“The souls of the damned are unruly tonight, what could have affected them this much, the time of the reaping has not yet come.”

A man holding a scythe along with an old-looking lamp with a candle was looking out into the murky darkness. There he could hear the usual screams and lamentations of the spirits. The land before him was desolate, devoid of any living beings.

While to any other sect such a place would have meant certain death to his Shadow Phantom Sect it was the source of their power. Even now a colorless spirit was floating around this man and he still recalled the time that he had captured it to reach the core formation stage.

The people here had developed strange arts to live together with these rage-filled beings. A vengeful spirit was formed when someone’s life was taken abruptly and they still had longing for this world. The longer such a spirit became the more probable the creation of its damned form was.

These spirits longed for life and anything that had it. Thus they would quickly gravitate towards any living beings in the vicinity. Only if one could alter their spiritual energy with the correct techniques would they be safe. Otherwise, the ravenous evil spirits that roamed the area would chase them down and swallow all of their essences.

This man was one of the watchers of this desolate area. Not even nascent soul masters were powerful enough to protect themselves fully from the ghostly energy thus their lands didn’t see much bloodshed. Besides the phantoms and their sect that was shrouded in many layers of protective barriers and illusionary ones, there was not much here.

While the ghostly cultivators aren't that strong they had enough freedom to reach to the height of a middle sized sect. They didn’t wander out from their lands too often as the resources that the other sects possessed didn’t really progress their cultivation realm.

They also lacked many natural resources besides the thick layer of ghostly energies that were hard to handle. Thus even though their life was shrouded in darkness they didn’t really care about the dealings of the other sects and remained truly neutral.

This caused information not to travel very far and thus they were mostly unaware of the current state of the empire. A few days ago there had been a strange incident in these lands that caused the spirits to act strangely. This man here was dispatched as the more prominent elders were far too busy with their own problems to even care.

“The spirits… they are angry… has someone breached the sanctum?”

The man here was only a core formation elder and his spiritual sense didn’t reach far. But after getting this close he could sense that something was happening, someone was battling with the spirits. At first, he thought that perhaps a cultivator from the other sects had been unlucky and lost his way here.

“No, how could this be… the spirits are being altered? Their soul energy is shifting…”

The area with the phantoms was shrouded in greenish energy but there was a pulsing light slowly forming in the middle. It looked to be dark crimson and there were several beings in the middle.

This cultivator had quirky techniques that allowed him to peek through the thick mist surrounding this area. He could see that the people there were different than your usual cultivator. Their skin was all red and instead of ears, they seemed to have something similar to bat ears.

During this very moment, their mouths were gaping wide open. It looked bizarre as what would normally be a human’s jaw was part of the mouth and wide open. Their mouths parted at this area to produce a large toothy maw that was somehow gobbling up the angry spirits.

“Demonic cultivators? Why are there so many… I must alert the elders!”

The man quickly pulled out his communication jade to send the message but before he could go with it he felt a presence next to him. With all his might he moved his scythe to his side only for it to be hit by something hard.

This hard thing was much stronger than he anticipated. The scythe that had phantom energies gathered around it snapped in half while he was tossed to the side by the attacker. His arm that was previously holding the scythe was in a world of hurt but even while flying through the air he kept his eyes on the attacker.

It was one of the red-skinned creatures that he saw eating the souls of the damned. Its hand had elongated nails that were enhanced with somebody refining techniques. Even before he could gather his footing the creature attacked once more.

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Large wings sprouted from its back as it propelled itself towards his position. The quickness this creature had was above what he was capable of. The communication jade that he was clutching in his good hand was quickly used. Even though he would surely die the people at his sect would be alerted to their presence.

Soon the man’s head was flying through the air. Yet even though his flesh had failed this was not quite the end to his existence. The core that he possessed was a phantom core, through which he would be able to remain in soul form for a short amount of time. It was a lesser form of what a nascent soul master was capable of.

While his form was similar to a vengeful spirit, if he managed to find a new host body he would be able to keep his life. What he needed to do now is to quickly return to the sect ground, being a core formation expert he would be given a replacement body from one of the lesser sect members.

While the person’s soul would be absorbed by his, the sect would be given back a stronger more experienced member to rely on. This was not something one could do repeatedly but the first time always had the biggest chance of being successful.

‘I must flee before I lose myself!’

The man’s spirit jolted towards his sect ground yet the monster that had decapitated him didn’t seem fooled. It was as if he could see the soul escaping from the body and continued the chase. Just like with the other souls the creature opened up its mouth to gobble him up.

“This is a delicious hunt, there are so many of them here, ripe for the taking.”

Soon the cultivator’s soul had been gobbled by this strange invader. He licked his lips as the mouth returned to something that looked more human in nature. The creatures that were gorging themselves on the vengeful souls soon gathered together. The body of the man who was beheaded was grasping something in his hand which was quickly discovered by them.

“They might know that we are here.”

“Does it matter? The hunt has only started, let them get ready, it will only make their flesh sweeter and souls taste better. Let their souls be devoured by fear while we devour this appetizer here.”

All of the red-skinned creatures here started to chuckle as they thought about sinking their teeth into their prey. The souls of the damned were quite the meal to them and the main reason why they chose to go towards these lands first.

….

‘I should be arriving soon…’

After evading the pale grasp of the voluptuous ladies he was close to reaching the lands of the Shadow Phantom Sect. This middle sized sect was not that prominent, they mostly remained in their lands where their powers were the strongest.

This wasn’t something out of the ordinary. There were many sects that gathered to places of power and just defended their location from others. Not everyone could boast universal power whenever they traveled. The cultivators tended to alter their techniques depending on the places they trained in, these just occupied a place with some strange phantoms on it.

‘There is not much information about this place, but there might be something else that is keeping the decrepit souls trapped here.’

Kuo had given him a report but there was not much known about this place. Universally everyone agreed that the souls were produced from some battle that took place many thousands of years ago, perhaps even before the last war between the empires.

But from Zhang Dong’s knowledge, there should be something making the souls stay. Perhaps some creature that had grown in energy past these many years or some kind of strange mineral. There were some options that could aid with his current cultivation problem yet for that to happen he would probably take away the protection from this Shadow Phantom Sect that was relying on the evil spirits as a natural repellent.

‘They sound like a semi demonic sect for playing with vengeful spirits which would make things easier. Nevertheless, I need to get stronger and those invaders are already here.’

He didn’t like the fact that he would need to strip the people here of their natural resources yet it might have been the only way for the empire to survive. If the invaders didn’t get to them, then there also was Wang Long that would probably continue killing people until he had enough spirit points to ascend into the immortal stage.

For that simple fact, he might have to ignore his strong sense of morality and look at the bigger picture. What he could do was simply tell them to relocate towards either his sect or the Long Clan or Heavenly Crane Sect. Besides his own people, he believed that those two factions would be able to defend themselves for the longest.

“Hm, looks similar to those dark lands in that other empire.”

Finally, he was here, the whole place was shrouded in dark and the clouds were very thick. Regretfully even though the clouds were dark it didn’t seem that there was any lightning energy hidden in them. It wasn’t a weather-based phenomenon but an alteration due to the strong vengeful spirit energy that made everything be covered in gray mist.

Before going in he glanced onto his map. Thanks to it he could somewhat tell where he would find the invaders. It wasn’t perfect but from what he could tell they were moving towards where the main city of this sect should be.

“Guess the vengeful spirits can’t stop their advances?”

Normally a body refiner would have more trouble with phantoms. These creatures that were composed of soul energy were quite different. The easiest way to combat them would be to be able to utilize soul power by the cultivator. Then the second-best method would be through strong concentrated spiritual energy. Punching the dead souls would not prove very effective.

“Did those toothy bastards have soul energy arts like me? Guess I’ll find out when I get there.”

Soon Zhang Dong disappeared into the grayish mist, his plan was to intercept the attackers before they got to the main sect city. If he was too late, he might have a lot more vengeful spirits to contend with.