After Qing Yanjing left, Xiao Yan flew alone in the direction of the Heavenly Tomb. He knew that the next time she appeared before him, she would likely be confident enough to challenge him. But Xiao Yan didn't particularly care. After all, even during their last fierce battle, he hadn't used his full strength. Even if Qing Yanjing managed to break through to the Heavenly Sovereign level, he was still confident he could defeat her again. So her departure didn't worry him in the slightest.
A few days later, Xiao Yan finally reached the location marked on the map. Technically, the distance should have only taken half a day to travel, but a series of unfortunate natural disasters along the way had delayed him. Thankfully, there were no serious accidents.
As described on the map, the area housing the Heavenly Tomb was desolate and ominous. Before Xiao Yan stretched a vast expanse of blackened earth, with cold mist swirling in the air. From a distance, he could faintly make out withered trees cloaked in fog, giving the place a haunting, eerie aura.
But Xiao Yan didn't hesitate. He stepped directly into the depths of the fog. Just as Qing Yanjing had said, this Heavenly Tomb had already been explored. Anyone capable of entering the Ancient Sacred Abyss had at least Lesser Earth Sovereign strength, and they naturally wouldn't pay much attention to the remnants of ordinary Sovereign-level cultivators. But Xiao Yan was different.
As he advanced, he saw bones scattered all over the ground. The remains came in all shapes and sizes—many cracked or shattered, some reduced to mere fragments of bone dust. And these were just the ones fortunate enough to have left behind remains. Xiao Yan was certain many others had been obliterated so completely that not even bones were left.
Even though tens of thousands of years had passed, Xiao Yan could still sense just how brutal the battle that claimed these lives must have been. On some of the better-preserved remains, he noticed broken black rings on their fingers—storage rings that only existed on the Dou Qi Continent.
This confirmed Xiao Yan's initial suspicion. These corpses belonged to the missing Dou Di from the Dou Qi Continent.
Among them might have been ancestors of the Xiao Clan. Unfortunately, the storage rings had deteriorated beyond recognition. Xiao Yan tried injecting spiritual energy to see if they could be activated, but the moment his finger touched one, it crumbled into dust. This extinguished any hope of identifying the original owners.
Xiao Yan never considered himself a noble person, nor someone who cared for abstract ideals like "the greater good." Back on the Dou Qi Continent, when he encountered corpses, he only thought about how to loot them for gold coins. But this time, as he stood before these skeletal remains, he felt none of those old urges.
He looked over the battlefield of bones and let out a quiet sigh. Then, with reverence, he began gathering them all. No matter what, these were the forebears of the Dou Qi Continent. Perhaps their strength hadn't been earth-shattering, but they had fallen fighting for the Great Thousand World. For that alone, Xiao Yan believed they deserved to be returned home and buried with honor.
Just as he collected the final bone fragment, all the skeletons suddenly disintegrated into powder and dissolved into the air. Before he could even react, motes of light rushed toward him, surging into his mind.
The moment those lights entered his body, Xiao Yan's surroundings transformed drastically. He looked up to find himself amidst a battlefield engulfed in flames. Around him hovered countless pitch-black shadows, each cloaked in a grey aura filled with the stench of corruption and death. The aura made Xiao Yan's stomach churn in disgust.
'So these are the Extraterritorial Evil Race…' he murmured. Then he suddenly realized that his own power had weakened drastically. He had regressed from a Perfected Earth Sovereign to a mere Sovereign, and worse—he couldn't control his own body. A quick reflection told him he was now inhabiting the memory of one of those fallen Dou Di.
"The Great Thousand World really is depleted—sending mere Sovereigns to face us," sneered one of the evil race's leaders. Xiao Yan could instantly tell that this creature's strength was equivalent to a Lesser Earth Sovereign. If he had his full strength, he could swat this thing like a fly. But now, in this borrowed body, the gap felt insurmountable.
"Kill!" he heard himself roar as the body charged forward, swinging a massive sword at the enemy. But the evil race expert simply waved a hand, and the body exploded into pieces. The searing pain of death stabbed into Xiao Yan's mind like fire.
Before he could recover from the agony, his consciousness shifted into another person's body. Seeing his comrade fall, this one also rushed forward—only to meet the same fate moments later.
Xiao Yan understood just how massive the gap was between a Sovereign and an Earth Sovereign. Even a perfected Ninth-Grade Sovereign couldn't escape from a Lesser Earth Sovereign without an extraordinary method. And these Dou Di had just ascended—they were barely First or Second-Grade Sovereigns. How could they possibly compete?
These Dou Di realized that too. In the end, many of them self-destructed upon arrival—just to inflict as much damage as they could and buy their comrades more time. But the gap in power was simply too vast. Even with such desperate tactics, they couldn't land a single significant blow on the evil race expert.
When the last Dou Di perished, Xiao Yan's consciousness finally returned to his real body. He opened his eyes and instinctively clutched his head. He had just experienced the agony of death thousands of times. If his will hadn't been strong enough, he would have gone insane on the spot.
He took several deep breaths, calming himself. Only then did he slowly recover from the torment. The pain had been so overwhelming that he hadn't even noticed his own body had undergone some subtle changes.
(End of Chapter)
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