My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 632 – The Soul Furnace Fails to Burn, Dragons and Serpents Rise from the Earth - Part 1

Chapter 632 – The Soul Furnace Fails to Burn, Dragons and Serpents Rise from the Earth - Part 1

Gray mist blanketed the sky, growing thicker and more pervasive by the moment.

Deep in the forest, the underbrush stretched endlessly, and strange, blood-curdling screams and howls echoed from the depths of the unseen fog.

Li Yuan stood silently, listening to the words of the former Sect Master. He made no move. The three beast kings before him were behaving...oddly. The combat powers hovering above their heads were spinning wildly, fluctuating without pattern.

Li Yuan remembered that due to the limitations of their cultivation time and environment, these beast kings should have been capped at the third rank, second stage at most. Combat power for creatures at that level typically hovered between 200k~300k, with stronger ones perhaps reaching close to 400k, but never more than that.

But now, things were unraveling.

The towering ape, the silver giant wolf galloping through the haze, and the golden wasp the size of a boulder...all of their numbers were flashing and reshuffling like a shuffled deck of cards. One moment, they froze at roughly 400k. The next, they dropped to zero with a snap, and then just as suddenly they skyrocketed to around 800k.

And that 800k wasn’t stable either. It writhed and bubbled like a monstrous embryo struggling to hatch, pulsing and expanding. Then in a violent surge, the number jumped again, leaping to around 1.2 million.

Li Yuan glanced sideways at Meng Xingxian, Han Feng, and even the former Sect Master. He raised a hand and said sharply, “Fall back now!”

The three caught the seriousness in his tone and didn’t waste time with questions. Without hesitation, they turned and fled.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Three streaks of movement vanished into the distance.

Only once they’d reached a safe distance did they dare look back, and what they saw sent a fresh wave of dread through them. The bodies of the three beast kings were...expanding. Their flesh seemed to be growing unchecked, their blood boiling beneath the surface. Bubbling sounds filled the air as froth oozed from every pore, like sesame flowers blooming or meat skewers dipped in molten candy.

The three watched in grim silence.

Even the former Sect Master felt a chill crawl up his spine.

When the Heavens stirred to kill, dragons and serpents rose from the earth.

But dragons and serpents were just metaphors. What the phrase truly referred to were abominations, creatures so alien and terrifying that one couldn’t even imagine them, much less prepare. Once born, they shattered the balance of power with a single breath.

The former Sect Master stared at the three transforming beasts and felt a razor’s edge at his back. A bone-deep coldness gripped him.

He did some quick mental math, then quietly concluded, Eighty to ninety percent chance we can’t beat them.

If not for Li Yuan being here, he would’ve bolted already.

He raised a hand, summoning his spirit sword. It whirled into orbit around him, and only then did he feel the slightest sliver of safety.

“Help...”

“Help me!!”

One of the beasts, the great ape, perhaps more vigorous than the others, was still mutating, yet somehow remained conscious enough to notice Li Yuan hovering in the sky. It bellowed, pleading.

Li Yuan didn’t move closer. He called back from a distance: “What happened to you?”

“Help! Help! Help!”

The great ape didn’t answer the question. It just kept screaming over and over.

Then suddenly, it stopped. For one fleeting moment, clarity returned to its gaze, like the final glimmer of lucidity before death. Its voice turned raw and hoarse as it shrieked a desperate warning.

“Don’t...don’t come...any...closer...”

The great ape never got to finish. Its voice cut off. After a two- or three-second stillness, the creature suddenly moved again. It reached up with one shaggy hand and rubbed at its eyes with wild desperation. When it looked up, two streams of blood trickled down its face.

Its eyeballs were grotesquely swollen, so much so that they could no longer fit in their sockets. With a sickening pop, one burst free, bulging out grotesquely. The surface of the eye was now a hive of pulsating pupils, enough to make anyone with trypophobia scream in horror.

Multiple vicious-looking pupils swirled and collided within a single eye, twisting and overlapping. The sight was unnerving to the point of nausea.

Above the Great Ape King’s head, the combat power changed again to almost 3 million.

Li Yuan’s gaze sharpened.

The Silver Wolf King and Golden Wasp King had mutated too, though their power levels hadn’t reached such extremes, around 2.4 million and 2 million respectively.

And now, all three were preparing to charge off toward various mortal cities and cultivation towns scattered across the Eastern Sea.

Li Yuan struck without hesitation.

No sound. No words. Just action.

His left hand opened, and a lotus with 36 petals unfurled.

Twelve golden, twelve red, twelve black.

The twelve golden petals floated outward first, each transforming into a towering golden avatar, giant divine warriors clad in celestial majesty, descending in all directions.

In the blink of an eye, it was as if twelve heavenly generals had descended, each holding down a corner of the land. Together, they formed a vast and radiant golden ring that encircled the area entirely.

Any twisted creatures that had crawled out from the gate and tried to escape were swiftly eliminated. Some were swatted down by the golden giants with a single open-palmed strike like crushing flies. Others were caught between two hands clapping shut in a fatal applause.

When targets came in swarms or scattered too widely, the giants breathed fire, burning everything to ash in a storm of golden flame.

But perhaps because Li Yuan’s movements had drawn too much attention, the three mutated beast kings suddenly took notice.

With a sharp crack, all three raised their heads in eerie unison and stared straight at him.

They paused for the briefest moment, as if trying to recognize what they were seeing, and then simultaneously, let out ecstatic, greedy screeches. Their cries were like cheers, but not the kind you’d want to hear.

In an instant, all three shot into the air. No more running, no more wandering. They pounced like beasts catching the scent of fresh prey. They clawed at the ground, leapt into the air, and hurled themselves toward Li Yuan with desperate hunger. Like starving wolves glimpsing raw flesh, like dying men in a desert spotting a glimmering oasis.

Their bodies reacted on instinct, and foul-smelling saliva flew in thick ropes behind them, cutting grotesque arcs through the air.

Li Yuan remained composed, calmly gazing down at the three charging beasts.

In his palm, the twelve black lotus petals blossomed.

A wave of ghosts surged forth, dense, suffocating, and utterly overwhelming, spilling into the sky with sudden force.

From afar, there was an almost haunting beauty to it.

The black lotus swayed in the wind, shedding twelve shadowy petals. They drifted like ancestral paper offerings, scattering into the mist and slowly disintegrating, turning into fine gray ash, floating like tiny embers.

But each ember was a mass of tightly packed ghosts.

And those ghostly swarms were still spreading.

For a moment, it became impossible to tell what was more terrifying, the unnatural gray fog, or the black mist that now devoured the sky.

The black tide enveloped the three charging beast kings in an instant.

But Li Yuan wasn’t finished.

He tightened his grip on the Lifespan Severing Blade and stepped onto the core of the red lotus beneath his feet.

Twelve crimson lotus petals hung in the air like suspended blades, each one pulsing with a gravitational force and the power of annihilation.

Li Yuan raised his hand, preparing to strike.

His eyes flicked downward, three colossal shadows were hurtling up from below.

He stepped forward, and slashed.

The moment his blade moved, the sky erupted with a thunderous roar.

BOOM! The ghost tide was blown apart.

From the shattered black mist, the mutated Great Ape King’s hand burst forth, its five fingers stretched wide like the bars of a prison, reaching straight for Li Yuan.

SHING! A cold flash of light sliced through the air.

The blade cleaved down on the ape’s palm.

In that instant, its entire body seemed to suffer the erosion of countless ages, centuries and millennia of decay compressed into a breath. It disintegrated into fine ash, scattered by the wind.

Still standing on the red lotus, Li Yuan took another step forward.

The twelve crimson petals inverted and descended like guillotines, falling upon the charging mutant Golden Wasp King and Silver Wolf King.

An immense force slammed down.

BOOM! BOOM! The two beasts couldn’t withstand it. They plummeted like falling stars, crashing into the earth.

The impact carved out deep craters, sending up a cloud of dust that surged into the heavens.

The wilderness shook. Even 50 kilometers away, the ground trembled.

Through the rising dust, the two mutant kings could still be seen. But both bore massive, gaping wounds. It looked as though some monstrous maw had taken a brutal bite out of each of them.

Their powerful regenerative abilities were already working to close the wounds, but the edges continued to burn with searing red flames, halting the healing process.

Before anyone could react, the surrounding ghost tide surged inward, spilling into the craters and filling them completely.

And just like that, the rampaging Golden Wasp King and Silver Wolf King were buried, never to rise again.

The battle...was over in an instant.

In the distance, the former Sect Master, along with Meng Xingxian and Han Feng, stood frozen, utterly stunned.

Had the roles been reversed, any one of them knew they would’ve been obliterated before they even blinked.

No...saying they’d be killed instantly would be generous.

In a direct confrontation, even the residual shockwaves from the Primordial Emperor's attacks would’ve been enough to erase them.

Thank the heavens he’s on our side, Meng Xingxian thought with a shiver.

She had made up her mind. Even if she somehow managed to survive this and break through to the second rank, she would cling tightly to her husband Naran and cherish her son properly. No more drifting heart. With a father-in-law like Li Yuan, a literal force of nature, she’d have to be insane to ever stray again.