The Flame Dragon Armor’s soul answered, “I’m not a human equipment forger. How would I know about that?”

The flames that had engulfed the entire altar gradually scattered and disappeared. The Blood Core, which had been floating over Nie Tian, also returned to the Flame Dragon Armor.

“I’ve consumed plenty of my flame power,” it added, “we can’t stay here for much longer. You need to decide now whether to fuse that pure soul with that pearl of yours, or refine it thoroughly.”

The raging flames soon dissipated completely, and all that was left was the cluster of soul fire that was flickering before Nie Tian.

Eyebrows furrowed, he examined it with rapt attention, and didn’t sense any danger from it.

In his senses, this cluster of soul fire was a pure soul body. Even though it was still powerful, it was bereft of any memories.

“Fuse it with the Spirit Pearl...” With these words, Nie Tian slowly held the Spirit Pearl closer to the cluster of soul fire. As he did, he had a feeling that the Spirit Pearl had started to attract the cluster of greenish-black fire on its own.

Just as he pondered what he should do, the second fragmentary star mark that had flown out of his chest suddenly lit up.

It recorded information about star souls, Starchain, and other secret soul magics from the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace.

The first fragmentary star mark recorded the usage of star power; the second one recorded soul related contents; the third one recorded methods to build inner domains.

Perhaps this was the reason why the second fragmentary star mark had been able to help him channel the pure soul power from the six fierce souls into his sea of awareness to strengthen his star souls.

At this moment, the second fragmentary star mark actually flew to the flickering soul fire.

Before Nie Tian realized what was happening, the cluster of soul fire was swallowed by the second fragmentary star mark.

“Hmm?” A surprised expression appeared on Nie Tian’s face as he hastily sent wisps of his soul awareness into the second fragmentary star mark.

BOOM!

His soul awareness suddenly exploded within the second fragmentary star mark.

Numerous mysterious magical symbols that carried his aura flew out and rapidly fused with the cluster of soul fire.

The cluster of soul fire seemed to be instantly branded with his unique soul aura.

Immediately afterwards, Nie Tian was struck by a strong sense of exhaustion. He could see the nine star souls in his sea of awareness rapidly losing their soul power.

His star souls were shrinking at a noticeable rate.

It seemed that it would take a significant amount of soul power to brand that reborn soul with his own marks.

Moments later, his nine star souls grew dimmer and dimmer.

At the same time, the cluster of soul fire started to form its awareness bit by bit, as if it were a newborn, growing and examining this world.

It gradually formed new memories as well.

WHOOSH!

All of a sudden, the new soul flew out of the second fragmentary star mark into the Spirit Pearl.

The Spirit Pearl had gathered numerous discarnate souls from the outsiders Nie Tian had killed, which had helped light up the star map inside of it.

The moment the new soul flew into the Spirit Pearl, many discarnate souls gathered around it, bearing their fangs and claws in an attempt to devour it.

However, the new soul didn’t seem afraid in the slightest.

Numerous discarnate souls rapidly surrounded the cluster of soul fire in ring upon ring. However, it ended up draining their soul power.

The cluster of soul fire came from a powerful Phantasm expert, while the Spirit Pearl was a treasure forged by the Phantasms. The two seemed to agree with each other perfectly.

The new soul was like a fish that had returned to the water. It rapidly strengthened itself with the power it absorbed from the discarnate souls.

At first, Nie Tian was a bit worried that the new soul would be able to recover its old memories as it gathered more and more soul power.

However, he examined it closely for a long time, and discovered that he was now its only memory.

The cluster of soul fire had an extremely strong sense of belonging with him. Even though it was accumulating power, Nie Tian didn’t sense the slightest threat from it.

“Does this mean the second fragmentary star mark has helped me erase all of its old memories, plant in my unique imprints on it, and made me its master?” Nie Tian couldn’t tear his eyes from the cluster of soul fire as it grew stronger and stronger within the Spirit Pearl.

At the same time, the remaining discarnate souls seemed to sense the danger, and thus stayed as far away from it as they could.

“From the look of it, it still needs some time to clear the Spirit Pearl and become its soul.” With this thought in mind, Nie Tian’s awareness returned to his mind. He looked down and discovered that the second fragmentary star mark had already returned to his chest, and once again disappeared under his skin.

At this moment, a message came through from the Flame Dragon Armor’s soul, telling him that it had consumed too much of its power, and it was about time they left.

“The problems are finally dealt with.” Nie Tian let out a sigh of relief and told the Flame Dragon Armor to open a spatial portal, through which he returned.

In the next moment, he appeared at the bottom of a deep hole in the meteor he had come from, and put the Flame Dragon Armor back into his ring of holding.

“Nothing seems to have changed on the star map within the Spirit Pearl except that the meteor with that strange lake is now marked out.

“I’ve no idea where Yue Yanxi is now, or where the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace’s teleportation portals were.

“So instead of drifting around, I might as well stay in one place and recover my strength first.”

After pondering for a while, Nie Tian sealed the mouth of the hole with broken rocks, sat down, and started recovering with all sorts of spiritual materials and strengthening his true soul and star souls with the considerable amount of soul crystals he had gathered.

He had been in all kinds of dangerous situations since he had come to this forbidden region. He hadn’t had a chance to practice cultivation.

Now that he was finally free, he found that there were so many things he needed to do.

After awakening the Life Blend bloodline talent, the green aura in his heart had once again shown its endless desire for flesh power. Only by satisfying it would it enter dormancy again and prepare for the next talent awakening.

Fortunately, he still had some outsider corpses left in his ring of holding.

Even though all of them had been drained of their blood by the Bone Blood Demon, their bones, meridians, and internal organs still contained considerable flesh power.

Therefore, he took them out and started channeling flesh power from them to feed his bloodline aura.

Time passed without him noticing it.

On this day, he finally finished absorbing the flesh power of all of the outsider corpses in his possession, as well as the spirit beast corpses Dong Li had purchased for him.

His bloodline aura had devoured every last wisp of the flesh power he had absorbed, yet it still showed no signs of being satisfied at all.

“Dear god! How much flesh power do I have to gather in order for my bloodline to enter the sixth upgrade circle?”

To this day, his bloodline had upgraded five times and awakened five bloodline talents, which were Life Transfer, Life Stealth, Life Drain, Blood Essence Extraction, and Life Blend.

Every time it upgraded, the amount of flesh power it would need for the next upgrade would rise significantly.

Even though he still had a small amount of spirit beast meat left in his ring of holding, since he still needed it for food, he couldn’t refine it all.

Therefore, he had no choice but stop channeling flesh power to the green aura, and started recovering with all sorts of spiritual materials.

Fortunately, he still had large stocks of spirit stones, Star Stones, and spiritual materials of fire and wood attributes.

After his spiritual core recovered and the three vortexes brimmed with power again, he went on to strengthen his star souls with soul crystals.

His star souls had also consumed a significant amount of power to help him defend against the Phantasm soul’s attacks, and later brand the soul fire with his unique imprints. Nie Tian drained ten soul crystals to recover the power they had lost.

Afterwards, he continued to strengthen his star souls with soul crystals, while trying to derive enlightenment regarding star souls and Starchain, which were recorded in the second fragmentary star mark.

After an unknown period of time, while his soul awareness was swimming in the second fragmentary star mark, the sound of something speeding through the air caught his attention.

He summoned Heaven Eyes and flew them out of the deep hole. In the next moment, he exclaimed inwardly, “It’s them!”

BOOM!

The rocks that had sealed the mouth of the hole exploded, and Nie Tian flew out from the bottom of the deep hole.

Qiao Yunxi was taken aback, standing on her Flame Bird. “Nie Tian!”

A few other air-transportation spiritual tools stopped beside her. Yin Yanan, Chu Bowen, Xing Beichen, and some other members of the three parties all fixed Nie Tian with bewildered stares.

Every one of them looked rather bedraggled. Many were even covered in wounds. From the look of it, they had just been through a fierce battle.

All of the Profound realm and Soul realm experts were nowhere to be seen. It was unknown where they were now.