Passing through that forcibly broken seal gap, stepping into the dark rotating entrance vortex, Tang Xiaoqi felt the world spin. He was plunged into a cold, viscous vortex filled with endless negative emotions. In his ears were countless illusory sounds of grieving souls screaming and wailing, assaulting his soul. Even with the jade pendant's remaining faint light protecting him, his head felt like it would split, nausea rising.
This sensation lasted only a few breaths before his feet touched solid ground, that nauseating transmission sensation abruptly vanishing.
He staggered a step, steadied by Mu Qingfeng beside him. The four stood back-to-back, instantly forming a small defensive formation, warily looking around.
However, the scene that met their eyes made even them, prepared as they were, gasp in shock, their minds reeling!
They seemed to be inside a massive underground palace beyond imagination. Overhead was not rock but a constantly roiling darkness like ink, in which countless twisted, suffering faces surfaced, struggled, and dissipated, emitting despair-inducing aura.
The palace was so vast one couldn't see its end. Massive stone pillars requiring several people to encircle rose from the ground, piercing directly into that dark canopy above. And these pillars, as well as the towering walls covered in strange relief carvings on all sides, were not made of ordinary stone but presented a semi-transparent, obsidian-like quality. Even more chilling, within these pillars and walls were imprisoned countless blurred, twisted soul bodies!
These soul bodies were of men and women, young and old, in various forms, but without exception, their faces were filled with extreme pain, resentment, and fear. They opened their mouths soundlessly, as if letting out eternal wails, their bodies pulled and twisted by invisible forces, like insects in amber, eternally sealed in this cold "stone." The entire palace's light source came from the faint, ghostly green phosphorescence these soul bodies emitted, illuminating this massive space like a realm of hungry ghosts.
Yin winds blew in gusts—not from air movement, but from the negative emotions and soul power fluctuations these countless grieving souls emitted, forming substantial cold currents that brushed against skin, bringing bone-piercing cold and intense mental discomfort.
The air was thick with cloying blood scent, rot stench, and a charnel smell of souls burning, making one want to vomit.
And in this vast palace's very center was an enormous circular altar. The altar was constructed entirely of strange dark red crystal that seemed to have soaked in countless blood, rising several zhang from the ground. The altar's edges were carved with countless ferocious demon patterns and twisted runes. These runes writhed like living things, constantly extracting strands of black resentful energy and soul power seeping from the pillars and walls.
At the altar's center was a massive blood pool that made one's heart palpitate! The pool didn't contain ordinary blood but a dark red liquid, viscous as mercury, bubbling and emitting contradictory aura of intense vitality and death. On the blood pool's surface, incomplete limbs and twisted faces occasionally surfaced before quickly sinking again. Countless struggling soul shadows floated and screamed in the blood pool, their soul power and essence being mercilessly extracted and refined.
A vast, pure, yet infinitely evil and chaotic demonic energy was continuously emanating from the blood pool's depths, pulsing like a heart, supporting the entire Ten Thousand Souls Hall's operation, and maintaining close connection with a blurred black shadow floating above the altar.
That black shadow...
Xiaoqi's gaze locked onto the space above the altar.
There, floating was a blurred black shadow about one person high. Its specific appearance couldn't be seen clearly; one could only sense an icy, vast, powerful soul fluctuation filled with destruction and temptation intent. It seemed to be Ten Thousand Souls Hall's center, controlling the blood pool's energy below, monitoring everything within the hall.
Demonic entity's soul fragment!
And beneath that demonic entity's soul fragment, at the blood pool altar's edge, stood a tall, imposing figure.
That person wore armor dark as night, flowing with demonic patterns like living things on its surface. A helmet covered his face, revealing only a pair of hollow, blood-red eyes with no emotional color, only pure slaughter and obedience. He held a dark red longspear with a ferocious design, wreathed in black energy, standing motionless like the most loyal guardian. The aura he emanated had reached Golden Core level, and carried a heart-palpitating, completely controlled deathly stillness.
Though separated by armor, unable to see his face, that palpitation and pain from the depths of bloodline made Xiaoqi's heart feel gripped by an invisible giant hand, almost stopping.
Xu Zhan...
His father, now the Shadow Snake Pavilion's most powerful battle puppet, stood there, guarding the Soul-Controlling Jade that imprisoned his soul, guarding the demonic pool that extracted the soul power and essence of thousands, guarding that demonic entity's soul fragment attempting to subvert everything!
The myriad phenomena before them, the endless grieving souls wailing, the bizarre architecture, the central evil blood pool altar, and those two figures on the altar representing despair and tragedy... all composed a living painting of hell, assaulting the four people's vision and minds.
"Steady your minds!" Mu Qingfeng's low voice like a warning bell rang in everyone's ears. His body emitted a gentle water-blue light halo, attempting to dispel that pervasive negative emotion erosion.
Liu Yun gripped her sword hilt tightly, knuckles white. The intertwining of cold killing intent and rage from seeing this human tragedy made the air around her seem about to freeze.
Aunt Su's gaze beneath the silver mask was fixed on that armored figure on the altar, her body trembling imperceptibly, filled with endless grief and complexity.
Xiaoqi closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of this despair-filled, filthy air. When he opened them again, only a cold determination like ten-thousand-year mystic ice remained.
He had seen the target, and the heartbreaking reality.
Ten Thousand Souls Hall—they were inside. And next, in this demonic lair's center, under countless grieving souls' watch, they would charge toward that deepest despair!