The Man’s Decree – Chapter 5508

That killing intent hung so thick it seemed to leech warmth from the very stones beneath their knees.

The Soul Urn had always been the beating black heart of the Malevolent Path Hall. Inside that bone-white vessel drifted nearly a thousand shimmering soul threads, each one a captive whisper torn from some unlucky cultivator, each one refined into raw power the hall intended to swallow and wield.

Now the urn lay in smoking shards, and the harvest of souls had scattered like ash on the wind. For Stebarin, the loss struck like a hammer to the ribs, his grand design staggered, and fury rushed in to fill the gap.

Worse still, his people had already paid the Celestial Palace in mountains of celestial gems to keep the urn fed. It had been days, perhaps hours, from reaching capacity, and then, at the very brink of success, everything had gone catastrophically, irreversibly wrong.

Back on level six, the moment Stebarin sensed the Soul Devourer's defeat, he slipped into the shadows and fled up to level seven without a sound.