8: Chapter 8 Devouring the Yaksha World

The Yin Soldiers stood their ground, neither retreating, dodging, nor showing fear.

They simply raised their spears and thrust them at the charging Yaksha Clan.

One thrust.

Two thrusts.

Three thrusts.

Every attack from every Yin Soldier was simple to the extreme: thrust, retract, and thrust again.

No fancy techniques, no complex moves.

Only mechanical repetition.

But it was this simple repetition that formed the most terrifying line of defense.

The Yaksha Clan at the very front had their chests, throats, and eyes pierced by spears. They fell, and the Yaksha behind them continued to charge, stepping over their bodies.

The Yin Soldiers' spears pierced the second, the third, the fourth.

Finally, a Yaksha broke through the spear defense and swung an axe at a Yin Soldier.

However, it was completely useless; the axe passed right through the Yin Soldier's body.

The Yin Soldier didn't scream, didn't retreat, and didn't even pause.

He just continued to raise his spear and thrust it at the Yaksha's throat.

One spear through the throat.

The Yaksha fell.

The Yin Soldier retracted his spear, his body completely unharmed.

However, some Yin Soldiers sustained minor injuries from energy attacks.

Fortunately, all Yin Soldiers possessed Yin Energy Affinity.

[Yin Energy Affinity: Can slowly recover from injuries in a Yin Qi environment]

Although the Yin Qi here was far less dense than in the Netherworld, Su Bai's World Mark was continuously releasing Yin Qi, shrouding the entire battlefield.

As long as there was Yin Qi, the Yin Soldiers would not die.

Su Bai stood behind the lines, calmly scanning the entire battlefield.

The Ghost Bride floated in mid-air, continuously using Soul-Claiming Red Makeup to cause chaos. Her aura was depleting rapidly, but every time a Yaksha fell, resentment would surge into her body, replenishing her consumption.

[Resentment Absorption: Can recover oneself by devouring the resentment of the deceased]

This was a perfect combat cycle.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman darted across the front lines, using eerie mental attacks to slay the strongest Yaksha warriors. Her consumption was also immense, but she killed the fastest and absorbed the most resentment.

Two hero units, one hundred Yin Soldiers.

Five hundred and seventy-three Yaksha.

The battle lasted for a full twenty minutes.

When the last Yaksha fell under the Ghost Bride's Soul-Claiming Red Makeup, there was not a single enemy left standing on the battlefield.

The ground was covered with the corpses of the Yaksha Clan.

Some were bleeding from their facial orifices, some had suffered cardiac arrest, some were pierced by spears, and some were trampled to death by their own kind.

As for Su Bai's camp.

He scanned the area.

One hundred Yin Soldiers: seven heavily wounded, thirty-one lightly wounded, and zero fatalities.

The heavily wounded Yin Soldiers lay in the Yin Qi, slowly recovering; their broken armor and wounds healed at a pace visible to the naked eye.

The Ghost Bride floated in the air, hungrily absorbing the resentment permeating the battlefield. Her aura was skyrocketing, only a hair's breadth away from the second tier.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman stood amidst the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, slowly putting on her mask. Her scissors were stained with blood, but her face remained expressionless, as if she had just performed a trivial task.

Su Bai looked away and stared down at the cracked earth beneath his feet.

The last of this world's resistance had been completely buried here.

Now.

It was time to harvest.

He raised his hand, and the mark of the Netherworld World appeared in his palm.

A grayish-white light surged from the mark like countless tentacles, probing into the cracked earth of the Yaksha Realm.

The devouring began.

The sky changed.

The dim yellow sky looked as if a massive hole had been torn in it, and grayish-white Yin Qi poured down from that opening like an inverted waterfall.

The ground began to vibrate.

It wasn't the kind of vibration from the Yaksha Clan running, but a tremor that shook the entire world.

Those cracks began to widen, and streaks of grayish-white light shone through them, as if something was awakening from deep underground.

In the distance, the weathered castle collapsed.

It wasn't pushed over but was uprooted by some invisible force.

The ruins of the castle, the rubble of the city walls, and the mountain of skeletons were all swept into the air, swirling, breaking, and dissolving in the grayish-white light.

Su Bai stood in the center of the battlefield, his raised hand never wavering.

He closed his eyes, his consciousness fully submerged into the core of the Netherworld World.

[Devouring initiated]

[Target World: Yaksha Realm (Tier 1)]

[Target World Diameter: Approximately 80 kilometers]

[Current World: Netherworld (Tier 1)]

[Current World Diameter: 10 kilometers]

[Devouring Feasibility: High (Target world has no remaining resistance)]

[Estimated Devouring Time: Unknown]

The system notification sounded in his mind, but Su Bai ignored it.

He was feeling.

Feeling the Netherworld World slowly tearing open the barriers of the Yaksha Realm, feeling the grayish-white Yin Qi frantically pouring into this dying world, and feeling everything in the Yaksha Realm being decomposed, absorbed, and transformed into a part of the Netherworld.

The world was turning upside down.

Quite literally, the world was being overturned.

Distant mountain ranges began to collapse; massive rocks were swept up by an invisible force, turning into fragments of light in mid-air as they were sucked into the gaping grayish-white rift.

The nearby wasteland began to churn; the cracked earth rose and fell like waves, and countless Yaksha skeletons were unearthed from underground, also turning into fragments of light to be swallowed by the rift.

Even the sky itself was shattering.

The dim yellow canopy was like a piece of torn, ragged cloth, peeling away layer by layer to reveal the grayish-white void behind it.

Heaven and earth were like an inverted funnel.

Everything.

The mountains, the wasteland, the ruins of the castle, the corpses of the Yaksha Clan, and even those wounded Yaksha who hadn't died yet.

All were swept up, swirling and rising, finally turning into fragments of light and injecting into the small gray mark in Su Bai's palm.

The Ghost Bride floated in mid-air, watching this scene with her eyes wide open.

"Wow..."

She had never seen such a sight.

The entire world was being destroyed, being sucked into the palm of the man who had created her.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman remained silent, but her hand gripping the scissors tightened slightly. In those hollow eyes, a rare flicker of awe passed through.

The Yin Soldiers remained lined up where they were, motionless despite the world turning upside down around them.

They felt no fear, no curiosity.

They were simply waiting for orders.

It felt as if a long time had passed, yet also as if only a moment had gone by.

When the last shred of the dim yellow canopy was torn away and devoured, and the last piece of cracked earth was swept into the rift, Su Bai finally opened his eyes.

In his palm, the mark was slightly hot.

[Devouring complete]

[Power Of Faith gained: 288 points]

[World Diameter Expansion: 10km → 39km]

[New Map Generated: Yaksha Wasteland]

Su Bai looked down at the map of the Netherworld World appearing in his palm.

The originally ten-kilometer grayish-white world had now expanded significantly.

The newly added twenty-nine kilometers were no longer pure grayish-white Yin Qi.

Instead, it was a wasteland.

A deathly silent wasteland, strewn with skeletons and shrouded by a dim yellow canopy.

The Yaksha Wasteland.

The corners of Su Bai's mouth curled up slightly.

He raised his hand, his consciousness probing into the Netherworld World.

Within the grayish-white Yin Qi, the newly born wasteland lay quietly at the edge of the Netherworld. The soil on the wasteland was still cracked, the skeletons were still scattered about, and even the weathered castle ruins were preserved in their entirety.

The only difference was that the canopy shrouding the wasteland was no longer dim yellow but had turned grayish-white, just like the Netherworld.

The Yin Qi was slowly seeping into every inch of the wasteland's soil, changing its essence.

After some time, this wasteland would be completely transformed into a part of the Yin Qi World.

At that time, new buildings could be constructed here, and new ghosts could be nurtured.

Su Bai withdrew his consciousness and looked up.

Before him, there was nothing left.

The Yaksha Realm had completely disappeared.

A world where three hundred thousand Yaksha had once lived and multiplied, a civilization that once had seventeen cities—not a single speck of dust remained of it now.

Only a void remained.

And the deep blue portal leading to the War Hall.

Su Bai turned around and looked at the Ghost Bride and the Slit-Mouthed Woman.

"Let's go home."

The Ghost Bride floated over, extremely excited by Su Bai's side.

"Master is so amazing!"

Su Bai rubbed her hair, his gaze passing over her to look at the hundred Yin Soldiers.

The seven heavily wounded had basically healed, and the thirty-one lightly wounded had long since recovered.

One hundred Yin Soldiers stood in a neat formation, waiting for the next command.

Su Bai nodded in satisfaction.

"Let's go."

He stepped into the deep blue portal.

Behind him, the Ghost Bride followed closely, the Slit-Mouthed Woman stepped forward in silence, and the hundred Yin Soldiers marched out in unison.

The moment he passed through the portal, Su Bai looked back at the void.

The Yaksha civilization had vanished from this point forward.

And his Netherworld World now had an additional territory.

The Yaksha Wasteland.