Aster saw the now wary expression on the face of the evil spirit and he smirked, naturally he hasn't committed any atrocity, or at least not something that can be considered one from his point of view.
Even if he has killed quite a few opponents, it's not like he has killed a large number of non-cultivators, at the same time he hasn't abused any women or used them as cultivation furnaces.
Which are some of the ways to get stained by the negative emotions of the victims, like those bandits from the Lagrae Stellar System which kidnapped women for the evil sects, for example.
So naturally his murderous aura shouldn't far exceed the one of a being that exists solely to bring calamity to the living, and it is also denied by the heavens blocking the access to the energy path to it.
The origin of that ominously dangerous black mist which is enveloping Aster, treating him as some kind of relative, is the fact that he has completely eliminated the lives of a few people before.
Aster's murderous aura is purely originated from killing, he has erased souls with annihilation, eliminating them from the cycle of reincarnation, which is something only the heavens are allowed to do.
Rya was quite vague about it, but when she saw Aster killing Robert using annihilation so that he would never reincarnate, she explained that by doing so he is spitting on the face of the heavenly law, a taboo of the highest level.
Which normally would have made tribulation lightning attack him on the spot, if he didn't use annihilation to do it, the heavenly law can't track and punish anything related to annihilation, because it is the extreme nothingness, it isn't regulated by the havens, nor follows its rules.
That's why he can enjoy the "benefits" of having this atrocity level murderous aura, without any repercussion, though to be honest Aster doesn't like the feeling of it.
Naturally this kind of murderous aura tries to corrode his mind, heart and soul, to turn him into a homicidal maniac, but with Rigel's flames, which are the bane of any evil, inhabiting in his body, why would he be worried about it.
Unless it is originated by Aster himself, like the violent impulses caused by his dragon bloodline getting stronger, Rigel's flames fiercely protect Aster's soul, as the scene of the blue flames swirling around his soul avatar all the time would suggest.
The evil spirit couldn't help but take a couple of steps backwards, as a being who lives for the same of brining calamity, how can it not recognize the murderous aura of someone who has committed unspeakable atrocities.
'Shit, this brat has been hiding himself, to think I would meet the disciple of an evil Heavenly Conqueror cultivator, if I can imprison his soul in my ghost formation, I'll be able to further improve my offensive!', thought the evil spirit.
Even with the corrupted memories of a Soul Sovereign, and an evil one on top of that, the worst he has done is imprison other people's souls and use them as ghosts, or use their corpses for his undead army, which is also considered an evil method but still a way to cultivate so it's not directly forbidden by the heavenly law.
And now the evil spirit though afraid, it looked at Aster as if he was looking at a precious first grade material.
"It doesn't matter who is your master, brat, turn into resources for my revival and rise to glory hahaha!", the evil spirit whose face was twisted, floated and then flashed towards Aster.
His hands had long been transformed into monster-like paws with large claws, as it is no longer a fragment of soul but an evil spirit.
Aster snorted, he extended his hand and summoned the incomplete black soul sword weapon, this evil spirit was still far from a Ghost King, without the support of the formations that fed it the yin that lingered in the atmosphere, he couldn't even maintain a proper form and was now an abomination created by the mix of a few evil spirits.
Since this was a soul cultivation abilities showdown, he created one imitation of his soul weapon, by condensing soul energy, it was way weaker than the one created with the technique of the Soul Crushing Parade, but he just wanted another weapon for the incoming fight.
Aster floated using soul energy to levitate himself, and then charged towards the evil spirit, the thing is just a mass of yin and negative emotions united by a corrupted fragment of a soul, so it has no mass, its strength is decided by the soul energy it has.
The evil spirit and Aster appeared in front of each other and their attacks clashed in the middle of the air, the claws of the evil spirit and Aster's black sword soul weapon collided, and the space near them waved, this was the distortion caused by two strong soul cultivators fighting each other, similar to what happened when Aster was training with Felicia.
But now it was stronger, since both parties were aiming to kill each other.
"Tsk, as expected of someone with a Sovereign level master, what a strong soul condensation", sinisterly said the evil spirit as he saw his claw being stopped by Aster's soul condensed weapon, but then his whole face bent upwards giving it a gross deformed appearance, as he attacked with his second claw.
Only to be welcomed by Aster's disdainful smiling expression, this time he used the incomplete black sword to receive the incoming attack.
'Humph, you can't even fully condense a second soul weapon, go to hell and repent for not even being a Spirit Trial cultivator!', inwardly swore the evil spirit, but then his eyes nearly popped out of its sockets, the moment his claws touched the black sword, they were cleanly cut, making the evil spirit grit its teeth, as a spiritual being a soul weapon could harm him after all, but he didn't expect his claws to be defeated in a head confrontation.
The evil spirit immediately backed off, putting some distance between Aster and himself, he then looked at his claws which had turned black, instead of the blue color of the yin energy which was used to condense them, and he frowned, the black color started spreading to the rest of its hand, his soul energy was actually being corrupted by the opponent's.
"Fuck!".
The evil spirit then used his other hand to cut off his arm from the elbow and below, the part fell to the ground turned black and then dissolved into black tendrils.
The evil spirit grew a new arm and then looked at Aster as if he was seeing a monster, he an evil spirit was corrupted by a human being, it was like a bad taste joke to the point that it was absurd.
Aster on the other hand was smiling, as he listened to the familiar voice of Lilia in his mind.
'What do you think darling, make sure to use that sword all the time so I can always fight at your side in a sense~'.
That's right, Lilia had entered the mind space and she was watching the battle with Rya, she then felt curiosity, lately she has been experimenting with the ability of Orionis, or at least the idea she had of it.
Unlike her, Aster couldn't make it do anything just by desiring it, probably because Lilia has yet to fully become a star maiden, also she needs to be present for it to work, those are some of the limitations she has learned.
Luckily, the black sword soul weapon is related to Lilia, and so she wanted it to cause troubles for her beloved son's enemy, the sword complied and it corroded the soul energy of the evil spirit, somehow.
In truth, she wished the enemy of her darling to drop dead, but since that didn't work, then she thought of a way to help Aster deal with an evil spirit in an easier way.
Aster could feel the sword which is already quite energetic around him, being livelier than normal and he chuckled.
The evil spirit on the other hand was having an attack right now, this black-haired youth was his direct nemesis, somehow his soul energy was way more vicious than his, his murderous aura was also stronger, and his soul condensed weapon lost in a head on confrontation, what's worse his Blood Devouring Flags and the hungry evil spirits he has accumulated were being treated like lambs in a slaughterhouse by that dreading golden giant, that left the body of his enemy.
'If that's the case, then… I just need to swap enemies!", thought the evil spirit, he sinisterly laughed and then his image flashed as he flew towards Camila and Felicia, they have been fighting using physical attacks to keep the giant undead in check, they have even destroyed some of its bones, and there were some of Camila's spears piercing it from side to side.
The giant undead received the order and then roared as it swayed its giant arms to force Camila and Tiana to step backwards, then the evil spirit laughed and they somehow changed places, probably a remnant of the ability to control space that Void Manipulation level beings develop, or maybe because they were linked as they both originated from the Blood Despair Sovereign.
"You two become my nourishment!", shouted the evil spirit as it pounced at Camila and Felicia.
"Roaaar!", the giant undead appeared in front of Aster and punched him with all its might, trying to turn him into meat paste under its giant fist.
"Heh, so you think you can bully me with physical strength just because my highest realm is in the soul path and I don't use illusions, what a shame, my strongest move combines energy and body paths", mumbled Aster.
The golden armor which was going wild alone under Aster's orders disassembled and turned lines of golden light that flew towards Aster turning into the golden armor once again.
But this time the design was different, it was sturdier and more dignified looking, instead of dreading and menacing, not to mention it was way bigger, previously Aster only expanded the armor to around forty meters, since he couldn't inject annihilation in all the armor anyway, not to mention this place only had one hundred meters of height, the exact same height of the full-sized manifestation Aster could currently use.
But now, he wasn't using annihilation so he doubled the size of the expanded armor, reaching eighty meters of size, the giant undead was only fifty meters of size, so in front of the golden armor, it was like a child facing an adult, one arm of the armor was almost larger than the whole body of the undead.
Aster beckoned and the arms of the golden armor grabbed the giant undead and then smacked it against the ground.
"Booom!", the impact was so strong that the whole place trembled, the skull of the giant undead cracked just with that one attack.
It got up and tried to retaliate, just to be slapped by the giant hands of the golden armor, without annihilation the armor returned to excel in defense capacities, but a good defense can be a fierce offense too.
In a physical clash, the sturdiest object with the biggest amount of physical strength behind will always be the winner, and right now it was as if a mountain clashed against a pile of crystal, large pieces of the bones that conformed the giant undead exploded after being punched by the golden armor, while the physical attacks of which the undead was so proud, didn't even pierce the internal defense of the armor, conformed by the golden light in which the armor was cladded.
Not to mention Aster which was calmly standing in the core of the armor, he then smiled and the armor repeatedly punched the undead, destroying its body piece by piece, starting from the arms to the legs and finally its ribs, leaving only its skull were the piece of flesh that acted as its core was residing right now.
Once the golden armor stopped punching the giant undead, the room finally stopped trembling, and the battle came to an end as well.
Aster turned around and was welcomed with the miserable appearance of the evil spirit, it had holes all over its body, which were punched by Felicia's soul condensed gauntlets, and it was being immobilized by golden spears that had faint traces of electricity crackling from time to time.
The evil spirit thought he could get rid of Felicia and Camila, if he couldn't deal alone with Aster, that's why he changed places with his other half, but then he realized how wrong it was for him to underestimate those two women.
His murderous aura was devoured by the black vortex the black-haired woman created, also her punches weren't heavy only physically, her soul energy was so heavy that when she punched him, she punched holes in his ethereal body.
The other woman originally seemed to only have energy cultivation, so he then tried to take advantage of it to use a soul attack to suppress her, but not only his attack didn't have any effect due to some strange metallic glow that enveloped her, but the metal weapons she created had one of the worst nightmares of any evil spirit, lightning.
She nailed him against the ground using large golden spears imbued with lightning that were preventing him from moving or using his soul energy, he was utterly defeated.
And to make things worse, he who shared vision with his other half, saw that the giant undead was practically destroyed by that dreading golden giant which obeyed the orders of the black-haired youth.
In other words, he lost in both soul and body path battles, and on top of that, the swam of undead was also decimated.
They were all frozen by the combination of water and ice spirit energies, despite their yin nature, since apparently the other party had a stronger yin, and then destroyed into small bits with a strong physical impact.
Aster dissipated most of the golden armor besides one arm with which he grabbed the skull of the giant undead, as he walked towards the girls that were gathering near the evil spirit that was being restrained by Camila's spears.
"I didn't know you could use lightning attribute; it goes pretty well with you metal attribute", said Aster to Camila, which made her blush a bit.
"It's all thanks to the Steel Tree root you gave me, in truth I can't use lighting attribute freely, but I can imbue it into my metal creations thanks to the property absorbed by my natal treasure, this is only the lowest level… it will be stronger when we train the next time", she mumbled.
Aster nodded at her, Camila previously underestimated herself, but the current her no longer lowered her own value, she is the ultimate treasure who has the capacity to absorb other treasures properties, and only after Aster made her see her own value, she managed to open the second page of her cultivation manual to learn how to use the treasure aura which is the name of that copper and silver energy that is stored in her dantian, to protect herself and channel the properties absorbed by her natal treasure into her metal creations.
That date she had with Aster, was indeed a turning point which changed her life more than what she could predict, but that is a story for another day.
Aster beckoned and the giant golden armor showed the skull which was being held by the giant hand, with a single thought, Aster could crush the skull and destroy the last piece of flesh of the Blood Despair Sovereign, but before that he had some questions to make.
"You lost, so you know how this works right, to be honest I'm going to kill you anyway, but you can go in peace after answering, or go in agony after answering, the choice is up to you", said Aster.
He didn't have any personal feud with the Blood Despair Sovereign, this fragment of his soul was corrupted and it tried to kill him for its revival, but it didn't particularly target him or the girls, it did the same to everyone, naturally that didn't mean he was going to spare its life.
The evil spirit whose body had shrank but in exchange his face stopped distorting, a sign that the other evil spirits it forcefully integrated into its body, were destroyed by Felicia's punches and Camila's lightning imbued spears, leaving only the fragment of the soul, actually showed some relief on its face.
"Kid, tell me, are there any legends about me out there, did I become a hero after trying to do a good deed for the first time in my life, which ironically caused my demise?", he asked.
Aster shook his head in response
"Who knows, you seem to come from another place than me, because I doubt a Soul Sovereign like you will just be erased from the history books", said Aster
The evil spirit sighed.
"I see, what do you want to know?", it asked, making Aster wonder if maybe he recovered some clarity thanks to Camila's lightning, or maybe because he wasn't forcefully integrating a ton of evil spirits into himself anymore.
In any case this worked for him, which is everything Aster cared about, he pointed upwards before saying.
"What is this place, what is the purpose of the Silicon Forest, this is large-scale formation's node, that means all this place is being used as a natural formation, but for what purpose?".
The evil spirit seemed to make memory, and fear flashed through its eyes as he answered.
"This is an ancient battlefield where many people were used as sacrifices for "the greater good", ironically all those undead that have appeared, weren't created by me, they are the armies of low ranked cultivators that came to this place seeking glory, only to end up as dry bones".
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