"That shouldn't happen. Auntie is a Soul Sage after all, and she possesses a Martial Soul True Body. Even if she can't win, escaping shouldn't be a problem." Shui Bing'er gently shook her head. Although a faint, ominous premonition secretly arose in her heart, she dismissed it as an illusion brought on by the constant influx of negative emotions.
Just then, in the distant valley, a terrifying surge of cold energy suddenly erupted. An ice-blue arrow, like a meteor, streaked across the sky, leaving a shocking ice trail above the valley. That terrifying cold energy, with its ultimate low temperature, made even Shui Bing'er, who possessed the Ice Phoenix Martial Soul, tremble involuntarily.
"Bing'er, run! Don't look back, there's...!" Powerful soul power fluctuations erupted like surging waves, and Shui Ming'er's voice carried from afar. However, the next moment, her voice abruptly ceased. At the same time, the violently erupting soul power fluctuations instantly died down like a extinguished flame.
Feeling Shui Ming'er's soul power fluctuations suddenly vanish, and her life aura completely extinguished, Shui Bing'er's pupils sharply contracted, a look of disbelief on her face.
"Auntie!" The disappearance of soul power and the complete extinguishing of life aura—everyone in the Tianshui Team knew what this meant. They simultaneously showed expressions of disbelief, and Shui Yue'er let out a mournful cry of sorrow, tears uncontrollably streaming from her eyes.
"Go!" Despite her immense grief, Shui Bing'er forced herself to suppress her emotions and maintain her composure. She grabbed Shui Yue'er, and a pair of ice wings quickly spread behind her. Without hesitation, she desperately fled in the direction they had come from. This sudden separation left everyone in the Tianshui Team with red eyes, but no one lost their rationality. Instead, they obeyed Shui Ming'er's last dying wish and chose to flee immediately.
"Boom!"
Soon after Shui Bing'er and the others hurried away, an object resembling a fiery meteor hurtled down from the sky. Accompanied by roars and explosions, a circular shockwave spread outwards, carving a huge circular crater into the earth. High-temperature flames swept wildly, melting the ground into scorching lava wherever they reached, leaving a scene of intense heat and destruction. Amidst the swirling smoke and surging air currents, a tall figure, shrouded in black mist, could be vaguely seen, appearing and disappearing.
The scene shifts to the depths of the valley, where dense black mist condensed into a pitch-black throne. Upon the throne sat a white-haired young man. He rested one hand on his cheek, his eyes tightly closed. On his pale face, several pitch-black cracks were particularly striking, adding a touch of sinister and demonic aura to him, as if he were a demon king from the abyss. Not far from the throne, a lifelike ice sculpture stood silently. Shui Ming'er's face in the ice sculpture was frozen in an expression of shock and terror, even in death. It could be clearly seen that there was a shocking void at her heart, as if her life force had been instantly drained at that moment.
Not far away, a pink-haired girl, also enveloped in black mist and with black cracks on her cheeks, expressionlessly slowly lowered the longbow in her hand, then gently closed her eyes. As she moved, the surrounding cold mist gradually dissipated, leaving only deathly silence and an eerie chill.
In the depths of the black mist-shrouded valley, several blurry figures flickered in and out of the darkness. At the same time, various negative energies, like an attracted torrent, continuously converged from deep underground. Killing intent, resentment, death aura, malevolent aura, yin energy, demonic energy... It was as if all the negative energy accumulated on the entire Douluo Star for countless years was now converging here like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.
"This is truly interesting!"
On a nearby mountain peak, Lu Jingming silently gazed at the figure on the pitch-black throne that looked exactly like him, a look of intrigue in his eyes. Immediately, his gaze shifted to the pink-haired girl who had just shot the fatal arrow, killing Shui Ming'er of Tianshui Academy. His expression instantly became peculiar.
"Is this the so-called 'darkened and ten times stronger'? Even little March wouldn't be able to beat her if she came herself!" Lu Jingming was extremely certain that if March 7th faced this darkened version of herself, formed by negative energy, she would undoubtedly be rubbed into the ground without any suspense. After all, these memory bodies, condensed from negative energy, had intricate connections to him. Because of this, he deeply knew that the power of these memory bodies was beyond imagination.
"Your idea is correct. Planting the World Tree on this planet, allowing its branches to form ley lines, materializing the negative energy generated by the planet over countless years, and then using the soul masters of this world to purify it, converting negative energy into positive energy, can indeed accelerate the planet's evolution!" The figure of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata quietly appeared. She also looked at the distant valley shrouded in black mist, sighing softly.
Lu Jingming's action, from the perspective of the planet, was indeed a profoundly significant good deed. By gradually guiding out the negative energy accumulated by the planet over countless years and converting it into positive energy, such as life force, it could indeed accelerate the planet's growth process.
However, this approach was not friendly to the life and civilization on this planet. After all, these negative energies were inherently generated by the intelligent life on the planet. Commoners oppressed by soul masters or nobles accumulated endless resentment in their hearts, and soul beasts hunted by humans also carried deep resentment. These intelligent beings, whether alive or dead, continuously produced negative emotions and energy. This negative energy had always existed, but ordinary people could neither perceive it nor utilize it.
Lu Jingming, on the other hand, planted the World Tree, allowing its branches to transform into ley lines, slowly guiding these negative energies, deeply buried within the planet, to the surface. He did this purely to condense a divine seat, and his goal was extremely ambitious: he did not want to gradually progress from the lowest-level divine seats. Take Sea God Poseidon, for example; he spent a thousand years continuously collecting the power of faith from the ocean, ultimately achieving only a first-grade divine seat. The Angel God was similar; by collecting faith from the continent, she only became a first-grade god.
But Lu Jingming disdained first-grade divine seats altogether; what he pursued was at least the God King position. So, he turned his gaze to the planet itself. According to research by the Herta, the so-called God Realm was essentially a convergence of sentient beings' thought power. It was formless and intangible, existing in a different dimensional space from the real world. And faith, in essence, was also a form of sentient beings' thought power. This was precisely why a divine seat condensed from faith could only be anchored in the God Realm, because the God Realm and the power of faith were essentially consistent. It was also because the God Realm was an intangible world of thought power that it could be swept into a black hole by spacetime turbulence, while a physical planet would not be affected in the slightest.
Whether in the Douluo Continent where Lu Jingming originally resided or this parallel world's Douluo Continent, collecting faith was by no means easy, and this process was particularly time-consuming. Even if he could unify the two Douluo Continents, achieving a God King position would definitely not happen in a short time; it would take at least a hundred years or more. Lu Jingming did not want to spend such a long time waiting. Of course, condensing a third-grade god position required relatively less time, but this was far from satisfying his ambition.
Ultimately, through the joint research of the Herta and Mobius, he found a shortcut. Since a planet possessed its own consciousness, then a planet could also provide sentient beings' thought power, and subsequently, the power of faith. Although the Douluo Star's planetary consciousness only possessed instincts, since it could autonomously select Children of Fortune, this meant it was also a special kind of living being. Just like the twin planet Dragon-Horse Star's planetary will, Long Tianyang, not only developed sentience but also possessed her own thoughts.
However, the Douluo Star's planetary will was far from as powerful as Long Tianyang. It had not yet formed its own self-will, so it naturally couldn't actively believe in a certain deity and thus provide immense power of faith. Therefore, Lu Jingming came up with a mutually beneficial method. He would help the planet evolve. In doing so, the planetary will would instinctively develop an affinity for him, thereby providing him with feedback in the form of sentient beings' thought power and fortune. And he, in turn, could use this feedback to achieve his goal of condensing a divine seat.
In just a few months, he had successfully planted the World Tree, materialized through stigmata, onto this planet. This was the root cause of the series of unusual changes the planet had experienced during this time. By leveraging the power of the soul master world to cleanse the planet's long-accumulated negative energy, thereby indirectly promoting the planet's evolution, Lu Jingming's task was to patiently await the moment of harvest.
According to estimates, once a large amount of the planet's negative energy was purged and converted into positive energy, Douluo Star would achieve direct evolution, becoming a quasi-God Realm existence. By then, the continent's strength limit would no longer be restricted to Titled Douluo. At that time, the powerful energy feedback from the planet would be sufficient to help Lu Jingming directly condense a God King level divine seat of Life and Wisdom.
The reason Lu Jingming chose the parallel world's Douluo Star to implement this plan was that the gods of the God Realm in this world were not so idle and wouldn't constantly stare at one Douluo Continent. The God Realm governed a vast star system, and there were quite a few high-level planes like the Douluo Continent. Therefore, no deity would be so bored as to constantly monitor every move of Douluo Star. Even the Asura God and Sea God, who left behind divine seat inheritances, only left a trace of divine sense in their inheritances, and this divine sense would only focus on matters related to divine trials, not interfering with affairs outside of them. Therefore, Lu Jingming could confidently and boldly implement his plan here and stir up immense trouble. But in the Douluo Continent where he originally resided, he could not act in such a manner, because a certain idle God King was constantly keeping a close eye on the Douluo Continent!