Roaming the Four Seas Chapter 151: Divinity

The withered well was inauspicious.
Beside the brick-lined wellhead lay the carcass of a sheep, the angle between its neck and skull indicating it had been broken by violent force.
A few venomous flies crawled upon it.
Su Ye had once subdued a fish demon within a well in Azure Lantern City.
The sight of the square stone well immediately suggested the presence of evil spirits.
Chen Mu pointed at the dry well and smiled.
"Fellow Daoist Su, you have walked all this way and must be thirsty. Why not draw some water from this well to quench your fatigue?"
Presented as concern, it was actually a covert mockery of Su Ye's low cultivation level, as he was not yet able to subsist solely on breath.
Lin Taixuan repeatedly tried to stop him, but seeing that Su Ye remained completely unconcerned, he said no more.
Su Ye merely sensed something strange about the dry well, yet he did not know how vast Bullfight City currently was... Fearing that missing a single detail could lead to a total defeat.
Judging merely by the miasma and the malicious thoughts of inner demons upon entering the city, he knew that the Crimson Glow Demon’s arrangement and capability were by no means ordinary.
As someone well-versed in all sorts of formations and schemes, Su Ye deeply understood what it meant for everything to be interlinked.
With matters of life and death at stake, arrogance had never once arisen in his heart.
"I was sweated through by the mist demon and exhausted by the inner demons, so I am indeed a bit thirsty," Su Ye said, feigning a degree of rustic naivety. "Please wait a moment, Seniors, while I fetch some water."
"Go ahead," the female Daoist cultivator said.
Full of curiosity toward Su Ye, Lin Taixuan quietly observed how the situation would unfold.
Su Ye stepped toward the dry well, using the Ten Directions Dream Domain to perceive the abnormalities around him.
There was an evil spirit at the bottom of the well.
It belonged to the soul-type category.
Within the perception of the dream domain, it felt even more real than the physical world.
The illusory outweighed the substantial.
Thus, no demonic aura could be detected.
Su Ye did not rush to take the bait; instead, he leaned down to observe the sheep carcass by the well.
With a wave of his hand, he conjured a blade of sword-qi mixed with fire, reducing the venomous flies lunging at him to nothingness.
"These venomous flies... are not corporeal entities either," Su Ye muttered to himself, reaching out to lightly touch the bleached white bones.
The female Daoist cultivator was about to issue a warning, but Lin Taixuan stretched out his arm to stop her.
A mighty dragon does not suppress a local serpent.
Being in a Bullfight City where heaven and earth were inverted, one should naturally be on guard everywhere and exercise cautious vigilance.
Yet Su Ye seemed unafraid of evil qi entering his body, directly touching the strangely deceased sheep's bones with his bare skin.
If there was no anomaly at all, it meant Su Ye was concealing something.
He wanted to see things clearly.
A wisp of black smoke gathered at Su Ye's fingertips, only to be incinerated by a crystalline white flame virtually invisible to the naked eye.
After receiving personal transmission from the Buddha's true body, his Buddhist power had advanced further.
The suppressing efficacy of the sword-qi lotus was far more formidable than before.
The evil spirit in the well failed to detect the flames hidden by Su Ye's Ten Directions Dream Domain.
Sensing the aura of the righteous path, the demonic power grew restless.
Because it could not be perceived by spiritual awareness, it made no attempt to conceal itself.
Su Ye summoned a wooden gourd, let out a long red rope, and lowered it to the bottom of the well to draw water.

Chen Mu could not help sneering.
"Within a dry well, how could there possibly be water?"
Before his voice had even faded, Su Ye's figure inverted, and he plunged headfirst into the dry well.
"Senior Brother, that kid has been dragged away by the evil spirit!" There was no joy in Chen Mu's tone, only panic.
Despite his ceaseless open mockery and covert sarcasm, he could not bear to see a pill cultivator who had once treated him meet a tragic end.
Lin Taixuan appeared beside the well in a flash, holding two fingers of his right hand together as a majestic surge of spiritual qi swept across his eyes.
He opened his magical sight to inspect the empty bottom of the well.
Su Ye's figure was nowhere to be found.
"Fellow Daoist Su... where has he gone?"
Lin Taixuan fell into deep thought, recalling the boundless miasma when they had first entered the city.
Under the reinforcement of the Crimson Glow Demon, it seemed even more vast than the Great Qian Empire.
"Senior Brother, what should we do?" The female Daoist cultivator lost her composure.
Lin Taixuan let out a long breath.
"I'm afraid Fellow Daoist Su's chances of survival are grim this time."
"Should we wait for him, or..." A trace of guilt stirred in Chen Mu's heart, and his tone was no longer arrogant.
Lin Taixuan stepped on the well curb with his left foot, rubbing the tip of his right index finger with his thumb, and remained silent for a long while before speaking softly.
"There is one thing I need to figure out..."
"Please instruct me, Senior Brother."
"We must see the person alive, or the corpse if they are dead."

The space at the bottom of the well was infinitely vast.
It corresponded directly to the miasma at the city gate.
No demonic qi was generated, making it difficult for ordinary spiritual awareness to detect.
"It has been a long time... since this demon last tasted the flavor of a living person," an entity covered in dense scales said, standing obliquely against the well wall. Its vertical slit eyes stared at Su Ye, and its scarlet tongue licked its lips. "The gamey odor of sheep's blood is truly repulsive to this demon. Your blood must be exceptionally delicious."
"Do you advance in cultivation by drinking blood?" Su Ye smiled as he looked up at the evil spirit clinging to the vertical well wall.
The evil spirit's vertical pupils contracted, flashing with a hint of perversity.
"Death is at hand, why are you not afraid?"
"You are going to die, not I; why should I be afraid?" Su Ye's tone was light and breezy.
"What?!" The evil spirit was secretly startled. It scanned Su Ye, yet completely failed to sense any fluctuation in his sea of qi. "You little ghost, you've actually been scared out of your wits."
"I am speaking the truth... Death is at hand for you."
"When I twist your head off, you won't be so arrogant!" The evil spirit's tone abruptly turned cold, brimming with murderous intent.
Su Ye chuckled brightly.
"Before you eat me, can you answer me a question?
What on earth is your leader trying to achieve by setting up this trap in Bullfight City?"
"Little ghost, you are not qualified to inquire about such matters," the evil spirit said, violently kicking off the well wall. Like an arrow loosed from a string, it closed the distance in an instant, its tone freezing. "Go to your death!"
"If you refuse to speak," Su Ye produced an ancient bronze sword five feet in length, his gaze suddenly turning sharp, "then you will have no value whatsoever."

Sensing the instantly surging aura of Su Ye, the evil spirit's body froze, its demonic soul entering a space suppressed by the Buddhas and deities of the heavens.
It could sense the long sword slashing toward its scale-covered body.
A golden cage resembling a sphere of water trapped it within the hall of deities.
It could only watch helplessly as its physical body was decapitated.
Completely unable to move.
Blood spattered, splashing against the brick-lined dry well.
Su Ye, who had swung the sword, stood outside, slowly putting away his precious blade.
Beneath the golden cage stood another Su Ye.
He stood atop shallow water, ripples spreading out from beneath his feet, his expression completely undisturbed.
"I told you that death was at hand for you. Do you still have any doubts now?"
"You... just who are you?"
"Su Ye."
The evil spirit's vertical slit eyes shook violently: "So it was you!"
"I'll ask you once more: what on earth is your leader plotting?"
"The Cult Master calculated that a certain person might kill him, so he dispatched Monarch Crimson Glow to set a fatal trap in this Bullfight City to lure that big fish into taking the bait." The evil spirit's soul was suppressed by the deities, making it difficult to keep secrets.
"I never expected that the notorious Cult Master of the Yellow Springs would also fear losing his head."
"Who isn't afraid of losing their head? Are you not?"
The evil spirit soul's question brought a smile to Su Ye's face.
"I can tell you that the one destined to slay the Cult Master of the Yellow Springs is none other than myself."
The evil spirit glanced around at the golden avatars of the deities filling the distant sky, feeling a shudder of dread deep within its heart.
"Where is this?"
"The Ten Directions Dream Domain."
"You claim you can kill the Cult Master of the Yellow Springs—just who are you?"
"My fiancée's soul was shattered by the Cult Master of the Yellow Springs," Su Ye looked at his right hand, slowly clenching it into a fist, and said softly, "From that moment on, a predestined nemesis capable of killing him came into being."
"You... can you truly kill the Holy King Cult Master?"
"Since we both belong to the soul-type realm, you should already have the answer in your heart."
"This demon's soul power is as different from the Holy King Cult Master's as heaven and earth," the red-scaled demon laughed. "With your level of cultivation, it is impossible for you to kill him. That Daoist of the Miaozhen Realm, however, might have a sliver of a chance."
"Just as I told you a moment ago, death is at hand for you," Su Ye said in a firm voice. "I will say it again: the person destined to kill the Cult Master of the Yellow Springs is precisely myself."
"You," the red-scaled demon's soul stared at Su Ye with its vertical slit eyes, "on what grounds?"
The corners of Su Ye's mouth curved upward as he turned away with an air of nonchalance, his voice ringing clear and crisp:
"On the grounds that within the realm of souls, I am a god."
The sound of footsteps gradually faded into the distance.
The red-scaled demon's soul was scattered to the winds.