Free Web NovelChapter 29: Burning Soul
Laying over his luminous sea and bed of red flowers, Ouyang Qianye could only surrender to the agonies of his soul breaking apart.
A chunk of his foot broke off and it began dissolving as if ash in the wind. His fingers, barely hanging onto his hand had been ridden with cracks.
Suddenly, two of them broke off at their joints. They crumbled, sanding into a faintly luminous dust that drifted away, never to be seen again.
Below his soul, where his back lay, he felt a distant rumbling coming from the luminous sea.
It was only barely because he struggled for sensation, but he felt right. Extreme tremors were quaking through his soul realm, stirring the sea wildly. It was as if whatever ground lay beneath it were splitting apart harshly.
The red flowers surrounding him, floating over ambiently, despite the growing chaos, as if to comfort him, began to wilt.
There as well, the abundance of koi swimming began to degenerate; first their forms would fall more and more intangible and translucent, and eventually, they would begin breaking apart.
And despite everything within his soul realm drawing over to him so pleadingly for his safety, he could not see it, and neither could he feel the caress of the flowers wilting leaves, or the brush of the fish against his deteriorating soul body.
All that he could see through the little light that remained in his eyes, was the never ending mist, laden with red. The koi only seemed like brushes of paint as they swam.
’If only...’ the faintest breath escaped his dry, cracked mouth. That breath, the faint vibration of it, fissured his lip, worsening the several fractures that already ran through his face, down his neck and across his bare torso. ’... If only I had more... time.’
Perhaps then, he would had chosen safety over this risk.
In the end, as calculated as his action had been, there was no predicting this.
He had believed, and perhaps rightfully, too much in the canon of the story.
Not once had he considered that she would have taken the risk to break the seal herself to invade his soul.
Qianye, in the first place had not even known that he had been worth the risk.
Thereupon, perhaps driven by the subconscious desperation and urgency simmering somewhere deeply buried within himself, His other hand twiched, as if to rise and do something, anything.
The hand itself broke off, and decomposed thereafter.
As his chest rose at his next slight breath, fissures that had been spreading through it intensified. His waist broke off, his legs dissolving.
Then, suddenly, deep and high above through the mist, in the skies of his ethereal soul realm, a black, giant sphere appeared.
The circumference of it flickered with dark blue and a deep silver. Then abruptly it enflamed with a blazing gold.
It’s light illuminated through the mist and the masses of koi, down to the wilting flowers, and his soul body. and then throughout the whole soul realm.
And inadvertently, Qianye sighed, and miraculously, his body did not fracture more than it already had.
The quaking from beneath the sea waned down with such speed the he, felt as if it was almost instantly that it had significantly reduced from feeling like cataclysmic tremors to minor shivers. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Moreover, from the black-golden sun, an intense warmth radiated.
It didn’t burn him in the slightest, and every fraction of himself that he felt it through, was soothed of his agony. frёewebηovel.cѳm
The wilting of the flowers stopped, and the koi were affected, their bodies no longer fading and cracking apart.
Whatever the black sun was, while it didn’t heal him, it stopped his soul from dying, and it slightly, and gradually, invigorated him.
’It’s... her...’
In the great relief that the sun had brought, Qianye’s eyes regained a little of their luminosity.
His brows lifted faintly, and his breathing quickened slightly, his lungs finally able to draw for more.
’Thank you... Thank you.... Thank you,’ Soul blood shed from his eyes, and the fist of his remaining hand clenched.
The sun’s existence continued to hold his soul together, and in the clarity that returned to him through it, his mind regained the capacity to work, digging for a solution.
"Bring!" His mouth hardly moved, yet the voice that came out of him thundered throughout the soul realm with its demand.
There was no normal way to heal a soul that was damaged to such a great degree.
For one’s soul sea/soul realm to begin collapsing, it had to be damaged to extreme degrees.
Anyone else in his situation would have been long dead without a ethereal soul realm, without the possibility of reincarnation.
With his ethereal soul realm, even with the help of an elf to stabilize him, at best he would be reduced to a comatose state, aware of his surroundings but unable to do anything physically.
Therapeutic healing from even an elf, to such degrees of damage, especially because he possessed a soul realm, might help to an extent.
However, it would be extremely long and arduous because of its complexity.
And that was all contingent on the fact that his body would have to survive.
’Fuck that bitch!’ Qianye immediately condemned the demoness for the circumstances that she had condemned him to.
It would be hundreds of years at best, and that was time that his human, crippled body would not survive.
Without extremely powerful soul treasures, he would not be able to heal his soul in time even with her help.
And when soul treasures themselves were extremely rare, he was essentially condemned to be a cripple once more.
However, in the clarity that her stabilising his soul, Qianye’s desperation made him gamble.
Even though his foreknowledge had failed him as worst as it possibly could have so far, it had also now, shown him a direction that could potentially save him.
All of the koi fish filling his soul realm opened their maws wide.
Then abruptly, the massive waves of golden soul blood that they had consumed from the ancient nether demoness flowed out of them, swirling with their luminosity in streams that winded through and amongst each other.
Qianye opened his mouth and those hundreds of gold rivers flowed, converging down towards him.
The moment the first drop touched his mouth, it were as if an flash of fire scorched through him.
Then as the bloodfall swam into him, that explosion blazed into a sea of burning agony.
His whole soul body—the fractured remains of it—was thrown into the pit of an active volcano, and he swallowed regardless.
Through the fissures, golden-black light began to shine. And in that moment as well, the water of the sea beneath him—that had nearly dimmed entirely—golden-black light began to glisten.
The soul blood of a being like the ancient nether demoness was not something to be consumed lightly. Not ever, by anyone without the appropriate soul strength and even then those of her own race perhaps.
At whatever her were strengths before she had broken the seal on that artifact, even with an ethereal soul realm, it may have killed him in the enormous quantities of it that he was devouring.
Yet, he had no other choice but to risk it on the fact that she had been severly weakened by her own actions. So severely weakened that it would allow him to heal safely.
Consuming the soul of another was a practice widely frowned upon by the orthodox. To do so was essentially ending their existence entirely.
However, having witnessed it in the book. Qianye knew that while on the surface it was presented as being hated, in reality, those who were capable of it accepted it.
After all, there were fewer more accessible ways to nourish the soul, even with its dangers.
Thus, Qianye gulped and gulped, and gulped until his soul blood ran gold.
And his soul body began to rapidly regenerate, from his hands to everything down his waist.
However, the fissures across his body did not mend, even with the golden light still shining through his fissures, seeming as it they would heal more. Yet they did not.
His soul was far from being fully healed only from her blood. It simply wasn’t enough.
And without something more to heal it further, his future would be severely affected.
