The fog of darkness faded in an instant, and the pressure suddenly vanished, which took Zhi Xuan by surprise. "Gone? This fog disappeared along with those figures?" Zhi Xuan thought. "Is this... a cycle? Perhaps they appear at specific intervals."
Zhi Xuan did not imdiately release his formation. He remained standing like a statue, allowing his divine sense to creep outward. He flicked a black bamboo sword, sending it out of the formation to streak toward a pillar visible in the distance.
The black bamboo sword shot straight, slicing through the remnants of the cold steam still hanging thinly in the air. When the blade struck the stone pillar in the distance, the pillar remained solid; the sound of the clashing impact rang out, yet the surrounding area remained eerily silent.
Zhi Xuan pulled the black bamboo sword back. The blade floated before him, and there was no trace of the dark fog clinging to it, as if everything from before had been a re illusion. Zhi Xuan exhaled, releasing the formation, and the sword rged back into his body.
"Strange," Zhi Xuan thought. "That fog of darkness truly appeared, yet afterward, it vanished without a trace. That aura of darkness, I felt it truly existed before along with those figures. But... it disappeared without leaving a single footprint?"
He looked down, staring at the ground beneath his feet. "This soil... could it really be the dust of the bodies of Gods and Devils? The will that appeared as spirits in the sky, perhaps this truly is the tomb of a fallen world."
The silence that followed the disappearance of the fog felt more suffocating than the previous storm of darkness. Ji Haoxuan released his grip, causing Ji Yuanyi to fall to a sitting position, her breath racing and her face as white as paper.
Around them, the expanse of ruins now appeared clear, yet the silence held an unutterable horror; the practitioners who had previously filled the gaps between the pillars had vanished, as if they had never set foot on this cursed land.
"They... they are truly gone," Wei Tianfeng whispered, his voice hoarse and trembling. "Not even their bodies remain. Is this what makes only the Ancient Clan envoys survive? Mortals are like plants harvested by death."
"Senior Gu, did you notice it too?" Ji Haoxuan asked, his face resolute. "That dark fog... it seems they appear at certain tis. We have only been in the underworld for a few hundred breaths since entering, but that fog suddenly appeared. It doesn't an it won't appear again."
Zhi Xuan nodded slowly, his gaze sweeping across the expanse of pillars. "The cycle of death's breath," he murmured lowly. "This underworld breathes, and that fog is its exhalation. We must move by walking, not by flying."
Zhi Xuan stepped forward calmly. Each of his footfalls on that dust of eternity made no sound, as if he were walking on the surface of frozen water. Behind him, the young practitioners followed with hesitant steps.
They moved through the gaps between the pillars. Every step was accompanied by the sight of gaping ruins of the palaces of gods and devils, yet no one dared to approach them. After walking five hundred zhang, they stopped before a towering statue.
The statue was a giant figure wearing ancient armor similar to the Underworld General, but its head was tilted toward the sky with its arms spread out, as if it were begging for forgiveness or holding up a collapsing horizon.
"Is this... actually a body frozen into a statue?" Wu Xinghan’s voice broke the silence, his divine sense creeping forward. "Long ago, I read a scroll from the Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets stating that Great Emperor Chen overturned heaven and earth to dampen the wars within the immortal world, but could not prevent the collapse of the immortal world itself."
"There are no records of what the war in the immortal world was about in ancient tis," Ji Haoxuan added. "The Lower Realm only knows that the immortal world once collapsed and is now buried in Huang Tu, right before our eyes. This... must be related to the Era of the Fall of the Great Emperors that split the nine plains."
"The Era of the Fall of the Great Emperors?" Ji Yuanyi whispered. "That... sounds very terrifying to hear. Great Emperors who are like the heavens can even fall to the point of becoming a tomb in this Lower Realm."
"Great Emperor Chen nailed this underworld down so it wouldn't fluctuate and break through to the outside," Zhi Xuan said, his eyes fixed on the giant statue. "But even when he held a world beneath his palm, he still fell."
Zhi Xuan touched the surface of a pillar near the statue, feeling the remnants of an incredibly ancient law vibration, as if he were touching a giant fra still pulsing in eternal frost. "The Immortal World, what truly happened back then?" he whispered.
"The dark fog is back!" Wei Tianfeng shrieked, staring intently at the darkness beginning to creep back in. "Look over there! Those figures are reappearing!"
Sure enough, from the previously clear gaps between the pillars, thick black steam began to crawl out, coiling like thousands of snakes thirsty for the essence of life. The sound of heavy, dragging footsteps and the clanking of rusted armor echoed again, louder and closer than before.
Zhi Xuan did not turn his body in a hurry. He withdrew his hand from the pillar's surface, his eyes staring sharply at the giant statue in front of him. The statue seed to glow faintly, radiating a law aura that suppressed the dark fog around it.
"Stay within the range of this statue!" Zhi Xuan said via soul transmission, standing still and silent. "Be quiet, and stay near this statue."
The atmosphere instantly beca haunting. Ji Haoxuan and the others imdiately closed ranks, their backs pressed against the cold, rough feet of the giant statue. They held their breath, suppressing their entire auras until they were no different from mortals without any aura at all.
The dark fog had now completely surrounded them, but exactly three zhang around the giant statue, the black fog seed to hit an invisible sacred formation. The thick fog just whirled wildly, hissing in frustration like a dragon blocked from its prey.
From behind the thickness of the fog, headless generals holding torn banners erged. They walked past the statue's protection circle with slow, stiff steps; their strides could not pierce the three-zhang distance from the statue.
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An entity even larger than the previous generals appeared from behind a tilted pillar. The creature dragged a giant sword that was broken in half; every ti the sword was dragged, it sparked underworld fire, burning the surrounding air.
Zhi Xuan remained frozen, but his divine sense focused on the giant statue behind him. He realized that this protection did not co from a deliberately placed formation, but rather from the body of a warrior from the immortal world—a divine aura that suppressed the darkness.
The giant figure dragging the broken sword stopped exactly in front of the protection circle. His form was so massive that his knees were level with Zhi Xuan’s chest. The figure stared straight ahead, raising its broken sword and swinging it toward the statue.
DUMM!
Instantly, the giant fra was repelled backward and slumped, as if it sensed an aura of life but could not approach, only to be thrown back by the statue's aura. The boom invited hundreds of other warriors; ancient banners fluttered in the darkness as hundreds of bodies moved toward the statue.
Zhi Xuan remained standing like a rock in the middle of a stormy ocean. His eyes did not look at the crowd of rotting generals, but were fixed on the surface of the giant statue, which was now beginning to show fine cracks radiating a faint golden light.
DUMM! DUMM! DUMM!
One by one, those dark figures slamd their weapons toward the sacred formation protecting the practitioners. Every strike created black ripples that clashed with the statue's golden glow. Although unable to pierce through, every collision made the ground tremble.
Suddenly, the giant figure that had been dragging the broken sword rose again. It no longer attacked blindly. It raised its broken sword high into the dark underworld sky, and from the cracked blade ca a roar that was not a sound, but a vibration of pure death law.
Instantly, the dark fog around them solidified, forming a giant vortex that swallowed the golden light from the statue. The three-zhang protection began to shrink slowly, inch by inch, forced back by the incredible thickness of the dark aura.
DENG!
The giant statue seed to hum; both eyes of the giant statue emitted a bright golden light, which instantly split and radiated a wave that swept the warriors outside the three-zhang radius with irresistible force.
The vortex of darkness that had been choking the protection circle was violently torn apart. The giant figure with the broken sword roared, its body dragged back dozens of zhang, leaving a deep trench in the dust of the Gods' bodies.
"Eternal Intent..." Zhi Xuan thought, his sharp eyes seeing the golden light. "This... is just like the heart's belief in the rejection of Reincarnation. The body dies, but the will is eternal. Just like the sword senior in the canyon earlier, the law will be eternal even if the soul must be a sacrifice."
The dark fog vanished as quickly as it had arrived, revealing the towering pillars and ruins once more, but like every arrival of the dark fog, it left no trace of law, as if the darkness had simply disappeared into thin air.
"This cycle... has a ti gap," Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice sounding heavy. "Five hundred breaths is the ti it appears and disappears; it will keep continuing, perhaps it has lasted for thousands of years."
"They also... might follow the pulse of the ground beneath us, Senior," Ji Haoxuan added, crouching and touching the soil. "If I didn't mishear, every step of those warriors always resonated with the ground here, as if... sothing is thumping beneath this soil, regulating their steps."
"Beneath this ground?" Lu Qingyan murmured; she also knelt and placed her palm on the cold dust. "Haoxuan is right. There is a subtle vibration. This is not just a thump; it is like a pulse."
"A pulse?" Ji Yuanyi frowned, her round face appearing pale under the dim light of the ruins. "How can soil containing the dust of corpses have a pulse? Sister Lu, you must have inhaled too much death fog earlier!"
"No, Yuanyi. Feel with your divine soul, not with your physical senses," Lu Qingyan said seriously. "This beat... it regulates when the fog must co out and when it must be pulled back into the underworld hole."
Wei Tianfeng stroked his chin, his eyes staring sharply at the giant statue which had now frozen back into lightless stillness. "If that is true, it ans we aren't walking on a grave. We are walking on the body of an incredibly large creature, or perhaps... the ground below is truly the ash of the bodies of Gods and Devils."
"Ancient Being," Zhi Xuan thought, his eyes closing for a mont. "Qing'er once spoke of the fallen Primordial Descendants; their bodies were destroyed and their eternal souls dissolved. Great Saint, is this like the Primordial Ancient City back then?"
"No," Ruo Xianxue’s voice echoed in Zhi Xuan’s sea of consciousness. "If that Ancient City carried ancient laws that forbade practitioners from treading on the ground, here it is more than that. That dark fog, although thousands of tis worse than the Holy Devil aura, originates from the echoes of the past trapped here. Be careful, you might encounter a remnant of an ancient race that will recognize your Ancient Devil fra through this body of yours."
Zhi Xuan opened his eyes, a flash of vigilance colder than usual crossing his sapphire pupils. He turned toward Ji Haoxuan and the others who were still fixed on the subtle beat beneath their feet.
"Keep moving," Zhi Xuan said; he shifted his gaze and began to walk slowly. "Misfortune can occur at any ti, and I will not reach out to pull you if you encounter that misfortune."
"Senior!" Ji Yuanyi exclaid while catching up with Zhi Xuan’s steps. "Don't you think this is too dangerous? If that five-hundred-breath cycle is real, we won't have ti to achieve anything before the fog swallows us again in the open!"
"Yuanyi, watch your words," Ji Haoxuan interrupted without looking back, remaining alert to every inch of the ground he trod. "If we just stand still in fear, we truly will beco part of this dust before the third sun sets above."
"But Brother, listen to !" Ji Yuanyi insisted, pointing at the line of pillars growing denser ahead. "The pattern of those pillars isn't random. They form a labyrinth ant to lead us toward the center of that pulse. Aren't we walking straight into a tiger's mouth?"
Zhi Xuan turned slightly, the sharp corner of his eye looking at Ji Yuanyi. "Tiger's mouth or not, in this underworld, there is no way back. If you seek safety, you should have stayed on your clan's ship."
"I... I am not seeking safety alone, Senior!" Ji Yuanyi’s voice squeaked slightly, but she tried to remain firm. "I just... I just don't want us to die a foolish death without knowing what we are actually facing."
"Knowledge is a double-edged sword in this place, little girl," Wei Tianfeng interrupted, folding his arms across his chest, his eyes scanning the shadows behind the pillars. "Sotis, knowing the truth behind this darkness will only shatter your Dao Heart instantly. Look at those practitioners earlier; they died because of greed based on shallow knowledge."
"Then what is our plan, Senior?" Lu Qingyan asked, her voice soft yet carrying a note of urgency. "If the pulse of this ground regulates the fog, shouldn't we find its center to stop this cycle?"
"Stop the cycle?" Zhi Xuan snorted thinly. "Even a Great Emperor could only seal it, and you think of stopping it? We did not co to be the saviors of this underworld."
"There is no choice but to follow this cycle," Wu Xingyan said, frowning as her fingers touched a block of a pillar beside the path they were traversing. "What is this? It feels soft—Brother Xinghan!"
Wu Xingyan was startled and shrieked sharply, pressing her body against Wu Xinghan as the sight of the pillar she had just touched made her eyes bulge. The pillar that Wu Xingyan’s delicate fingers had just touched slowly began to appear clearly as the thin fog vanished.
"This... their bodies turned to stone as if stopped by ti?" Wu Xinghan said, calming his sister. "This is the body of Hu Bao, a practitioner from the Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets ship."
Hu Bao, an early-stage Weaver Transformation practitioner, now stood frozen in a position as if about to speed away. His face was frozen in an expression of pure terror, but the most horrific part was his skin, which had now turned a pale grey, almost the sa as the pillar stones surrounding them.
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