"You incredibly ugly bastard, just looking at you makes me sick. I want to see how many lives you really have."

A pillar of ice smashed the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch into the thick ice layer, while Ao Tian stood proudly in mid-air, laughing heartily.

When the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch resurrected, Yang Yan and Ao Tian were initially a bit surprised.

However, they weren't too shocked.

For ordinary people, the death of the body signifies the death of a person.

But for cultivators, the body is merely a vessel of life; the soul is the essence of life.

As long as the soul does not die, a life cannot be considered truly dead.

In Western Satan's Hell and Eastern Yama's Yellow Springs, their main task is to collect souls of ordinary people after death.

Then they seek a suitable opportunity to find new bodies for these souls.

However, compared to cultivators, the souls of ordinary people are extremely weak.

After the body dies and the soul leaves the vessel, memory and thought dissipate at a rapid pace.

So, when these souls enter new bodies, they have no memory of their past lives and must start over from infancy.

In the East, this phenomenon is called reincarnation, and in the West, it's called rebirth.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything.

The intensity of some ordinary people's souls is higher than usual, and after the body dies, the dissipation of soul thoughts and memories is much slower.

When they enter new bodies, such souls retain some of their thoughts and memories.

This explains why some people are much smarter than their peers from birth, even being labeled as geniuses later on.

But this does not imply immortality in a certain sense.

If the soul suffers damage, it can also die and decay over time.

That is when a person faces true death.

The Demon Race, like humans, are primate creatures and naturally have souls.

The reason the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch could revive must be because Manhattan took away the wounded residual soul, allowing him to possess a body again.

At his level of strength, his soul has been thoroughly stabilized.

As long as the soul is preserved, no matter how severe the injury, he can regenerate.

Losing his body only greatly reduces his strength, but poses no real threat to his life.

This is one of the reasons why the Demon Race is so terrifying.

A body can die, but if the soul survives, revival follows, which many cultivators in the Hidden World can achieve.

Particularly among the Eastern Hidden World lineage, their cultivation techniques include methods specifically for training the soul.

For instance, Transforming Soul into Form and Nascent Soul Outing.

But even then, once the body dies and the soul is heavily damaged, it will take a decade or so of recuperation to restore the soul from a weakened state.

It's hardly comparable to the Nine Netherworld, whose body has been completely terminated and the soul reduced to a residual soul state.

Yet in less than two months, it's fully revived, and he's conveniently restored his strength to peak state after passing through the Heavenly Dao Barrier.

Though reluctant to admit it, Ao Tian could not deny that the innate advantages of the Demon Race are indeed stronger than humans in many aspects.

"Cack, cack!"

The Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch crawled out of the ice with difficulty. Though looking utterly wretched, he still let out a repulsive, sinister laugh:

"No matter how much you struggle, you won't be able to stop our army from descending upon this place!"

"You lowly and contemptible races will all become our slaves, and then I'll put a dog collar on you..."

Ao Tian squinted his eyes and coldly replied:

"What a pity, I don't plan on letting you see tomorrow."

As he spoke, his fingers snapped loudly, and he muttered with a wide grin:

"Explode!"

Bang! Bang! Bang...

Subtle sounds that weren't very apparent spread from the massive body of the Nine Netherworld. The solid ice fragments clinging to his wounds exploded one after another.

"Roar!"

When the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch realized something was wrong, it was already too late to stop it.

He never expected these fragments of ice attached to him to suddenly unleash such tremendous power.

No matter how hard he tried to circulate demonic qi to devour the ice fragments, he couldn't keep up with their explosive speed.

The immense pain from his body was unbearable, even for the bloodthirsty Demon Race, eliciting furious and painful roars that were heart-wrenching.

With each anguish-filled howl, the people of Manhattan, who were battling with Ten Swords and Titled Puppet, also looked over.

In their shocked and fearful gaze, the enormous body of the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch suddenly crumbled into a pile of flesh on the ground.

The wounds Ao Tian inflicted on his body were very precise, targeting none other than Nine Netherworld's joints.

After the ice shards, infused with his source power, shattered violently, they completely destroyed the Nine Netherworld's ability to move. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Die!"

Having toyed enough, Ao Tian coldly uttered a single word.

Impetuous by nature, seeing the Nine Netherworld's body fall, he wasted no words and thrust a solid ice spear straight into the chest.

There lay the Demons' greatest weakness—the heart.

Collapsed on the ground, the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch stared in despair at the ice spear growing larger in his pupils.

Despite desperately wanting to dodge, he couldn't move at all.

Even with their bodies' regenerative capabilities, the Demon Race hadn't reached the point of instant recovery.

He could only let the ice spear impale him completely.

Hatred filled the crimson eyes of the grotesque-headed Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch.

As the life force of his body gradually drained, a black shadow, resembling mist, floated out of the lifeless form of Nine Netherworld.

Ao Tian seemed entirely unaware of its emergence, allowing it to swiftly shoot toward Yuanfang.

Yet, before the shadow could travel far, it collided hard with an invisible barrier and was violently bounced back.

The shadow appeared to be in utter panic, darting aimlessly like a headless fly, unable to breach the invisible barrier no matter what.

"Last time, I accidentally let you escape. Did you think I would make the same mistake twice?"

Yang Yan, hovering in mid-air and borrowing the research of the Abyss Demon Monarch's ability to devour demonic qi, said calmly.

At that moment, his eyes glittered with charming azure light, devoid of emotional fluctuations.

Simultaneously, he lightly pointed a finger in the direction of the shadow.

In an instant, wave-like ripples encased the shadow in a transparent cube, surrounding it in the air.

These water ripple-like barriers prohibited any escape for the shadow.

Watching the still-struggling shadow, Yang Yan's mouth curled into a slight smile as he said gently:

"The mastery of the Soul Technique isn't exclusive to the Demon Race!"

After many futile struggles, the shadow let out a terrified cry from the Nine Netherworld Demon Monarch:

"Moonlight, if you dare to kill me, once the Demon Race army arrives, they'll plunge this world into chaos, burying it with me."