The next moment, the ancient demon's split soul opened its maw, unleashing a demonic roar.
The screech was shrill enough to crack gold and stone!
It seemed to echo directly from the depths of everyone's hearts, violently jolting their essence souls. Ordinary defenses were utterly useless against it.
Having devoured Demonic Qingzhu, the split soul threw back its head and howled toward the sky. It hung suspended in midair with arms outspread, disheveled hair thrashing wildly, like a true demon incarnate.
Hearing the demonic shriek, the youth and young girl turned deathly pale. With agonized cries, they collapsed to the floor.
The protective barrier the elder had erected for them had failed to ward off the strike. Fortunately, the roar had not been aimed at them, and they had only caught the residual shockwaves; otherwise, the pair would likely have perished on the spot.
Even so, their condition was tragic. Blood seeped from their seven orifices, and they were gravely wounded.
Inside Qin Sang, his essence soul gleamed with golden brilliance, revealing the form of a golden Buddha.
The moment the essence soul was struck by the demonic roar, the jade Buddha was triggered to react, shielding Qin Sang and keeping him unharmed.
However, upon seeing the youth and young girl's wretched state, Qin Sang vigilantly threw himself onto the ground. He deliberately snapped several of his own meridians, feigning bleeding from his seven orifices as well.
With a look of sheer terror on his face and anxiety burning in his heart, he kept his eyes tightly shut.
No one noticed that Qin Sang was currently gripping a demonic banner in his hand. Thread after thread of Nine Nether Demonic Fire was wrapped in his divine consciousness, guided into his body, and gathered within his purple palace.
At a moment like this, he was actually cultivating the *Fire Seed Golden Lotus* with single-minded focus!
Because the lotus seed still carried residual traces left behind by Old Devil Mou that could not be purged quickly, Qin Sang had no choice but to discard it and rely solely on his own strength to force his cultivation forward.
Even so, the lotus seed's greatest purpose had merely been to serve as a vessel to contain the spirit fire, mitigating its harm to the practitioner and preventing their essence soul from being incinerated.
Qin Sang possessed the jade Buddha's protection, so he did not need to rely on the seed.
If Old Devil Mou were to witness this scene, he would undoubtedly be left flabbergasted and curse Qin Sang as a madman.
Back when Mou had condensed the Dongming Cold Flame, he had been exceedingly cautious every single time. He had failed countless times and nearly had his essence soul frozen solid on multiple occasions before finally tempering the fire seed into being.
Yet the Nine Nether Demonic Fire was something even Old Devil Mou dared not lightly provoke.
Qin Sang, on his very first attempt, dared to condense demonic fire into a fire seed!
Had it not been for the jade Buddha's sheltering grace, Qin Sang would have incinerated himself long ago. Even so, he endured immense agony. The space within his purple palace seemed to boil, thrown into utter turmoil by the demonic fire.
The demonic fire was wildly recalcitrant.
Expecting to cultivate the *Fire Seed Golden Lotus* to great accomplishment in a short span was unrealistic.
Qin Sang's only goal was to tame a single wisp of Nine Nether Demonic Fire and condense it into the initial demon seed.
Following the secret technique in the *Fire Seed Golden Lotus*, his essence soul embraced the demonic fire. Relying on the jade Buddha, he felt no fear of being scorched, focusing entirely on guiding the Nine Nether Demonic Fire until the embryonic form of a fire seed gradually began to emerge.
Unexpectedly, the ancient demon's split soul suddenly launched its attack, and the once-favorable situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
The aura within the split soul fluctuated violently. Accompanying its howl, an invisible ripple abruptly manifested across the void.
In an instant, alarm bells rang loudly in the hearts of Lingzhuzi and the others, their faces draining of color in horror.
In the empty air before each of their foreheads, a transparent soul blade suddenly materialized. Immediately following was a tearing, splitting agony within their minds. Caught completely off guard, the cultivators let out agonized screams. Their bodies trembled uncontrollably, leaving them incapable of mastering their limbs, and they all collapsed to the ground.
Screams of anguish rose one after another.
Clutching their heads tightly, their faces were etched with torment, their features twisted to the extreme as they endured unimaginable agony.
Their Daoist arts and magic treasures could no longer be sustained.
What the ancient demon's split soul had unleashed was none other than the Split-Essence God-Slashing technique, and its effect was astonishing.
A cohort of grand masters could not even withstand this single strike. In an instant, they were severely wounded, stripped of all fighting strength.
Beholding the field of lambs awaiting slaughter, the ancient demon's split soul burst into wild, unrestrained laughter.
Unleashing the Split-Essence God-Slashing art had come at an immense cost to it as well; its aura had weakened significantly, its strength far below what it once was. Even so, it was in vastly better shape than Lingzhuzi and the rest.
*Whoosh!*
The split soul's figure flickered, targeting the Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle first.
The Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle's body was convulsing in agony, leaving him without the slightest ability to fight back. He could only watch helplessly as the split soul closed in, feeling a sudden tightening around his entire form until he could not move an inch.
"Ah!"
The Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle reverted to his true form, struggling desperately, only to have his abdomen punched through by the split soul's fist. Blood splattered everywhere as he let out a final screech.
The colossal turtle body was like a plaything in the split soul's grasp, kneaded and crushed at will.
Flesh turned to mush; bones shattered completely.
The Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle followed in the Flood Dragon King's footsteps. His essence spirit, along with his flesh and blood, was refined into essence through the split soul's secret technique and cast into the blood coffin.
Upon receiving the Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle's vital essence, the Blood River Formation's power surged drastically. The blood coffin regained a portion of its bloody radiance, while the blood color within the sword qi grew increasingly dense.
In mere moments, the Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle had met such an end.
Grief at the death of their fellow struck the others, filling their hearts with bleak desolation.
They were paramount masters of the two races, figures who could summon wind and rain in the outside world, yet every one of them was doomed to die here, reduced to sacrifices for the ancient demon's advent.
"Hmm?"
Having crushed the Nine Lives Mysterious Turtle, the ancient demon's split soul was about to move on to its next victim—Fairy Nangui, who was closest to the turtle—when it suddenly sensed a strange fluctuation.
It snapped its head around, looking toward a corner of the blood-red crystal wall.
There, a fist-sized withered-leaf cicada lay perched motionless against the crystal wall. It was Old Devil Fang.
Compared to a human body, a withered-leaf cicada was utterly inconspicuous and easily overlooked.
However, the strength Old Devil Fang had displayed previously had not been inferior to the others, having caused considerable trouble for the ancient demon.
Old Devil Fang had also been targeted by the split soul and had not been spared. Furthermore, possessing the body of an insect gu, his essence soul seemed even more fragile than the rest; his aura was faint and intermittent, already on the brink of death.
Yet a scene no one could have anticipated unfolded.
As the withered-leaf cicada clung tightly to the blood-red crystal wall, a fissure abruptly split open down its abdomen. An adult thumb-sized spirit cicada crawled out from within its body.
The spirit cicada's entire body was translucent like emerald, its gossamer wings dusted with flecks of starlight.
Beholding this shocking sight, even the ancient demon's split soul was momentarily stunned.
"The Star-Winged Cicada! Twin gu?" the Grand Shaman blurted out in shock.
She and Old Devil Fang both hailed from the Witch Clan, yet until this moment, she had never known that besides merging with the body of a withered-leaf cicada, Old Devil Fang had concealed another natal insect gu.
Moreover, the twin gu possessed different bloodlines.
One possessed the bloodline of the withered-leaf cicada, endowed with divine abilities of sonic arts that caught adversaries off guard and made defense nearly impossible.
The other was the Star-Winged Cicada, which possessed an extraordinary escape technique.
Both were rare spirit insects of the exceptional variety, virtually impossible to find in the present era, let alone knowing how to nurture them.
Back on the Witch God Continent, Qin Sang had encountered a Witch Clan cultivator who possessed twin gu—Cui Xuanzi, the sect master of the Five Insects Sect. However, one of Cui Xuanzi's natal insect gu had stalled after reaching a certain point, unable to advance another inch.
Old Devil Fang's twin gu seemed entirely different from Cui Xuanzi's.
The moment the Star-Winged Cicada appeared, the withered-leaf cicada shriveled at a speed visible to the naked eye, peeling away from the Star-Winged Cicada like a scrap of paper, as though all of its vital essence had been utterly drained by the Star-Winged Cicada.
The Star-Winged Cicada still appeared exceedingly frail, yet nearly half of its tiny body had already embedded itself into the blood-red crystal wall!
Chapter 1087