Desolate Devouring Art

Chapter 1792 - Refining the Mysterious Eyeball

No matter how violently Liu Wuxie struggled, the surrounding magma clung to him with unyielding tenacity. Unable to move his body, he extended his divine sense and attempted to determine what had happened.

The magma imprisoned even his divine sense, severing his perception of everything beyond it. Liu Wuxie felt as though an impenetrable cage had swallowed him, and every method he tried ended in failure.

"Am I going to die here?" Liu Wuxie abandoned his futile struggles and closed his eyes, forcing himself to search calmly for an escape. During the final moment in the valley, the mysterious eyeball had released a crimson mist before he had suddenly appeared here. That could only mean the mysterious eyeball had trapped him inside itself.

"The mysterious eyeball intends to seize the Ghost Pupil!" Liu Wuxie's eyes flew open as realization struck him. This was the only explanation for why the mysterious eyeball had swallowed him alive instead of killing him outright.

Although the magma severed his connection to the outside world, Liu Wuxie could still feel he was descending at tremendous speed. He had no idea how long the fall lasted before a loud splash rang out, as though he had plunged into a body of water.

In the next instant, a pungent stench of blood seeped through the mysterious eyeball and invaded Liu Wuxie's nostrils.

"The smell of blood!" Liu Wuxie frowned as concern flickered through his eyes.

The mysterious eyeball continued sinking while the fading light around Liu Wuxie gradually surrendered to absolute darkness. He immediately circulated the Desolate Devouring Art, intending to consume everything surrounding him. Yet even the Desolate Devouring Art remained restrained, as though an invisible force had sealed every meridian in his body.

Liu Wuxie then attempted to summon the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron and use it to devour the mysterious eyeball. However, an unseen force also suppressed the cauldron deep within his body. He had exhausted every solution he could devise.

"Heavenly Dao Book! I'm about to die! Do something!" With every other option gone, Liu Wuxie placed his final hopes upon the Heavenly Dao Book and prayed that it could help him escape.

The Heavenly Dao Book remained utterly motionless within his soul sea, giving no response. Liu Wuxie called to it repeatedly, but after receiving nothing but silence, he could only give up.

Meanwhile, the stench of blood thickened with every passing moment.

"How strange. This blood smells peculiar. I can distinguish the blood of humans and immortal beasts, but there are other scents I can't recognize," Liu Wuxie murmured after taking several careful whiffs.

Words could not adequately describe the smell. It resembled countless varieties of blood mingled together over an immeasurable span of time.

Above him, the cultivators descending along ropes discovered that the abyss was far more complicated than they had imagined. Nothing awaited them at the bottom, and the mysterious eyeball had disappeared without a trace. Only the overpowering stench of blood remained, completely overwhelming their sense of smell.

"Look! There's a stone cavern here!" Upon reaching the bottom, the cultivators discovered numerous caverns branching underground. None of them knew where those passages led, but since underground caverns were common, the discovery caused little surprise.

They immediately divided into smaller groups and entered the surrounding caverns, each searching for the mysterious eyeball.

A sudden stab of agony erupted between Liu Wuxie's brows and jolted his entire body.

It has begun extracting my Ghost Pupil.

Everything had unfolded precisely as he had feared. The mysterious eyeball had brought him there to tear Ghost Pupil from his body and merge with it, thereby completing its own evolution.

Liu Wuxie knew only the names of the Eight Divine Pupils, so he could not yet confirm if this mysterious eyeball was one of them. After all, the Eight Divine Pupils had vanished for countless years, and only a handful of people within the Celestial Realm still knew of their existence.

Without warning, Liu Wuxie's forehead split apart. The horrific tearing sensation that followed sent violent convulsions through his body.

"Damn it!"

His every attempt to save himself had failed, leaving him helpless as an invisible force slowly tore Ghost Pupil from his upper dantian.

At that critical moment, Liu Wuxie's soul sea erupted into violent turmoil. Torrents of soul energy gushed outward and wrapped tightly around Ghost Pupil, preventing it from being ripped free. The mysterious eyeball, however, possessed power dozens of times greater than Ghost Pupil.

The fissure across Liu Wuxie's forehead continued widening, and the agony became so unbearable that he longed to lose consciousness. Yet he knew that surrendering his awareness now would mean death, so he bit down on his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood essence.

The pain cleared his mind, allowing him to mobilize his soul energy to secure Ghost Pupil more firmly. A merciless tug-of-war erupted between Liu Wuxie and the mysterious eyeball, with victory awaiting whichever side endured till the end.

"You want to refine my Ghost Pupil? Since that's the case, I'll refine you instead!" Liu Wuxie retorted stubbornly. He could now confirm that the mysterious eyeball was one of the Eight Divine Pupils. If he succeeded in refining it, he would gain its power.

The mysterious eyeball intensified its pulling force, prompting Liu Wuxie to release an equally powerful surge of soul energy. Neither side yielded, for the first to falter would become nourishment for the other.

While controlling his soul energy, Liu Wuxie desperately searched for an escape route. His current cultivation could sustain only a limited amount of soul energy, giving him no more than fifteen minutes.

Once Liu Wuxie exhausted his soul energy, nothing would prevent the mysterious eyeball from refining him. Therefore, he had to break free before his remaining strength disappeared.

Survival stood above everything else. Refining the mysterious eyeball remained secondary.

"Bloodthirst Blade, lend me your power!" Despite the mysterious eyeball's imprisonment, Liu Wuxie discovered that the Bloodthirst Blade remained firmly within his hand.

Had Liu Wuxie stored the Bloodthirst Blade inside his interspatial ring before the mysterious eyeball swallowed him, retrieving it now would have been impossible. He was already directing every strand of his soul energy toward resisting the eyeball.

An eerie radiance spread across the Bloodthirst Blade in answer to Liu Wuxie's summons, while the crimson marking upon its surface began flickering.

"Can you help me break through this place and help me escape?" Liu Wuxie asked. Once he escaped the mysterious eyeball, the immediate danger would pass.

The same power suppressing Liu Wuxie also immobilized the Bloodthirst Blade. Only the crimson marking retained its freedom, continuing to flow across the blade's surface.

The suffocating suppression bore down upon the Bloodthirst Blade until its crimson marking suddenly flew free, just as it had the previous night. The instant it emerged, the mysterious eyeball began trembling violently, seemingly gripped by terror.

The crimson marking shot forward with unstoppable force and ripped through the surrounding magma. The moment an opening appeared, blood poured through the breach and flooded Liu Wuxie's nostrils.

"What's going on?" Confusion seized Liu Wuxie. He had expected the newly opened crack to offer him an escape, yet blood had surged inside instead.

"Dragon's blood, the Heavenly Yin Wingwolf's blood, human blood..." As the liquid engulfed him, Liu Wuxie began distinguishing the different varieties of blood. Soon, it felt as though an entire sea of blood had swallowed him.

The enormous pressure exerted by the blood forced the crack in the magma to widen, allowing an even greater torrent to pour inside.

After suffering the heavy impact, the mysterious eyeball slowed its extraction of Ghost Pupil. That brief reprieve allowed Liu Wuxie to catch his breath and recover a portion of his control. The instant his meridians responded again, he circulated the Desolate Devouring Art.

At that moment, dazzling radiance suddenly erupted from the Heavenly Dao Book and illuminated the surrounding darkness. The mysterious eyeball immediately released a peculiar whimper, as though the book's brilliance were scorching it.

"Hahaha! Heavenly Dao Book, I was wrong! So you have been accumulating your power!" Liu Wuxie had cursed the Heavenly Dao Book for hiding silently within his soul sea at such a critical moment, but now he finally understood its intentions.

Beneath the radiance of the Heavenly Dao Book, the mysterious eyeball's power steadily weakened.

Blood continued flooding through the opening, bringing with it the scents of numerous rare beasts that Liu Wuxie immediately recognized.

"The blood of a ten-thousand-year Flood Dragon!"

"The blood of an Emberborn, the descendant of the Phoenix Clan!"

"The blood of the Divine Race!"

"......" Countless varieties of blood had merged within this place, forming a reservoir of unimaginably vast energy.

The Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron suddenly stirred. A black hole manifested before Liu Wuxie and began devouring the surrounding blood without restraint.

As torrents of blood poured into the cauldron, Liu Wuxie's aura climbed steadily. This reservoir had accumulated for countless years, reaching a scale beyond imagination.

Liu Wuxie finally regained enough freedom to extend his divine sense beyond the mysterious eyeball. Scarlet red filled everything around him, forming a crimson pool where blood had continuously gathered throughout the years.

"How strange. Where did all this blood come from? And who could kill a Divine Dragon?" Questions flooded Liu Wuxie's mind. He could sense that this blood had remained here for at least several thousand years.

"Could it be...?" Liu Wuxie's eyes snapped open as a startling possibility occurred to him.

He had previously believed that his arrival had drawn the mysterious eyeball into the open. Now, however, that assumption appeared incorrect. The mysterious eyeball had been hiding within the Dragon Burial Mountain Range for countless years without anyone discovering it.

When Liu Wuxie ascended to the celestial realm, Ghost Pupil must have sensed the mysterious eyeball's presence. That connection had drawn him deep into the Dragon Burial Mountain Range, where he later encountered Ye Linghan and Chen An.

None of those events had been coincidental. A mysterious connection between the two divine pupils had orchestrated everything. Liu Wuxie inhaled sharply at the realization.

For thousands of years, the mysterious eyeball had nurtured itself within this place, hunting countless beasts and feeding upon their blood. That explained why the blood remained so exceptionally rich even after so many years.

The gate to the True Immortal Realm had already opened before Liu Wuxie, allowing him to break through whenever he wished. However, the surrounding blood vastly exceeded what he could immediately refine. He could only channel it into the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron and use it to nourish the desolate world.

The blood belonged to countless races that had long since vanished into history. Within several breaths, dozens of new sequences emerged inside the Heavenly Dao Book. At the same time, unfamiliar realms began forming throughout the desolate world.

Rather than rushing into his breakthrough, Liu Wuxie continued absorbing the surrounding blood. Deprived of the nourishment that had sustained it for thousands of years, the mysterious eyeball gradually weakened.

Liu Wuxie waved his right hand, causing the Bloodthirst Blade to rise and hover in the air while the crimson marking upon it became increasingly distinct.

Curiosity toward the Bloodthirst Blade's origins surged within Liu Wuxie. Its crimson marking could tear open even a divine pupil, proving that the one who had forged it could only have been an extraordinary figure.

According to Liu Wuxie's speculation, the crimson marking itself was likely a treasure no weaker than the Divine Pupil, only sealed within the Bloodthirst Blade.

Realizing the tide had turned, the mysterious eyeball began struggling frantically to escape. Liu Wuxie, however, had no intention of letting it get away.

If Liu Wuxie successfully refined a Divine Pupil, he would acquire another unfathomable power, much like Ghost Pupil's unrivaled perception.

"Time to make my breakthrough!" Liu Wuxie decided to advance now. Once he entered the True Immortal Realm, his chances of refining the mysterious eyeball would rise considerably.

The sea of blood roared and transformed into a vast torrent that surged into the desolate world. The blood had long since evolved into a spiritual spring, and it poured from the skies of the desolate world like an endless crimson waterfall.