"After him! He must be heading for the Treasure Temple Domain to the west!"

The red-robed figure instantly melted into a pool of liquid that clung to the ground, carrying the man away in pursuit toward the west.

Although he could no longer sense Yang An's aura, he knew Yang An and his group were surely heading for the Treasure Temple Domain. If Yang An lingered in the Fusheng Domain, he would be discovered quickly.

Therefore, the best course of action was to head for the Treasure Temple Domain immediately.

Even if he couldn't catch Yang An, he could still go after the two small fry who had run off earlier. Capturing them would be acceptable too.

In any case, as long as he brought someone back, he could consider his duty fulfilled.

But that was just a rationalization. The failure to kill Yang An weighed on his heart like a stone, and he shot westward in a mad, high-speed chase.

Soon, the man's figure vanished into the distance.

More than ten breaths later, the man's figure suddenly reappeared. He returned to the spot and observed it for a moment, his expression growing darker, before he headed west once more.

This time, the man did not come back. The area was riddled with signs of battle—pockmarked with craters, the earth and rock churned up.

Gusts of wind blew through, as if trying to erase the marks of the fight, but only time could truly scrub them away.

「Half an incense stick's time later.」

From behind a distant pile of rubble, Yang An slowly crawled out. He saw that no one was around and sensed that the Qi Seal he had left on the man had traveled too far to be detected. Only then did he let out a long, deep sigh of relief.

'I finally led him away.'

HISS—

Yang An suddenly collapsed, his entire body wracked with violent convulsions. His face was a mask of agony, twisted in pain.

'Stop... stop biting!'

Struggling to remain conscious against the agony erupting from his soul, he finally cried out to the Bow Lady in his mind. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Ptui, ptui, ptui! So bitter I could die! You little brat, how is your Soul Body different from everyone else's? Why is it so damn bitter?!"

The Bow Lady's complaining voice suddenly echoed in Yang An's ears.

The moment her voice sounded, the pain in his soul finally ceased. His convulsions stopped, and his body was drenched in a cold sweat.

He didn't blame the Bow Lady in the slightest, though. After all, he had been the one to ask her to do it.

'I was right. The pain of the soul truly is the worst kind of agony!'

'The pain of ruptured organs, of a shattered mind—none of it even compares to the agony of the soul.'

Physical pain had a source. You knew where it came from, you could describe the sensation clearly, and it was generally within the limits of one's endurance.

But the pain of the soul... there was no way to know its origin.

At first, it felt like countless ants crawling all over his body, burrowing into his ears, his mouth, his nostrils.

They squeezed into every orifice and began to viciously tear at every inch of him, every piece of his flesh.

Then the swarm of ants felt as if it had turned to fire, then to ice, and finally to all sorts of other, indescribable torments.

Yang An's physical body and his consciousness were tortured again and again by this agony.

And that was just from the Bow Lady taking a single bite of his soul. Any more a-damaging action would have been even more painful—enough to drive a person mad, to make them lose consciousness and their very sanity.

But it was also precisely because of this that he had been able to hide here. He had used the pain of his soul to amplify his Illusion Technique, completely concealing his aura and tricking that guy into thinking he had fled.

'I have to admit, my current strength is enough to face a Zombie God head-on. But when they use the Power of Rules, I'm completely outmatched.'

'The Power of Rules can actually animate the Techniques I use, allowing my enemy to turn them back against me. That's just too damn bizarre!'

'Relying purely on my Techniques, I can't harm him at all. I can't even get close.'

'If I hadn't secretly used the Summoning Incantation at that final, critical moment to call upon an unknown, controllable Xian and temporarily hinder my opponent, I probably would have been tortured to death by now.'

'Against his Power of Rules, I was completely helpless.'

'So this is the fundamental difference between a Corpse Transformation and a Zombie God!'

'I wonder when I'll be able to get a Forbidden Artifact Fragment, or get my hands on the one in the Secret Pattern Space.'

'Although I'm just a Corpse Transformation and still a long way from becoming a Zombie God, with my Golden Finger, it might not be impossible to try.'

'If I could also master a Forbidden Artifact Fragment, my power would take another quantum leap. I would surely be able to face a Zombie God head-on, maybe even kill one!'

'I wouldn't be like this, getting completely crushed with no way to fight back.'

'But thinking about this is useless right now. The most pressing matter is figuring out how to deal with that guy.'

'If I stay in the Fusheng Domain, it's just one Zombie God after me for now, but who knows how many more will follow. After all, the entire Fusheng Domain is basically the Golden Soul Sect's territory.'

'Finding me here in the Fusheng Domain would be all too easy for them.'

'The only thing I can do now is get to the Treasure Temple Domain as quickly as possible. But that guy already headed west. If I go to the Treasure Temple Domain now, I'll inevitably run into him.'