An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Whoosh!

A mana chain wrapped around one of Luo Chen's tiny legs. "And why do you think I gave you the Black Sovereign Paste formula for free? That paste was made specifically to strengthen puppet bodies! Everything I gave you was meant to prepare this body for me. The only pity is that you destroyed the Nascent Core. If you had formed a Nascent Core alongside your first, I could have reversed the Nascent Core Art and stolen it for myself. I could've taken control right then and there!

"Your Purple Mansion would have become mine, and your original Nascent Soul could have been refined into my second. Together with my own, I would have possessed three Nascent Souls. If I used Soul Split to divide my soul among them, their combined strength would have rivaled the Blood God Clones refined by Blood Hermit and Blood Nightmare."

Han Zhan looked at Luo Chen and chuckled. "Do you remember asking whether I missed my sect during one of our conversations? Heh, why would I? The Falling Cloud Sect rises and falls with me. Once I return to the Eastern Wilderness with three Nascent Souls and a White Tiger puppet comparable to a late-stage Sage, I can rebuild the sect myself, even if it's already been destroyed. Luo Chen, just give up. You're as good as dead!"

Clatter...

More chains slid out from the walls of the Purple Mansion and coiled around Luo Chen's newly formed Nascent Soul. Within moments, they had bound him completely, leaving him no way of escape.

Yet Luo Chen showed no panic and merely closed his eyes. "Han Zhan, this body is a raft used to cross the sea of cultivation. What use is stealing the raft if you haven't captured its master? You haven't won, and I haven't lost."

Han Zhan's expression shifted. Only then did he realize that Luo Chen had withdrawn his divine soul before the Beaded Curtain Lock could close around it. The union of the Three Treasures had only been a temporary state required for the tribulation, not something permanent. Thus, he could separate his divine soul from the other two whenever he wished. Moreover, although Luo Chen's completed version of the Beaded Curtain Lock retained the fundamental weakness that allowed Han Zhan to control it, his later modifications had introduced changes even Han Zhan could not fully predict.

"And where do you think you can hide?"

With a faint smile, Han Zhan also split off his own divine soul from his Nascent Soul to chase Luo Chen. He passed through the sealed meridians and closed acupoints until he reached the edge of darkness, where countless golden threads crossed and intertwined to form a defensive barrier.

Han Zhan regarded it with indifference. "If your Woodrot Go Stone was still intact, I might have had to put in some effort. Unfortunately, even that was destroyed in the Heaven of Oblivion."

The name stirred memories he would rather have left buried. During the trial of the Dao Heart, the hostility he had concealed toward Luo Chen for so many years had nearly consumed him. Had he not practiced Soul Split, which had allowed him to sacrifice part of his soul to save the whole, he might have perished in that place. Even so, surviving had cost him one of his split souls, which had left him lacking during the Puppet Realm trial in the Heaven of Bright Illumination. In fact, he had even decided that once he recovered his cultivation, he would return to the Land of Fallen Devils and reclaim what he had missed.

For now, however, a far greater prize lay within reach. He reached toward the golden threads and tore through them with little effort. The barrier had formed naturally after Luo Chen attained Perfected Mastery of Divine Breaker of Malevolence many years ago, but against a Sage proficient in the arts of the soul, they offered almost no resistance.

The golden threads unraveled under Han Zhan's touch, and he stepped into Luo Chen's sea of consciousness without a trace of caution. Battles of the soul had always been his greatest strength; he had never feared an opponent in this realm, least of all one who had only just broken through. The moment he entered, golden waves rolled and brushed against him with instinctive resistance. They were the raw and unrefined power of Luo Chen's divine soul. Only upon reaching the Divine Transformation Realm could a cultivator gather such power and shape it into a true divine soul body, an almost godlike manifestation that dwarfed the physical form.

For now, it was little more than an unformed sea, and Han Zhan saw nothing in it to fear. He hovered above the golden expanse as he searched for Luo Chen. "Hiding again? It won't save you, boy."

Pressing a finger to the center of his brow, Han Zhan used Soul Split again. Seven streaks of dark light peeled away from his soul and transformed into translucent figures that looked identical to him. Having reached minor mastery, he could divide his soul into nine parts, but two had been lost—one at Green Parasol Mountain and the other in the Heaven of Oblivion—so these seven parts were all he had remaining.

Han Zhan's main soul sat cross-legged at the entrance to the sea of consciousness to cut off the only clear way out. Then, at his command, the seven divided souls scattered and plunged into the golden sea.

"Find him!"

Time passed slowly. In a struggle where life and death hung in the balance, even a single minute seemed to stretch on for years.

Suddenly, Han Zhan let out a low grunt as one of his divided souls disappeared from his senses. He turned toward the stretch of golden sea and looked around in disbelief. "How can this be? There's no way my split soul is weaker than him. There's no way it should've died that quickly."

A trace of unease began to erode his confidence. Luo Chen had clearly hidden some things from him, but before he could even hypothesize what it was, his face paled. A second split soul was destroyed.

"Urgh... No. I have to recall them before he kills them one by one."

He immediately summoned the remaining souls. By now, he could no longer deny that Luo Chen's divine soul was at least as powerful as any individual fragment of his own. Yet the realization had come too late. Although divine souls moved with extraordinary speed, three more were slain during the retreat, and in the end, only two returned to merge with his main soul.

For the first time, genuine panic appeared on Han Zhan's face. "What technique could possibly destroy my souls so easily?"

At that moment, the golden sea surged as waves crashed upward, and a figure rose from the depths and strode toward him. His gaze was sharp and merciless, and the killing intent he carried swept over everything like a biting frost. Luo Chen's voice thundered through the boundless sea of consciousness. "I knew the thing you were most proud of was your soul cultivation, and that is also exactly why you dared to enter my sea of consciousness. But now that you're here... you've stepped into my domain."

Han Zhan's expression darkened, but he quickly forced down his unease. "I have every reason to be confident. Do you really think destroying a few divided souls is enough to turn this around?"

Luo Chen gave him a contemptuous smile and raised two fingers like a sword. "You can't defeat me here. And out there, your Nascent Soul is already collapsing. Don't tell me you still haven't noticed."

Han Zhan's first instinct was to dismiss the warning as a bluff. Yet the moment he reached for the connection to his Nascent Soul in the Purple Mansion, his expression changed. "How is that possible?!"

Within the Purple Mansion, a fire tree unfurled its branches and scattered clusters of azure-gold sparks that drifted down onto Han Zhan's Nascent Soul and slowly melted it away. Luo Chen's Nascent Soul had already slipped free of the chains and now sat cross-legged at the center, where he released his mana and claimed the entire Purple Mansion as his own.

***

Within the sea of consciousness, Han Zhan's divine soul roiled with unease. There was no longer time for him to wonder how Luo Chen had freed his Nascent Soul or what power was consuming his own. What mattered now was that he had to win. If he failed, even escaping Luo Chen's sea of consciousness would not save him. Stripped of both his Nascent Soul and a physical body, he would be reduced to a wandering remnant soul with no path left but reincarnation. And judging by the killing intent bearing down on him, Luo Chen had no intention of granting him even that.

Luo Chen raised two fingers like a sword. As if to confirm Han Zhan's thoughts, he growled, "We could've ended this peacefully. We could have been friends. But you just had to plot against me. Today, I'll destroy you completely, and you won't even get the chance to reincarnate."

He brought his fingers down diagonally. The golden sea responded at once as its waves surged and gathered around his sword fingers. They condensed into a colossal blade of golden light that cut through the void as it descended upon Han Zhan.

"What kind of technique is this?" Han Zhan's composure was shattered. "It can sever divine souls and erase spirits?"

His hands blurred as he quickly formed seals to block it, yet he failed to put up even the slightest resistance before the golden sword light.

The sword light passed through him and split his divine soul into two. The severed halves recoiled, then immediately flowed back together, but the regeneration came at a steep cost. His aura weakened sharply and left his figure noticeably smaller than before.

Knowing that defense would only lead to a slower death, Han Zhan struck back with all his strength. "I underestimated you! BUT DON'T YOU THINK YOU'RE UNDERESTIMATING ME AS WELL?!"

Before Han Zhan's final words had faded, his hands finally finished casting seals. The shockwave produced by his powerful soul art instantly slammed into Luo Chen, knocking him off the wave and sending him crashing into the golden sea.

However, he only disappeared for a heartbeat before breaking back through the surface and steadying himself in midair. Without slowing down, he lifted his fingers into yet another sword gesture and struck again with the Dragon-Slaying Art. Han Zhan reacted just as quickly and answered the attack with his own technique.

The fight spread across the sea of consciousness, each clash stirring the golden waves into motion. In a battle like this, there was little room for outside help, and everything depended on the strength of one's soul and the skill with which it could be wielded. That made such confrontations especially dangerous. Since divine souls were fragile by nature, techniques to protect them were both rare and difficult to cultivate. Thus, even something like the Woodrot Go Stone, though only a low-grade enchanted treasure, was an invaluable safeguard. By comparison, the Open Thatch Art that Han Zhan had taught Luo Chen could dispel illusions and resist mental interference, but it did almost nothing to withstand a direct assault on the soul.

Despite the danger, Luo Chen remained calm. This was undoubtedly the most perilous battle he had ever faced, yet he had not entered it without preparation. When his proficiency with Dragon-Slaying Art reached Perfected Mastery, he grasped the deeper wonders of it and discovered that its true nature had always extended beyond purging foreign energies. He could now use it to cut directly through divine souls; its power could only be properly displayed at close range, but there could hardly be a closer range than this.

Within his own sea of consciousness, where every surge of golden waves responded to his will, naturally, there was no soul he could not strike and no spirit he could not bring down. Even when they traded wounds, Luo Chen held the advantage of fighting on his home ground. More than that, with the immense divine soul power of his sea of consciousness replenishing him, he only grew fiercer as the battle wore on. By contrast, Han Zhan had no such support. With five of his seven divided souls already destroyed, there was nothing left to restore what he had lost.

With Luo Chen's strength continuing to recover and Han Zhan's steadily declining, the outcome became inevitable. Han Zhan's resistance weakened with every exchange until the violent turbulence across the sea of consciousness finally began to subside. The golden waves gradually settled, and when Luo Chen emerged from the sea again, all that remained of Han Zhan was a faint wisp of light hovering before him.

He raised his right hand and brought his sword fingers down one last time. The fading light trembled, but no longer possessed the strength to resist it.

As the golden radiance closed around him, Han Zhan sighed. "All these years of planning... gone, just like that. And now, it's too late for regrets."

Luo Chen stood in silence within his sea of consciousness, feeling neither joy nor sorrow over Han Zhan's death. Perhaps Han Zhan had regretted his betrayal in the final moment. He had already obtained a physical body and controlled a White Tiger puppet comparable to a late-stage Sage. Had he honored their agreement and parted with Luo Chen on good terms, there would have been few places in the Mountain and Sea Realm beyond his reach.

Then again, perhaps he had never regretted the decision itself. From the moment Luo Chen began using Beaded Curtain Lock, Han Zhan had regarded him as a future vessel or even puppet. What he lamented at the end might have been nothing more than his own defeat.

Luo Chen let out a slow breath as exhaustion swept through his translucent form. Golden light rose from the sea of consciousness and gathered around him to replenish the divine soul power he had consumed during the battle. As the light flowed into him, several unfamiliar fragments appeared among it, each carrying traces of Han Zhan's aura.

Luo Chen stiffened. "Soul Split?!"

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