366: Chapter 367 Soul-Degrading Strike! The Shocking Truth Behind the Living Sacrifice Artifact

Violent Soul Search.

Lin Qi's Dao Source seeped from his five fingers into Ku Ye's skull, plunging deep into the core of his Soul along nerve fibers and blood vessels.

Ku Ye's Soul defenses began to crumble the moment they made contact with the Dao Source.

It wasn't because the defenses weren't sturdy enough. As an old monster who had lived for over a hundred years and practiced Law for eighty, the thickness of his Soul defenses far exceeded that of High Priest Cang Yan from the mining area. If conventional mental intrusion methods were used to crack it, even a half-step Law-level mental-type ability user would have to spend several hours.

But Lin Qi wasn't using mental intrusion.

It was physical cracking.

With microscopic precision, the Dao Source directly rewrote the underlying structure of Ku Ye's Soul defenses. Just like formatting the Law roots before, it didn't play logic games with you; it directly dismantled the hardware carrying that logic.

No matter how strong your antivirus software is, if I format the hard drive, what are you going to defend?

In this instant, Ku Ye's Soul experienced the most extreme terror a person who had lived for over a hundred years could feel.

It wasn't the fear of death.

It was the fear of being "read through."

Over a hundred years of memories, beliefs, obsessions, and secrets were all exposed like open pages under the Dao Source vision of a seventeen-year-old youth.

"No... You can't..."

Ku Ye issued his final protest.

Then, his Dao Heart shattered.

It wasn't smashed. It shattered because it couldn't bear the strain. It was like an old man's most private diary being read aloud in public; his psychological defenses collapsed automatically.

Lin Qi ignored these emotional fluctuations.

He began to flip through rapidly.

The memory capacity of over a hundred years was extremely vast. Lin Qi didn't have the time to check frame by frame. The Dao Source automatically filtered out all irrelevant fragments of life, locking only onto memory nodes related to "faith channel," "Prophet," "Container," and "law seed."

The first key node.

Forty-seven years ago.

Ku Ye was in his prime, standing in a dim underground altar. In the center of the altar was a figure.

No.

It wasn't a human figure.

Lin Qi's Dao Source focused on that "figure," and the image zoomed in.

Then he saw clearly.

That wasn't a person.

It was a mass of distorted, constantly shifting high-dimensional projection. It was as if something was trying to compress itself into a humanoid shape in three-dimensional space but consistently failed. Its outline flickered repeatedly between human, plant, and geometric shapes, spilling out a large amount of garbled information with every switch.

Visually, it looked like a shattered kaleidoscope.

On an informational level, it was a segment of code filled with grammatical errors that could not be interpreted normally.

The Prophet.

In the memory, Ku Ye was prostrate on the ground, his whole body trembling as his mouth repeatedly chanted the name of the Throat of Devouring Heaven.

The Prophet's "voice" entered Ku Ye's mind.

It wasn't sound waves; it was a stream of information written directly into his consciousness.

Lin Qi indirectly received this information through Ku Ye's memory. The content was encrypted in layers, but after the Dao Source forcibly decoded it, the core instruction was very simple.

"Feed the Container. Use vitality. Continuous supply. Until the day of descent."

The second key node.

Twenty-three years ago.

Ku Ye stood in the center of the Rotten Wood Forest, where a deep pit had just been dug in the ground. A person lay at the bottom of the pit.

A woman.

She was very young, probably in her early twenties. Her skin was pale to the point of being almost transparent, her lips were pale purple, and her entire body emitted an extremely cold aura.

She had no power to resist, her limbs bound by some kind of Law chains, her eyes half-open and half-closed, her pupils unfocused.

Ku Ye stood by the pit, his expression pious and calm.

The Prophet's projection appeared again.

Information stream written in.

"Extreme Yin Physique. A natural Container. Sink her into the deepest part of the faith channel, and use a hundred years of vitality to continuously nourish her; her body will become the vessel to hold the power of God."

Ku Ye did as instructed.

The woman was enveloped by Law roots and sunk into the ground, deeper and deeper.

That throb, the throb once every minute—it was her.

It wasn't some monster.

It was a person who had been buried alive for twenty-three years.

Lin Qi's Dao Source lingered on this memory for two seconds.

Two seconds later, he flipped to the next page. His expression didn't change, but his five fingers gripping Ku Ye's skull tightened slightly.

The third key node.

Eleven days ago.

Ku Ye received the Prophet's latest instructions through the faith channel. There were two instructions.

First: The Eastern Stronghold has been lost, Cang Yan has fallen, and the killer's logic of action is not within the known Law system; all strongholds are to enter the highest state of alert.

Second: Abyssal Fang has been assigned to infiltrate Tianhai City to search for a backup Container. Prioritize locking onto the following three characteristics—Extreme Yin Physique, age not exceeding twenty, and an unawakened or failed Awakening human.

When Lin Qi reached this part, his movements paused for a moment.

Abyssal Fang didn't go to D-3 for revenge.

Not at all.

Shi Gu and the others' judgment was wrong. After Abyssal Fang sensed Cang Yan's death, he did indeed have a violent impulse due to Soul resonance, but the Prophet gave him a new mission immediately.

Go to Tianhai City to find someone.

Find a young person with an Extreme Yin Physique to serve as a backup Container.

Why was a backup needed?

Lin Qi continued to flip down.

The answer was in the final memory fragment.

There was a footnote in the Prophet's information stream with the highest encryption level; Ku Ye himself might not have even realized this information existed:

"Rotten Wood Forest Container cultivation progress has reached ninety-one percent. Ice Rift Valley Container cultivation progress has reached eighty-seven percent. The completion of either Container will initiate the descent. Finding a backup Container is to... ensure redundancy."

Two strongholds, two Containers.

Both were living people with Extreme Yin Physiques.

Both were buried alive at the deepest part of a faith channel, continuously nourished with vitality for over twenty years.

The cultivation progress had already exceeded eighty percent.

Lin Qi's Dao Source withdrew from Ku Ye's Soul.

Ku Ye's body convulsed violently the moment the Soul search ended, his mouth letting out an incoherent groan, his eyes having completely lost focus. His Soul had been turned inside out, and on a conscious level, he was basically scrapped.

Lin Qi stood up.

He didn't speak, his mind quickly organizing the information he had just obtained.

The Prophet was a mass of high-dimensional projection that couldn't maintain a humanoid form. It wasn't human, nor was it a native existence of this world. Its Law outline was distorted into garbled code, which was completely consistent with the intelligence previously interrogated from the Eye of the Abyss.

The Containers were living people with Extreme Yin Physiques, buried alive in the deepest parts of the strongholds and nourished with a hundred years of vitality. Currently, there was one each in the Rotten Wood Forest and the Ice Rift Valley.

Abyssal Fang was in Tianhai City looking for a third backup Container.

Of these three pieces of information, the third was the most critical.

Because in Tianhai City, the range of people who met the three conditions of 'Extreme Yin Physique, age not exceeding twenty, and unawakened or failed Awakening' was not large.

And while Instructor Su Qing was at the Base D-3, making it impossible for Abyssal Fang to break in, Tianhai City was not D-3. Tianhai City had millions of ordinary people, most of whom had no ability to protect themselves.

If Abyssal Fang found the target and succeeded before he returned...

Then the Prophet would have an extra trump card in hand.

Time was getting tight.

Lin Qi looked down at the unconscious Ku Ye at his feet.

It was time to wrap things up.