Wang Lin stilled his heart. The clamor of the Seven-Colored Daoist’s assault upon the outer seal faded into oblivion as he immersed himself in the study of the arcane warding.

Suddenly, a wind of ill omen arose, whispering across the deck. It caught the tattered sail of the Soul-Daemon Vessel, stirring its canvas. The grotesque visages painted upon the sail stirred to malevolent life, their eyes gleaming with an unholy light.

One grim face, in particular, seemed to fix its gaze upon Wang Lin, its painted lips curving into a subtle, unnerving smile, as if possessed by a dark sentience.

A frown furrowed Wang Lin’s brow. A disquieting unease settled within him, disrupting his concentration. He lifted his head, his gaze sweeping across the deck, until it locked with the baleful stare of the sail’s daemon visage.

After a long silence, Wang Lin regained his composure, his spirit settling once more. He lowered his head, returning to the intricate weave of the warding.

Slowly, the arcane glyphs etched into the deck began to glow, ripples of energy spreading outward, engulfing the vessel in their ethereal light.

“Of the Four Great Wards, the Destruction Ward is most familiar to me. I possess some understanding of the Life-Death and Time-Wasting Wards as well. But the Ancient Soul Ward… I have only glimpsed it in the Fallen Land, surrounding the colossal Turtle-Beast. Yet this deck throbs with its presence,” Wang Lin murmured, his eyes gleaming with calculation. He pointed a finger towards a particularly intricate glyph.

This glyph was a miniature rendition of the Ancient Soul Ward! Within it, faint whispers of anguish and rage echoed. As Wang Lin peered deeper, he perceived the spectral form of a titanic serpent trapped within its bounds. The serpent, consumed by ravenous hunger, snarled towards him, as if seeking to break free and devour him whole.

Time flowed on, three hours dissolving into the ether. Throughout those hours, the outer barrier of the vessel shuddered under relentless assault, the air crackling with the Seven-Colored Daoist’s power, tendrils of iridescent light piercing the defenses to fall upon the deck.

Fan Shanmeng’s gaze grew increasingly cold. The initial shock of Wang Lin’s actions had subsided, replaced by a calculated assessment. He appeared to have reached an impasse, remaining motionless for hours.

“This Soul-Daemon Vessel cannot be mastered so easily,” she thought. “He managed to breach the initial defense of the deck, but that is his limit. To unravel the vessel’s entire warding… Wang Lin, you are far too arrogant.” A cruel smile danced at the corners of her lips, masked by an expression of calm indifference.

“Fellow Daoist Wang,” Fan Shanmeng said, her voice soft, yet carrying an underlying edge. “Three hours have passed. If you now retreat to the altar, perhaps you can still make it…”

Wang Lin remained unmoved, as if deaf to her words. His focus remained fixed upon the glyph beneath his fingertips, his mind lost in its intricacies.

“Ancient Soul Ward…using souls as the core to integrate with the wards so that the wards turn into living beings. The stronger the sealed soul, the greater the power of the ward…This ward is not difficult!”

In the fifth hour, Wang Lin’s eyes snapped shut. His right hand slammed down upon the glyph. It shuddered, then exploded in a puff of black smoke. A spectral serpent escaped from within, but before it could flee, Wang Lin seized it in his grasp. With a brutal squeeze, he crushed the dark essence, yet it refused to dissipate. Instead, with a swift hand gesture, he reshaped the smoke into a new ward, placing it upon the spot where the first had been.

“That is the first…” Wang Lin’s eyes opened. He gazed upon the glyph he now understood, under his complete control, then turned his gaze towards Fan Shanmeng.

“There is no need to rush, there is still time.”

Fan Shanmeng frowned. Even if Wang Lin had dismantled one glyph, the deck was covered in an unfathomable number of them. And even then, they only protected the outer perimeter of the Soul-Daemon Vessel. There were far more wards within.

“Five hours to break one? At that rate, you’ll only disarm a dozen in three days. You…” Her words were cut short by a series of echoing cracks that erupted around Wang Lin.

Before her disbelieving eyes, he casually swept his hand, and nine more glyphs exploded simultaneously, their dark essence gathering together to form new wards that settled into place.

“Impossible…” Fan Shanmeng drew a sharp breath. Before it filled her lungs, her eyes widened in horrified disbelief.

Wang Lin swept his hand once more, and a deafening roar echoed across the deck. One by one, the glyphs that composed the deck exploded in a chain reaction, dozens, hundreds, then thousands, until finally tens of thousands shattered, their essence coalescing into a black tornado that engulfed the deck.

In a handful of breaths, the area around Wang Lin was free of all warding, save for the swirling black storm. The vortex shattered, its power reforged into individual glyphs that fell into place, leaving Fan Shanmeng reeling in shock.

“I apologize for the spectacle,” Wang Lin smiled faintly.

Fan Shanmeng inhaled deeply, forcing a smile to her lips. She nodded. “Your mastery of the arcane is truly extraordinary. However, there are tens of millions of wards on this deck. You have only undone a fraction of them, which is…”

Wang Lin raised his right hand, the Destruction Ward shimmering in his palm, and pierced Fan Shanmeng with a look. The Destruction Ward erupted into a dark light that covered the entire deck.

A deafening roar tore through the air. All of the Destruction Wards on the deck shuddered, then shattered. Of the millions of wards that composed the deck, hundreds of thousands were Destruction Wards. Their destruction sent the Soul-Daemon Vessel into a violent tremor.

Simultaneously, the Life-Death and Time-Wasting Wards formed in Wang Lin’s right hand, and he swept them across the deck. A constant barrage of explosions filled the air, as black smoke rose in spirals. Within the time it took to burn half an incense stick, countless wards were destroyed, their essence twisting into dark vortices.

The black essence swirled, even catching the attention of the Seven-Colored Daoist outside the vessel.

Fan Shanmeng stared in stunned silence, her mind blank.

“Five hours… How can this be? Even if these deck wards are just on the perimeter, it should be impossible to unravel them completely in five hours. And not only does he unravel them, he also is reverse engineering them. What is going on…”

The blackness dispersed, its essence reformed into individual wards upon the deck. The majority of the tens of millions of wards now served Wang Lin!

Wang Lin’s eyes shone with comprehension. In his right hand, four warding glyphs floated, each distinct, the embodiment of the Four Great Wards! To unravel the deck’s defenses was not difficult for him. The true challenge was to master the Ancient Soul Ward. Those five hours were not spent simply dismantling a single glyph. He spent that time perfecting his mastery of the Ancient Soul Ward.

Even before this, Wang Lin was not ignorant of the Ancient Soul Ward. He had spent time researching it in the Fallen Land, but those wards, while seemingly intact, possessed subtle flaws that hindered his mastery.

The Ancient Soul Wards upon this deck were different, they were utterly perfect.

Wang Lin was no longer the novice that lingered upon Ward Mountain for years. He was now an Empyrean Exalter of mid-stage, in possession of six origin powers. Five hours was sufficient to pierce the heart of the mystery, his understanding amplified to the absolute limits.

Wang Lin stood. With a sweep of his sleeve, the remaining wards upon the deck, including the Ancient Soul Wards and wards he had never encountered before, collapsed.

He did not have time to master each unfamiliar ward completely. He could only take a brief glance, imprint them within his mind, and then destroy them.

This method might weaken the deck’s defenses, but it would allow Wang Lin to break through the Soul-Daemon Vessel’s defenses quickly.

With a final explosion, the wards upon the deck fell under Wang Lin’s control. Standing upon the deck, Wang Lin was its master. He cast a curious gaze towards Fan Shanmeng.

“This vessel is comprised of nine layers of warding. The deck is the first. There are eight more. Fellow Daoist, did you not say that if I were to breach the defenses, you would give me this vessel?”

Fan Shanmeng’s face grew pale. With the destruction of the first layer of defense, she could feel her control over the vessel slipping away. It was as if a magic weapon now had two masters!

She could not have imagined that five hours could have brought such change.

Seeing her silence, Wang Lin shook his head. His body shimmered, then vanished from the deck. He reappeared within the Soul-Daemon Vessel, upon the second deck.

Staring at the spot where he had been, hatred glinted within Fan Shanmeng’s eyes.

“So, he breached the first layer? The rest of the layers are difficult to master, more so with each layer. I don’t believe that a puny Cultivator of a mortal plane like him can fully control this Soul-Daemon Vessel!”

Time continued to flow. One hour, two hours, then three. An entire day rushed past. The light from the Seven-Colored Daoist grew brighter, the shuddering more violent. The outer defenses were almost gone.

As the seventh hour passed, an astonishing power erupted from the second deck, and the Soul-Daemon Vessel shook violently.

“Impossible!” Fan Shanmeng stood, shock unmasked on her face. Her control of the Soul-Daemon Vessel was being stripped away piece by piece. Because she could not enter the vessel with her true body, she could only exert thirty percent of the control over the vessel. With Wang Lin stripping away the rest, she had only the barest sliver more control over the vessel than him.