Chapter 2652: Chapter 2652
After destroying another battleship in pursuit, Ye Liuyun received intelligence from his spy: Torin had fled with a group of elite alien warriors aboard several small vessels.
"Track Torin. Leave the rest to me."
Ye Liuyun ordered the alien under his command to focus solely on Torin while he personally pursued the remaining fugitives. Meanwhile, the demon army continued advancing toward the alien mothership under Lei Ming’s guidance, with the Purple Kylin Snake and the Nine-Headed Netherdragon assigned to protect him.
Though Lei Ming’s golden pupils couldn’t match Ye Liuyun’s range, they were still sharp enough to detect enemy vessels once the general direction was known.
Ye Liuyun, on the other hand, released his falcon, scanning the void with his golden eyes. Any small alien skiffs within range were swiftly hunted down and eliminated. The distance wasn’t vast enough to evade his sight.
The falcon made quick work of the fleeing skiffs—despite their speed advantage over larger warships, they were no match for its pursuit.
Soon, all scattered alien escapees were eradicated. Lei Ming, true to his task, located the alien mothership and led the demon army in its complete destruction.
Ye Liuyun first recalled Lei Ming and the demon forces into his spatial realm before turning his attention to Torin’s trail.
Then, the alien spy tracking Torin sent another urgent message: Torin and another elite had abandoned their skiff, resorting to spatial teleportation to escape. Worse, Torin had activated an invisibility cloak, rendering the red-armored alien spy unable to follow.
Ye Liuyun instructed the spy to tail the other alien instead, providing coordinates. Left with no choice, he activated the Black Tower of Teleportation, instantly appearing beside the fugitive. He swiftly imprisoned the alien in his spatial realm, then froze time to chase down the second escapee—devouring its soul and feeding the corpse to the demonic vines.
Next, he scanned the void with his golden eyes for Torin. As a fourth-level Dominator, Torin’s spatial abilities were formidable. In mere moments, he could have traversed vast distances.
Compounding the difficulty was the invisibility cloak, obscuring Torin’s exact trajectory. Searching for his soul signature in the boundless cosmos was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Afraid Torin might slip away, Ye Liuyun dared not release the time-freeze. Straining his temporal powers to the limit, he sprinted in all directions, desperately seeking any trace.
Just as his temporal energy neared depletion, he summoned a doppelgänger to continue the hunt in his stead.
Just as his doppelganger was about to exhaust its temporal power, its golden eyes finally spotted Turin’s fleeing soul. Without hesitation, it donned the invisibility cloak and gave chase.
Turin’s spatial abilities were formidable indeed. It kept changing directions mid-flight, forcing the doppelganger to expend tremendous effort and repeatedly tap into its time-manipulation powers just to keep up.
After several abrupt turns, Turin finally settled into a straight-line escape. Seizing the opportunity, Ye Liuyun swapped places with his doppelganger and took over the pursuit.
This time, with ample reserves of temporal energy, Ye Liuyun quickly closed the distance. He drew the Great Desolation Bow and loosed several arrows in rapid succession.
The moment Turin sensed the threat of the bow, it froze in shock. Despite its meticulous concealment, someone had still tracked it down.
It immediately employed spatial shifts to evade, but the emerald arrows pursued relentlessly, as if locked onto its essence.
"Tracking arrows!" Turin realized instantly. Abandoning evasion, it shed its invisibility cloak, donned defensive armor, and raised a shield to block three consecutive shots from Ye Liuyun.
To Ye Liuyun’s astonishment, none of the three arrows managed to pierce through Turin’s shield.
Turin, meanwhile, was equally baffled. Though it could detect spatial disturbances from Ye Liuyun’s presence, it couldn’t actually see him.
"He’s got an invisibility cloak too!" Turin deduced, hastily reaching for its own cloak to make another escape.
But Ye Liuyun activated his temporal power, dashing forward in an instant. He seized Turin’s soul directly, yanking it into the depths of his own consciousness.
"Got you now! Let’s see you run from this!"
With Turin’s soul trapped within his mind, Ye Liuyun finally allowed himself to relax.
He first stripped Turin of its shield and armor, confirming their exceptional quality. He made a mental note to gift them to Tian Dao Ye someday—better she stay unharmed in battle.
Yet when he inspected Turin’s Interspatial Ring, he was met with disappointment: it held surprisingly few resources.
His heart skipped a beat as he immediately halted the Divine Decree’s absorption of Torin’s soul. Fortunately, Torin’s spiritual power was formidable enough that it hadn’t been completely devoured yet. Ye Liuyun swiftly began a soul search, desperate to uncover where the resources were hidden.
But the search revealed something shocking—Torin actually had a doppelgänger. During the earlier moment when Torin had used his shield to block the attack from the Great Desolate Bow, his doppelgänger had already slipped away under the cover of an invisibility cloak. All of Torin’s resources had been taken by this fleeing double.
Without hesitation, Ye Liuyun implanted a slave seal into Torin’s soul and returned it to his consciousness. To track down the doppelgänger, he would need the original body’s guidance. Though Torin’s soul was now severely weakened, it could still sense the doppelgänger’s location.
"Which direction did your doppelgänger flee?" Ye Liuyun demanded directly.
Under the slave seal’s compulsion, Torin reluctantly pointed in a specific direction.
Ye Liuyun immediately summoned his falcon, mounting it with Torin in tow to give chase.
The doppelgänger changed course multiple times, but its original body’s senses remained unshaken. Meanwhile, the doppelgänger itself had also detected its master’s pursuit and was now fleeing for its life. The falcon’s speed was on par with the doppelgänger’s, making it impossible to close the gap immediately.
The doppelgänger’s cultivation and strength mirrored Torin’s own, a testament to the effort he had poured into nurturing it. In this regard, Torin was much like Ye Liuyun—except that he couldn’t synchronize thoughts and information with his double.
But with the original body in hand, Ye Liuyun wasn’t worried about the doppelgänger escaping. Even if it meant exhausting every last drop of his true essence, he wouldn’t let it slip away.
A full month of relentless pursuit passed, leaving even the falcon utterly exhausted—only then did the doppelgänger’s speed finally begin to wane.
Ye Liuyun promptly recalled the falcon, allowing it to rest, while he grabbed Torin and activated his temporal power, freezing time to continue the chase.
Once his temporal energy was depleted, he paused, summoning his own doppelgänger to take over carrying Torin while maintaining the pursuit.
This burst of temporal power had drastically shortened the distance between them, startling Torin’s doppelgänger.
Now on the verge of collapse, the doppelgänger was horrified to see Ye Liuyun suddenly accelerate—at this rate, he would catch up in no time. Realizing escape was futile, it steeled itself for battle.
Its greatest weapon was its soul attack. It assumed Torin had only been subdued after being severely injured and refused to believe Ye Liuyun’s spiritual power could surpass its own.
