Martial Peak
chapter-1289

Editor and Proofreader: Leo of Zion Mountain

In fact, Yang Kai had dealt with these kinds of creatures before. Many years ago, when he dove into the Evil Cavern in the Ash Grey Cloud Evil Land, the Evil Spirits he encountered were similar existences to Yin Souls. At that time, he was able to collect a lot of Evil Spirit Essences after killing them, but unfortunately, no such thing remained after he destroyed this Yin Soul.

After entering the giant mountain valley, Yang Kai had wondered whether Yin Souls would exist here, but until now he and Yang Yan hadn’t encountered any, so he didn’t think much about it.

What caused Yang Kai to frown though was that since there was one Yin Soul here, it meant there would undoubtedly be a second, third, and so on.

Looking at Yang Yan’s complexion, she apparently thought of this as well, and her expression became uncertain.

As if to verify the pair’s conjecture, as soon as Yang Kai eliminated this first Yin Soul, from beneath the ground in all directions, wisps of frigid aura visible to the naked eye began sprouting up, seeming to have been roused by the death scream of the Yin Soul Yang Kai had killed.

These frigid auras varied in opacity, from almost invisible to as thick as fog, but no matter their density, all of them squirmed momentarily before transforming into a Yin Soul. Without exception, these Yin Souls lacked clear features and some were even missing limbs, all of them appearing extremely strange.

Seeing this, Yang Yan immediately activated her Artifact Armour and in a flash, a fiery glow enveloped her body. On the other hand, Yang Kai just lifted his hands and released ten jets of Demonic Flame that swiftly penetrated the surrounding Yin Souls.

Although there was quite an intimidating number of Yin Souls, all of them were apparently weak and simply collapsed after a single blow. Every Yin Soul touched by Yang Kai’s Demonic Flame quickly evaporated, leaving no trace behind.

Yang Yan was quite relieved when she saw this and after composing herself, she took out a disc-shaped artifact and activated it with her Saint Qi.

In the next moment, a large halo of red light was formed, centred on the disc-shaped artifact. As this light halo expanded, it actually dispelled the ambient chill in the air and the Yin Souls caught in its radius were quickly destroyed, all of them screaming pitifully as they melted.

The red light halo spread out a thousand metres before it ran out of energy and faded; however, the dense swarm of Yin Souls within this radius had all been vanquished.

Yang Kai was stunned, quickly turning to stare at Yang Yan in amazement.

“Hehe, my newly refined artifact isn’t bad, right?” Yang Yan smiled back at Yang Kai happily.

“En, it’s very suitable for this kind of situation, but if you were facing a single opponent that is stronger, its strength would be insufficient,” Yang Kai’s vision was quite sharp and immediately saw the shortcoming of this artifact.

Hearing Yang Kai say this, Yang Yan pouted, “I have other artifacts that can be used against single opponents, it’s just that I’m disinclined to fight with others, hmph!”

Having the flaw in her artifact pointed out by Yang Kai seemed to make her unhappy.

Yang Kai scratched his cheek and said lightly, “Let’s go. Although these Yin Souls are quite weak, there may be stronger ones as we proceed further. We can’t be careless.”

And so, the two immediately continued forward.

This Sect ruin was quite strange. There were many Spirit Arrays still functioning as well as many Yin Souls that had spawned. On the following road, Yang Kai and Yang Yan encountered barriers and attacks from Yin Souls several times, but all these were solved by Yang Kai and Yang Yan easily, so they didn’t encounter any real danger.

The pair explored the mountain valley for several days, with Yang Yan checking the map fragments more and more frequently as time passed. It seemed that as they approached their destination it became more difficult for her to determine the correct position.

One day, while Yang Yan was checking the map fragment, Yang Kai’s expression suddenly changed and he released his Divine Sense in a certain direction. After a while, a look of surprise appeared on his face as he muttered, “There are other people here.”

“Other people, like who?” Yang Yan asked, startled.

“I’m not clear, but there are only four of them, two Third-Order Saint Kings and two Second-Order Saint Kings. It seems that they’ve been trapped in some kind of barrier.”

“Do you want to check it out? Perhaps they’ll be able to tell us where this place is,” Yang Yan suggested.

According to Yang Kai’s original idea, since the two of them had come here to treasure hunt, naturally, he wasn’t willing to complicate the situation. Regardless of who these people were, or what danger they had encountered, Yang Kai had no intention of interfering, but just now, under his Divine Sense’s investigation, two of the life auras from this group gave him a familiar feeling, as if he had encountered them before.

This unavoidably made him curious, and hearing Yang Yan’s proposal, he nodded and said, “Ok, let’s quietly take a look without exposing ourselves.”

“En,” Yang Yan naturally had no opinion.

The pair rushed quietly towards the unknown group’s location. Yang Kai Soul was incredibly powerful, so as long as he suppressed his aura by wrapping himself in his Divine Sense, he wasn’t worried about being discovered by cultivators in the same realm.

As for Yang Yan, she activated a necklace artifact she was wearing and was instantly shrouded in a thin energy barrier that appeared like flowing water. In the blink of an eye, her figure faded from Yang Kai’s vision and nearly disappeared, leaving only a faint outline behind. Even when he used his Divine Sense, Yang Kai was unable to detect her aura, so unless someone stood extremely close to Yang Yan and saw her with their own eyes, it would basically be impossible to discover her.

Realizing this, Yang Kai nodded lightly.

The unknown group of four were at least thirty kilometres away from Yang Kai and Yang Yan’s position and were only detected by Yang Kai because he dared to release his Divine Sense indiscriminately in this kind of place.

After an incense stick worth of time, Yang Kai and Yang Yan arrived atop a small hill and looked curiously towards this group of four.

The pair saw an empty field with a dome-shaped light curtain covering a range of about three hundred metres down below. From afar it almost looked like a giant overturned transparent bowl was lying on the ground with four cultivators trapped inside. Each of these four was facing a different direction and was on high alert. Light flashed around these four as each of them used their Saint Qi to operate artifacts they were holding. Two of them were focused on attacking the light curtain.

Although each attack these two launched could shake the light curtain, a moment later, this barrier would actually rebound their attacks towards the four trapped cultivators.

The remaining two from this group needed to use their defensive artifacts to resist the rebounded energy after their companions attacked so that they didn’t wind up injuring themselves.

This team of four was quite skilful actually and it was obvious at a glance that they were familiar with one another, but no matter how hard they tried, it seemed they were unable to break this hemispherical light curtain in short order. It was impossible to tell how long they had been trapped here, but from the unsteady fluctuations of their Saint Qi, it was apparent they had consumed a great deal of their strength.

“Oh, it’s actually a barrier with reflective properties, interesting,” Yang Yan’s eyes lit up as she seemed to take an interest in the dome-shaped barrier.

On the other hand, Yang Kai was frowning slightly as he stared at an enchanting young woman among the group of, muttering with a strange expression, “It’s her!”

Previously, Yang Kai had felt that two of the life auras here were familiar, which was why he agreed to come take a closer look, but he never expected it to actually be this woman.

The young woman he was seeing now was none other than Chen Shi Tao of the Clear Sky Sect. Yang Kai couldn’t say he had a deep relationship with this woman; in fact, they could barely be considered acquaintances, having interacted only briefly in the Flowing Flame Sand Field. However, this woman seemed to have identified him as a person of great destiny. At that time, she had extended an invitation to him to act together, but before Yang Kai could refuse, they had encountered Chang Qi who had been chasing down the Dragon Soul. As a result, she had gotten lucky and followed Yang Kai to an underground Saint Crystal lode.

Later, Yang Kai departed from the underground Saint Crystal lode in advance, leaving only the small group from Clear Sky Sect and Chang Qi to mine Saint Crystals there.

However, judging from the gains Chang Qi made, the group lead by Chen Shi Tao must have also reaped significant benefits. With several people working together, they had to have harvested at least a hundred million Saint Crystals while not taking any risks.

Furthermore, Yang Kai had obtained his Dragon Bone, Dragon Bead, and Nine Branch Jade Crystal Tree from that Saint Crystal Lode, so it wasn’t impossible that Chen Shi Tao and her group obtained other treasures there as well.

From a certain perspective, she really had benefited from Yang Kai’s luck at that time, allowing her to have such great gains.

Yang Kai never expected to encounter Chen Shi Tao in this kind of place though. Of the two familiar auras he felt just now, one belonged to her while the other belonged to another beautiful woman who had been part of Chen Shi Tao’s group at that time. This young woman was a Second-Order Saint King and was currently one of the two responsible for defence.

“You know them?” Yang Yan tilted her head and asked softly.

“Barely,” Yang Kai nodded.

“Do you want to help them?”

“No,” Yang Kai shook his head decisively, “This woman is somewhat troublesome, so I don’t want to get involved with them. The situation they’re in also doesn’t seem to be that dangerous; judging from the state of that barrier, they should be able to break free in a day or two.”

“But I want to study…” Before Yang Yan could finish her words, her eyes suddenly narrowed as she turned away from Yang Kai and stared in a certain direction.

Yang Kai turned his head back at this moment and a helpless expression filled his face.

Because in the direction he was looking, there were several Yin Souls flying over, seemingly attracted by the disturbance here. Worse, if they continued on their current course, these Yin Souls would pass right by the hill where Yang Kai and Yang Yan were hiding.

Yang Kai immediately became annoyed and quietly pulled Yang Yan’s hand to retreat.

But the moment Yang Kai tried to withdraw, the group of Yin Souls seemed to sense his movements and all turned to look in his direction before wailing loudly and rushing over menacingly.

Although the concealment techniques Yang Kai and Yang Yan were using made them all but impossible to discover by Saint King Realm cultivators, as far as these Yin Souls were concerned, as long as it was a living creature, no concealment technique mattered.

Seeing this, murderous intent flashed across Yang Kai’s eyes as he reached out and seized the nearest Yin Soul before releasing a wave of Demonic Flames to incinerate the others.