Xie Zhaolin took out the jade slip from her storage ring once again, and the map of the Blackwater Abyss floated up before her eyes.
She carefully checked every single path, then chose a relatively safe route. It wound in and out, forcing her to detour around three dangerous areas, but at least it let her avoid a few known zones where high-rank yin souls gathered.
"Let's move." She spoke softly, and the five main beast souls immediately took their positions.
Shuang Ling and Dian Diao scouted ahead. They had no life aura, so they blended seamlessly into the yin-filled environment. Bing Jing and Teng She guarded her flanks, while Xue Xiao patrolled from above. Xie Zhaolin walked in the center, cloaked in a thin disguise of yin qi.
The deeper she went, the more she realized how much better beast soul scouts were compared to the bee swarm.
High-rank beasts in the Blackwater Abyss were hypersensitive to living creatures, yet to Shuang Ling and the other yin souls, they paid no mind. Those scouts could move freely, perfectly merging into their surroundings. Even better, through the bond, she sensed everything ahead in real time, like she'd suddenly gained several more pairs of eyes. She didn't need to trigger hidden dangers, yet she still got the most accurate intel.
Thanks to them, she didn't have to creep along as cautiously as she had when she'd first entered this abyss. Under their protection, she sidestepped several more dense pools of yin qi along the way. She couldn't help but feel grateful. Without these beast souls, if she'd relied only on the bees, she'd have blundered into a deathtrap already.
"In a place like this, yin souls really are more useful," she muttered. The bees were loyal, but their life aura stood out far too much in a yinsha-infested land like this.
Feng Wang seemed to sense her thoughts and rubbed against her hair in protest. She chuckled, pulling out a drop of spirit honey to comfort it. This little one wasn't strong, but its loyalty was priceless.
She'd barely soothed it when Dian Diao suddenly sent an urgent warning. Her divine sense swept the right-hand path and spotted three wandering human-shaped yin souls. Judging by their robes, they'd once been disciples of a cultivation family.
Each held a magic tool. Though their minds were gone, their combat instincts still remained.
Cold light flashed in her eyes. She formed a hand seal, and Bing Jing leapt out from the left, claws laced with bone-freezing chill as it smashed toward the lead yin soul.
The creature raised its sword on instinct, but Dian Diao struck from behind, violet arcs paralyzing its movements.
Crack!
The tiger's claws slammed down, shattering its skull. The soul body instantly unraveled.
At the same time, Shuang Ling spat out foxfire, forcing back the other two. Teng She darted from a crack in the rocks, its fangs sinking into the throat of the second one with deadly precision.
The last yin soul roared, swinging its blade wildly, only to be skewered through the crown by Xue Xiao's diving strike. In the blink of an eye, all three turned to ash, leaving behind only pure fragments of soul power, which the beast souls devoured in moments.
Xie Zhaolin nodded in satisfaction. That fight hadn't even lasted three breaths. Her beasts were growing more and more seamless in their teamwork.
She casually collected the fragments of their broken tools, then looked deeper into the fog ahead. Through the swirling darkness, several yin qi vortices pulsed faintly. She passed a warning through the contract link, and the group advanced carefully once more.
Similar skirmishes happened several more times.
Each time it was human-shaped yin souls. Each time, the five beast souls worked together to crush them in seconds. She barely had to lift a finger, only watching from the rear and directing the battlefield. It reminded her of when she used to command Hehuan Sect disciples into formation.
The further in they went, the more the environment changed. The paths widened, black lines etched themselves into the cliffs, and even the yin qi thickened, condensing into tiny dark crystals that floated in the air.
She noticed something odd. The stronger yin souls inside weren't beasts at all, but nearly always human-shaped. The few beast-shaped ones she encountered were weak in comparison.
"So most of the high-level yin souls were once cultivators," she thought aloud.
That explained why beast-shaped yin souls rarely had much intelligence. Very few monsters could even keep their soul intact after death, let alone retain enough wisdom to act like humans.
The discovery left her disappointed.
She'd hoped to capture a few stronger beast souls, but it clearly wasn't possible. Still, she reminded herself, human-shaped yin souls might not be contractable, yet their pure soul essence was still a huge boon to her beasts. That wasn't a total loss.
Just then, Shuang Ling sent an urgent signal.
She ordered the group to halt and tapped into its vision through their bond. A hundred zhang ahead, a black-robed human yin soul sat cross-legged on a massive obsidian boulder.
Nine black beads, each the size of a fist and inscribed with eerie runes, revolved slowly around it.
"A Golden Core-stage yin soul…" Her heart tightened. Souls of that level could still unleash some of the spells they'd mastered in life. They were extremely troublesome.
She immediately changed routes, leading the team in a wide arc. Along the way, Dian Diao found two more Golden Core yin soul territories, which she carefully avoided.
Stop and start, advance and detour, until five days later she finally reached the border between the middle and inner regions.
There, the land dropped sharply, forming a massive funnel-shaped chasm.
Above the abyss hung a dense fog so thick it seemed to congeal into a wall. Flickers of strange red light glowed inside. The cliffs were riddled with honeycomb-like caves, each radiating a terrifying aura.
But what caught her eye most was the black waterfall in the center.
Pitch-dark liquid cascaded from above, crashing into the depths with a deafening roar.
When she focused, she realized it wasn't liquid at all, but pure, condensed yin qi!
In her past life, the Blackwater Abyss had never looked like this. There'd been no such concentrated yin qi, let alone a waterfall made entirely of it. It was completely unheard of.
"In just a hundred years, how could this place change so drastically?" she murmured, fingers absently brushing her storage ring.
Not to mention the Rebirth Flower, a heaven-and-earth treasure that took at least a thousand years to bloom. If what that gray-robed man said was true, and one was flowering here, then she should've sensed something the last time she'd come.
Shuang Ling rubbed against her wrist, sensing her doubt.
She stroked its head gently, but her eyes stayed locked on the waterfall. Beneath it, a whirlpool-like pool churned, dark as ink, with ripples that moved in strange, unnatural ways. She suddenly remembered the Hehuan Sect disciples stationed at the entrance when she'd first come in. In her past life, there had been no guards at all.
"Something's off…" she whispered, fingers tapping lightly against her storage ring.
A hundred years was nothing to cultivators, a blink of an eye. How could such a land transform this much in so little time?