The darkness exploding out of Daoyi's orifices returned and wrapped her up like a mummy. A smirk emerged on Jiang Chunye's lips as Daoyi's screams got snuffed out. That smile didn't last long as she detected something wrong.
Silver light burst out of Jiang Chunye's darkness bandages. As the light eroded the darkness away, Daoyi appeared once more. Her appearance no longer resembled a human but a construct of silver light.
Suddenly, cracks appeared on her face. Likes shards of glass or porcelain, the pieces started to fall off to reveal an empty husk. Once the shards fell off, they pittered and pattered melodiously, but Jiang Chunye didn't have time to appreciate the sound as she distanced herself.
"Where?!" Jiang Chunye shouted as she looked around. Without a second's hesitation, she melded into the darkness once more. She replayed the battle and tried to pinpoint when Daoyi replaced herself with a fake.
"Was it when she donned that ghostly garment?" Jiang Chunye asked aloud. Even if Daoyi had swapped herself at that time, where did she hide?
The furrow of her brows increased. Everything within the sphere of darkness was within her domain, meaning she could sense everything within. However, she couldn't sense Daoyi at all. Her senses told her nothing was inside the sphere, but her instincts told her something was hiding inside.
Immediately, spears of darkness erupted from inside the sphere, piercing from all directions in an attempt to snuff out Daoyi. Jiang Chunye frowned when no changes occurred.
'Was my gut instincts wrong?' Jiang Chunye thought. Immediately, she refuted the thought. Her instincts had never led her wrong before. It just meant that she lacked the method to flush Daoyi out.
Inside the shadow space, Jiang Chunye's eyes lit up. 'Material attacks can't affect souls. Conversely, soul attacks can't affect those without souls. The only method I have to deal soul attack is through the body. If Daoyi has a method to store her physical body and fight with her soul, it means most of my attacks are useless. And the devil dagger can only hit one point at a time.'
Jiang Chunye clicked her tongue. She never imagined that she would one day fight a pure soul as an opponent. 'Still, just learning this fact is a big help.'
A moment later, a small bag appeared in her hand. Inside the bag was Mortal Dust Powder. Jiang Chunye unloaded the powder that resembled countless motes of light. They drifted from the shadow space and into the innards of the sphere of darkness and filled it with a silver haze.
Not long after, a silver specter appeared. It appeared to be formed of fog, and its state constantly changed, but Jiang Chunye could still recognize Daoyi's eyes.
The Mortal Dust Powder was made from the scales of the Illusion Weaving Moth and numerous other ingredients. Everyone who touched it would forget their current self and enter a powerful illusion to live a mortal life. Normally, it'd take longer since the powder would have to spread throughout the body, but the effects would be different if the powder touched a soul directly.
Still, the powder only had an auxiliary effect and didn't directly deal damage. And, there was a chance for people with powerful willpower to break the illusion, people like soul cultivators. That's why she had to kill Daoyi before she broke the illusion.
The devil dagger appeared in Jiang Chunye's hand. She shot out of the shadow as if she had been shot out of a sniper rifle, dagger poised to pierce Daoyi's head. Unlike the body, the most crucial part of a soul was the head.
Jiang Chunye pierced through soul-state Daoyi's head, and it burst like a smashed watermelon. However, instead of smiling, she frowned.
She knew that Daoyi carried an artifact that could release the nine mountains formation, a spatial ring, and a defensive artifact. So, why didn't they appear after she killed Daoyi?
Jiang Chunye's eyes widened. 'Was my gut instincts wrong? Wait, what if Daoyi used an incarnation technique to scope me out, and her true body wasn't trapped at all?'
"Not good!" Jiang Chunye shouted.
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Outside the sphere of darkness, Daoyi, in her usual blue robes, suddenly paled. 'The incarnation formed with part of my soul was killed.'
Earlier, she had used a secret technique to split off a portion of her soul and created an incarnation to scope Jiang Chunye's ability out. She just never expected that once her incarnation entered Jiang Chunye's domain of darkness, she would lose all connection to it.
"Sure enough, I shouldn't follow Tianyi's example and take anyone who mastered a worldly law lightly," Daoyi uttered. Tianyi, with his monstrous strength, could afford to make mistakes. On the other hand, she had much less leeway.
Daoyi swallowed a Soul Calming Pill before tapping the Mountains and Seas Pendant on her waist and releasing the Mountains and Seas Formation. Nine mountains, three real and six illusionary, descended and covered the surrounding kilometers.
She could feel the Mountains and Seas Formation draw power from the Yellow Mausoleum. It couldn't compare to the amount of immortal qi Daoyi could supply it or its own in-built energy source, but it was a nice addition.
Under Daoyi's control, the Mountains and Seas Formation trapped Jiang Chunye's sphere of darkness in the fourth mountain and started to absorb it. In response, the sphere of darkness condensed itself until it was only a hundredth of its former size.
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Despite Jiang Chunye's best efforts, flecks of darkness split off from the condensed sphere. Still, at the rate it was going, Daoyi would still spend a considerable amount of time breaking through Jiang Chunye's defense.
'That's fine, my soul hasn't completely healed yet.' Daoyi thought as she settled down on the first mountain, Spacetime Mountain. Although she was most powerful on the second mountain, Life and Death Mountain, the first mountain provided better defenses.
While she worked on breaking down Jiang Chunye's sphere of darkness, she had the Mountains and Seas Formations absorb the Earthcore Heavywater before transforming it into the sea of the third mountain.
Daoyi didn't expect to finish forming the third sea before breaking Jiang Chunye's defense, but that was fine. As she expected, Jiang Chunye's sphere of darkness suddenly crumbled and was absorbed by the fourth mountain.
However, Jiang Chunye's figure didn't appear, and the shattered fragments of the sphere of darkness started to corrupt the fourth mountain, tainting it in black. Vein-like lines of black started to spread through the fourth mountain.
Daoyi frowned and summoned her guqin. After she became a true immortal, her guqin had already reached the level of an immortal artifact. Since it was one of her three lifebound artifacts, she could perfectly display its power.
The problem became how to upgrade it now. Out of her three lifebound artifacts, the one that couldn't keep up was the Cloudless Crest Link refined by Tianyi. 'I should give it to him and have him upgrade it for me.'
Daoyi's guqin, the Nine Nether Note Guqin, floated horizontally in front of her, and she placed both hands on the strings. Then, she began her performance.
"Seven Sins Song - Sixth Song Sloth Sleep"
A slow, mesmerizing tune spread through the Mountains and Seas Formation. Daoyi even controlled it so that the music didn't leave its range, increasing the song's potency. Time seemed to slow down everywhere the song reached. Everyone who heard the would be overcome by a sense of laziness, so much so that they would want to fall asleep forever. Not even their souls would be spared as they would disintegrate.
Of course, that was an extreme effect of the song. For those strong enough or with enough willpower, they would feel their mind become sluggish and find it hard to concentrate. Like now, the black lines overtaking the fourth mountain had slowed down and even begun to recede.
That wasn't important. What was important was that Daoyi had discovered Jiang Chunye's location. Immediately, she switched songs.
"Eighteen Songs of Hell - Seventh Song Shredding Sabers"
A ghastly light enveloped the strings on her guqin. Each time she plucked a string, the ghastly light would explode out and form a ghostly warrior wearing armor and bearing a saber. Their gumless teeth clattered against each other like broken laughter as they charged toward with sabers poised to strike.
Using the power of Spacetime Mountain, she sent the ghostly soldier directly into the illusionary fourth mountain. A thin film of black lined the edge of their saber as they reached Jiang Chunye's location. With a slash, they sliced through a slightly bulbous patch of darkness, but it had no effect like a knife cutting through the water.
Daoyi didn't give up as more and more ghostly soldiers surrounded the bulbous patch of darkness. In less than a minute, thirteen ghost soldiers had surrounded it, each one slashing at their target.
Just as Daoyi produced five more ghost soldiers to join the encirclement, a figure flashed out of the patch of darkness. Along with the disappearance of the Jiang Chunye, the bulb in the darkness had flattened out as it started to disappear rather quickly.
Naturally, the ghostly soldiers chased after Jiang Chunye. Jiang Chunye, who was running away, sent a glare at Daoyi. "Dammit, you coward. Come on and face me like a woman!"
Daoyi didn't even deign to respond to Jiang Chunye's provocation. She just continued to puppeteer the ghost soldiers and swarm Jiang Chunye.
Jiang Chunye activated some sort of technique as her whole body became black. Even her form started to blur as if she had become darkness itself. With her increased speed, she outsped the chasing ghost soldiers and soon reached the edge of the fourth mountain.
She sped past.
"You may have won this battle, Daoyi, but I will kill you next time!" Leaving those parting words, Jiang Chunye fled out of the Mountains and Seas Formation, or, at least, that's what she had planned.
'These words feel familiar.' Daoyi thought, but her actions didn't slow down. She activated the spatial abilities of the first mountain, and Jiang Chunye found herself in the center of the fourth mountain again, where a squad of ghost soldiers awaited her.
Their sabers slashed through their body but didn't catch any blood as if they had sliced through shadow. The darkness that formed Jiang Chunye's face formed a smirk as she phased through the ghostly soldiers again and fled toward safety.
Still, no matter how many times Jiang Chunye tried to leave, she would always find herself teleported back into the fourth mountain. "Dammit, stop relying on your treasures and face me head-on!"
Jiang Chunye was starting to get desperate. She checked her qi reserved and discovered that she had less than ten percent left. If she ran out, wouldn't she be like a fish on a chopping block?
Then she noticed it. She had thought it was just fatigue, but upon closer inspection, she noticed that her body's vitality had diminished by a large margin. Even if she had pushed herself to the limits for seven days, it wouldn't have reached this point. It was as if she had used a forbidden technique to raise her strength. Only she didn't. If it lowered anymore, her martial body would be crippled, and it would take a large amount of resources to fix.
"What did you do?!" Jiang Chunye shouted, enraged. She could already imagine her dark future if her martial body was crippled. "You bitch!"
Daoyi didn't say anything. After mastering the Law of Death, she increased the offensive power of her ghost soldiers. The black film that coated their sabers would steal vitality from whatever they slashed and feed it back to her. If they slashed through a venerable, that venerable would immediately reach old age.
"You forced me!" Jiang Chunye shouted as the air behind her split across to reveal a black void.
Slowly, a black coffin emerged. The moment a fragment of it touched the outside world, devilish qi erupted and engulfed the fourth mountain.
Daoyi sent her ghost soldiers to stop Chunye, but the devilish qi eroded their ghostly forms and weakened them to the point that when they reached her, it was too late. Red lines resembling veins covered the entire coffin and pulsed like a heart.
Jiang Chunye endured the devilish qi and gently stroked the coffin's lid. "I'm sorry, Jusang, but I need your help again."
Then the coffin lid exploded, and a massive amount of devilish qi erupted and shrouded all of the fourth mountains. When the smoke-like qi cleared up, Daoyi saw a devil.