Chapter 216: Du Busi Defeated, Life Hanging by a Thread
Darkness Holy Dragon Long Xiaoyao heard Du Busi's words. His gaze swept over the Body Sect Master's resolute expression, one that faced death with absolute equanimity. A disdainful snort escaped the old dragon's lips.
He shook his head slowly, entirely unmoved by the display of unyielding resolve. Raising his right hand, a vortex of pale gray soul power began to gather within his palm, twisting the very fabric of the air. "Ignorant of what is good for you."
Long Xiaoyao prepared to step forward and obliterate this eyesore of an obstacle once and for all. Yet, the moment his finger lifted, a pale hand tinged with an eerie, blood-like crimson pressed lightly against his shoulder.
Death God Douluo Ye Xishui halted his advance.
Her crimson eyes shifted toward the Darkness Holy Dragon. A faint, chilling curve appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her voice was soft, yet it carried the weight of an unquestionable command. "Xiaoyao, step back."
Long Xiaoyao's hand froze in mid-air.
He turned his head to look at the woman standing beside him. After a heavy moment of silence, he slowly lowered his arm, took two steps back, and offered a gesture of invitation.
"Fine. You handle it."
Ye Xishui withdrew her hand and began a slow, measured advance.
With every step her delicate feet took, the ambient temperature plummeted, freezing the moisture in the air into fine crystals of blood-red frost. She came to a halt exactly ten meters away from Du Busi. As her arms spread wide, the soul power fluctuations radiating from her slender frame underwent a terrifying transformation. The sky above seemed to darken, oppressed by her sheer malice.
A flash of freezing crimson light erupted. A towering humanoid entity materialized by her side, its joints glowing with a sinister, pulsating red hue.
This construct possessed no metallic panels or wooden joints. Instead, it was a grotesque amalgamation stitched entirely together from various rotting biological tissues and flayed muscle fibers. A suffocating, stale stench of coagulated blood instantly washed over the execution grounds. This was her Martial Soul, the Blood Soul Demon Puppet.
Without missing a beat, Ye Xishui flipped her left wrist. A miniature, pitch-black tower materialized out of thin air, hovering just above her palm.
The dark metallic surface of the tower was etched with incredibly dense grooves, each carefully carved with complex, high-tier soul formations that drank the surrounding light. This was her signature Class 9 Soul Tool, the Death God's Tower.
Ye Xishui pressed her right hand against the cold surface of the Death God's Tower, flooding the artifact with her vast, abyss-like soul power.
The complex formations flared to life, glowing with a sickly gray luminescence. At the very pinnacle of the spire, an impossibly fine beam of light began to condense, radiating an aura of absolute, unadulterated destruction.
"This is the path you chose, Du Busi."
Ye Xishui tapped her index finger against the air.
A grayish-white ray erupted from the tower's tip, tearing through the spatial fabric as it shot straight toward Du Busi's heart.
The velocity of the strike defied mortal comprehension. Du Busi did not even have the luxury of a full evasion. Instinct alone forced his massive frame to twist sideways, bringing his left arm up to guard his vitals.
A sickening sound of vaporized flesh echoed across the square.
The ray punched cleanly through Du Busi's left shoulder, leaving behind a perfectly circular, charred hole that bypassed his formidable physical defenses entirely.
A muffled groan tore from Du Busi's throat. The sheer kinetic force of the impact sent his burly figure skidding backward, his boots carving deep trenches into the stone floor before he slammed heavily against a massive pillar of the Execution Platform. Dust and debris rained down around him.
He glanced down at his ruined shoulder. Black smoke curled upward from the wound, and he could vividly feel the residual grayish-white energy actively devouring his muscle tissue and bone marrow.
The sheer destructive purity of this energy eclipsed any offensive strike he had ever endured in his long life.
A grim realization settled over the Body Sect Master. If he remained on the defensive, he would perish on this very platform.
Refusing to hold anything back, he drew in a massive breath, his chest expanding as his vast soul power detonated outward like a volcanic eruption.
"Body Martial Soul, Secondary Awakening!"
His deafening roar shook the heavens. A thick, impenetrable layer of blue-gray keratin rapidly crystallized across the surface of his skin.
His already burly physique underwent a monstrous expansion, his skeletal structure cracking and shifting as he surged from two meters in height to a towering five meters. His muscles bulged, hardening into something denser than ancient granite, veins pulsing like thick steel cables beneath his armored skin.
This was his Martial Soul Avatar, the absolute zenith of his current combat prowess.
His massive feet stomped the ground with cataclysmic force. The entire Execution Platform shuddered violently, deep fissures spider-webbing outward from his launch point. Reduced to a blur of blue-gray fury, Du Busi charged directly toward the Death God Douluo, intending to crush her fragile-looking form into dust.
Ye Xishui watched the incoming behemoth without a single shift in her placid expression.
Beside her, the Blood Soul Demon Puppet unhinged its stitched jaw, unleashing an ear-piercing, soul-tearing shriek that distorted the airwaves.
Triggered by that unholy sound, the corpses of the Imperial Guards scattered across the surrounding battlefield began to convulse. Their chests burst open in a shower of gore, releasing thick wisps of pale red mist into the air. This was the pure, unadulterated resentment and lingering agony of the violently deceased.
Instead of dissipating into the natural world, this foul energy was magnetically drawn toward the center of the square, swirling into a massive vortex that funneled directly into the Blood Soul Demon Puppet.
Gorging itself on the resentment of the dead, the grotesque puppet swelled, its stitched flesh glowing with a blinding, hellish crimson light. It acted as a macabre battery, continuously funneling this corrupted vitality through a visible soul power channel directly into the Death God's Tower.
The pitch-black Class 9 Soul Tool vibrated violently, humming with a terrifying frequency.
This time, the spire did not merely fire a single concentrated beam. Instead, an inescapable, densely woven net of grayish-white death rays erupted forward, blanketing the sky.
A horrifying sizzling sound echoed across the battlefield.
The instant those grayish-white beams made contact with Du Busi's massive, keratin-armored body, they melted through his ultimate defense like red-hot iron sinking into fragile ice.
Du Busi roared, swinging his colossal fists in a desperate bid to shatter the incoming beams. But the rays were endless, a continuous barrage of concentrated annihilation. With every violent collision, large chunks of his hardened tissue and flesh were cleanly sliced away from his true body, vaporizing into bloody mist.
His unstoppable charge was forcibly ground to a halt, his massive feet sliding backward against the stone.
"Get lost!"
He thrashed wildly, his fists tearing through sections of the energy net, but for every beam he managed to disperse, three more materialized to fill the void.
The invincible keratin layer covering his body began to spider-web with deep, jagged cracks under the relentless bombardment. Hot blood, tainted by the corrosive gray energy, gushed from his deepening wounds, staining the platform beneath him.
Across the ruined square, several Titled Douluo Elders of the Body Sect witnessed their Sect Master being systematically dismantled. Panic and rage flared in their eyes as they desperately tried to disengage from their respective skirmishes to provide immediate support.
"The Sect Master is trapped! Break through and assist him!"
Yet, before they could even take a step toward the center platform, several ghastly shadows flickered into existence, completely sealing off their path. Those were the sinister Elders of the Holy Spirit Cult.
"Your opponents are us."
A Holy Spirit Cult Elder chuckled, the hoarse, grating sound akin to metal scraping against bone. A vile staff, topped with a screaming human skull, materialized in his grip.
The two factions instantly clashed, plunging the perimeter of the square into a chaotic, blood-soaked melee.
The Body Sect Elders found themselves tightly pinned down by the relentless, unorthodox assault of the evil soul masters. No matter how fiercely they fought, they were entirely cut off, unable to spare even a fraction of their strength to rescue Du Busi.
Dozens of meters away, concealed within the shifting shadows of the ruined architecture, Liu Yuan stood perfectly still.
He watched the brutal execution unfolding before him, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
His Double Pupils allowed him to perceive the flow of energy with absolute clarity. Du Busi was being utterly and hopelessly suppressed by Ye Xishui's Death God's Tower. The fundamental, qualitative gap between a high-level Titled Douluo and a true Limit Douluo was simply an impossible chasm. It was a divine boundary that not even a Body Martial Soul's Secondary Awakening could bridge.
Every instinct screamed at him to rush forward, to intervene, but his cold rationality anchored him in place. He knew perfectly well that injecting himself into a clash of Limit Douluos with his current cultivation base would be utterly meaningless. It would be nothing more than throwing his life away.
'Still not strong enough!'
Liu Yuan ground his teeth together, tasting the metallic tang of his own frustration. He was well aware that while he stood as an absolute monster among his peers, when compared to the true apex predators of the Douluo Continent, he was still far, far too weak.
Back in the center of the slaughter, Du Busi unleashed another heaven-shaking roar. Ignoring the agonizing disintegration of his flesh, he tried to force his way through the energy net, desperate to drag the Death God Douluo into close-quarters combat. But the Blood Soul Demon Puppet, acting under Ye Xishui's flawless telepathic control, lunged forward. The towering monstrosity slammed into Du Busi, its rotting arms wrapping tightly around his waist, violently pinning the giant in place.
Seizing the momentary immobilization, the Death God's Tower flared with blinding intensity.
A massive, concentrated beam of annihilation fired point-blank, striking Du Busi squarely in the center of his chest.
The catastrophic impact generated a shockwave that shattered the remaining stone pillars. Du Busi was blasted off his feet, slamming brutally into the cratered ground.
The sheer destructive force instantly shattered his Martial Soul Avatar. His towering five-meter frame rapidly deflated, shrinking back to his original, mortal proportions.
Du Busi lay sprawled in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood, his face drained of all color, as pale as a sheet of parchment.
His trembling arms pushed against the rubble, struggling to force his broken body upward, but his strength failed him. He collapsed, coughing up a massive mouthful of dark, clotted blood. Violent, rattling coughs wracked his frame, the agonizing, piercing pain in his ruined lungs making drawing even a single breath an impossible task.
Ye Xishui walked slowly toward the fallen giant. Stopping at the edge of the crater, she looked down at the dying Sect Master of the Body Sect with cold, apathetic eyes.
From the shadows, Liu Yuan watched his teacher lying broken in a pool of blood, unable to even stand. A suffocating pressure seized his chest, as if an invisible, iron hand were crushing his heart.
'Damn it, Teacher is going to die.'Without a second of hesitation, Liu Yuan plunged his consciousness deep into the boundless depths of his spiritual sea. He directed a desperate, near-roaring mental call toward the silent, gray expanse within his mind.'Elder Yi!''Elder Yi, answer me! What is the situation with the Snow Empress? How much has she recovered?!'
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