Chương 1163: Chapter 1161: Silent Night

The spatial tear closed behind Li Yu and Elder Huo Zheng as they stepped onto the polished stones of the Heavenly Sword Sect. The lingering scent of ozone faded into the crisp mountain air and the ambient spiritual energy washed over them like a refreshing tide. The towering peaks of the sect stood proud against the clear sky while spiritual cranes soared through the scattered clouds above the main halls.

The tranquil environment offered a stark contrast to the frozen graveyard they had just left behind in the Frostveil Realm. Li Yu floated the restrained Hollow Husk captives behind him using his Qi. The creatures hung in the air like gruesome trophies and dripped dark fluids but that was also restrained in the air by his Qi. Several patrolling disciples stopped in their tracks and stared at the bizarre squid creatures with wide eyes.

Some drew their weapons out of sheer reflex while others simply gawked at the appendages hanging limply from the floating bodies.

"Do not dawdle and go about your business," Elder Huo Zheng commanded while waving the curious disciples away with a stern flick of his sleeve.

"We have urgent sect business that requires the utmost secrecy. Return to your designated cultivation peaks and prepare for possible missions." The disciples bowed quickly and dispersed to give the elder and the Holy Son their required space. Once the courtyard was empty Elder Huo Zheng reached into his robes and retrieved a communication token. The token was etched with intricate golden runes designed for direct contact with the leadership of the coalition that fought within the zone.

"We must contact the Worldkeeper now." Huo Zheng explained as he infused his robust Qi into the jade token.

"I will contact him directly and summon him back here right away." The token glowed with a bright golden light and hummed with an energy that vibrated in the air. Huo Zheng sent a brief but urgent mental message through the encrypted spiritual link across the spatial boundaries of the realms. The golden light faded back into the token once the message was delivered. They did not have to wait very long for a response since Zhan Tian was already made aware of the potential threat of this species.

In less than the time it took for an incense had passed, the air above the courtyard distorted violently. A fissure tore open in the sky and the pressure dropped as Zhan Tian stepped out from the void. The Worldkeeper wore dark robes and his silver hair flowed freely in the mountain wind. His sharp eyes scanned the courtyard and immediately locked onto the grotesque creatures floating behind his grandson. Zhan Tian descended to the courtyard and walked straight toward the captives.

He ignored the standard greetings and leaned in to inspect the mottled skin and jagged barbs of the nearest squid creature. A look of shock washed over his usually stoic features as he realized what he was looking at and that the message was true.

"By the heavens," Zhan Tian muttered while tracing a finger over the dormant Qi lines of a captive male.

"You actually brought them back alive. We have fought these abominations for years inside the zone and I have never seen one captured alive in such a state. They always trigger their self-destruct seals before we can secure anything from it. We lost a lot of time trying to take prisoners during the early campaigns."

"They tried to do exactly that," Li Yu replied while lowering the captives closer to the floor.

"Their souls flared with a destructive heat the moment I tried to bind them for capture. I managed to rip the seals out of their minds before the detonation could trigger and turn them to ash." Zhan Tian stood up straight and looked at his grandson with a sense of pride mixed with disbelief.

"We had cultivators who are extremely skilled in soul techniques try to defuse these seals during the early wars and all of their attempts ended in failure. The mechanism is tied directly to the collapse of their life force so overpowering them with high cultivation does not work. For you to pull the seal out while it was actively detonating is something none of my top people could achieve. You have done something extraordinary today, Li Yu.

This is a breakthrough we have needed for a long time and it can change our tactical approach."

"I tried binding the leader as my servant to speed up the process of extracting information but it didn't work." Li Yu gestured toward the female Sovereign hovering near the back of the group.

"She has secondary memory seals blocking her core knowledge as would be expected. I even tried sending my divine sense into her mind but hit a wall of dense barriers. I cannot extract any useful information from her without breaking those locks first." Zhan Tian narrowed his eyes and inspected the female leader with a calculating gaze.

"Since she is already bound to your soul, we will save her for last. The other fourteen will serve as our keys to breaking those locks and finding out where they came from."

"I mentioned to the Holy Son back in the Frostveil Realm that we would need to forcefully extract the information," Huo Zheng added.

"We need the specialized soul search experts to bypass those internal locks since physical interrogation methods will not unlock things that are sealed behind a soul technique. Shall I summon the unit here?"

"We need them but not here." Zhan Tian answered with a cold edge to his commanding voice.

"The Heavenly Sword Sect is not the kind of place for this type of work. It requires a secure environment away from possible prying eyes and sensitive ears. We will take them to Titan's Keep where my interrogators can operate freely." Zhan Tian raised his hand and channeled his immense power to tear a stable rift in the space before them. The portal swirled with dark silver energy and revealed a glimpse of a heavily fortified stone courtyard on the other side.

"Bring them through," Zhan Tian instructed while stepping into the portal. Li Yu used his Qi to lift the fifteen captives into the air and followed the Worldkeeper through the rift while Elder Huo Zheng secured the rear. The transition was smooth and they arrived in a sprawling military fortress built atop a barren rocky plateau. Titan's Keep was the personal stronghold of Zhan Tian and it radiated an oppressive martial aura.

High walls of dark stone surrounded the perimeter while armored soldiers were standing atop the battlements with a sharp vigilance. There were no spiritual creatures or tranquil clouds here. The air was filled with the edge of war. Li Yu looked around and found that this space was most likely a pocket dimension that his grandfather controlled.

He could not sense that far out from where he was which meant that there were arrays suppressing such things and was probably part of the overall defensive structure of this pocket of space. Zhan Tian led them to a secluded square in the center of the keep, retrieved a crimson token from his robes and sent his Qi into it. A pulse of blood red energy shot into the sky and vanished beyond the horizon.

It was a direct summons to a specific group of specialists who operated in the shadows of his army and handled the tasks that standard soldiers could not do or perhaps stomach. While they waited for the elite unit to arrive, Li Yu decided to organize his captives. He separated the female Sovereign from the rest of the floating pile and brought her forward to stand on the stone tiles.

The creature glared at him with bulbous alien eyes and thrashed her rubbery tentacles in a futile display of resistance against her new master.

"You draw too much attention looking like that," Li Yu stated firmly while looking down at his new servant. He tapped into the dominant soul seal connecting their minds and issued a direct unyielding command.

"Take a more humanoid form." The Sovereign shrieked as the soul command forced her biology to obey against her will. Her mottled skin rippled violently and the sickening sound of snapping cartilage echoed through the quiet square. Zhan Tian and Huo Zheng watched with grim fascination as the creature compressed her form to mimic a human silhouette. The shifting flesh sounded like wet mud being churned by a heavy spade.

This wasn't the kind of transformation that many beasts or other creatures took when they adopted a more humanoid form. It is said that the humanoid form allows one to be closer towards the Dao even though this is heavily debated among cultivators. Either way, most beings whether they are born as a beast, creature or anything else had a humanoid form that they were able to take a certain point in their cultivation.

What this Sovereign was doing was not performing that transformation that happens in an instant and was another natural form for those other beings. What this Sovereign was doing was physically altering her original form to take on a humanoid form due to the special characteristic of their race. It wasn't the same thing as shifting to a natural humanoid form and it was actually quite sickening to see but Li Yu didn't know that before giving the order. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on the original website. The result was far from a normal human appearance. She stood on two legs but her knees bent backward at unnatural angles making her stance look predatory and unstable. Her skin turned a pale sickly gray and her arms hung past her knees with long webbed fingers adorned with sharp black nails. The most disturbing aspect was her face. She lacked a jaw or a mouth to speak with.

Instead a mess of writhing rubbery tentacles hung from her cheekbones down to her collarbone shifting and curling with every breath she took. Her bulbous black eyes stared unblinking from beneath a hairless brow. She looked like a grotesque deep sea horror that had stolen the shape of a person and wore it poorly.

'She is quite ugly,' Li Yu thought while studying her new form and noting the dense muscles hidden beneath the gray skin.

'This was not what I was expecting when giving the command for her to bend in. How is this bending in and not standing out? At least she can walk on her own.'

"A fascinating display of biological flexibility." Zhan Tian noted while crossing his arms over his broad chest.

"They use physical illusions to hide their true forms in the wild but forcing a permanent structural shift shows how malleable their flesh truly is. Keep a tight leash on her just in case, Li Yu. Perhaps they have other abilities we do not fully understand yet." The air in the square grew noticeably colder as a second spatial portal opened near the stone pillars. Three figures stepped through the rift and brought a heavy aura of dread and death with them.

The daylight seemed to dim around their bodies as they approached the Worldkeeper. This was the head of the interrogation unit known as Silent Night. The leader was an ancient withered man named Warden Mo. He leaned heavily on a crooked bone staff and his skin looked like dry parchment stretched too tight over a fragile skull. His eyes were sunken deep into his face and devoid of any light or warmth. Walking beside him was his middle aged son Mo Chuan.

The son wore heavy leather aprons stained with years of dark work and he carried a variety of hooked blades secured to his thick belt. He possessed a grim and silent demeanor that matched his ancient father well. The third member of the group stood out like a vibrant flower blooming in a graveyard. She was a surprisingly young and innocent looking female disciple named Su Yin. She wore a pristine white dress adorned with pink lotus patterns and her dark hair was tied into neat twin buns.

She had bright cheerful eyes and a radiant smile that made her look like a junior disciple arriving for a spring festival rather than an elite interrogator.

"Lord Zhan," Warden Mo greeted with a voice that sounded deep and completely serious. He bowed deeply and his son followed suit with mechanical precision.

"Silent Night answers your call. We were told there was flesh to carve and secrets to harvest."

"Greetings Worldkeeper," Su Yin chirped happily while offering a polite curtsy. She noticed Li Yu standing nearby and waved a delicate hand in his direction.

"And greetings to your grandson, Li Yu. It is good to finally meet you." Li Yu was taken aback by her sweet demeanor and the bright tone of her voice. He nodded politely and greeted her back but felt a strange disconnect between her cheerful attitude and the grim reputation of her specialized unit. She looked like she belonged in a garden rather than a torture chamber.

"Warden Mo," Zhan Tian acknowledged the old man with a solemn nod.

"We have secured fourteen captives of the Hollow Husk species. They possess secondary memory seals blocking their memories. I am mainly interested in knowing where they are hiding, what their plans are and anything of military value. I need you to bypass those seals and at least extract the location of a base immediately." Warden Mo turned his hollow eyes toward the pile of floating squid creatures and a disturbing grin stretched across his withered face revealing rows of yellowed teeth.

"To be able to capture them after all this time. What an incredible stroke of luck. A rare bounty indeed my lord. My son and my disciple will begin the work right away. The dead speak eventually but the living sing much faster." Mo Chuan stepped forward and unhooked a jagged blade from his thick belt. He grabbed one of the male captives by a rubbery appendage and dragged it violently toward the center of the square.

The creature hissed and struggled but the middle aged man possessed a terrifying physical strength that would have easily overpowered the beast even if it were at full strength.

"I will take the first one, master," Su Yin volunteered with a bright smile while clapping her hands together. She skipped over to the captive and knelt beside its thrashing form on the dark stone tiles. Li Yu watched closely as the innocent looking girl raised her hands above the creature. Her slender fingers glowed with a sickly green spiritual energy that crackled in the cold air. She did not use blades or physical tools like the older men in her unit.

She plunged her glowing hands directly into the creature's chest, bypassing the rubbery flesh to grip its soul directly somehow. The Hollow Husk let out a bloodcurdling shriek that rattled the stone tiles of the square and echoed against the area before slamming into isolation arrays. Su Yin maintained her cheerful smile as she began to meticulously pull the creature's spiritual essence apart strand by strand.

She performed a flaying technique that isolated the soul and amplified the pain it would feel several times over. Not because she needed to in order to get a result but purely because she found enjoyment in it while performing her actual tasks. The creature thrashed in agony as she slowly burned away its divine sense to bypass the mental barriers protecting its core memories.

"Oh, this one is very stubborn," Su Yin giggled while twisting her wrists to apply more spiritual pressure. A sickening crack echoed from the creature's ethereal form as a piece of its soul splintered.

"But the stubborn ones always sing the loudest once you find the right place to probe." Li Yu observed the brutal interrogation with a mix of surprise and fascination. The techniques she employed were not just mindless torture or crude violence. They were highly precise applications of soul control and manipulation. She was isolating specific memories and using her techniques to force the internal seals to open without triggering a fatal collapse of the mind.

It required a deep understanding of the soul and exceptional Qi control to avoid killing the subject too quickly. Mo Chuan dragged a second captive forward and began his own work utilizing his hooked blades to carve intricate runic patterns into the rubbery flesh of a female squid. The runes acted as dark conduits to funnel agony directly into the creature's consciousness and bypass its physical resilience.

The square quickly filled with the horrific sounds of burbling screams and tearing flesh as Silent Night went to work.

"Their methods are unorthodox and unpleasant to witness," Zhan Tian said quietly while standing beside Li Yu and watching the gruesome display.

"But Silent Night produces results when others can't. When the fate of a realm hangs in the balance we cannot afford mercy when dealing with monsters that threaten us." Li Yu kept his eyes focused on the work that was being done before him as his soul was one of his greatest strengths. He paid attention to Su Yin's glowing hands as she worked. He saw how she manipulated the energy to sever the connections between the creature's will and its memory core. It was a delicate dance of destruction and preservation.

There were many other things that she was doing that he couldn't quite understand at first as it didn't make sense from his own understanding of the soul. Li Yu was quite skilled in this area and had read through many techniques at the Veil and then those provided by the Eidolon Court. After a bit of time he came to realize that she was simply torturing the creature towards no end at all but the cruelty of it. Something he then quickly realized she greatly enjoyed. It brought about a cold chill through his spine.

"This is a highly refined form of soul control," Li Yu observed out loud while analyzing the flow of her energy and disregarding her crueler side of things.

"It is brutal but the precision is incredible. She knows exactly which strands to pull." Warden Mo chuckled dryly from his position near the stone pillars. The ancient man leaned on his bone staff and looked at the young man with approval.

"Your grandson has a sharp eye for the soul as you have told me. Most people only hear the screaming and turn their heads away in disgust. They do not see the art behind the blade or the science behind the suffering. There is beauty in all techniques." Li Yu turned to look at the ancient man and then shifted his gaze to his grandfather. The application of such targeted soul techniques opened new doors for his own martial path.

"Can I learn these techniques? The ability to navigate and potentially dismantle soul barriers would be highly useful for my own cultivation." Zhan Tian looked at his grandson and a smile broke across his face. He appreciated Li Yu's pragmatism and his desire to learn every aspect of the martial path regardless of how grim or dark it appeared. He preferred that much more over a righteous cultivator that would look down on such things that are needed at times.

A true ruler needed to understand both the light and the shadows of the world.

"You certainly may learn them," Zhan Tian declared proudly with a sweeping gesture. He looked over at the withered leader of the interrogation unit.

"Warden Mo, you are to teach my grandson anything he wishes to learn from your craft. Show him the depths of your knowledge and do not hold back anything that is not restricted by your ancestral oaths."

"It would be my distinct pleasure, Worldkeeper," Warden Mo bowed his head. The ancient man looked at Li Yu with a renewed sense of interest shining in his hollow eyes.

"We will start with the basics of soul flaying once my disciple finishes extracting what information she can from this batch of meat. Pay close attention, Li Yu. The soul is a delicate instrument and learning how to play it requires a very steady hand and a cold heart." Li Yu nodded and returned his attention to the gruesome scene unfolding on the stone tiles. He focused his divine sense to memorize the flow of Su Yin's green Qi as she dismantled her victim.

The screams of the Hollow Husk echoed into the fortress sky as Silent Night continued their dark work to uncover the hidden secrets from them. They were preparing to bring a storm to the enemy and Li Yu was determined to learn every skill necessary to ensure their victory.