Chapter 218

Chapter 218

Du Lian was dead.

She had died when she was three years old.

And then Du Lian came back to life.

Someone had used those fine, rootlike filaments to stitch Du Lian’s Souls back together, bringing her “back to life.”

Du Lian’s words-“So I was already dead…”-had condemned not only her to death, but me as well.

Because the two liquefied ribs at the very bottom of my chest had been stitched together in exactly the same way.

Perhaps… this was the true reason I had been able to reincarnate and return.

“Go!”

“Hurry!”

Du Lian suddenly screamed inside my head. She desperately opened and closed her mouth, pounding both hands against the wall of the fish tank.

“It’s a trap!”

“They’re coming! They’re here!”

Clap… clap… clap…

The sound of applause suddenly came from behind me.

Even though I was only a Soul Body, I instantly felt as if all the blood in my veins had frozen solid.

I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Feng Lishu.

What an elaborate trap.

At that moment, I didn’t even dare imagine how many years Feng Lishu had spent laying it for me.

“Linu, do you like the gift I prepared for you?”

Feng Lishu’s voice came from behind me. I didn’t turn around. I had no idea what kind of restrictions she might place on me if our eyes met.

“I hadn’t planned to activate this Formation so soon,” Feng Lishu continued. “But you were far too disobedient. You kept struggling with everything you had and forced my hand, so I had no choice but to set this part of the plan in motion. Well? Are you satisfied?”

When I gave no response, Feng Lishu let out a cold laugh.

Then she said, “You’ve been here for a while now, haven’t you, Linu? Haven’t you ever thought to lower your head and take a look at yourself?”

Look at myself?

I knew I was currently a Soul Body.

But that clearly wasn’t what Feng Lishu meant.

I lowered my head and looked at my Soul Body. The instant I did, I froze.

Like everyone else’s, my Soul Body was almost transparent.

But for the first time, I could clearly see my two liquefied ribs.

Those two ribs… were identical to the liquid in the bathtub.

They… were flowing.

Countless fine, rootlike strands filled the viscous, flowing liquid.

Looking closer, I saw that those roots spread outward from the two liquefied ribs, extending through nearly my entire Soul Body.

My… my Soul Body looked as though it had been stitched together by those roots.

It was exactly how I had just imagined Du Lian being brought back to life.

There was no difference at all.

“Do you see it clearly now, Linu?” Feng Lishu asked smugly. “Twenty years ago, when you were unexpectedly born in Tafeng Village, you gave me quite a fright.

“I couldn’t understand it. You’d clearly been suppressed so completely, so how could you still be reborn?

“From that moment on, I began studying you. I studied everything about you, but it wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near enough!

“So I found a child whose Reincarnation Fate Pattern was almost identical to yours. We found a way to shatter her Souls, collected all the fragments, and then obtained her corpse. After that, we poured the shattered Souls and that liquid into her body.

“Do you know what happened next?

“She came back to life!”

By this point, Feng Lishu was utterly deranged. “The roots in that liquid actually stitched her Souls back together and brought her back to life. Linu, isn’t that marvelous?”

The next instant, she teleported in front of me, blocking my view.

A foul stench assailed my nose, nearly making me vomit.

Feng Lishu’s body had decayed even further since the last time I saw her in Paradise Beyond the World.

Beneath the rotting flesh of her right cheek, I could even see blackened, withered bone.
I frowned and instinctively took two steps back.

That small movement enraged Feng Lishu.

She followed me forward two steps, her putrid face almost pressing against my Soul Body as she roared, “What? Disgusted by the way I look?

“Linu, you are my ‘Slave’! What right do you have to be disgusted by me?

“Everything you have is mine!

“Your body, your man, everything!”

As she spoke, she raised a hand to touch my cheek. I quickly backed away and dodged her.

The instant she lifted her hand, a chunk of rotting flesh fell off.

Feng Lishu stared at the piece of flesh on the floor and went mad.

She suddenly struck the fish tank behind her with her palm.

The force of the blow whistled through the air, and I frowned.

Feng Lishu’s internal cultivation… seemed far weaker than before.

Even so, the strike shattered the fish tank.

The liquid inside came gushing out in an instant.

Du Lian’s body slammed heavily onto the floor.

When she hit the ground, she neither cried out nor struggled.

She merely lay there with her eyes open, staring blankly upward, utterly lifeless.

The next moment, something inside her body… shattered.

It was her Souls.

They splintered into pieces and scattered into oblivion.

Du Lian’s corpse dissolved into a puddle of pus until not even her bones remained.

Feng Lishu laughed like a madwoman. Pointing at the pus on the floor, she said to me, “Do you see that, Linu? This is what happens when you disobey me.”

She started toward me again. “Be good and surrender yourself to me. You are my ‘Slave’. Everything you have was always meant to belong to me!”

With that, she lunged at me.

I backed away while carefully observing her.

She could have done what she used to do: form hand seals the instant she saw me, use the Mantra to control me, and do whatever she pleased with me.

But she hadn’t.

It was clear that the backlash from the Symbiotic Curse had ravaged her badly. She no longer had the power to control me.

That was why she so urgently needed to replace me.

What should I do now?

I had an overwhelming premonition that if I could kill her here in this underground palace today, she would disappear from my life forever.

I had no idea what kind of backlash I might suffer afterward, but I knew I had to seize this chance.

I shouted, “Fengwu, come forth!”

At the same time, I thrust out my right hand and curled my fingers as if gripping something.

But nothing happened.

The Longbow did not appear. Even the Copper Coin Liu Junyan had given me was gone.

Feng Lishu laughed mockingly.

I reached for my neck, then looked down at the base of my left middle finger.

The jade pendant was gone, and even the Water Ripple at the base of my finger had vanished.

None of them… could follow my Soul Body here.

But there was one thing I could not understand. Fengwu was clearly my Lifebound Artifact, so why couldn’t I summon it while in my Soul Body?

“Waiting for your Lifebound Artifact?” Feng Lishu asked. “Do you really think I would set this trap without accounting for it?”

So the Formation in this underground palace had shut Fengwu out.

Fengwu was still there. It had simply been isolated by the Formation and could not sense my summons.

At that moment, I finally understood what it meant to be at the end of my rope.

“I told you, stop struggling. It’s useless.”

Feng Lishu abruptly retreated several steps to the side. With a wave of her hand, she extinguished one of the oil lamps on the raised platform.

The instant the lamp went out, I distinctly sensed the Formation inside the underground palace shift.

The surrounding Candle flames flickered in and out. When they finally steadied again, the remaining lights had formed a Taiji Eight Trigrams Formation.

Feng Lishu and I each stood within a Formation Eye of the Yin-Yang Fish…