The Stone Golem capital was built with pale-gray rocks. The tainted energies within the city were much thicker than without.
Numerous evil spirits and ghouls roamed the city.
Stone pavilions that were several dozen meters high stood on either side of the wide streets.
As soon as Nie Tian and the others’ air-transportation spiritual tools crossed the city wall into the city, their flesh and soul auras instantly attracted evil spirits and ghouls to them.
Evil spirits fed on souls, so they came after their true souls.
Ghouls, however, came to feast on their flesh and blood.
Not all of the evil spirits were equally strong. Those who had been powerful when they had been alive would be powerful after turning into evil spirits.
The same went for the ghouls.
Nie Tian examined the ghouls pouring towards them with rapt attention, and discovered that almost none of them had been transformed from humans.
However, after pondering the matter briefly, he realized that since humans had feeble flesh bodies and weak flesh power, the chance of them turning into ghouls must be smaller to start with.
Then, even if they became ghouls, they would be the weakest among the ghouls.
They might have long since been eliminated by former explorers who had entered this city.
Therefore, most of the ghouls that had survived had been transformed from outsiders or Ancientbeasts.
WHOOs.h.!.+ WHOOs.h.!.+
About a dozen evil spirits flew towards them like cl.u.s.ters of gray clouds, screeching as they did.
As they approached, a cloudy soul aura that was mixed with raging killing intent blew directly in their faces.
Without making a sound, the peculiar soul aura pervaded a large area around them in the blink of an eye.
Waves were instantly created in Nie Tian’s quiet sea of awareness. Even his true soul, which he had refined many times, seemed to be shaken, and became somewhat blurry.
As soon as this happened, Nie Tian felt very dizzy, as if he was being bewitched.
He instantly realized that the cloudy aura had already infiltrated into his sea of awareness without him knowing it.
“Star Soul s.h.i.+ne!” As a thought entered his mind, the nine star souls that floated over his sea of awareness instantly emanated chilly starlight that had the effect of soothing his nerves and cleansing his mind.
He soon rid him of the soul aura’s negative influence and recovered a clear mind.
Immediately afterwards, he turned to look at the three girls in the Star Boat with him.
Mu Biqiong and Yin Yanan didn’t summon their coexisting flowers or Frost Blood Python, but they were able to communicate with them on a soul level to draw some of their soul power.
Thanks to this, the two of them also rapidly recovered clear minds after a short period of bewilderment.
However, as he laid eyes on Xie Wanting from the Water Moon Sect, he discovered that a fierce look had been added to the depths of her pupils, which were usually as quiet as lake water.
A strange aura that was filled with violence and a thirst for blood rapidly built up within her, completely unlike her normal vibe.
Killing intent flashed across her eyes.
“Wake up!” Nie Tian shouted, while lifting his hand to place his finger on the spot between her eyebrows.
A wisp of chilling star power instantly spread out from his fingertip, cleansing her bewildered mind.
The fierce look in her eyes rapidly faded, along with the strange aura that had wreathed her.
Immediately afterwards, she came back to her senses. With a confused expression, she asked, “What just happened?”
“Strange,” Mu Biqiong said in a soft voice. “Not only are the evil spirits in this Stone Golem capital in great numbers, but they can even bewitch people.”
“Be careful now,” Nie Tian said, withdrawing his finger from between Xie Wanting’s eyebrows. “You’d better guard your sea of awareness at all times, lest you get influenced again.”
“Thank you,” Xie Wanting said, her heart still fluttering with fear. “Sorry I was too careless. None of the evil spirits we met before were able to bewitch people, so I wasn’t prepared for this.”
“Yeah,” Nie Tian said plainly.
At this moment, Huang Jinnan’s chariot and all of the other air-transportation spiritual tools started gathering towards Nie Tian.
That was because the incoming evil spirits had attacked their seas of awareness as well.
However, none of them seemed very much affected, as they all looked rather calm and composed.
As a few evil spirits flew closer and closer to Nie Tian, numerous fine soul strands interwove into a large net that hoped to net the souls of Nie Tian and the others.
Having dealt with evil spirits on many occasions, Nie Tian had long since been prepared for this. He summoned the Spirit Pearl as soon as the soul strands appeared.
In the next moment, the fine soul strands released by the evil spirits were sucked into the cyan pearl like wisps of cyan mist.
Seeing this, the evil spirits became instinctively scared, and fled in panic.
However, an irresistible attractive force was born within the Spirit Pearl, and the evil spirits were grabbed, as if by invisible hands, and dragged right into the cyan pearl.
The other evil spirits, which were attacking Huang Jinnan and the others, instantly sensed danger, and flew away as quickly as they could.
Soon, all of them vanished into the distance.
Huang Jinnan and the others didn’t seem shocked by Nie Tian’s performance, as they had witnessed Nie Tian do this before with that mysterious pearl.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
One ghoul after another walked out of the lofty stone pavilions on either side of the wide street.
From the look of it, they had turned the former Stone Golem residences into their own homes.
Only after catching a whiff of flesh aura would they come out of them and prey on the living.
Covered in fluffy hair all over, the ghouls were of different sizes. Some of them could even fly, while others walked the gruesome streets. However, all of them fixed their dull, hollow eyes on the air-transportation spiritual tools that were berthed in midair.
SHEW! SHEW! SHEW!
All of the flying ghouls morphed into streaks of pale light that rammed directly towards the air-transportation spiritual tools.
“Leave these ghouls to us,” Huang Jinnan said with a relaxed smile.
Immediately afterwards, all of the others from the various domains shot out of their air-transportation spiritual tools or drove their air-transportation spiritual tools towards the incoming ghouls, engaging in a fierce fight.
Huang Jinnan, however, didn’t head out. Instead, like a magnificent statue bathed in divine golden light, he stood unwavering on his golden chariot.
From the look of it, he didn’t think it was necessary that he fight these ghouls personally. The other Qi warriors would be more than capable of handling them.
Under the young chosen ones’ joint attack, the flying ghouls were indeed proven inferior, as many of them were split into chunks of cold flesh that fell out of the air.
The ghouls that were walking in the street gathered over to the mangled parts of their own kind, and started munching.
It didn’t take very long for the Qi warriors to slaughter all of the ghouls that could fly.
All that were left were ghouls that couldn’t fly, and since they were busy feasting on the remains of their friends, they posed no threat to Nie Tian and the others.
At this moment, Huang Jinnan’s eyes once again started to glitter with golden light.
His golden pupils seemed to allow him to detect even the most subtle movements as he glanced around at the stone pavilions the ghouls had come out of.
Moments later, he exclaimed, “That one!” Then, his golden chariot suddenly shot behind one of the stone pavilions like a golden flash.
Surprised by his action, Nie Tian went blank for a moment before flying after him on the Star Boat.
There was a well in the s.p.a.cious backyard of the stone pavilion.
A shriveled female ghoul was standing by the well and pulling bucket after bucket out of it with a dull expression on her face.
Instead of clean water, the bucket she pulled from the well was actually filled with grimy blood.
The female ghoul buried her face in the bucket and started gulping, and soon emptied the bucket.
Then, she threw the bucket back into the well and repeated the action mechanically.
There were no other ghouls by the well.
Huang Jinnan got off his golden chariot and watched the ghoul in silence. After observing for a while, he said in a low voice, “A Demon ghoul.”
After berthing the Star Boat beside Huang Jinnan’s golden chariot, Nie Tian jumped off it and stared shockingly at the well and the ghoul.
Violent, frenzied flesh power could be sensed from the well.
Eyes narrowed, Huang Jinnan said, “I sensed that there was an Earth Cultivated grade spiritual material inside the well, but I couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Let’s get rid of this ghoul first.”
The female ghoul had focused all of her attention on drinking the grimy blood that she scooped from the well, and was completely unaware of their arrival.
She was obviously different from the other ghouls.
All of the other ghouls had rushed out to Nie Tian and the others upon sniffing out their flesh auras, but she had stayed here the whole time, scooping grimy blood from the well.
She was so concentrated that even Nie Tian and Huang Jinnan’s arrival didn’t alert her.
BZZZ!
A bolt of golden lightning suddenly shot out of Huang Jinnan’s fingertip, piercing directly towards the ghoul.
The ghoul finally sensed something, and thus turned around instantly.
A strand of her long, knotted hair suddenly shot out like an arrow, clas.h.i.+ng with Huang Jinnan’s golden lightning bolt.
The golden lightning was reduced to tiny golden sparks that rained from midair as the ghoul’s strand of hair also blew up.
“Hmm?!” A shocked expression spread across Huang Jinnan’s face, as he clearly didn’t expect that this ghoul transformed from a female Demon would be able to neutralize his attack so easily.
He was well-aware that that golden lightning bolt of his could easily split rocks and penetrate metal. No outsider at or under the sixth grade could have defended against it so effortlessly.
“This ghoul must have been at a high grade when she was alive.”