Chapter 661: The Lord of the Nether Abyss Descends

Ye Qing came by for a visit in the afternoon. He had just pushed open the heavy wooden door of Qingyou Residence when his gaze casually swept across the room, and then fixed dead on the windowsill.

"My heavens!" Ye Qing cried out in shock, the few green soft tendrils on top of his head that represented the life-force fluctuations of the spirit race now standing straight up from extreme astonishment. "This... is this still the same black furball from before? How did it turn into this?"

Ying, who was crouching on the windowsill intently preening its feathers, froze mid-motion at the words "black furball." Its small head tilted slightly, and it turned to glare at Ye Qing. Within those deep purple-gold pupils, a cold sharpness and displeasure flashed without any attempt at concealment.

Ye Qing felt his entire body prickle under that stare, as if a keen icy chill pressed directly against his throat. He instinctively stepped back two paces, his back slamming heavily against the door frame.

Su Ming was sitting upright at his desk, a green jade slip held in his hand. He spoke mildly, "Brother Ye, do not panic. Ying has just undergone a deep bloodline transformation. Its appearance and physique would naturally change. The old feathers have all molted off. What you see now is the new growth."

Ye Qing swallowed hard, forcibly suppressing the unease in his heart, and leaned closer with lingering doubt.

Only then did he see clearly that every new feather sprouting from Ying's dark silver skin was more than twice as thick as before. The color had shifted from pure black to a deep ink-blue like an abyss. And along the edges of the feathers, under the faint light filtering into the tree hollow, a faint, heart-stopping purple-gold halo shimmered.

The most striking change was in those wings. The originally somewhat short wings had now stretched to nearly double their former span. The flight feathers at the wingtips had grown slender and sharp, and when they occasionally cut through the air, they even stirred faint sonic ripples, like finely forged dark-gold blades. Ying's body size had also grown from a single fist to the bulk of two fists pressed together. On the slightly curved beak, a piercing gold appeared at the tip, radiating a merciless killing intent.

Ye Qing leaned two steps closer with lingering doubt, swallowed again, and tentatively extended a finger, wanting to touch the beautiful flight feathers on Ying's tail.

"Cheep-"

Ying did not even turn its head. It merely emitted an extremely low threatening trill from its throat, and the purple-gold halo at the edge of its wings suddenly flashed.

A tiny air blade, almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, sliced past the tip of Ye Qing's finger, directly shaving off a layer from the front of his fingernail, the cut smooth as a mirror.

Ye Qing gasped sharply, yanked his hand back, and retreated three steps in a row, his face ashen.

"What beautiful feathers..." Ye Qing awkwardly withdrew his hand, rubbed his fingertip, and exclaimed, "Guest Official Su, the rank of this spirit beast of yours is probably far above many of the bonded beasts we spirit race cultivate internally. This kind of pressure, it makes one not dare look directly at it. Given time, it will surely become something tremendous."

Su Ming smiled faintly and did not respond, merely casually steering the topic elsewhere, asking a few trivial questions about the allocation of materials for the outer defensive formations.

After seeing Ye Qing off, Su Ming shut the doors and windows, returned to his desk, and recorded the detailed data of Ying's bloodline transformation in the green jade slip one by one: the proportion of body-size change, the gradient pattern of feather coloration, the newly constructed dual-track circulation structure within its body, and the extent of improvement in each sensory and speed capability.

Once the inscription was complete, he carefully stored the jade slip away. His gaze fell on the gradually dimming sky beyond the windowsill, and his brow furrowed unconsciously.

Though Ying's transformation had succeeded, and even far exceeded his expectations, the problems revealed behind it pressed on Su Ming's heart like a boulder.

The laws of life in the spirit realm had a far deeper impact on the human race and the Demon Tribe than he had initially deduced. If even Ying, a spirit beast possessing an ancient star bloodline, could be catalyzed by this environment to such a degree, then the Dark Current Sect's mad extraction of earth vein vitality to destroy the Abandoned Lands seal would absolutely not be limited in its scope of influence to just this corner of Greenwood Court.

"They are accelerating all of this," Su Ming murmured in his Consciousness Sea.

Lin Yu's Soul Body swayed slightly within the Xuantian ring, and he gave a cold snort. "Those madmen of the Dark Current Sect are playing with fire. The more ruthlessly they drain vitality, the stronger the laws' backlash will be. We need to be ready to jump out at any moment."

Five days later, at noon.

Su Ming was at the northwestern corner of Greenwood Court's outskirts, conducting a routine inspection of a newly reinforced root vein node. Over the past few days, he had optimized the arrangement of the defensive formation lines twice more, striving to reduce spiritual energy loss to the absolute minimum.

Just as his fingertip left the formation line, confirming the circuit was unobstructed, the sky, without any warning, darkened.

This was not clouds blocking the sunlight, but the illusion of pure light being forcibly devoured. Immediately after, a terrifying aura, vast enough to suffocate, descended from the northwestern horizon like an invisible mountain of ten thousand fathoms, instantly shrouding the entire Greenwood Court.

Within a hundred li, all sound was abruptly severed and silenced at this moment. Even the wind stopped flowing.

The foliage of the ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan, which blotted out the sky, began to tremble violently. Countless emerald leaves, as if struck by an extreme cold storm, rustled down, withering into ash midair before they even landed. From the deepest part of the banyan's trunk came an extremely low, ancient true dragon death-rattle moan, the will of Elder Woodheart, a passive defense activated after sensing a fatal threat.

Su Ming felt as though his chest had been struck by lightning, his qi and blood churning, a thick sweet metallic taste rising in his throat.

A cultivation at the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm, before this unreasonable pressure, was as fragile as paper. His legs began to weaken uncontrollably, his kneecaps emitting creaking sounds of being overwhelmed, as if they might be crushed at any moment.

But he absolutely would not permit himself to kneel.

Su Ming bit hard into his tongue. The bloody agony that shot straight into his marrow restored a sliver of clarity instantly. Ruo Shui spiritual energy surged frantically through his meridians, desperately protecting his heart vessels, and Observation of the Minute was pushed to its absolute limit at this moment.

He "saw" it.

The source of the aura that turned the heavens and earth pale was at an extreme altitude in the clouds northwest of Greenwood Court. A blurry humanoid black shadow was quietly suspended there, as if he were the sole center of this vast world, all light submitting to him.

Throughout Greenwood Court, all spirit race beings sensed that terrifying existence at the same moment.

Warriors patrolling the outskirts turned pale as paper, the wooden staffs and weapons in their hands trembling violently, then dropping to the ground one after another. Some spirit race members of lower cultivation were directly pressed flat into the soil by this pressure, without even the strength to lift their heads, despairing whimpers escaping their mouths.

Elder Genxu was standing beside a formation nexus. He gripped the wooden staff that had accompanied him for a thousand years with all his might, his withered frame like deadwood swaying in a storm. He struggled to stand steady, his murky old eyes filled with unwillingness and despair.

Elder Qingluo reacted most violently. The vine soft armor within her body activated automatically, and dense dark-green thorns madly surged out from beneath her skin, instantly wrapping her into a massive green spike ball. But even this spike ball trembled ceaselessly under that pressure.

Elder Panshi's body directly transformed into a half-rock form. The moss patterns on his body emitted a piercing earth-yellow radiance, and his feet sank deep into the earth, attempting to use the power of the earth veins to resist that crashing-down force.

Every spirit race being, whether high-ranking or ordinary, understood one thing in the depths of their souls at this moment.

The Dark Current Sect's highest combat power, the Lord of the Nether Abyss who had always remained behind the scenes, had come personally.