The man in gray curled his lips into a smug, confident sneer.
When he planted the Soul Chasing Mark earlier, it was just something he did casually. He didn't know how this little girl managed to shake it off, but he figured it must've been a moment of carelessness, letting that sly little fox slip through the cracks.
A mere early Foundation stage brat, what kind of great ability could she possibly have?
Now this slave contract was even simpler, so how could there be any chance of failure?
He was already drowning in the thrill of his imminent victory, completely blind to the fleeting cold smile that flashed across Xie Zhaolin's lips.
He had no idea this was exactly what she wanted. After all… who stumbles into the same pit twice? Especially someone like her, a devil who crawled back from hell itself.
That rigid, frozen look from earlier? Pure acting. From the start, this so-called desperate battle had been under her control.
In fact, the moment the man in gray appeared at the bottom of the Blackwater Abyss, Xie Zhaolin realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. She deliberately exposed her tracks to bait him into striking. She faked defeat, step after step, and even that display of being shackled by Golden Core pressure had been a carefully staged performance.
Sure, his pressure was uncomfortable, but her divine sense had already reached the mid-Golden Core level. How could she truly be paralyzed?
The reason she'd been branded with the mark outside wasn't her weakness, but because he'd crushed her with sheer cultivation. Here in the Blackwater Abyss though, the unique suppression reduced his pressure to nothing but a nuisance.
She faked painful struggle for one reason only: to lure him into plunging his divine sense into her sea of consciousness. Because she knew too well that under the Abyss's restrictions, his strongest move could only be a divine sense contract!
And now, the moment she'd been waiting for had finally arrived!
The man in gray didn't notice at all. In his mind, he was already picturing the girl kneeling at his feet, becoming his most loyal puppet—just like the countless cultivators he'd enslaved over the past hundred years.
"Submit!" His divine sense condensed a blood-red contract rune in Xie Zhaolin's sea of consciousness, ready to brand itself into her core.
But in that instant, everything flipped.
The man's cold smile froze.
The contract power he'd sent into her sea of consciousness vanished like a stone sinking into the ocean, not even leaving a ripple. Worse, he felt his own strand of divine sense being devoured by some unknown force!
"This… impossible!" His face changed drastically as he tried to pull back, only to find the connection had already been severed.
He stared at Xie Zhaolin in horror, watching her slowly lift her head. The pain in her eyes was gone, replaced with a frigid, merciless light.
The moment his divine sense entered her sea of consciousness, it felt like plunging into a pitch-black abyss.
From the depths, countless chains of divine sense suddenly blazed to life, weaving together into a heavenly net. Every chain pulsed with cold, cutting brilliance, each one forged from her own divine sense.
"I've been waiting for you." Xie Zhaolin sneered. With a thought, a broken fragment of the Soul Chasing Mark surfaced from her sea of consciousness, wisps of azure-violet mist curling around it.
This was her trump card—the fragment she'd carefully preserved, once corroded by that strange azure-violet fog.
The instant it touched his divine sense, the last lingering threads of mist surged outward. They shared the same source, so fusion happened almost instantly. His divine sense thrashed wildly, but it couldn't break free—the mist was already imprinted with Xie Zhaolin's mark.
And since the fragment came from his own divine sense, there was no rejection at all!
"Bind!" Xie Zhaolin's divine sense snapped. The chains tightened in unison, locking the fused divine sense in place.
At the same time, a blood-red slave contract rune began forming in the center of the net—the exact same contract he'd meant to brand on her, only now it was turned back on him!
The man in gray coughed out a muffled groan and staggered back several steps. A foreign contract force surged through his divine sense, pouring into him against his will.
"You… you dare?!" Fear flickered in his eyes for the first time.
Xie Zhaolin didn't even bother responding. To her, this battle never had any suspense.
The divine sense he'd sent into her sea of consciousness might be weak, but as someone who had once reached the Yuányīng Zhēnjūn realm, she understood the laws of contracts inside and out. Even the lowest-level slave contract had to contain a sliver of Primordial Soul.
Once a sliver of soul was involved, it could never be severed from the cultivator's true body.
That was Heaven's iron law, unbreakable.
And the lower the rank of the contract, the less soul power it required, the weaker the divine sense needed.
With his arrogance, facing a mere Foundation cultivator like her, would he waste large amounts of divine sense? Of course not. He'd pick the lowest-level slave contract.
And that was exactly what she wanted.
Failure? That thought never crossed her mind. She only struck when she was already certain. Thanks to the Soul Chasing Mark, she'd already gauged his strength. This clone's divine sense was only mid-Golden Core, barely stronger than hers.
Now, with the azure-violet mist's boost, her divine sense completely matched his. Add in the fragment's imprint, and the outcome was guaranteed. But the man in gray wasn't slow either. The moment he realized something was wrong, he lashed out!
His five fingers curled into claws, gray light bursting forth, aimed straight for Xie Zhaolin's throat. The power at his fingertips was enough to crush her body to dust.
"Die!" His roar boiled with killing intent.
Losing a talented slave was a pity, but better that than capsizing in a ditch. If he killed her before the contract fully formed, it wouldn't harm him at all!
Xie Zhaolin's awareness was still locked inside her sea of consciousness. She wasn't affected by Golden Core pressure, but her five beast souls were. Shuang Ling's feathers stood on end as it screeched, Xue Xiao thrashed its wings in panic, Dian Diao sparked with lightning trying to teleport but failed—none of them could stop that fatal strike.
The claw had already brushed her skin, death's chill rushing over her.
And at that exact instant—
Pfft!
The man in gray convulsed violently. His hand froze just short of crushing her throat. The savage expression on his face stiffened, replaced with raw, disbelieving terror.
Heaven bore witness.
The contract was sealed.