66: Soul Pollution 1

Three days after leaving Burning Sky Purgatory, high above the southernmost wasteland.

Xiao Bing flew at a low altitude, carrying the unconscious Ling Xiao, carefully avoiding the spatial rifts that wandered through the clouds. Ling Xiao’s condition was worsening; his silver hair had lost its former luster, and faint black threads, like living things, could be seen wriggling beneath his skin—that was the pollution left by the Chaos Devourer.

"Hold on, we're almost there..." Xiao Bing whispered comfortingly, even though he knew his brother might not hear him. He adjusted his posture to make Ling Xiao more comfortable on his back, while vigilantly observing his surroundings.

Since leaving Burning Sky Purgatory, Ling Xiao had had four episodes. Each time, he would suddenly awaken, his eyes blazing with black light, attacking Xiao Bing, then falling unconscious after a struggle. The intervals between episodes were getting shorter, but their duration was becoming longer.

Xiao Bing looked down at his left arm—during the last episode, Ling Xiao’s fingernails had become as sharp as blades, leaving five bone-deep scratches on his arm. If not for the power of the Heart of Chaos, he might have lost his entire arm.

"Ugh..." Ling Xiao on his back suddenly groaned, his body twitching slightly.

Xiao Bing immediately landed on a relatively flat ice plain and carefully laid Ling Xiao down. He placed his right hand where the Heart of Chaos was located, and his left hand condensed Extreme Ice Power, ready to respond to any potential attack.

Ling Xiao slowly opened his eyes; his pupils were initially normal silvery-white, then began to turn black.

"Ling Xiao! Look at me!" Xiao Bing shouted, and the red light of the Heart of Chaos surged from his palm, forming a barrier. "Control it! Just like before!"

Ling Xiao’s body trembled violently, his hands clutching his head, letting out painful groans: "Brother... run... this time... I can't control it..." His voice was sometimes clear and sometimes hoarse, as if two Souls were fighting for the same body.

Xiao Bing did not retreat; instead, he stepped forward, enveloping Ling Xiao entirely in the red light: "Listen, no matter how strong it is, it cannot defeat the three of us! Xiao Yan is still waiting for us to return! The Source World is still waiting for us to save!"

"Foolish..." "Ling Xiao's" voice suddenly transformed into the multiple echoes of the Chaos Devourer. "Do you think... a few pretty words... can dispel my pollution?" His head tilted back at an impossible angle, and black mist seeped from his seven orifices. "I have long since... fused with his Soul... to clear me... is to... kill him!"

Xiao Bing gritted his teeth, maintaining the output of the red light, fine beads of sweat seeping from his forehead. The Heart of Chaos pounded violently in his chest, each beat bringing a tearing pain. He knew Ling Xiao was right—forcibly purifying him would likely destroy his brother’s Soul along with it.

"Then... let's try another way." Xiao Bing suddenly withdrew the red light, and instead injected Extreme Ice Power into Ling Xiao’s body. "Since it cannot be cleared, then let's freeze it first!"

Ice-blue spiritual power spread like a spiderweb across Ling Xiao’s body, instantly encasing him in a transparent ice crystal. Inside the ice crystal, Ling Xiao’s eyes were wide, his expression frozen in a mixture of shock and pain.

"Rest now, brother." Xiao Bing gently caressed the surface of the ice crystal, his voice tender yet firm. "When we find Xiao Yan, we will surely find a way to save you."

He picked up the frozen Ling Xiao again and continued flying north. The power provided by the Heart of Chaos allowed him to maintain this extremely draining Seal for a long time, but the cost was the slow loss of his own vitality.

......

Seven days later, at the edge of the Source World.

Xiao Bing stumbled onto a dilapidated city wall, collapsing to his knees, utterly exhausted. Seven consecutive days of non-stop flying and maintaining the Seal had drained all his strength. Fine cracks began to appear in the ice crystal on his back, and Ling Xiao’s eyeballs slightly rotated behind the ice—the Seal was failing.

"Damn it..." Xiao Bing coughed up a mouthful of blood, his vision blurred as he looked into the distance. By distance estimation, he should have entered the Source World, yet he saw no signs of allied forces, only a devastated land and the increasingly widening black crack in the sky.

Even stranger, a peculiar energy fluctuation permeated the air, both familiar and unfamiliar, like... Xiao Yan’s Qi, yet somehow different.

"Brother... where are you..." Xiao Bing murmured to himself, struggling to stand, but fell again from exhaustion.

Just then, a violent energy fluctuation came from afar. Xiao Bing barely managed to look up, only to see a blue light rising from the horizon, soaring into the sky, exploding into countless specks of light. The fluctuation contained within that light undoubtedly belonged to Xiao Yan!

"He's alive!" Xiao Bing's spirits lifted, and with renewed strength from who knows where, he once again picked up the ice crystal and flew towards the direction from which the light emanated.

As the distance closed, the sounds of battle gradually became clear. Xiao Bing rounded a collapsed mountain and finally saw the battlefield—hundreds of allied powerhouses were forming a battle array against a tide of shadowy monsters, and at the forefront of the battle array, a translucent humanoid light figure was particularly striking.

The light figure was entirely cyan-blue, vaguely showing Xiao Yan’s outline, but without a physical body. At the heart was a pulsating cyan flame, and the Meridians were ice-blue energy flows, the entire being like a Soul body woven from fire and ice.