Wilderness: I Tame Beasts to Survive

Chapter 326: Chapter 238: Qingyao’s Blessing, Lots of Benefits

With a joyous, ringing cry, Qingyao pointed a claw toward the outside of the Cosmic Light Tower, its meaning unmistakable.

"Alright. I’ll leave the enemy outside to you," Han Ning said, smiling and nodding.

’Now that Qingyao has successfully broken through to the Monarch Level, the Blade of Despair outside is no longer a threat!’

...

「Outside the tightly sealed stone doors of the Cosmic Light Tower.」

The Blade of Despair, which had been standing as motionless as a statue, suddenly snapped its eyes open, staring intently at the space behind the doors.

"HISS!"

At that moment, it sensed an incredibly terrifying presence slowly approaching.

It crouched slightly, and a sharp, humming vibration erupted from its entire body.

Then, it reached out and plunged its razor-sharp fingers into its own spinal column.

SPLURT!

Blood flew everywhere.

It rapidly drew its own spine from its back—a long bone shaped like a greatsword, covered in faint purple patterns.

Having drawn its spine, the Blade of Despair’s upper body went limp, slumping to the ground. Now resembling a lizard, it held the long blade and stared grimly at the great doors.

Suddenly—

The solid stone doors began to rumble, sliding slowly apart.

A sharp glint flashed in the Blade of Despair’s grim eyes, and its figure vanished in an instant.

A brilliant, pale-white light exploded from the spine-blade. The air trembled in its wake as a piercing shriek tore through the area.

CLANG~

In that instant, a surging shockwave erupted from the gateway.

BOOM!

The deafening sonic boom followed a moment later, reverberating throughout all of Night Nether City.

Long, wide cracks spiderwebbed across the ground as the earth began to cave in.

One tower after another was sliced apart by the invisible blade aura, shattering into countless fragments before collapsing with a roar.

With a single strike, every tower—save for a few clearly protected by an Energy ward—was reduced to rubble.

And yet, this world-shaking strike was effortlessly stopped by just a couple of emerald-green dragon claws.

Qingyao caught the long, narrow spine-blade between the tips of its five claws.

"HISS!!"

The Blade of Despair gripped its long blade, the humming sound from its body growing ever more intense.

Seeing that its strike had failed, it prepared to retreat.

But it discovered that, at some unknown point, its body had become covered in dark, greenish-black draconic patterns, rendering it completely unable to move a single inch!

These twisted markings, which resembled tiny Flood Dragons, felt like a heavy Curse pressing down on its body.

"Gasp... Gasp!"

The Blade of Despair’s pupils contracted violently as it let out pained gasps. Its body was as stiff as a corpse, with only the flickering in its eyes revealing its utter despair.

The curse-like draconic patterns squirmed silently.

Before it knew it, the Blade of Despair’s entire Body, from head to toe, was covered in the draconic patterns!

Its Body began to twist and transform.

Before Han Ning’s astonished eyes, the Blade of Despair—which just moments before had been a peerless instrument of death—transformed into a small, green snake writhing on the ground with a bewildered look on its face.

Meanwhile, the Shadow Reapers hidden in the surroundings all became silent corpses, collapsing to the ground with a series of thuds.

’What a powerful Sealing Technique! Is this the power of a newly ascended Monarch?’

Han Ning couldn’t help but sigh in amazement, seeing how an enemy that had previously been so difficult to resist couldn’t even last a single round against Qingyao.

Qingyao grabbed the helpless little snake, and with a slight twitch of its claws...

SPLAT~

The entire snake exploded into a shower of flesh and blood.

The Blade of Despair was no more.

A Crystal Stone, radiating a sharp, blade-like aura, fell from the snake’s remains.

Qingyao casually flicked its claw, tossing the falling Crystal Stone to Han Ning.

Han Ning raised his hand to catch the Crystal Stone, but the razor-sharp aura instantly shredded the flesh of his palm, leaving only bare, white bone.

"Hiss..."

His brows furrowed in pain as he tossed the Crystal Stone to Yin Yi.

Fortunately, his life force was now so Vigorous that the bleeding stopped immediately, and the All-Encompassing Spiritual Silkworm within his body began to rapidly repair the damage.

Even when Yin Yi caught the Crystal Stone, the sharp aura cut deep gashes into its jade-white branches.

Seeing this, Qingyao quickly blinked at the Crystal Stone.

An ethereal chain shot out from its Dragon Eyes and wrapped around the Crystal Stone.

Instantly, the pale Crystal Stone was bound by the illusory chain, sealing all of the blade-like aura within it.

’So this is a Quasi-Monarch Level Crystal Stone... Even an inanimate object carries such destructive power.’ The scene served as a stark warning to Han Ning. He made a mental note not to carelessly touch High-Level treasures in the future.

About ten seconds after the Blade of Despair’s death, an unstable, illusory shadow began to slowly coalesce from its fragmented body. Like flowing water, it was drawn toward the ground by an invisible force.

"Just as I thought—an experiment of the Alataku People," came Hom’s Spiritual Fluctuation. "The Blade of Despair wasn’t a natural Soul Beast. It’s a Spiritual Mark, left behind when the physical Body of a sufficiently high-level Beast Master dies. Just like me."

"A Spiritual Mark? A Soul?"

Han Ning’s expression changed abruptly as he watched the illusory figure being slowly drawn into the ground, a twisted, faintly visible face appearing within it. ’This Soul’s appearance... it looks a lot like the Beast Master that Akatos told me about.’

"Hom, Elder Qingyao, is there any way to preserve this Spiritual Mark?" he sent to them both.

"KREEE!"

Qingyao tapped its draconic claw. Instantly, chains materialized around the Soul Shadow, sealing it in place and stopping the pull from the force underground.

"A Soul? That’s a fitting term," Hom replied. "To preserve this Soul, you must provide it with a suitable vessel, like the Biological Armor I inhabit, or have it parasitize the body of that Netherworld Snake."

"Otherwise, a Soul exposed to the void will be disrupted by various particle Energy and radiation, which will accelerate its dissipation—especially in a place like this, with such abundant Spiritual Energy and radiation," Hom explained. "Furthermore... for a Beast Master’s Soul to remain intact in the physical world after death, their Spiritual Strength must have been at least Dark Star Level, which is Tier Four or higher."

"Tier Four Spiritual Power is known as the Elemental Tier. At this stage, a Beast Master can channel Elements into their Spiritual World to form an Elemental Realm. This imbues the Soul with certain properties, making it more resilient and preventing it from easily dissipating."

Meanwhile, the Residual Soul, now contained by Qingyao, gradually coalesced into a hazy, indistinct human figure. Bound in mid-air by layers of chains, it could neither dissipate, move, nor be drawn away by the mysterious force from below.

It was a male figure. His body was roughly eighty percent human, while the remaining twenty percent bore the features of a Dragon Species.

Compared to Qing Fan, whom Han Ning had seen before, this Soul appeared more normal. He merely had a pair of sharp, curved horns on his head, scales on his cheeks and jaw, and two shield-like plates of Armor attached to the sides of his arms.

He was completely naked and bore no wounds, but he stared blankly into the distance, his eyes completely unfocused.

The moment Han Ning approached, the man seemed to notice, shifting his vacant gaze to lock onto him.

Within his vacant pupils, a faint green light flickered intermittently.

"Hello," Han Ning said with a wave.

"..."

The mysterious man opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

A weak Spiritual Fluctuation emanated from the mysterious man. "Who am I?" Like a robot, he repeated those three words over and over, as if he were a crashed computer unable to process new commands.

"Ahem!"

After waiting for a moment, Han Ning couldn’t help but interrupt his "muttering."

The man stopped, looked up at Han Ning again, and returned to his previous state, simply staring fixedly at him.

"Qing Xuan?" Han Ning recalled the name Akatos had given him and tentatively called it out with his Spiritual Power.

"Qing Xuan... That’s right... I am Qing Xuan..." For a brief moment, a flicker of Spiritual Light appeared in the man’s eyes.

’It really is Qing Xuan! Why is he here...? Did the Alataku People turn him into a Soul Beast?’

A chill ran down Han Ning’s spine as he recalled the grotesque form of the Blade of Despair.

’Even a Beast Master of at least Tier Four and the unfathomably powerful Hom couldn’t escape the fate of becoming experiments. The Alatak... what a terrifyingly powerful people they must be.’