Cultivation through Skin Making - Chapter 769 - 269. Good friend, I must see you! (4.5K words - seeking subscription)
Chapter 769: 269. Good friend, I must see you! (4.5K words – seeking subscription)
“Any discoveries?”
Ning Yunmiao sent a thought over.
Song Yan scanned the surroundings and said, “You turn on the Array of Concealment that comes with the Void Ship completely, I’ll go and take a look around.”
As soon as he spoke, the Void Ship floating silently mid-air vanished instantly.
The two had long discussed numerous plans and naturally had mutual understanding.
What Song Yan meant was that he hadn’t discovered anything and needed to travel further for a short exploration.
He was particularly suited for this task, with the “Great Freedom Realm” and “Divine Forms Demon Body” allowing him to layer himself in a doll-like fashion outside his body and Divine Thought, topped with the high efficiency of “Words Follow as Laws”.
As long as he didn’t provoke the vigilance of any powers, he could effortlessly blend into his surroundings, something Ning Yunmiao couldn’t do.
…
Several days later…
Song Yan walked across this land shrouded in eternal night, a withering land, with fierce winds slicing through the frozen soil, lifting a storm of sand and stones.
Huge rocks and deep chasms were everywhere, hidden in the darkness.
If a mortal were to tread this place, even if not frozen to death, swept up and thrown to death by the wind, or struck dead by the stones in the wind, they would still surely fall and get impaled by sharp rocks or fall into an abyss to their death.
Song Yan’s figure trailed a shadow.
Each step spanned nearly a hundred miles, and he wouldn’t get lost as he had already left Divine Sense marks.
The fragmented earth made it impossible for him to determine what this place used to be.
Suddenly, he paused in his steps.
From behind a rock covered by his Divine Sense, there came a faint sound of life energy being absorbed, very quietly, with hidden array shields set around as if afraid of being discovered.
Song Yan’s Divine Sense easily penetrated the shield without triggering any array, revealing the scene within.
Surprisingly, a black-robed Demon Monk was devouring a Cultivator’s body…
Song Yan could vaguely sense that the Cultivator was not entirely dead yet. Though his body was decayed, his soul clung stubbornly to his Divine Thought, still resisting the Demon Monk’s devouring power.
The black-robed Demon Monk wore a sinister smile, a gigantic mouth formed of black energy appearing before him, with the struggling Cultivator within.
This scene stirred distant memories in Song Yan.
Once, he too had been in such a gigantic mouth.
Back then, it was the Threshold of the Callous King.
In a moment of reflection, he casually reached out and grabbed.
The black-robed Demon Monk felt an overwhelming power descend upon him, like a divine hand reaching down from the clouds to press upon a tiny ant… Immediately, he wore a fawning expression, trying to beg for mercy.
But in the next instant, he was gone, he…became a layer of “skin” outside Song Yan’s Divine Thought.
Song Yan ignored the still-struggling Cultivator and continued on his way.
There was no cause and effect between him and that Cultivator, nor did the Cultivator possess anything desirable to him. Saving him on a whim was not out of compassion, but simply a revisitation, seeing a minor entity like the Demon Monk and wanting to play with it, while further concealing his own aura, that was all.
However, if that Cultivator managed to resurrect himself and appeared before him again, that would be a karmic bond.
Yet, how many in this world possess the unfathomable wisdom like his?
Suddenly, he somewhat understood how Ning Daozhen felt when he first encountered him; Ning Daozhen had wandered the void for long and surely had witnessed much death, yet a Righteous Dao person like Ning Daozhen never showed themselves, giving him only a karmic bond upon meeting him—because of the small stone stuck to his soul, the relic of Gu Mohan. That was a karmic bond.
This trait was vividly manifested in Ning Yunmiao as well.
Though she followed the Righteous Dao, she was not a naïve do-gooder.
But…
He felt a slight oddness because the Ning Daozhen who shouted “save people” loudly over the Rusted Sword Blood Abyss seemed every bit the naïve do-gooder…
All along the way, Celestial Demons were numerous, but with the Demon Monk’s aura, coupled with his own concealment, he easily slipped past.
Upon seeing a pitch-black feminine Demon Shadow shackled by nine chains, it was as if a child found an interesting pretty shell on the beach, a child would naturally bend down to pick it up and stash it in their pocket, and he would…
He dispatched a “Great Freedom Realm” to directly stick the Nine-Child Demon Mother to him, then discarded it onto his Divine Soul surface.
The Nine-Child Demon Mother couldn’t even utter a word, departing peacefully just like that…
Once a formidable enemy, today merely a shell on the beach for his collection.
Song Yan wanted to collect a full set, so he started seeking the Demon Dragon.
The Fire Demon Dragon of yore, mouthful after mouthful of Karmic Fire, nearly burned him to death.
Now, he found himself longing for the Fire Demon Dragon.
After all, they were memories.
Clop, clop, clop…
With the aura of the Nine-Child Demon Mother, he no longer needed to hide, and walked directly on this apocalyptic land.
Suddenly, he stopped again, as he sensed an ice sea as clear as a mirror.
Yet this ice sea was not boundless; it must have been a vast body of water left after the retreat of a flood that engulfed the land long ago.
This body of water had frozen over.
Yet beneath the ice, countless Netherworld Corpse Demons were quietly frozen in place. Being creatures that only act upon sensing life, yet with little life in this post-apocalyptic world, they had stopped moving and were temporarily frozen in the ice pit.
Squatting beside the ice pit, Song Yan looked at the Netherworld Corpse Demons in bizarre, twisted postures, seemingly dead yet still imbued with Power, recalling the black heart encounter with a Netherworld Corpse Demon at the end of the Threshold of the Callous King—a brush with death and survival, followed by the “Yin Soldier Patrol” on the starlit ruins next door to the void.
