Chapter 231: Douluo: Emerald Poison Emperor [231]
"Stop wasting your energy. Three ordinary Titled Douluos like you could never undo the cold poison, even if you lived to your dying breath."
Chen Ming squatted down, looking mockingly at the three elders of the Clear Sky Sect, his eyes filled with cold disdain.
"I trust that as seasoned veterans of the Soul Master world, all of you are quite aware of your current position, aren't you?"
"Hmph, scoundrel!" Even though the three of them had lost their ability to fight after being tricked, the second elder of the Clear Sky Sect still looked defiant.
"Do what you will—kill me, chop me to pieces—it doesn't matter! There are no cowards among the men of the Clear Sky Sect!"
"Oh? And what about Tang Hao? That man who angered his father to death and caused your sect to seal itself away?" Chen Ming casually asked, and in an instant, all three elders were stunned. The seventh elder, who harbored a deep-seated hatred for Tang Hao, nearly bulged his eyes out of his head.
"That bastard!"
"Don't you dare mention that wretched beast!"
"That disgrace is the shame of the Clear Sky Sect! He was exiled from the sect long ago! If I ever see him again, I'll tear his flesh from his bones to avenge my son!"
Listening to the seventh elder's rage-filled words, Chen Ming blinked, recalling what he had sensed earlier when he poisoned them. He then activated the Sinful Judgement ability from the soul bone in his head.
With this special ability, Chen Ming shared his perspective with Ah Yin, allowing her to see what he was seeing.
From Chen Ming's current perspective, the three elders, frozen in ice, were cloaked in black energy, their bodies completely enveloped by the power of sin. Among the three, the second elder bore the heaviest burden of sin, but the seventh elder's aura was far more sinister.
With a surge of spiritual power, Chen Ming saw the deepest sin buried within the seventh elder.
In a mountain cave, the seventh elder lay on the ground, covered in blood, alongside a younger Soul Master. The younger Soul Master, despite being injured, tended to the seventh elder, allowing him to recover his soul power first. However, as the seventh elder regained his strength, he looked at the young Soul Master with a conflicted expression.
Although Chen Ming didn't recognize the young Soul Master, he could sense that this person was likely the seventh elder's son.
Under Chen Ming and Ah Yin's increasingly disturbed gazes, the memory unfolded further. In the cave, the young seventh elder summoned his Clear Sky Hammer martial soul, his soul power barely reaching the Soul Douluo level. From his storage spirit tool, he retrieved a blood-stained, crimson skull.
The moment the young Soul Master saw the skull, his face filled with terror and shock. Helpless, he dragged himself backward, begging the seventh elder through tears.
The younger seventh elder's face twisted with inner turmoil, but in the end, his gaze turned cruel. He pinned his son to the ground and shattered his limbs with the Clear Sky Hammer. Finally, he drew a dagger and plunged it into his son's heart.
As blood poured from the young Soul Master's chest, the seventh elder whispered blasphemous incantations over the crimson skull. With his son's lifeless, disbelieving eyes staring back at him, the blood and life force drained from the mortal wound was absorbed by the skull, converting into malevolent energy that surged into the seventh elder's body. Using the power gained from sacrificing his son, the seventh elder's injuries healed, and his soul power advanced by two or three levels beyond his original Soul Douluo rank. He then smashed his son's drained corpse to pieces with his hammer and fled back to the Clear Sky Sect in disgrace.
What the seventh elder didn't realize was that the crimson skull had absorbed more than just his son's life force—it had also permanently imprisoned a fragment of his son's soul within the Clear Sky Hammer.
From that day forward, the seventh elder was haunted daily by his son's vengeful spirit, tormented every night by the memory of taking his only child's life with his own hands.
As Ah Yin witnessed this scene, the faint hope she still held for the Clear Sky Sect because of Tang Xiao completely crumbled. As a mother who had been forced to part with her child from the moment of his birth, Ah Yin's gaze toward the seventh elder turned utterly cold, as if she were staring at filth.
But it wasn't over yet. As Chen Ming's Sinful Gaze continued to activate, more of the three elders' heinous deeds surfaced before him and Ah Yin.
They had killed entire families over trivial arguments, destroyed a tavern and its surrounding town because a drunkard had claimed Qian Daoliu was stronger than Tang Chen, and turned people into pulp over minor disputes. They crippled rivals and fed them to soul beasts during hunts. They raped and murdered female Soul Masters in front of their companions for rejecting them. They killed their teammates during hunts for soul bones. They massacred an entire town over a single soul bone. They killed a girl in front of her parents because they found the food she served unpalatable. They dragged a beggar child into the forest to feed him to a soul beast simply because they found him unsightly.
At first, Chen Ming's expression remained calm. But as one atrocity after another unfolded—some so vile they defied imagination—his composure finally broke.
Under Ah Yin's pleading gaze, Chen Ming's eyes flashed with a blood-red light as he activated the second stage of Sinful Judgement. The black aura of sin surrounding the three elders transformed into a curse, imbued with the power to affect reality itself.
The curse, born of resentment and sin, surged into the three elders' minds. Their past misdeeds rose to the surface, forcing them to confront the weight of their sins. Under the curse's power, their bodies withered and weakened, their soul power dissipated, and their souls felt as if they were being dragged into an endless abyss where they would suffer for their crimes.
The curse targeted their souls. Unless an expert with soul-related abilities or a deity intervened, there was no way to resist it.
Even though the three were Titled Douluos with immense vitality, the sheer weight of their accumulated sins far exceeded what their strength could endure.
If Chen Ming hadn't deliberately controlled the curse to prolong their suffering rather than killing them outright, the three elders, with their soul power sealed, would have instantly died under the burden of their sins.
At this moment, the once-proud elders of the Clear Sky Sect howled in agony, their faces twisted with madness. Blood dripped from their eyes, noses, and mouths.
Before they could die, however, Chen Ming summoned his Dark Gold Terror Claw and effortlessly severed their limbs, extracting the soul bones from their bodies. The three elders yielded seven soul bones in total: four of ten-thousand-year quality and three of thousand-year quality.
The second elder alone contributed two ten-thousand-year soul bones and one thousand-year soul bone.