THE MARTIAL KING, VOLUME 8 - Season 20 Episode 32

Zen’s soul was in a state of near unconsciousness as he slept.

To him, it was only a matter of closing his eyes and opening them back up. Even so, he felt like he had slept for far too long.

Having just awoken, Zen was still dazed. Once he adapted to the surrounding light, he took notice of Lavender.

“Hmmm?”

She was curled up like a baby, her eyes closed as she lay motionless beside him.

At this moment, Zen could feel how extremely weak her soul was as if it had suffered some great injury.

Although her soul had already been completely restored, she lacked a complete body—she had stayed as his sword spirit.

“Lavender?” Zen called out.

When he received no response, he had his sword spirit stand up to stretch her body.

Since it was originally Zen’s sword spirit, naturally, he could control it. But because Lavender’s soul was living within it, he hadn’t interfered with it until then.

It was quite a surprise when Lavender opened her eyes just as he was about to make her stand up.

Her pair of crimson eyes had lost the sharp killing intent that once clouded them. Instead, they had fallen into a perplexed state.

“What’s the matter?” Zen asked.

But Lavender didn’t give the slightest reaction and only looked at Zen, dumbfounded.

During the time inside the door, Lavender had relied solely on her willpower to extinguish the Soul-sealing Needle.

One could only imagine the pain of the Soul-sealing Needle piercing into her soul.

While she erased this needle, she had also severely injured her own soul.

The trauma of Lavender’s soul wasn’t as severe as before—last time, because of Elena’s conspiracy, Lavender had almost lost most of her soul, leaving it fragmented. But, her memories hadn’t been damaged in the slightest that time.

But this Soul-sealing Needle was deeply embedded within her soul. By releasing the information within the needle, one could directly control the recipient’s memories.

To erase the Soul-sealing Needle meant that she had to erase her memories along with it.

And Lavender realized this as she was grinding out the needle—just as she removed a part of it, she also lost a portion of her own childhood memories.

Suddenly, she couldn’t remember where she was born or where she grew up.

Once she figured it out, Lavender stopped for a moment. After much consideration, she continued wiping the needle out without any more hesitation.

Then, she forgot her name, her race, her cultivation technique, her status as one of the three queens of the Demon Night race, and even why she even had to endure such intense pain in the first place.

The deeper the memories, the more difficult they were to erase.

For a while longer, she remembered that the young man beside her was called Zen.

But in the end, even he was lost to her. She had to rely on her remarkable persistence to continue erasing the Soul-sealing Needle.

And so most of her memories had dissipated. Her soul had become no different from a blank sheet of paper; she was like a newborn baby, unconscious, and unknowing about how to look at the world.

At this point, she was incapable of understanding her surroundings.

Although she could see Zen, she had no idea what was in front of her.

Zen’s eyebrows furrowed—he realized that something was amiss.

Although Lavender’s attitude was already rather strange before, it wasn’t like this.

With a wave of his hand, Lavender turned into specks of red light that circled the air for a moment before returning to his body.

What happened while he was asleep? Could it be that she ended up like this because of Holy Drew helping him refine his body?

With that thought, Zen suddenly floated into the air and opened the door in the void.

Zen and Lavender had spent 80, 000 years there, while only a day had passed for the warriors in the outside world.

When they saw Zen coming, Holy Jay, Holy Drew, Rocher, and the souls of the nine Genuine Dragons all rushed over.

“Congratulations, Zen,” Rocher greeted with a smile.

Seeing Rocher was quite a surprise, but Zen was still too worried about Lavender to wonder about it. After giving Rocher a nod, he turned to Holy Jay and asked, “What happened while I was asleep? What did you do to Lavender?”

During this trip, Zen’s only goal was to cultivate in the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land to increase his own strength. He would have paid any price to grow stronger, but he couldn’t afford anyone hurting his friends.

Zen had even suspected Holy Drew of refining a part of Lavender’s soul.

He was wrong about Holy Drew. Although Holy Drew once had such impulses, he didn’t really think highly of Lavender’s soul. The nine Genuine Dragons were much suitable materials, and he wanted to refine them, but they refused his request.

In the face of Zen’s questioning, Holy Drew stared at him with a cold sneer.

From the moment Zen stepped out of the door, Holy Drew had been sizing up his own work. Without a doubt, it could make him proud. He decided to ignore his question.

“Lavender? You mean your sword spirit?” Holy Jay asked.

Zen nodded in response.

After the door was closed, they discovered Lavender’s presence.

In the space behind the door was the crafting furnace that Holy Jay had prepared for Zen. After the time was highly compressed inside, it was impossible for them to open the door again.

Even if a Holy Being were to increase the time flow rate by 30 million times, they’d still have to pay a hefty price—it wasn’t an easy task.

When Lavender appeared, Holy Jay and Holy Drew were left baffled. They had noticed Zen’s sword spirit before, but they didn’t think that it had its own consciousness—a soul was residing within.

The time inside the door had been increased by 30 million times. From the outside, the world inside progressed rapidly. It was so fast that even a Holy Being wouldn’t have been able to see it clearly.

But Holy Jay and Holy Drew understood well enough. In Lavender’s mind lay a Soul-sealing Needle.

“From the looks of it, this Soul-sealing Needle is the work of Mitchell Hao of the Weapon Refining Association.” Holy Drew could identify the origins of the needle in a single glance.

Mitchell Hao was a rather famous weapon refiner in the divine land. He was one of the top ten weapon refiners within the Weapon Refining Association.

“He’s from the Mu Clan. So this Soul-sealing Needle must have been planted by Murphy Mu. Since it has already been activated, do I need to intervene?” Holy Jay seemed rather worried.

All of them were well aware of the usage of the Soul-sealing Needle. If the order of the Soul-sealing Needle was to kill Zen, there’d be no way Lavender would be able to violate the order. With Zen being in a critical period of his body refinement, it was the worst time for him to get killed by Lavender.

But just as Holy Jay finished saying it, he once again looked at the scene before him and decided that he did not need to intervene.

Because of the different time flow rates outside and within the door, he had said only a single sentence, but time passed by quickly inside the door—the moment he finished speaking, he could already see Lavender attempting to erase the Soul-sealing Needle. Since Lavender had expended so much willpower to erase the Soul-sealing Needle, she was unlikely to bring Zen any harm.

“With this woman’s soul power, wanting to erase a Soul-sealing Needle isn’t easy,” Holy Drew said with a shake of his head.

In their eyes, Lavender’s power was rather weak. Although the treasures that entered people’s souls weren’t particularly sturdy, their materials were usually rather special—this needle was still considered a treasure from the divine land.

But the willpower Lavender displayed afterward still moved the two Holy Beings.

For a full eighteen hours outside the door, Lavender worked hard, forcefully extinguishing the needle.

Although eighteen hours outside the door went by fast, around 50, 000 years had already passed within the door. This woman’s willpower truly went beyond their imagination—she had been doing the same thing for years and years.

“That’s all we know.” Holy Jay recounted what they had seen to Zen. “According to my speculations, she truly belongs to Murphy Mu. But since she destroyed the needle, we can say that she has escaped Murphy’s clutches.” Hearing his words, Zen was stunned. He couldn’t help but clench his fists in frustration. He had no idea that he was asleep for so long. Never did he think that Lavender would keep such a secret from him. It was no wonder then that she had acted so strangely in the past.

“Murphy Mu! The Sacred race!”

Zen exclaimed through gritted teeth.

Murphy built the Murphy Universe, where the Sacred race, the Invaders of the Evolutionary Universe, had originated.