38: Chapter 38 The Final Battle, Dragon's Might Resounds, Red Sleeve's Diary!

The villa.

Blood-red ghostly mist surged and roiled within the villa, so thick it nearly condensed into substance.

The air was squeezed by the resentful force, emitting a sharp wailing sound, and every inch of space was filled with a suffocating sense of oppression.

Massive ghost heads flashed continuously from the mist, with distorted features and grim fangs, opening their large mouths to bite toward Lin Ye.

Meanwhile, the zhulong staff in Lin Ye's hand had ballooned to nearly ten zhang in length!

The bright golden staff body traversed the entire hall, and every swing stirred up a destructive wind pressure!

The ghost heads crashed into the staff body, like a paper lantern hitting a red-hot iron pillar, and were smashed into clusters of black smoke before they even had time to scream.

He only attacked and did not defend.

A sharp claw condensed from a Resentful Spirit tore open his lapel from the side, leaving three bloody marks under his ribs.

He did not block.

A bone spike bounced out from a crack in the floor, plunging into his calf and piercing through skin and muscle.

He did not dodge.

These attacks could indeed hurt him...

But that was all they did.

His physical body had been tempered by heavenly thunder, soaked in yellow emperors essence blood, and repeatedly strengthened by the devouring power of the Taotie.

Under the fierce ghost's full-strength attack, it merely broke the skin and drew blood, unable to even injure his tendons and bones.

The body-tempering ointment given by A-Yao made Lin Ye's self-healing ability extremely exaggerated as well.

The next second, it began to heal on its own, the bloodstains fading and disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving only a faint white mark after just a few breaths of effort.

This bit of injury was simply not worth caring about.

With this thought in mind.

The combat style became even more pure.

The zhulong staff flashed continuously, and every landing point accurately smashed onto the nodes of the ghost domain.

The blood vessel network in the walls, the nerve bundles on the ceiling, the dark red flesh membrane beneath the floor.

Every single node was smashed to pieces.

The entire villa would convulse violently, like a giant beast being constantly stabbed in its vital points struggling on its deathbed!

Hongxiu's aura weakened by three parts with each destruction of a node; her true body was dispersed throughout the entire ghost domain, making it nearly impossible for her to be killed with a single blow.

But it also meant that the shattering of every node would directly backfire onto her true body!

"No... No!"

Hongxiu began to shriek.

At this moment, the entire villa seemed to transform into an abandoned building being demolished.

The walls cracked, the floors collapsed, the doorframes warped, and even the thick resentful force in the air began to thin out.

One room collapsed!

Another room collapsed!

Violence to the extreme.

This was the purest suppression of strength, without any redundant skills or clever moves—just finding the vital spot and smashing down with a staff.

If one staff strike wasn't enough, then two; if two weren't enough, then three, until the entire ghost domain was smashed into a pile of ruins!

Hongxiu finally began to feel fear.

She initially thought Lin Ye was merely putting up a stubborn front.

No one could maintain this kind of output continuously in a battle of this intensity; no matter how strong a challenger was, there would be a moment when their spiritual power was exhausted.

Yet she found out she was wrong.

This man wasn't putting up a stubborn front; he truly wasn't tired.

His breathing remained steady, his movements remained swift, and his staff grew heavier each time. Every strike of his staff hit her pain points even more accurately than the last.

This was not human stamina; it was simply like a perpetual motion machine with no upper limit!

She couldn't wear him down anymore.

The one who couldn't hold on first... was her!

"Lin Ye!"

Her voice came from deep within the remaining walls.

The remaining walls of the entire villa exploded at the same moment, and all the blood vessel networks transformed into overwhelming dark red roots winding toward Lin Ye.

All the residual Resentful Spirit fragments condensed in the air into a giant single eye.

A black beam of light shot out from the single eye, and wherever the beam passed, even space was scorched with fine cracks.

The ghost heart swelled drastically several times over, with twisted human faces emerging one after another on its surface, emitting sharp and painful shrieks.

Hongxiu poured out all the resentful force she had accumulated over the past two years in this single strike.

The entire villa and the whole mountain peak trembled violently under the oppression of her strike!

"If you kill me, Changye will not let you go!"

Her voice exploded from every inch of space simultaneously, like millions of evil ghosts shrieking at once, "They will find you, and make you die a hundred times—ten times more miserably than me! You will regret this!!"

A threat?

The corners of Lin Ye's mouth twitched slightly.

What a coincidence; he was least susceptible to this kind of trick!

Facing the overwhelming roots, black beam of light, and Resentful Spirit fragments surging over, Lin Ye advanced instead of retreating.

Within his body, the long-dormant zhulong seal was suddenly activated...

From a mild warmth to a fierce burning, the transition took only a split second.

The air behind him distorted violently, and the phantom of a huge dragon tail slowly emerged, mottled with scales, its tip swaying slightly.

The stirred-up wind pressure shattered all those roots that were close at hand into pieces.

Following closely behind, behind the dragon tail phantom, an even more massive outline began to condense...

A blurry dragon body, a high-raised dragon head—although most of it was still just a flickering phantom.

But that vast and ancient might had already pressed down like a tangible substance.

"Roar!!"

A low dragon roar resounded from within Lin Ye's body.

The sound pierced through the walls, through the mountain body, and through the eardrums of everyone at the foot of the mountain.

The Demon Suppression Division soldiers at the foot of the mountain felt their knees go soft the moment they heard this dragon roar, as if pressed by something from the depths of their souls, and several people collapsed straight to the ground.

They blankly raised their heads to look toward the mountain peak, their faces pale as death!

They didn't know what that sound was, but their bodily instincts told them that it was an existence far superior to them.

"What is going on? How can there be a dragon roar?"

The scout's detector in his hand suddenly dropped to the ground.

"Could that be the female ghost's new ability?"

The young man beside him trembled in fear, yet could not manage to associate a female ghost with a dragon roar no matter what!

The dragon might resounded across the mountain peak.

Hongxiu's desperate final strike collapsed like a house of cards before this dragon might.

The roots were shaken into powder by the dragon might before they even touched Lin Ye; the black beam of light dissipated on its own under the gaze of the dragon head phantom, and the Resentful Spirit fragments shrieked as they turned to ashes!

The human faces emerging on the surface of the swelling ghost heart were all forced back into the interior of the heart in an instant, and the entire heart began to violently contract, shrink, and wither!

The dark red light on its surface rapidly dimmed, like a lamp drained of oil.

Then.

A figure fell out from the collapsed heart fragments, crashing heavily onto the ground covered with gravel and rubble.

It was Hongxiu's true body.

Her water-red ruqun was already tattered, with large areas of skin exposed, but the exposed skin was densely covered with spiderweb-like black cracks.

Those cracks were still spreading slowly, and with every inch they spread, her body trembled.

Lin Ye put away his staff and looked at her calmly.

"You...!"

Her voice was hoarse and weak, her lips quivering, but she could no longer speak.

Finally.

She raised one hand, her five fingers forming a claw, and scraped across the void with her very last shred of strength.

A faint black light lit up, and then her body began to disintegrate...

Starting from her fingertips, her skin, flesh, and bones turned into black dust layer by layer and drifted away.

But before completely dissipating, that finger she had scraped with gave a sudden flick.

A hair-thin black energy shot out from her fingertips, piercing through the broken walls and the mountain body, rapidly shooting toward the faintly visible town at the foot of the mountain!

Lin Ye's gaze narrowed, and he raised his hand to intercept it, but that wisp of black light was too fast, and it wasn't a physical attack.

It was some kind of medium, like a key or a trigger command.

The moment it flicked from Hongxiu's fingertips, it directly merged into the mountain body, spreading down the mountain along the earth veins.

Hongxiu's true body completely disintegrated.

On the ground, there was only a pile of grayish-black dust left, along with a few items scattered within the dust.

Lin Ye walked over to that pile of dust and squatted down.

The first item was a core.

Golden!

He had killed quite a few ghosts before, but this was the first time he had ever seen a golden core.

The core was not large, entirely flowing gold in color, with a faint luster circulating on its surface, exuding a warm aura.

He pinched the core and placed it in his palm, feeling an extremely pure power surging within it.

A Crimson-dressed Fierce Ghost-grade core of top-notch quality.

Such an item, if placed on the open market, would be enough to drive any challenger crazy.

He pocketed the golden core and turned his gaze to the second item.

That was a dark red crystal about the size of a fist, with a rough surface, entirely emitting rich fluctuations of resentful force.

Lin Ye released his spiritual power to probe into it, and his perception was instantly swallowed by a surging torrent of resentful force.

That was all the essence of resentful force Hongxiu had accumulated over the past few years, and also the source of power maintaining her fierce ghost-grade strength.

"Good stuff!"

Just as Lin Ye was preparing to activate the Taotie Devouring Seal to swallow this resentful force crystal, another force within his body took the lead and began to stir eagerly.

The zhulong seal.

That seal quietly dormant on his chest had maintained a nearly dormant, quiet state ever since he obtained it from the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

Those he had desperately absorbed previously couldn't even be considered as entering the threshold.

Yet at this moment, the seal seemed to sense something, growing slightly warm, and the heat was rising rapidly.

After carefully sensing it, he found that this was like an instinctive reaction close to "hunger".

"The Zhulong Divine Sense is interested in this resentful force crystal?"

Lin Ye pondered slightly and came to a guess.

The essence of the zhulong seal was a wisp of divine sense of the Zhulong.

And a deity of top-tier status like the Zhulong possessed vitality even down to a thread of divine sense.

It took root within his body and lived off his power, so it would also grow.

What was needed for growth was not just his own abilities.

It also needed external nourishment.

Resentful force was the power essence of ghosts, and in essence, it was the purest yin-attribute energy.

And as an ancient divine beast presiding over the yin and yang chronologies, refining malevolent yin forces with the pure yang origin was a natural cultivation method.

Therefore, it was completely normal for the Zhulong Divine Sense to be interested in this thing.

"Then I'll give it to you."

Lin Ye pressed the resentful force crystal against his chest and actively activated the zhulong seal.

The seal suddenly lit up, and a scorching power surged out from his chest, like a sleeping beast suddenly opening its eyes, opening its large mouth to swallow the resentful force crystal in one gulp.

The absorption process was extremely crude.

Unlike the Taotie Devouring Seal which transferred all energy to Lin Ye, the zhulong seal took all the power in the resentful force crystal for itself, not sharing a single bit with him.

After the dark red resentful force was swept into the seal, it was instantly transformed into a certain golden fluid, slowly flowing along the lines of the seal like magma pouring into a dry riverbed.

The absorption was complete.

Lin Ye lowered his head to look at his wrist.

On the inner side of his wrist, an extra mark had appeared at some unknown time...

A coiled dragon shape, with its head and tail connected, its scales and claws hazy, and most of it still shrouded in shadows.

But that small section of the dragon tail was exceptionally clear, with golden light flashing, and one could faintly sense the majestic power contained within it.

A surge of information flooded into his mind.

The meaning of the information was clear and definite, like an automatically translating ancient book, pouring those ancient and obscure meanings directly into his consciousness.

Only then did Lin Ye truly understand.

So...

The Zhulong divine power he had absorbed previously hadn't even reached the introductory level, and hadn't even activated the true power of the seal.

And at this moment, with the infusion of the full resentful force essence of the Crimson-dressed Fierce Ghost, the zhulong seal could be considered to have truly completed its entry-level threshold.

From zero to one, it had initially entered the early stage of the second phase.

That dragon-shaped mark coiled on his wrist was the sign of the second phase.

"I see."

Lin Ye looked at the dragon-shaped mark on his wrist, the corners of his mouth curving up slightly.

When the Zhulong gave him the divine sense back then, it didn't provide any explanation, causing him to only gradually figure out the rules now.

It seemed...

To truly fuse with the Zhulong Divine Sense, relying solely on one's own cultivation was far from enough; one also needed to continuously devour the energy of high-grade ghosts to feed the seal.

Each feeding would increase his affinity with the Zhulong Divine Sense; the higher the affinity, the more Zhulong power he could invoke.

At the same time, the feeding process also accelerated the progress of fusion, shortening a situation that might otherwise have taken decades or even longer to cultivate into an unbelievable speed!

And the higher-grade the ghost, the better the feeding effect!

He faintly had a feeling.

A sleeping giant dragon was slowly waking up inside his body.

Although it was far from truly waking up, after absorbing the resentful force essence of the Crimson-dressed Fierce Ghost, that giant dragon's eyelids seemed to twitch slightly.

Lin Ye withdrew his thoughts, stood up, and looked around.

The ghost domain had completely collapsed, and the villa had turned into a patch of broken walls and ruins, with light pouring down from the fractured roof, shining on the pile of rubble.

He released his spiritual power to scan around, discovering several unusual energy fluctuations within the debris.

He walked over, uncovering the gravel and rubble to reveal an iron box that had been crushed out of shape.

The box was smashed open, and the items inside scattered out.

Three dragon-eye-sized luminous pearls, brimming with spiritual energy, should have been looted by Hongxiu from some ghost domain during her lifetime.

A short sword, with archaic runes carved on its scabbard, revealing a chilling light when the blade was unsheathed, of no low grade.

Several silver spell talismans, their ink not yet completely dry, exuded gentle spiritual fluctuations and were of considerable value.

There was also a pile of scattered spiritual crystals of medium quality and considerable quantity.

Taking them all, he pocketed these items along with the iron box.

While sorting through the sundries, a yellowish-covered notebook slipped out from the bottom of the box.

With a parchment cover and badly worn corners, it was still relatively well-preserved.

Lin Ye picked up the notebook, opened the first page, and what met his eyes was a line of delicate handwriting...

"Hongxiu, on the graduation day of Qingzhou Challenger Academy, if life could always be as beautiful as first meeting!"

Leaning against the broken wall, by the meager light, he opened this diary...

And the more he read, the weirder Lin Ye felt.