Chapter 357: Chapter 138: A Great Windfall, the High-Grade Ancient Treasure Ten Thousand Souls Banner, and Beginning Arduous Cultivation of the Demon Dragon Celestial Spirit Scripture

"Preposterous!" A savage killing intent nearly shattered her composure.

She squeezed her eyes shut, extending her consciousness to summon the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, a treasure bound to her very soul.

Utter silence.

Not a single response.

It was as if the powerful Demon Treasure had never existed.

’This shouldn’t be happening...’ Lingkong Jade frowned deeply.

Dragon Ridge Mountain and Cyan Yang Ancient City weren’t far apart. With the strength of her Divine Sense, she should have been able to sense at least a sliver of a connection.

Unless... someone with a Cultivation Realm far surpassing her own had decisively erased her Divine Soul Mark from the Ten Thousand Souls Banner!

Ghost Moon’s earlier message had only said a Demon Suppression Envoy was on their way. Based on their itinerary, they wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow at the earliest.

Unless the Demon Suppression Bureau had sent more than one person, or some unpredictable old monster had shown up!

Her head snapped toward the main peak of Dragon Ridge Mountain.

The Demon Suppression Envoy Yue Mankong was still there, barely suppressed by her Dragon Ridge Mountain Grand Array.

If she left now to retrieve the Ten Thousand Souls Banner from Cyan Yang Ancient City, the core of the Grand Array would be unguarded, allowing Yue Mankong to break free in an instant.

With Yue Mankong’s strength and speed, she feared he would catch her from behind before she even reached Cyan Yang Ancient City—at that point, death would be certain!

If she had the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and used the Resentful Spirit as its main soul, she would have the confidence to hold her own against Yue Mankong for a time.

But as things stood, she wasn’t even qualified to face him head-on!

Trapped between a rock and a hard place, her hands tied!

An extreme sense of frustration and helplessness coiled around her heart like poisonous vines.

Lingkong Jade took a deep breath, suppressing her roiling blood. Her voice was ice-cold. "Give the order! All personnel, retreat immediately! Break ranks and scatter. Do not delay!"

"Yes, ma’am!" The black-robed figures surrounding her moved as if they’d been granted amnesty, their forms flickering before vanishing into the thick mountain mist.

After all her subordinates had left, Lingkong Jade sat cross-legged in a clearing in the center of the valley.

She formed a hand seal, and Primordial Qi erupted from her body.

In an instant, the ground beneath her lit up with countless crisscrossing Spiritual Threads. Tens of thousands of complex Runes flickered, outlining a massive Array Map.

The Array Map covered the entire valley, even extending over parts of Dragon Ridge Mountain.

With her subordinates gone, the burden of maintaining the Grand Array imprisoning Yue Mankong fell squarely on her shoulders.

A powerful backlash washed over her like a tide. Beads of sweat formed on Lingkong Jade’s pale forehead, and her body trembled faintly.

But she had no other choice.

If she didn’t use this chance to let her subordinates retreat, once Yue Mankong broke free, not a single one of the sect elites she’d brought to Dragon Ridge Mountain today would escape.

As for her, death would be an absolute certainty!

A complete and utter loss...

A complete and utter loss!

Her only chance at survival was to use this window of opportunity, expending her own life Essence to create a clone imbued with a portion of her power. She would leave it behind to barely maintain the Grand Array.

Every moment she could buy was a moment gained.

Her true body, meanwhile, had to escape as soon as possible and head to Qing Province to regroup... That was her only sliver of hope—to either request aid from the Main Altar or find some other way out.

In the valley, Lingkong Jade sat alone in the eye of the array, her silhouette, cast in the flickering light of the runes, looked both exceptionally lonely and utterly determined.

A meticulously planned operation had ended in utter failure, leaving behind nothing but a heart full of resentment and a complete mess.

This Dragon Ridge Mountain, this empty cavern, this lost treasure... each one was a thorn in her side.

’This isn’t over!’

A vicious glint flashed through her eyes.

’Whether it was the mysterious person who stole the "key" or the Demon Suppression Bureau, I will one day repay this humiliation a hundredfold!’

...

The last rays of the setting sun filtered through the window lattice, dappling the simple room with light and shadow.

Chu Fan sat alone at the wooden table. A focused expression was on his face, but his eyes held a hint of irrepressible excitement and curiosity. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

On his open left palm, a palm-sized banner slowly spun.

The banner was pitch-black, as if it could drink in all the surrounding light.

A strange black mist, so dense it seemed almost solid, coiled and squirmed across the banner’s surface like a living entity. It faintly exuded a bone-chillingly cold aura.

As the black mist swirled, one could occasionally glimpse a ferocious skull embroidered in the center of the banner with ghastly white thread.

Its empty eye sockets seemed to gaze out at the world, radiating an evil and an ominous aura that seeped deep into one’s bones.

"Kid..."

The Paperman on the corner of the table suddenly spoke, its voice filled with shocked disbelief. "How in the world did you refine it?"

The Paperman’s cinnabar-dot eyes were fixed on the small banner, as if trying to uncover its secrets.

"This Ten Thousand Souls Banner is the ’Ancient Treasure’ that the Moon Worship Sect’s Divine Sacrifice Envoy Lingkong Jade forged with her very life! It’s branded with her Divine Soul Mark, which is indestructible!"

"Forget another person using it—if someone even recklessly probed it with their Divine Sense, the slightest slip-up would trigger a backlash that would suck their soul into the banner, trapping them for eternity!"

"My original plan was to wait until my true self broke free from the array," Yue Mankong’s voice was laced with disbelief. "Then, I would have used a Secret Technique to help you erase the seal and forcibly refine the banner."

"But you... you lift this thing off that bastard Zhang Yunpeng, bring it home, and you can already partially control it? This is absolutely unheard of!"

He was utterly baffled.

Chu Fan’s Cultivation was paltry, only at the Second Heaven of the Spirit Awakening Realm.

A Cultivator at that Realm has a Divine Soul as fragile as a candle in the wind. They’re often not even proficient at projecting their Divine Sense or performing Introspection on their own bodies, to say nothing of erasing a Divine Soul Mark left by a Divine Sacrifice Envoy!

This completely defied all logic of cultivation!

"I don’t know either," Chu Fan said evasively. "It was like this when I brought it back."

"Maybe she erased the Divine Soul Mark herself so that Ghost Moon and Zhang Yunpeng could use it?"

The Paperman shook its head. "Absolutely impossible!"

Chu Fan’s gaze remained locked on the Ten Thousand Souls Banner as his fingertip lightly brushed the coiling black mist.

A chill and a thrum of energy traveled up from his fingertip and into his heart. "When I first got my hands on this thing, it felt... ’hungry’," he murmured. "And then... it just calmed down on its own."