My brother is so cunning

Chapter 1094 Ruthless and Heartless, Killing and Soul-Stealing

"Pfft!" The Soul-Devouring Sword pierced Chi Jingzi's back without any resistance. The blood-red patterns on the blade lit up instantly, and a powerful suction force came from the sword, frantically absorbing Chi Jingzi's life essence.

Chi Jingzi let out a shrill scream, his body convulsing violently. He could clearly feel his immortal power and lifespan being sucked away like a tide. His originally pale face aged visibly, his hair turned gray rapidly, his skin lost its luster and began to wither and wrinkle, and even his body hunched over slightly.

The Mantis Witch's teleportation ability allows her to traverse space directly, entering and exiting without any time interval. To counter this move, Wen Rui would have to use cloud supercomputing, combined with spatial fluctuations, to perform extremely complex trajectory calculations in order to predict the location where the witch might appear.

Immortals do possess supernatural powers such as seeking good fortune and avoiding misfortune, and intuitive perception. They can consume immortal power to achieve similar cloud-based calculation effects, but Chi Jingzi was poisoned by the Dao Ma Zhuang poison, and the lingering pain left him no time to be distracted. He simply didn't have time to prepare for it.

"How dare you, you brat! Fellow Daoist Chijingzi, I've come to your rescue!" Huanglong Zhenren, in his golden dragon form, roared, his body radiating golden light as he clawed at the Creation Celestial Venerable, his eyes filled with fury.

But Wen Rui remained calm. He grabbed Chi Jingzi's shoulder with his left hand and used his teleportation ability again, this time dragging Chi Jingzi into the space as well. The two of them appeared several feet away in an instant, avoiding the golden dragon's attack. The Soul-Devouring Sword was still stuck in Chi Jingzi's back, and its suction force was not diminished at all.

"Wen Rui! You dare to harm a Golden Immortal of my Chan Sect! Today, you will pay for this in blood!"

Guang Chengzi was so angry that his eyes were about to burst. He subconsciously wanted to use the Fantian Seal, but he only managed to cast the spell and failed. Then he remembered that his natal magic weapon had been lost and had been dragged to some corner of the universe by the giant ship and hidden away.

Master Yu Ding gripped the Immortal-Slaying Sword tightly and charged towards Wen Rui like lightning. He gathered all his immortal power into the sword blade, and a streak of sword energy cleaved through the air.

Wen Rui was prepared and didn't bother to dodge. He slightly shifted the arm he was holding onto Chi Jingzi, using the withered Chi Jingzi as a human shield to block the direction from which the sword energy was coming.

Using the opponent's teammates as shields is a basic tactic that Wen Rui consistently employs when fighting others. He hopes that Chi Jingzi will be killed by Yu Ding Zhenren with a single sword strike, thus transferring the killing karma to others and reducing the amount of killing karma he himself can create.

Master Yuding hurriedly formed a sword incantation to control his sword, forcefully deflecting the sword energy a few inches, which grazed past Chijingzi's withered old face.

At this moment, Chi Jingzi had completely lost the power to resist. His consciousness began to blur. He could feel his life rapidly slipping away, and images of his tens of thousands of years of cultivation flashed before his eyes.

From becoming a disciple of Yuanshi Tianzun to participating in the Investiture of the Gods, and then guarding the Chan Sect's dojo, scenes flashed by like a revolving lantern, but in the end, he was destined to perish here.

He struggled to raise his hand, trying to grasp something, but only touched empty air. His body withered completely, like a dead tree that had lost its moisture. If the Soul-Devouring Sword hadn't been absorbing his essence, he probably would have perished long ago.

Guang Chengzi, Yu Ding Zhenren, and Huanglong Zhenren stared at Chi Jingzi's withered, lifeless body, their eyes filled with disbelief and shock. Guang Chengzi staggered back half a step, his voice trembling slightly: "No... impossible! How dare you, a disciple of the Jie Sect, so cruelly kill a fellow disciple of the Chan Sect?!"

These words were like a key, unlocking the three people's long-sealed memories—during the Investiture of the Gods, although the Chan Sect and the Jie Sect were opposing camps and fought each other constantly, the disciples of the Jie Sect, even when they defeated and subdued them, never took lives so decisively.

When Zhao Gongming captured Huanglong Zhenren, he imprisoned him but did not harm him fundamentally; when the Three Immortal Maidens set up the Yellow River Formation and reduced the cultivation of the Twelve Golden Immortals, they only crippled their supernatural powers but did not take their lives.

Even the most ruthless disciples of the Jie Sect always adhered to the bottom line of "not killing fellow disciples," which allowed them to always escape danger.

However, Wen Rui, a junior of the Jie Sect, used the Soul-Devouring Demon Sword to pierce Chi Jingzi's heart and frantically absorbed his life essence, leaving no room for maneuver.

"Are you insane?!" Jade Cauldron Immortal shouted at Wen Rui, his tone no longer filled with anger, but with urgency: "During the Investiture of the Gods, your Jie Sect predecessors spared the lives of their Chan Sect comrades. Why are you so ruthless? Although we have different stances, we are both from the lineage of Hongjun Daozu. If you kill Chi Jingzi, you will set a precedent for killing each other among the Chan and Jie Sects!" Guang Chengzi's tone carried a hint of compromise: "We admit that we underestimated your strength today and should not have come to suppress you rashly. If you are willing to release Chi Jingzi, we are willing to retreat immediately and not fight with you for a hundred years, no, a thousand years."

"Do you know the consequences of this action? Once the infighting among the disciples of the Chan and Jie sects becomes a fait accompli, the order of the Three Realms will be thrown into chaos! At that time, not only will my Chan sect not let it go, but Hongjun Daozu will also be furious. Can you bear the consequences? If you don't think about yourself, you should at least think about Tongtian Jiaozhu, who swallowed Hongjun Daozu's Immortal-Slaying Pill."

Huanglong Zhenren also restrained the dragon clan's violent temper, his golden dragon eyes filled with solemnity. He deliberately mentioned "Tongtian Jiaozhu" in an attempt to awaken Wen Rui's sense of belonging to the Jie Sect and bring him back to rationality, so that he would prioritize the overall situation.

The three of them talked back and forth, from "fraternal friendship" to "consequences in the Three Realms," and then took the initiative to compromise and speak softly, adopting an extremely humble posture, just to get Wen Rui to show leniency.

Although Chi Jingzi was in a daze, he still heard his fellow disciples' advice. His withered fingers trembled slightly, and a desire to survive flashed in his eyes.

"Fellow disciples? From the lineage of Dao Ancestor Hongjun?"

Wen Rui scoffed, his tone full of mockery: "During the Investiture of the Gods, when your Chan Sect was hunting down the disciples of the Jie Sect, did you never think about 'fraternal ties'? Ten thousand immortals from my Jie Sect came to pay homage, but in the end, we suffered heavy casualties and our sect was destroyed. When did you ever leave any room for maneuver? Good people have to be held at gunpoint? What kind of bullshit logic is that!"

"As for the consequences..."

Wen Rui raised his hand and pressed down on Chi Jingzi's head. The suction force of the Soul Devouring Sword increased again, and Chi Jingzi's aura weakened even more: "Since I dared to make a move, I was already prepared to bear the consequences. At worst, the Three Realms will be destroyed, and the Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water will be repeated. The Tongtian Ancestor couldn't be ruthless back then, but I'll do it for him!"
As Wen Rui finished speaking, the Soul-Devouring Sword in his hand flashed red, and the last bit of spiritual light in Chi Jingzi's eyes was extinguished. His golden body crumbled inch by inch, turning to ash and dissipating with a gust of wind, leaving only a withered skull, which was preserved just like the tortoise shell of the Holy Mother of Tortoise Spirit back then.

Just then, a faint white light suddenly appeared in the eye sockets of the skull, and a semi-transparent primordial spirit slowly floated out from the white light, which was the remnant soul of Chi Jingzi.

He had clearly prepared for the worst, protecting a wisp of his primordial spirit the instant his golden body collapsed.

As soon as his primordial spirit left his body, it sped off towards Kunlun Mountain at an astonishing speed, clearly intending to escape back to Yuxu Palace to lament and recount the changes that had occurred there to the Primordial Heavenly Venerable.

In this magical world, death is not the end. The Chan Sect itself has a method to reshape the physical body. Nezha obtained the Lotus Holy Body through this method and was resurrected and reborn.

"Want to go?"

Wen Rui curled a cold smile at the corner of his mouth, and with a wave of his left hand, a pitch-black banner appeared out of thin air in his hand.

The banner was embroidered with dense, blood-red runes. It moved without wind, and one could vaguely see countless wronged souls struggling and howling within it. It was another treasure of the Jie Sect—the Six Soul Banner!

This banner can capture people's souls; even a Golden Immortal's primordial spirit would find it difficult to resist its pull.

The original Six Soul Banner of the Tongtian Sect Master could even capture the soul of a saint, and could forcibly capture it while the other party was alive. Wen Rui's youthful version, which was a knock-off based on the sect's classic texts, was naturally not as effective as a treasure personally crafted by a saint, but capturing the primordial spirit of a Golden Immortal whose physical body had been destroyed and whose foundation had been lost was still a piece of cake.

(End of this chapter)