PD -Chapter 159 Cloned Souls

I let out a cold snort and stopped paying attention to Yang Yingzhe, stepping into the secret chamber.

The chamber was much larger than I had imagined. The moment I entered, I froze for a second. The room was packed with rows upon rows of transparent glass containers.

I wiped the dust off one of them and looked inside. Something within was emitting a faint glow.

Startled, I placed my hand against the glass and sensed the aura coming from the glowing object. My heart lurched, and I instinctively staggered backward several steps. Turning toward Yang Yingzhe, I could hardly believe what I had just felt.

“You…” I stammered, nearly unable to form coherent words. “These… are all your souls?”

Even in the Eight Cold Hells, after witnessing the suffering of countless beings and encountering the Ten Yama Kings, I had never been this shocked.

The aura I had sensed inside the container was identical to that of the Yin creature standing before me—Yang Yingzhe. And it wasn’t just one. Every container held the exact same aura.

The glowing entities inside those jars were all fragments of Yang Yingzhe’s soul. More importantly, they weren’t inert—they were slowly growing.

Yang Yingzhe had cloned his own soul!

“You’re correct!” Yang Yingzhe floated into the air. “This is the result of my research.”

I found it almost impossible to believe that a mere mortal could achieve something like this. No wonder he had abandoned his physical body. He had realized that true immortality lay not in the flesh, but in the indestructibility of the soul.

“How did you do it?” I stared at him. “And where is the energy required to incubate these souls coming from?”

Looking down at me, the frustration from his earlier defeat had vanished. In its place was boundless pride.

“Your abilities are extraordinary. Why not stay and work with me? I can grant you true immortality. Together, we can use this power to change the world! Before long, humanity will no longer be bound by the limitations of the flesh!”

His voice echoed throughout the chamber.

“The patients…” I ignored his grandiose speech and suddenly understood. Yang Yingzhe had imprisoned the vengeful spirits of those patients here in order to drain their soul energy and use it to nourish his cloned souls.

“You’re delusional. You’re not a god!” I shouted angrily.

Before he could react, I casually threw out a talisman.

Bang!

One of the glass containers shattered instantly. The glowing soul inside was exposed, and the moment it touched the talisman’s power, it vanished into nothingness.

“No!”

Yang Yingzhe screamed in fury and rushed toward me, trying to stop me from destroying a second container.

I sneered.

Instead of throwing another talisman, I formed a hand seal. The Spirit-Probing Divine Art activated instantly as I thrust two fingers toward his forehead.

Bzzzz…

A ringing filled my ears.

My consciousness entered Yang Yingzhe’s memories.

At last, every mystery was revealed.

Back then, after returning from his studies abroad, Yang Yingzhe had been asked to treat a patient who had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness.

What he hadn’t known was that the patient was actually a highly accomplished Daoist master.

Through him, Yang Yingzhe learned about the various applications of spiritual power and the phenomenon of soul projection. From that moment onward, he became obsessed with the study of souls.

Combining modern psychiatry with Daoist secret arts, he conducted extensive research and eventually developed an entire theoretical system of his own.

To put those theories into practice, he came here and convinced the government to build this psychiatric hospital.

On the surface, it was a facility for treating patients with mental disorders.

In reality, it was a laboratory.

Using countless cruel methods, he studied the relationship between the human soul and mental energy, laying the groundwork for his future experiments in soul cloning.

Once everything was ready, he orchestrated the riot.

Using his own “death” as a cover, he freed himself from the shackles of the flesh. Together with the souls of the countless patients who had died in the hospital, he remained trapped here within a massive formation.

Then he moved on to the next phase of his research:

The extraction, replication, and fission of souls.

During his experiments, he discovered something astonishing.

Patients with mental illnesses—particularly those suffering from dissociative identity disorders—did not actually share a single soul between multiple personalities.

Instead, the additional personalities were the result of replicated soul fragments that had undergone slight mutations during the fission process.

That revelation finally unlocked the secret of soul cloning.

Using his own soul as the test subject, he cultivated thirty embryonic soul fragments derived from himself.

But then another problem emerged.

His theory was flawless.

Its practical application was not.

Although the soul embryos had successfully developed complete consciousness, they lacked the energy necessary to sustain their existence.

And so, he turned all the trapped souls in this place into fuel.

He drained their soul power to provide energy for the embryos.

I cursed under my breath and withdrew my consciousness from Yang Yingzhe’s memories.

Another talisman blasted into him, sending him flying backward.

The Yin creature he had become grew even more ferocious.

Dodging behind a row of glass containers, he slipped toward the center of the chamber.

I immediately chased after him.

There, surrounded by countless jars, stood a massive life-support apparatus that combined a mystical formation with an electrical power system.

This machine was the reason the soul embryos had survived until now.

Yang Yingzhe floated above it, electricity once again crackling from his hands. His fingers curled into claws and plunged directly into the apparatus.

Crackle… Crackle…

Stimulated by the electric current, the machine erupted with blue arcs of energy and emitted a piercing shriek.

Then came the sound of shattering glass.

One container after another exploded.

The soul embryos glowing with eerie blue light were exposed and began converging toward Yang Yingzhe.

Behind him, countless figures materialized.

Every one of them looked exactly like Yang Yingzhe.

It was as if he had become the Great Sage Equal to Heaven himself, capable of creating endless clones with the slightest gesture.

I cursed inwardly.

Seeing that I had no intention of cooperating, he had flown into a rage. He would rather destroy the fruits of his life’s work than allow me to leave alive.

An endless swarm of Yang Yingzhes charged toward me.

At this point, I could no longer tell which one was the real body.

Using the dagger that had been stained with my spiritually empowered blood, I casually cut down several clones and charged straight toward the enormous life-support machine.

Because within Yang Yingzhe’s memories, I had uncovered the greatest flaw in all of his experiments.

His physical body.

He constantly preached about freeing the soul from the flesh and achieving immortality through soul-cloning technology.

But in reality, even now, none of his techniques had truly escaped the need for a body.

Because his physical body was hidden inside that very machine.

Every soul—whether his original soul or the cloned embryo fragments—was still tethered to the flesh.

Still bound by the pull of the body.