousands of sharp shards flew toward the two humans. Yong Ke's defense had been turned against her. However, she had been training in 'Nuwa's Celestial Silk' long enough to know of those weaknesses.

According to what she had heard, this martial art had been created not by Emperor Nuwa but by some of her followers. They had admired statues and pictures of her and had been struck by inspiration. Of course, they attributed this inspiration to her as she had already ascended at that time. Despite her efforts, Yong Ke had not found too much about them, but they were probably members of the School of the Celestial Goddess, like the people from Luozhi who had been devoured by this beast. There was a form of irony that wasn't lost on Yong Ke. The demonic beast who had killed followers of the School of the Celestial Goddess would be killed by one of the most powerful martial arts created by this very school. 'Nuwa's Celestial Silk' was a 5-star Heaven martial art or above.

'Covering the World With Silk'!

Large strips of silk appeared all around Yong Ke's sword's hilt. Then, Yong Ke stabbed frenetically all around herself. With her Sword Intent, her own weapon was multiplied. It was like she was wielding several dozens of swords at the same time. Most of the ice shards falling toward her and Cao Yun were destroyed. But even with her speed, she wasn't fast enough, a few shards passed through. Even then, she took most of them. Her body was covered in an armor of silk made of Qi Manifestation while she was still stabbing all around herself. The rate at which she was using her own Qi was alarming. In fact, she was pushing her limits so much that her clothes were torn apart here and there. No injury was too serious, but nothing was over.

Furthermore, she was using a lot of energy to push back against an attack that had cost the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish almost nothing. Thanks to her efforts though, Cao Yun suffered from almost no ice shards. Only a couple of them hit him. His Wei Qi was not enough to stop them as they had been infused with the Qi of the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish. But no shard was able to penetrate his skin too deep. Even the shallow injuries he suffered from quickly healed themselves.

In his blood though, there was now the same poison that was forcing the Soul Obsidian Nian Fish to obey its master. In fact, Yong Ke was starting to feel this poison. An intense pain radiated from all her injuries and was starting to even affect her mind. Her sight was getting blurry as she was fighting against such an intense pain. That being said, it was nothing compared to the anguish she was feeling about her forgotten past. There was no way she was going to die against a mere fish in an underground cave!

Within Cao Yun's sea of consciousness, the scene was now infinitely calmer. The soul fragment had resigned itself to its fate. The seal crafted by Cao Yun had been branded in its core. Now, there was nothing left for it to do. If Cao Yun wanted to, he could kill it with a single thought. Besides, each time it was trying to muster its will in order to resist Cao Yun, its very soul suffered immensely. The mere attempt to resist was being punished. This would be a terrifying seal if a demonic cultivator could master it. Ironically, Cao Yun would be a better demonic cultivator than the demonic cultivators if he wanted to. However, the idea of using innocent people as resources was disgusting to him.

Even if he could become stronger faster, he wouldn't resort to such means. However, inflicting those methods on those who deserved it or were trying to kill him didn't bother him at all. The methods used by the demonic cultivators were not necessarily evil. The problem was always how those methods were used, against whom and for what purpose.

Now that the seal was well in place, there was only one thing left to do. Cao Yun had to put the fish back into the water. And he did.

Since Cao Yun had grabbed onto that soul fragment, the Soul-Sucking Catfish had been trying to pull it back within itself. If Cao Yun had been fighting a Spirit Warrior, he wouldn't have made this mistake as he would have known what kind of methods other humans had. Unfortunately, the Soul-Sucking Catfish was ignorant of them. After all, it had been subdued by a beast tamer and by poison, not by a soul seal, unlike human demonic cultivators.

The moment it felt this fragment of its soul going back to it, the fish was overjoyed and even ceased its attack. It was now certain the humans were about to die.