Former Interstellar Mercenary In Urban Cultivation World-Chapter 1377: Shadows in Ashwood Hollow

Beyond the door lay a bleak and abandoned city.

The barren land and the dry air, the ground littered with dead trees and yellowing leaves — there was no trace of vitality.

This was the only way to enter Ashwood Hollow City.

A space carved out by powerful cultivators long ago, it had been set up to prevent the city gate from falling and devils immediately flooding into Mystic Void Continent.

Amalia headed straight for the far end. Sure enough, she found a formation carved into a cliff face.

The formation, apparently unused for a year or two, was covered in dust.

She placed spiritual stones into it herself and activated the formation to enter Ashwood Hollow City.

Ashwood Hollow City.

In a shadowy corner, a dusty, hidden formation suddenly flickered faintly with a soft light.

The light flashed and vanished, and the formation returned to silence.

A guard nearby suddenly turned his head and looked over.

"What’s wrong?" another asked.

The man walked toward the formation. "I thought I just saw the formation flash."

His companion said, "No way. You’re seeing things. The passage from the Oryeong Mountains has been sealed by the humans for over a year now. No one’s shown up all this time."

The man scratched his head, looking confused. Had he really imagined it?

Yet when he thought about it carefully, the flash had seemed incredibly real.

Still, there was no one around. If someone had come through, they would have noticed.

In the end, that devil also convinced himself it had just been his imagination.

Little did they know, at the very instant Amalia was transmitted over, she had immediately entered her small World, which was why no one had seen her.

"Ashwood Hollow City has indeed already been occupied by the devils."

Amalia, seeing two figures guarding the formation nearby, immediately confirmed that they were devils.

If they had been human cultivators, after the gate was sealed, they would not have deliberately stationed guards at the formation.

Only devils would behave like this.

She controlled her Small World, now disguised as mere drifting dust, and let it float outward.

Along the way, she saw few devils wearing human skins.

This Ashwood Hollow City itself wasn’t very large to begin with.

The strongest being here was merely a cultivator at the Body Integration Stage.

Of course, this Body Integration Stage cultivator had already been transformed into a devil.

After observing for a while, Amalia quickly came up with a plan and returned to the area where the two devils were guarding the formation.

"It seems like fewer human cultivators have been coming by recently."

"Ashwood Hollow City is remote and small. The humans naturally don’t like to come here. And even if they do, it’s not like we’d get any share."

"Ah, but the City Lord is wise. At this rate, if another hundred human cultivators come, maybe we’ll finally break through."

"My cultivation has been stuck for so long. I want to break through too, not stand guard at this godforsaken boring place every day."

"Then how about changing places?"

A voice suddenly sounded out of nowhere.

"It’s not that easy to change, you know," the devil replied casually, still unaware anything was wrong. "Nobody even dares to think about it."

Just as they realized something was off, their vision went black. When they came to, they found themselves standing on an expansive plain.

In the distance, layers upon layers of mountain ranges loomed, veiled in mist. This was definitely not anything one would see in Ashwood Hollow City.

Amalia appeared before the two devils.

The devils looked at each other, and without a word, they lunged forward, brandishing their sharp claws.

Amalia froze them midair, rendering them completely immobile.

She forcibly extracted the devils’ soul from their human bodies.

The stripping away of their soul made them scream so loudly that smoke almost rose from their throats.

Once separated from their bodies, the devils’ soul tried to flee.

The devil soul were different from human soul. Once separated, they became easy to distinguish.

Human soul resembled a miniature version of their physical self, while a devil’s soul was a cluster of light, with a small hard bead seemingly wrapped inside.

The hard beads inside the two soul were pale yellow in color.

Amalia reached out and plucked one of the beads from the devil’s soul core.

It was as if it was stuck in something sticky; when she pulled the bead out, the devil’s soul immediately disintegrated.

However, she could still faintly sense a lingering trace of the devil’s life force—and that trace was emanating from the bead she now held.

She crushed the bead between her fingers, and that trace of life force completely vanished.

The other devil was so terrified that he began to beg for mercy without end.

"How many devils are there in Ashwood Hollow City? How many King levels? How many Great Lord levels...?"

Amalia asked countless questions, and the devil answered each one obediently.

In Ashwood Hollow City, there was only one King level devil, a few hundred Great Lord

level devils, and over a thousand lower ranked ones—a number neither too large nor too small.

When the devil thought she might spare him, Amalia erased him completely, then exited her Small World.

Amalia then transformed into the appearance of one of the devils.

As long as no one stronger than her encountered her, no one would be able to see through the disguise.

In all of Ashwood Hollow City, only the City Lord had a higher cultivation than she did.

Inside Ashwood Hollow City, the devils appeared extremely lax.

After over a year of idling, where every so-called "battle" was staged merely to deceive human cultivators, the devils had grown undisciplined, each doing as they pleased.

Amalia would lure devils into isolated corners and suddenly strike, pulling them into her Small World to eliminate them.

Repeating this method over and over, the number of Great Lord level devils in Ashwood Hollow City steadily dwindled.