Boom!

The hammer shadow and the beast soul collided with a thunderous roar.

Azure radiance and black ghostly qi intertwined and detonated, sending shockwaves rippling outward. Every stone table and chair in the cave abode was flipped into the air by the blast.

Zhou Kai felt a surge of immense force crash against him. His figure swayed, but he planted his feet and held his ground.

First round: Evenly matched!

Of course, this was only because Li Youci had deliberately suppressed the power of the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

“Interesting.” She let out a soft snort, waving the banner once more.

This time, the beast souls coalesced into a massive black wolf, several zhang in size. It threw its head back and howled, pouncing down with a ferocity that seemed to tear the very air apart!

Zhou Kai did not retreat. Instead, he advanced.

The Chaotic Sky Hammer danced like a storm, layers of hammer shadows stacking upon one another, accompanied by the shriek of breaking wind.

Bang!

Another deafening crash. The black wolf was shattered by the hammer shadows, dissipating back into pure ghostly qi.

Zhou Kai took a single step back, his arm numb from the impact.

“Again!”

Li Youci seemed to have found her rhythm. With a delicate yet imperious shout, the soul shadows on the Ten Thousand Souls Banner solidified further. An Aura Pressure far more terrifying than before began to suffuse the cave.

This time, dozens of beast souls fused together, transforming into a hideous, ghostly claw that blotted out the sky as it raked down toward Zhou Kai!

Zhou Kai’s eyes exploded with light.

He raised the Chaotic Sky Hammer high, frantically pouring his Mana and Vitality into the weapon. The verdant glow on the hammer’s surface reached a blinding intensity, resembling an ancient, towering tree!

The ghost claw and the hammer shadow collided head-on!

The impact was far greater than before. The entire cave abode trembled violently, debris and crushed rock raining down from the ceiling.

Zhou Kai grunted, staggering back three heavy steps. A trace of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes remained bright and burning.

Li Youci stood motionless, clutching the Ten Thousand Souls Banner. Her black hair and skirt danced without wind, dark mist churning around her figure.

Three rounds were over.

The cave fell into a momentary, heavy silence.

A moment later, Li Youci put away the banner. With a cold snort, she tossed the Mysterious Nether Precious Mirror and four unsealing talismans toward Zhou Kai.

“Take them! Go verify it yourself! If their feelings for you are truly as solid as gold, then consider this young lady meddling in vain!”

Zhou Kai reached out and steadily caught the mirror.

However, he let the four unsealing talismans flutter past him and drift to the floor.

“Hm?” Li Youci’s phoenix eyes narrowed, a sharp killing intent rising. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I trust them,” Zhou Kai said, his tone flat and calm.

“Get out!”

Li Youci was infuriated by his look of absolute certainty. Her jade-like palm lashed out, sending a sharp blast of black palm wind whistling toward Zhou Kai’s chest!

Zhou Kai did not dodge. He didn’t even try to evade.

He simply flared his protective spiritual light, intending to take the hit raw.

Bang!

Zhou Kai felt his chest tighten, his blood churning violently. The protective light flickered and swayed, but it did not shatter.

At the instant the palm wind made contact, Li Youci had clearly pulled back most of the force.

Zhou Kai looked at her with clear eyes and asked in a deep voice, “The Grand Miss spared no expense, wasting her own cultivation and Mana to help me improve. What is it that you actually want?”

He paused, then added with practiced shamelessness, “This subordinate is willing to share the Grand Miss’s burdens!”

Li Youci’s voice returned to its usual icy detachment. “Trash.”

“Now, take the mirror and leave my cave!”

Just as Zhou Kai was about to step out of the cave entrance, Li Youci’s voice drifted over, sounding faint and ghostly.

“Zhou Kai… those four unsealing talismans. I left them by the entrance.”

Free stuff? Only an idiot refuses free stuff.

Zhou Kai shouted back cheerfully, “Then I’ll take them to exchange for Spirit Stones! Thanks, Grand Miss!”

Inside the cave.

Smash!

A white jade teacup was hurled viciously against the floor, shattering into dust.

Li Youci’s chest heaved rapidly.

“Bastard!”

That line—I’ll take them to exchange for Spirit Stones!—echoed in her ears. Zhou Kai’s matter-of-fact, roguish face appeared in her mind, making the breath stuck in her chest choke her even more.

He was a thoroughbred scoundrel!

But as her rage subsided, a trace of exhaustion and powerlessness quietly welled up in her heart.

She was the exceptionally gifted Grand Miss of the Li Family, born with a Heaven-grade Yin Spirit Root. Such aptitude was rare enough, let alone the bizarre Yin attribute.

The Sect and her family naturally placed high hopes on her, tilting all their resources her way, wishing only for her to achieve the Great Dao.

Yet, who knew what fatal danger lurked behind her infinite glory?

In the Calamity Abyss Valley, aside from the all-encompassing Heavenly Scripture, the only technique truly suited for her Yin Spirit Root was a grotesque and eerie Ghost-Feeding Art.

When she first began cultivating, Li Youci noticed nothing wrong. Her progress was godlike, her path smooth. She had rejoiced, thinking the Great Dao was within reach.

But as she sang her way to the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment, the hidden danger finally surfaced.

Li Youci was a living being of flesh and blood, not a natural-born ghost. For a living human to cultivate such a gloomy, spectral method was an act of defying heaven, fraught with peril.

The most troublesome part? The “ghost” she fed was not some ordinary resentful spirit.

It was a fragment of her own soul, sliced away from her main body!

In the dead of night, she could feel the throbbing of that remnant soul—an instinctive, unconscious hunger to return to the whole.

The Ghost-Feeding Art was branded into the Heavenly Scripture; they were one and the same.

As long as Li Youci continued to cultivate the Heavenly Scripture as her foundation, the Ghost Body formed from her soul fragment would grow stronger. The sensation of being coveted by another “self” would intensify.

If she erased the Ghost-Feeding Art from the scripture, the Ghost Body—linked to her life—would lose its shackles and spiral out of control. The consequences would be unthinkable.

But if she destroyed the Ghost Body? That was equivalent to ripping apart her own soul. She would be permanently incomplete, her spirit traumatized, her Dao Foundation shattered.

Now, Li Youci stood at the peak of late Foundation Establishment, only a single step away from the Golden Core.

But breaking through to the Golden Core required facing the trial of heaven and earth.

Her True Body and the Ghost Body shared the same Source Origin. Their fates were bound.

When the time came, her living True Body would face the majesty of the Lightning Tribulation.

But her Ghost Body would simultaneously attract the tribulation unique to ghost cultivators—not lightning, but the internal Yang Fire Tribulation!

Blazing, pure Yang energy. It burned the soul and forged the spirit. It was the polar opposite of the Ghost Body’s Yin-cold nature—the absolute bane of all ghostly things!

Her Ghost Body was merely a condensation of a remnant soul. How could it withstand the domineering Yang Fire designed to incinerate evil? It was a sentence of ten deaths with no life.

Even if, by some miracle, the Ghost Body survived the fire, a greater crisis awaited. Once both bodies achieved Golden Core, a Yin-attribute Ghost Core would condense within the Ghost Body.

With a Golden Core as a base, that remnant soul would likely birth an independent consciousness.

Once that Ghost Body gained clear sentience, it would no longer be part of Li Youci.

Two wills in one vessel. A battle to the death between the True Body and the Ghost Body would be inevitable—until she destroyed it, or it swallowed her.

This was why Li Youci had painstakingly gathered rare materials to forge the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

Her initial plan was to seal her uncontrollable Ghost Body into the banner, making it the artifact spirit or the master soul. This would impose constraints.

But after repeated simulations, she fell into despair. It wouldn’t work. Fusing the Ghost Body into the banner was no different from severing her soul or killing herself.

Before she confirmed Zhou Kai’s constitution, she had a backup plan: wait for the Righteous-Demonic War to erupt and steal a top-tier Yin cultivation technique from the demonic giant, the Yin Ruins Sect.

But ever since the day she discovered Zhou Kai possessed the Creation Spirit Yang Body—a physique unseen in eons—a new, perhaps more viable idea had sprouted in her mind.

If that mortal woman, Chen Ziyi, could rely on Zhou Kai’s Creation Spirit Yang Body to force a Spirit Root to grow from nothing…

Could she, Li Youci, use the profound mysteries of his physique to grow a new Spirit Root?

To achieve this fantasy, she first needed Zhou Kai to be strong. Strong enough to completely suppress the restless Ghost Body inside her.

Only then could she strip the accursed Ghost-Feeding Art from the Heavenly Scripture without fear.

She would disperse her lifetime of Yin-cold cultivation.

And finally, with Zhou Kai’s help, she would reforge her Dao Foundation, choosing a new attribute free from the curse of the ghost. With the Heavenly Scripture as her base, rebuilding her cultivation would be effortless.