Chapter 58: Old Ghost Tree-Infant? Escape to the Star Dou Great Forest!
Right at this moment...
Ju Chui Douluo's gaze locked onto the hunched silhouette blocking their path. The veins on the back of his hand bulged like thick earthworms as he gripped the haft of his massive hammer. His aura, usually as immovable as a towering mountain, violently rippled the second he recognized the withered face hidden beneath the cowl.
"Old Ghost Tree-Infant?" Ju Chui Douluo's voice dropped into a terrifyingly low register. "You are actually still alive?"
Every syllable was ground out from between his clenched teeth, heavy with a mixture of disbelief and deep-seated loathing.
Behind him, the heavy wooden doors of the carriage swung open. Liu Yuan stepped out, Vina close at his side. Within Liu Yuan's eyes, his Double Pupils shimmered with a cold, spectral light. His enhanced vision pierced through the gloom, clearly perceiving the foul soul power radiating from the aged crone. It felt like a bottomless black quagmire, viscous, suffocating, and reeking of rotting flesh and ancient decay.
This was no random ambush. It was a vendetta steeped in blood, dragging up one of the darkest memories of the Heavenly Soul Empire.
Ju Chui Douluo was the mortal enemy of this particular Evil Soul Master.
Over thirty years ago, a pair of infamous Evil Soul Masters had plagued the borders of the Heavenly Soul Empire—Old Ghost Tree-Infant and her husband, Old Ghost Ghost-Soul.
Their atrocities defied human conscience, plunging the border territories into absolute terror. Old Ghost Tree-Infant possessed a horrific martial soul known as the Infant-Devouring Mother Tree. To force her martial soul to evolve, she scoured the villages for newborn infants, burying their fragile, breathing bodies alive beneath her roots to serve as bloody fertilizer.
Her husband, Old Ghost Ghost-Soul, was equally depraved. He specialized in the cruel extraction of living souls. He thrived on the despair of his victims, ripping their souls from their flesh to torture them slowly, refining their agony into resources to fuel his own cultivation.
Because their methods were so venomous and bizarre, countless Soul Masters sent to hunt them down ended up as nothing more than mangled corpses.
Eventually, the Emperor of the Heavenly Soul Empire flew into a towering rage. He dispatched Ju Chui Douluo, then an eight-ring Soul Douluo, to personally execute a decapitation strike.
During that fateful battle, Ju Chui Douluo intercepted the demonic couple at the peak of a jagged canyon. At the time, the two Evil Soul Masters were merely at the Soul Emperor level, possessing cultivation in the sixties.
Facing the absolute, crushing suppression of his heavy hammer, Old Ghost Ghost-Soul was pulverized into a bloody paste on the spot.
Old Ghost Tree-Infant fared little better. With half the bones in her body shattered by the hammer's shockwave, she plummeted into a ten-thousand-foot abyss, screaming curses of endless resentment as the darkness swallowed her.
Ju Chui Douluo had assumed she was dead. Anyone with such catastrophic injuries falling into that lightless chasm had absolutely zero chance of survival.
Yet, he never could have anticipated that thirty years later, this demon who should have been nothing but bleached bones at the bottom of a ravine had not only survived but had clawed her way up to the world of a Titled Douluo.
Ju Chui Douluo's stomach dropped.
He knew the terrifying reality of the situation. Once an Evil Soul Master broke through to the Titled Douluo realm, their combat prowess eclipsed that of ordinary Soul Masters at the same rank. A madwoman like Old Ghost Tree-Infant, who built her foundation on the slaughtered corpses of innocents, would possess methods infinitely more treacherous than she did three decades ago.
"Protect the Princess and Liu Yuan! Retreat! Now!"
Ju Chui Douluo roared, his voice cracking like thunder. Without looking back, he issued the command to the imperial guard commander. Beneath his feet, nine soul rings erupted in a dazzling, rhythmic pulse—yellow, yellow, purple, purple, black, black, black, black, black.
He dared not gamble. As long as Vina and Liu Yuan remained in the line of fire, he would be forced to split his attention, unable to unleash his full destructive might.
A horrifying, hideous smile split Old Ghost Tree-Infant's face, her skin wrinkling like dead bark. Her scarlet, bloodshot eyeballs locked onto Ju Chui Douluo. When she spoke, her voice grated like rusted iron plates grinding together.
"Leave? Old Dog Ju Chui, do you honestly believe that after I waited thirty agonizing years in the dark, I would give you a chance to escape with your lives?"
The crone's withered palm slashed downward.
Instantly, the two black-robed Evil Soul Masters lurking behind her shot forward. Like starving hyenas catching the scent of fresh blood, they blurred past Ju Chui Douluo's flanks, cutting off the carriage's only avenue of retreat.
"Back then, you slaughtered my husband!" Old Ghost Tree-Infant cackled wildly, the sound piercing the eardrums. The black mist billowing from her robes morphed into countless shrill, vengeful spirits that shrieked as they circled the darkened forest. "Today, I will not only make you beg for death, but I will force you to watch your pathetic loyalty turn into a bloody joke!"
"I know your Luo family has served as the loyal dogs of the Heavenly Soul Imperial Family for generations." She pointed a gnarled finger at the carriage. "So today, I will butcher you, and then I will butcher these two precious juniors from the Imperial Family and the Body Sect! I will string their flayed corpses from the main gates of the Heavenly Soul Imperial City!"
"Imagine it! The dignified Imperial Princess, dying a miserable, screaming death because her loyal dog failed to protect her. Your proud family's reputation will be dragged through the mud, branding you as a sinner despised for ten thousand generations! Am I right?"
Her words dripped with venom. She didn't just want physical revenge; she wanted to utterly shatter Ju Chui Douluo's mental foundation before he died.
"Tear those two brats apart!"
Following her screeching command, the two flanking Evil Soul Masters detonated their soul power simultaneously. Their strength was formidable in its own right. One was a Soul Sage with cultivation in the seventies, while the other was a Soul King in the fifties.
The monstrous, demonic qi erupting from their bodies instantly corroded the surrounding grass and vegetation, turning the vibrant green leaves into dead, gray ash.
"You dare?!"
Ju Chui Douluo's eyes practically split at the seams. The massive black-gold heavy hammer in his grasp abruptly expanded, doubling in size. His first soul ring flared with blinding yellow light. A domineering shockwave, carrying the sheer physical force to crush mountains, swept outward, aiming directly for the two advancing Evil Soul Masters.
But the very second he launched his attack, the earth beneath them violently convulsed.
"Your opponent is me, Old Dog!"
From the nine soul rings hovering around Old Ghost Tree-Infant, a terrifying configuration revealed itself. Two yellow, three purple, and four black rings shone with blinding intensity.
The soil beneath her feet ruptured. A colossal, twisted, pitch-black monstrous tree tore its way out of the earth. Its thick trunk was entirely covered in the distorted, agonizing faces of human infants, their mouths stretched wide as they emitted bursts of miserable, soul-piercing wails.
This was her seventh soul skill—Martial Soul Avatar: Infant-Devouring Mother Tree!
Countless pitch-black roots, each as thick as a water barrel, lashed out like a nest of massive poisonous pythons. Dripping with disgusting, highly corrosive mucus, they violently stabbed toward Ju Chui Douluo.
The black-gold hammer slammed into the incoming roots, producing a dull, deafening explosion that sent shockwaves rippling through the air.
Ju Chui Douluo's first soul skill instantly pulverized dozens of the thick roots into splinters. However, at the severed stumps, a bizarre and sickening mutation occurred.
The shattered remnants of the roots writhed, rapidly transforming into grotesque, malformed babies with bruised purple-blue faces and glowing blood-red eyes.
The demonic infants let out sharp, hysterical giggles. Their movements were frenzied and impossibly swift. They swarmed Ju Chui Douluo, scrambling up his legs and torso, their tiny, clawed hands desperately searching for gaps in his armor to burrow into his flesh.
Ju Chui Douluo was instantly bogged down. He was forced to continuously detonate his soul power just to blast the vile creations off his body. In the short term, he was completely pinned down, utterly incapable of breaking away to support Liu Yuan.
On the other side of the carriage, the situation was rapidly deteriorating into a bloodbath.
The guard commander of the Heavenly Soul Imperial Family roared, rallying his dozen elite soldiers into a tight defensive phalanx. They threw their lives on the line, desperately trying to hold off the Rank 70-something Evil Soul Sage.
But numbers meant little in the face of absolute power. Against a Soul Sage-level Evil Soul Master, the guards were being slaughtered, their defensive line buckling as casualties mounted by the second.
"I'll take the leftovers!"
The Rank 50-something Evil Soul King let out a lewd, grating laugh. Kicking off the ground, he bounded through the air, hurtling straight toward Liu Yuan and Vina who stood exposed before the carriage. In the center of his palm, a sickly, miserable green ball of evil fire danced and crackled, radiating a searing, toxic heat.
Vina's face paled. She immediately prepared to summon her Brain martial soul to launch a mental interference attack, but before she could channel her soul power, a warm, powerful hand firmly clamped around her wrist.
It was Liu Yuan.
Liu Yuan's expression was as cold and unyielding as a glacier. Within his eyes, the overlapping Double Pupils spun rapidly. The crimson light bleeding from his irises was so intense it almost materialized, gushing outward as he pushed his soul power to its absolute maximum limit.
"Die, brats!"
Just as the Evil Soul King crossed the ten-meter threshold, raising his hand to unleash a massive wave of toxic green fire, Liu Yuan's Double Pupils abruptly contracted.
Without a single warning gesture, two terrifying beams of crimson light, as thick as stone pillars and carrying extreme, incinerating heat, erupted directly from his eyes.
The Evil Soul Master was completely caught off guard. He never could have fathomed that a mere Rank 39 Soul Elder could unleash such a devastating, instantaneous strike. Panic flashed across his face. He instinctively threw up his arm, hastily forming a soul power shield, but it was useless.
The crimson beams slammed into his defense, dissolving the barrier in a fraction of a second like snow thrown into a furnace.
"Ahhh—!"
A bloodcurdling scream tore through the forest. The moment the crimson light made contact with his flesh, the Evil Soul Master's entire right arm was instantly vaporized, erased from existence in a hiss of boiling blood and ash.
Yet, despite the catastrophic injury, the intense pain only served to ignite the Evil Soul Master's deranged nature. His eyes rolled back in madness. Instead of retreating, he lunged forward, his remaining left hand gathering an even more violent, unstable mass of evil energy.
Liu Yuan did not stick around to finish the fight. His mind was perfectly calm, rapidly calculating the battlefield.
Ju Chui Douluo was completely bogged down by a Titled Douluo, and the imperial guards were being ground to dust by a Soul Sage. If any more Evil Soul Masters arrived, or if Old Ghost Tree-Infant freed up even a fraction of her attention, he and Vina would be dead in seconds.
"We can't stay here!" Liu Yuan whispered sharply.
Taking full advantage of the crippled Evil Soul King's momentary sluggishness, he yanked Vina's hand. His figure blurred into a streak of lightning, abandoning the carriage and plunging straight toward the dense, looming tree line of the nearby Star Dou Great Forest.
The terrain within the Star Dou Great Forest was notoriously complex, teeming with lethal and unpredictable soul beasts. For ordinary travelers, entering its depths was a death sentence. But for two youths actively being hunted by a Titled Douluo, the perilous forest was their only viable path to survival.
"Elder Luo, hold the line! I'm getting Vina out of here!"
Leaving those final words hanging in the air, Liu Yuan pushed his Rank 39 soul power to its absolute limit. He bounded through the dense foliage, his footwork bizarre, erratic, and incredibly swift. With Vina matching his pace, the two figures quickly vanished into the unfathomable, creeping green mist of the Star Dou Great Forest.
Old Ghost Tree-Infant tracked the direction where Liu Yuan and Vina had disappeared, a flash of pure, sinister malice glinting in her bloodshot eyes. She didn't move to pursue them herself, instead issuing a raspy command to the writhing shadows at the base of her monstrous tree.
"Go. Hunt them down. I want to personally dig those Double Pupils out of that boy's skull, and I want to savor the sound of that little Princess's death wail!"
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