74: Soul-locking ignites the flames of heaven and earth, the deep throat of the rift reveals the demon night.

"Time to crush you to death."

Four words were uttered, and the word became Law! Jiang Linfeng's calm voice was like a divine hammer of judgment, driving into the frozen space of Ziyun City! He held the sleeping Jiang Xuanchen, floating outside the sky-high ice-blue formation barrier of the Xuanhan Starry Sky Dojo. The Chaos runes flowing on the barrier, the floating star fragments, and the frozen dragon-shadow ice lotus patterns all seemed to vibrate slightly at these four words, emitting an even more piercing, murderous chill!

His left hand, hanging by his side—the one once eroded by the Abyss Soul-Devouring Dragon Curse, still hiding a faint purple-black mark—slowly rose.

Buzz!

A speck of Chaos Divine Light suddenly lit up from the tip of his thumb! It was as if the core of the Universe had been ignited! That wisp of pitch-black mark, stained with Ning Yudie's Origin Soul Essence Blood and lingering deep within the coordinates of the Void Realm's cracks like a maggot on a bone, was cast into the furnace of Chaos like fuel!

Hu—!!!

Above the Xuanhan Starry Sky Dojo, the originally slow-flowing ice-blue cold current turned violently frantic! As if pulled by an invisible gravity, it converged madly toward Jiang Linfeng's raised left hand! The wind of the clear sky for ten thousand miles was instantly drained and frozen, transforming into a deep blue ice-flame pillar a hundred zhang in diameter that pierced through the heavens! Inside the giant pillar was not a burning heatwave, but an extreme ghostly cold that incinerated space and swallowed light! At the tip of the ice-flame pillar, a speck of dark-gold divine light, concentrated with the will of Chaos's birth and death, suddenly erupted like the pupil of an apocalyptic star, locking onto a certain point deep within the mysterious Void Realm!

Using the enemy's blood as the guide!

Using Chaos Divine Power as the furnace!

Using the Heaven and Earth Cold Soul as the fuel!

This is—the Soul Locking Heaven and Earth Ice Flame! Ignoring the barriers of time and space, tracing back to the Origin of Karma! Burn!

"Found you." Jiang Linfeng's lips parted slightly as he uttered three cold words. His gaze pierced through the dark-gold divine light at the core of the ice-flame pillar, seemingly seeing through the endless distorted dimensions of the Void Realm, precisely anchoring onto a spot deep within a chaotic, violent black Abyss Rift filled with infinite tearing energy!

There, a speck of cold light dust, finer than a grain of sand and compressed from the ultimate Restriction of the Ice Soul Palace, was like a withered leaf caught in a storm, frantically trying to merge into the turbulent spatial astral winds that were enough to tear apart a True God's body. Around the cold light dust, Ning Yudie's terrified and desperate Soul fluctuations tumbled, mixed with bone-eroding curses and resentment!

"Burn."

Jiang Linfeng flicked his finger toward that locked point in the Void Realm!

Roar—!!!

The ice-flame pillar, entwined with the Chaos will, was like a roaring ice dragon as it crashed into the space before him! The space shattered silently like fragile glass, collapsing into a spinning, expanding black hole! From the other side of the black hole, the ear-piercing shriek of tearing space and energy turbulence violent enough to destroy stars instantly transmitted through!

Inside the Xuanhan Starry Sky Dojo, Luo Yan, who had just steadied her mind and was carefully nourishing Su Ningxue with life source energy, suddenly looked up! Xi Youqin's small face turned pale as the green-light small sword in her hand buzzed and vibrated, pointing toward the direction of the shattered space! The chaotic aura of destruction leaking from the opened passage carried the thick scent of deathly Ice Soul and evil curses unique to Ning Yudie!

Abyss Rift, an unknown depth.

This was a land of eternal Chaos. Space was like a tattered cloth bag torn and haphazardly patched together by a god; violent spatial turbulence formed visible storms of destruction blades, slicing through everything in existence. Distorted gravity fields caused floating shattered continents to rise and fall, upon which remained architectural ruins of ancient eras and the skeletons of massive, unknown behemoths. Pitch-black energy vortices were like hungry maws, emitting silent hisses as they swallowed all matter and energy that strayed into them. This was a dead zone in the Void Realm, a forbidden zone for gods and demons!

At this moment, a speck of dust struggled through a spatial crack finer than a hair, evading the violent spatial blades. On the surface of the dust, dim divine runes flickered. Ning Yudie's remnant Soul fluctuated violently at the core, like a dying beast growling:

"Impossible... How could he be so fast... so far?! His will... his power... exactly what Realm is he at?!! Damn it... damn it!! Origin backlash... spatial storm... at this rate..." An unprecedented fear gnawed at her last bit of sanity, mixed with the Soul-burning pain of the peach blossom brand on her back and the crazed whispers of the remnant Abyss Dragon Curse, pushing her to the brink of collapse!

Boom—!!!

It was as if the giant hammer of Chaos at the creation of the world had smashed the eggshell of the abyss! A massive dark-gold divine pillar wrapped in ghostly cold ice-blue divine flames arrogantly tore through the chaotic gravity field and the Void Realm membrane, slamming into this silent dead zone like a pillar that steadies the sea!

The position locked by the ice-flame pillar, right at the center—was that speck of cold light dust fleeing for its life!

"No—!!!!" A desperate shriek of Divine Thought exploded like a deathbed wail!

Chhh!!!

There was no world-shaking explosion. The moment the Soul Locking Heaven and Earth Ice Flame precisely hit that speck of cold light dust, the extreme ghostly cold ice-flame was like a greedy devil, instantly saturating the entire compressed palace core! All of Ning Yudie's power, all her struggles, and all her resentful curses were like dewdrops under the sun before this ice-flame that condensed the Laws of Chaos Origin!

The dust suddenly stiffened! Immediately after, it began to silently disintegrate and melt! Every inch of the spatial Restriction runes that formed the dust evaporated under the ice-flame! Ning Yudie's final Soul emitted a shrill, invisible scream beyond the limits of perception under the purification of the dark-gold divine light, like billions of lost Souls being cast into an eternal frozen furnace! Her last bit of consciousness clearly "saw" her own Origin turn into ice-crystal dust like ignited dry grass, and along with the burning pain of the peach blossom brand on her back, it all returned to absolute nothingness!

In less than a single breath!

That speck of cold light dust, which contained all of Ning Yudie's remnant Souls and her Divine Palace Origin, along with her last trace of existence in the myriad worlds, completely vanished within the dark-gold divine light at the core of the Soul Locking Heaven and Earth Ice Flame. It dissipated into smoke, turning into the purest stream of Origin particles, becoming a negligible bit of nourishment for the ice-flame pillar itself.

[Ding! Tracking target 'Ning Yudie's' Soul brand has been completely annihilated! Death confirmed! Abyss Dragon Curse (Main Contract End) is permanently deactivated! (Note: The 'Ancient Profound Desolate Key Fragment' the curse is attached to is not the main contract body and is unaffected.)]

The cold notification echoed in his Sea of Consciousness.

The ice-flame pillar, having completed its mission, did not immediately dissipate. Instead, the dark-gold divine light at its core appeared even sharper and more overbearing due to the instant incineration of a Peak powerhouse's Soul mark! The divine light turned slightly, like the eye of an apocalyptic demon god scanning this chaotic and brutal Abyss Rift! Wherever it passed, the originally violent spatial turbulence seemed intimidated by an invisible will, actually freezing for a moment! Several massive floating skeletal continents silently turned into grayish-white powder and dust, dissipating into nothingness as the divine light swept over them!

The pillar slowly withdrew. At the moment the huge passage opening it had crushed through the spatial barrier was about to close—

Rip!

A distorted dark-purple spatial curtain, originally hanging not far from the edge of the passage and slowly melting from the radiation of the ice-flame's edge, was suddenly torn open by an abruptly rising dark energy that looked like thick asphalt!

A figure stumbled out from that viscous darkness!

As soon as she appeared, she let out a muffled groan of pain mixed with an extremely pleasurable, eerie quality: "Ugh... ah...!"

Purple demonic light surged under her skin like boiling water before quickly receding. But this momentary leak was enough for a fleeting glimpse!

Night Demon!

That figure was surprisingly the demonic enchantress who had made a brief appearance with magic-rune illusions in the ruins and later tried to lure and kill Jiang Linfeng with a succubus array at a dark node, only to be suppressed! At this moment, she seemed to have undergone a tragic battle or some bizarre transformation. Her clothes were severely damaged; the inner garment woven from Ten-Thousand-Year Dark Demon Spider Silk was largely torn and sliding off, exposing half of her fragrant shoulder and a startling abyss-like cleavage. Her face was covered by half a cracked bone mask, but the other half of her cheek was covered in unhealed purple-black demonic marks, adding a touch of eeriness. A broken purple soft gauze sash at her waist barely covered her vital parts, making her peach-like buttocks with their startling curves appear even fuller and tighter under the dim energy afterglow. On the outside of her left thigh, a claw mark deep enough to see bone was slowly oozing purple-black blood that seemed alive. Her right arm hung limply, seemingly heavily injured, but her five fingers were tightly dug into the deck of the broken starship floating beneath her.

"Damn it... Ice Soul Bone-Eroding Qi... I almost failed in an easy task..." Her voice was raspy and charming, as if she were cursing an enemy, yet also as if she were savoring the ultimate pleasure brought by a certain pain. However, when her gaze unintentionally swept across the other end of the spatial passage torn open by the Soul Locking Heaven and Earth Ice Flame pillar, toward the figure quietly floating outside the barrier of the Xuanhan Dojo—

Night Demon suddenly stiffened!

The single eye visible on the face partially covered by the mask instantly contracted, the pupil vibrating violently! It was as if the tongue of the most poisonous snake had glimpsed the tail feathers of a Nine Heavens Divine Phoenix!

"...It's... you?!" Her voice changed pitch, carrying unbelievable shock and a deep-seated greed-mixed-with-extreme-fear vibration! She recognized that figure! The man who had wiped away her meticulously arranged demonic array with a wave of his hand and pinned her to a stone wall to do with as he pleased! The man who had given her an unforgettable experience of "death" and "rebirth" at the Peak of her magic-rune backlash and lust!

She felt even more of the aura remaining in that ice-flame pillar that pierced through the void and coldly incinerated everything—an apocalyptic power enough to instantly crush her current heavily injured body into fly ash! There was also the lingering echo of the Soul shriek of an Ice Soul powerhouse who made even her a bit wary, having just been precisely erased by that ice-flame pillar!

The edge of the spatial passage opening was closing rapidly. Through the quickly narrowing gap, Jiang Linfeng's cold gaze, projected across the Laws of the myriad worlds, seemed to also sweep over her figure as she lay miserably prostrate in the void dust.

That gaze was like a deity from the Nine Heavens glancing at a maggot wriggling in the mud; it passed over briefly, without surprise or joy, containing only a void that disregarded all living beings. It was as if her existence was not worth mentioning at all.

The next moment, the huge spatial crack closed, completely isolating the two worlds. The Soul Locking Heaven and Earth Ice Flame pillar completely dissipated above Ziyun City, leaving only a trace of cold pressure from incinerating a powerful enemy and disrupting the abyss.

The Abyss Rift fell silent for a moment, with only the noise of violent spatial turbulence swirling debris and the lingering echoes of desperate shrieks from the final incineration of several wisps of Ning Yudie's remnant Souls.

Night Demon lay on the bone-chillingly cold, broken deck, her body still stiff. The purple-black blood from the wound on her left thigh seeped out faster due to the intense stimulation, sliding down the inside of her thigh and drawing a lewd thin line in the dim light.

Under the mask, her seductive red lips slowly curved into an extremely distorted arc filled with shock, humiliation, fear, as well as a certain pathological excitement and greed. Her single eye stared fixedly at the place where the passage had vanished, while magic runes surged and rose secretly and crazily under her tattered clothes, as if brewing an even more dangerous dark storm.

"Jiang... Lin... Feng..." She stuck out her scarlet tongue and licked away a trace of purple magic-rune blood that had overflowed from excitement, her voice like the friction of a cave snake, "So... you're hiding there... a neighbor of the abyss..."