CHAPTER 337 THE MYSTERIOUS AXE CAME TO THE RESCUE AGAIN

About six hours later, the three of them had almost recovered. Of course, they had only regained some

of their strength and were now able to fight again. As for their internal injuries, they needed a little more

time to heal.

At this point, however, the lines from the array in front of them began to fade away quickly. Within only

a few seconds, the whole space created by the array had already disappeared and they found

themselves in the middle of another strange place--a rather dark palace.

Before they could figure out what had happened and where they were, their attention was soon

attracted by something on the palace's walls. There were many black holes on the walls of this dark

palace, and from inside the holes, blood was slowly streaming out and dripping down to the floor. The

red blood seemed fresh and warm, like it was directly flowing out from someone alive.

Without having to confirm with each other, they all knew for sure that the blood belonged to all the

warriors who had entered the graveyard just now. And the black holes they just saw were used to be

the entrances to the caves hours ago.

The rivers of blood kept flowing and converging with each other, until they all streamed as one into an

altar at the center of the palace.

It was obvious that the altar was in fact the center of this sealing array, but the strong smell of blood

had already turned it into an altar for blood sacrifice.

By then, the altar was no longer operational even though there was still blood pouring into it, because

the blood sacrifice had already been completed. As the three of them stared at the altar, a black figure

rose from it and shot out into the air. It was none other than Yates himself.

But he was hardly the same person that he used to be. His aura had totally changed. Although strong

and endless evil spirit could still be felt from him, they were all restrained or rather condensed deeper

into his body. It could be imagined that once he unleashed his power, it would be very devastating.

Ricky knew that they were now facing a powerful enemy whose strength had multiplied a lot.

Now they were beginning to feel that Yates had not only become the center of this palace, but also of owns this text.

the whole broken world of this ancient battlefield. All the energy that surrounded them was being

attracted to him.

Ricky had met the Shadow King before, who was a powerful upper spiritual king. But based on what

Ricky could feel right now, he was certain this Yates was far greater than that. If the Shadow King stood

in front of Yates, he would probably be reduced to a helpless insect--he feared it would also be their

fate.

"It seems that this is the real body of Yates. Since his real body has shown up, he must have combined

it with his replicate. Considering the energy he just unleashed, there's a chance he's a demi-spiritual

emperor already!" Ricky said to himself as he detected Yates' energy levels.

But surprisingly, instead of feeling nervous or scared, Ricky found himself pretty calm facing this

powerful enemy. Not only him, when he looked at Tyson and Kristen, he didn't see a single sign of

panic on their faces. Ricky knew that they weren't just faking their calmness.

But he also understood that none of them was feeling very confident about the impending fight either.

The truth was, they were either fully prepared for the coming death just like an ant seeing an elephant

and coming for it, or they had simply been through too much that they couldn't care less about facing

death anymore. Anyway, it didn't matter what they were thinking at the present, what mattered was that

they were going to face the situation head on together and try their best to survive and defeat the

enemy.

"I am Yates, a spiritual emperor!" Yates announced, breaking the silence in the dark palace. Then in a

dry and condescending tone, he said to Ricky and the others, "What are you waiting for, you puny

humans? If you have no plans on killing yourselves, I can be kind enough to crush all of you myself. It

wouldn't be any different from killing some helpless ants."

"You think too highly of yourself, you evil creature. You are merely a demi-spiritual emperor and you

can't fool us. What do you think other real spiritual emperors would do if they heard about your lies? I'm

pretty sure they will do everything to hunt you down to the ends of the earth," Ricky replied flatly as he

heard Yates' threatening words.

"How dare you speak to me in such manner, you insects? Seems that you badly need someone to

teach you a lesson," Yates said a bit more sternly at Ricky's mockery. But he wasn't really irritated. At

least for now, he still didn't think that the puny humans standing in front of him were worth the hassle of

getting furious.

After all, he was a demi-spiritual emperor, it would be too impulsive of him to be affected by humans'

threatening words. Why would a lion give a damn about a sheep's opinion anyway?

"How nice of you to offer and save us from all the struggle. I don't think we have the courage to take

our own lives even if we wanted to," Ricky answered mockingly. "But may I ask a question before you

pull out your weapon? How come you have survived for such a long time? I think you have been sealed

for hundreds of thousands of years, if not a million." Ricky was quite confused. "After all, you were

merely a spiritual king at that time, who should only have a life span of several thousand years!" he

added.

"I don't think it's necessary to speak of ice to some insects that could barely survive one summer."

Yates had only shaken his head slightly as a response to Ricky's question.

As soon as he had done speaking, he raised two of his fingers and created three blades out of evil

spirit. The blades didn't seem very hard and just kept swirling around his fingers. But they were

definitely sharp. Apparently, he didn't want to waste any more time on the three of them.

Seeing this, Ricky and the others knew instantly that it was time for them to fight for their lives or suffer

tragic deaths.

"Tyson, Kristen, we have to bring the best out of us and enjoy the end game!" Ricky called out,

preparing himself for the upcoming battle.

"You got it!" the two of them shouted their answer at the same time with calmness in their voices.

They all feared death, there was no doubt about that. But since it seemed inevitable, they decided to

just fight bravely and die a decent death in case they failed.

Now, when faced with the evil spirit blades that were coming at them like bullets, they all gathered up

every last bit of their energy and activated their most powerful skills to defend themselves.

Just as the fight was starting, a strong and familiar rush came over Ricky and he could feel that

something was happening in his Soul Sea.

When he realized what was going on, things concerning it came rushing back to him as clear as day.

Back then, when he was being hunted down by the Shadow King, Alva tried to save Ricky from the

Shadow King, but he had failed and even fallen into a deep sleep in the Heaven Melting Pagoda. Still,

Ricky nearly got himself killed. In the end, he was saved by the power of the Chaotic Fire Zone and the

Devourer Zone.

What was strange was that when he woke up, he found that a mysterious axe had appeared in the

middle of his Soul Sea. He had never seen anything like it before, nor did he know anything about it. It

just stayed there, doing nothing, and he also didn't know if he could do anything with it.

From then on, he had tried many ways to activate the strange axe. He had tried it with the power of his

regained spiritual meridian, he had also tried activating it with the three zones, but all his efforts always

ended up in failure. The axe made no reaction to his attempts at all.

After numerous failed attempts to interact with the axe, Ricky had given up. It had gone completely out

of his mind until this fight.

Now he was certain that the axe was responsible for the strange feeling he got from his Soul Sea. But

the question was why?

It had been in his Soul Sea for such a long time without really doing anything, so why now? Ricky tried

to regain his composure and thought about it hard. Last time when it appeared, Ricky was dealing with

the Shadow King, someone really powerful and had nearly killed him. This time, the axe just showed up

when Yates was attacking them. So what the axe might be doing was trying to save him anytime he

faced something or someone that was much more powerful than him. Come to think of it, it was this

axe that had driven the Shadow King away the previous time!

'We might have a chance to live another day!' Ricky thought very excitedly, his face lighting up at once.

Although he didn't have any concrete evidence yet, Ricky could sense that the mysterious axe was

showing itself to help them.

There was no time to figure out the reason behind it, but Ricky couldn't care less about it at the

moment. What mattered to him was that they survived this battle.

"Tyson, Kristen, come and hide behind me. I'll give you cover," Ricky hastily yelled at the other two.

Tyson and Kristen were bewildered. Didn't they just agree to fight and die together? What was Ricky

trying to do, standing between them and the enemy at this crucial time?

"Hurry up! We have a chance to be saved! There's still hope!" Ricky urged anxiously.

But instead of getting them to see the point, Ricky's words had made them even more puzzled.

Nevertheless, they followed his instructions and involuntarily retreated behind him. They didn't know

how and when Ricky's words had started to become orders that they were always willing to follow. This

needed absolute trust in him, just as at the time being, they somehow knew that listening to him

unconditionally could be their only way out of this sticky situation.

"Hope? I hope you're not messing around! Do you really think you guys would stand a chance against

me?" Yates questioned with a sneer knowing that the three of them were coming up with a plan to

escape.

Without any knowledge about the mysterious axe, Yates had every reason to be confident. He didn't

think that there was any way that they could defend themselves from his attacks. Even if he undid the

seal in this space now and they dared to escape by using some spiritual space tool, surely he would be

able to catch the spiritual weapon in no time and crush it with the three of them all together.

Ricky had simply ignored Yates' sarcastic words this time. Instead, he went all out to rush towards the

three blades of evil spirit unleashed by Yates.

The next instant, he clashed with the blades head on!

As he and the blades met, dazzling lights shot out from between his eyebrows. The lights were of all

the colors of the rainbow, and in the middle of it, the mysterious axe appeared. Now it was clear that it

was the axe that had collided with the blades, producing a sharp ringing sound.

But the sound seemed the only terrible result of the violent collision, as the air became still and all the

energy was gone the moment the axe touched the blades. Things had ended quite more peacefully

than they expected. Slowly, the colorful lights started to flow onto the blades. The blades began to fade

and eventually disappeared into thin air. They were all gone, together with all the evil spirit and the

resentment in the palace. In just a snap, all the evil entities were cleared by the blessings of the axe.

"That is impossible!" Yates cried out in disbelief, changing color at the sight. The confidence and

arrogance on his face disappeared and were replaced by shock.

He didn't even care that his attack had no effect but the horrible fact was that the varicolored lights from

the axe gave him a sense of danger that he did not anticipate. He had a feeling that the axe could finish

him off in the blink of an eye. What was more, the axe and its lights had strangely brought back

memories, some very ancient memories to him.

However, he knew that it was not the right time to recall the past, because he needed to run now--The

farther away he was from the axe, the greater chances of surviving.

He had reacted quickly. Before the three of them could do anything, he got hold of the array from the

graveyard, tore the space apart, and quickly fled the palace.