Chapter 3359

Ao Yan had already been burned until his skin hung in shreds, his entire body charred black. All his strength was being used to resist the flames, leaving him with none to withstand the Demon-Sealing Stele.

Only now did he realize how powerful the Demon-Sealing Stele’s suction was. He tried to draw on the power of his spatial world to resist the flames, but each time, half of it was sucked away by the Demon-Sealing Stele.

He could only keep expending the power of his spatial world to barely stay alive. At the same time, the power of his soul was also being devoured by the Demon-Sealing Stele. His soul was now completely enveloped by its suction and could not escape even if it wanted to.

His demonic dragon, demonic tiger, and demonic wolf all wanted to go back and rescue him, but the demonic dragon was held back by the Dragon Maiden and Lei Ming. In the end, the two of them joined forces to pin it to the ground and thrash it, leaving it unable to get back up.

The demonic tiger was held back by the White Tiger and the Megalithic Ape. The Megalithic Ape wanted to fight it to its heart’s content, while the White Tiger provided support with its golden spear. In the end, when the demonic tiger tried to flee, the White Tiger directly melted its head away with a beam of white light.

As for the demonic wolf, Chi Lian had already absorbed half of its power of bloodline, and then the Demon Lion ambushed it with the Wind-Thunder Fan, blasting it until it was charred on the outside and cooked tender inside.

Afterward, Chi Lian also absorbed all the power of bloodline of the demonic dragon. The bloodlines of these demonic beasts were all exceptionally pure. It seemed that once Chi Lian finished absorbing their power of bloodline, she would soon break through again.

After that, Chi Lian no longer needed Ye Liuyun’s protection. Together with the other demonic beasts, she launched into a killing spree, charging into the demonic cultivator army and killing to her heart’s content.

The demonic cultivator army was now being attacked from both sides. Behind them, the second clone led ten thousand female soldiers of the Ninth Level, riding Ninth-Level snow wolves as they pursued and slaughtered them.

In front of them, the firepower war chariots of the Death Legion had sealed off the way, and they could not break through at all. The powerful members of the demon race had already been almost completely wiped out.

The rest could not escape Ye Liuyun and the first clone’s pursuit either. As for the assault troops organized by the demon race, they had long since been completely annihilated by the spiritual-energy beasts and the firepower war chariots.

Thus, all that remained for the demonic cultivator army was to be slaughtered. Once the Death Legion had nearly finished bombarding them with its firepower war chariots, it also charged in to use them for practice.

Only then did Ye Liuyun release all the women from his spatial world, allowing them to join in and get some practice as well.

Every martial cultivator Ao Yan had brought was killed by him and the first clone; not a single one was allowed to escape.

The demonic beasts all killed to their heart’s content this time, rampaging through the demonic cultivator army. Even after they ran out of true essence, they were reluctant to return. The female soldiers also fought all the way to the end.

After this battle, even the Death Legion’s essence-reserve stones had been completely depleted. The Death Legion had also fought to its heart’s content. In the end, it was the puppets who cleaned up the battlefield.

The Demon-Sealing Stele was no different, crashing down again and again with thunderous booms. Even after the battle ended, it continued pressing down on the piles of demonic cultivator corpses sorted out by the puppets, absorbing without pause.

The demon race’s garrison troops and demonic cultivators numbered more than a million. The entire army had been wiped out.

Everyone returned to the clone’s spatial world to accelerate the recovery of their true essence. Only Ye Liuyun, the black-armored soldiers, and the puppets remained stationed at the army camp.

Among the demonic beasts, the Vermilion Bird broke through to the late stage of the Ninth Level of Unity and awakened a new bloodline cultivation art. From then on, breaking through to the Taixu Realm would certainly pose no problem. This gave hope to the demonic beasts that had not cultivated the Taixu Qi-Refining Art.

Ye Liuyun searched Ao Yan’s Interspatial Ring and found the Soul-Refining Cauldron. It still contained a considerable amount of soul power imbued with demonic energy, all of which Ao Yan had stored up for himself.

Ye Liuyun simply let Lin Feier, Lei Ming, the Nine-Headed Demonic Dragon, and the Demon Lion absorb all that soul power first. He also gave Ao Yan’s other cultivation resources to the demonic beasts and demonic cultivators around him.

Only after the Soul-Refining Cauldron had been emptied did Ye Liuyun use Spatial Force to draw it into his sea of consciousness and refine it.

According to the information he obtained after refining it, the Soul-Refining Cauldron condensed souls through a total of five steps. The first was vibration and impact.

Basically, after any soul was absorbed into it, this step would scatter it apart. The second step was for the Soul-Refining Cauldron to extract all the attribute power contained in the soul and condense it anew.

The third step was to use the power of the Soul-Refining Cauldron to compress and condense the soul and its attribute power.

After that came tempering with ice and fire, followed by the final step of reintegrating the attribute power.

For members of the demon race or demonic cultivators, the attribute power was demonic energy. Moreover, the attribute power could be chosen; absorbing it was not mandatory. Since Ao Yan was a member of the demon race and needed to absorb demonic energy, he had previously accepted everything without exception.

If Ye Liuyun were the one absorbing it, he could filter out the attribute power he did not need.

"This cauldron is a treasure for condensing souls! You can simply throw an entire soul inside and refine it!"

The Book Demon immediately reminded Ye Liuyun.

"What? Wouldn’t that be no different from suicide?" Ye Liuyun was startled when he heard this.

"Don’t you have two souls? Just absorb it back afterward! The quantity won’t decrease; only the quality will change. Once you absorb and refine it back, your memories will recover after some time!"

The Book Demon said this indifferently. He felt that doing so was well worth it if it meant strengthening the power of the soul.

Ye Liuyun gave it a try, separating out a strand of soul and placing it inside. It was instantly scattered, and he lost contact with it.

"That really is suicide!"

Even thinking about it made Ye Liuyun feel terrified, and he still did not dare put an entire soul inside at once. That would be equivalent to sending that soul to commit suicide, then absorbing and refining it back afterward.

After thinking it over, he separated half of one of his souls and half of one soul from each of his two clones, then condensed them together. This would at least ensure that none of the souls directly committed suicide.

However, this process of self-mutilation was painful enough. A soul that had originally fused into one whole was being torn apart again, which was almost like ripping flesh from one’s own body.

If not for the Myriad Gods Token, he would have long since passed out from the pain in his soul.

"Why go through all this? Better to get the pain over with quickly. Wouldn’t it be better to have one soul jump straight in?" The Book Demon watched from the side and even made sarcastic comments.

Ye Liuyun felt that this was already good enough. He truly could not bring himself to let one of his souls commit suicide.

He was in too much pain to argue with the Book Demon. He only thought to himself, "I’ve really gone all out just to become stronger! I doubt Ao Yan ever refined his own soul!"

The Book Demon could sense his thoughts, however, and told Ye Liuyun, "If he had been absorbing souls this pure and refined from the very beginning of his cultivation, he wouldn’t have had to suffer like you are. Your foundation is simply too poor. You can’t compare with him."

"Uh... My foundation is poor? Fine, everything you say makes sense. I’ll keep going!"

Ye Liuyun had intended to argue, but when he thought about comparing himself with someone who possessed such a treasure, his foundation was indeed much weaker. So he said nothing more and instead focused his attention on continuing to separate his soul.