Chapter 1172: The Yin-Yang Pearl of Deathly Thoughts
As the commander of the Azure Profound Army, Shang Shaojun had guarded the Roaring Abyss for a century. Even when faced with a terror as profound as the world-ending tide of demonic sound, he could maintain his composure.
But now, for the first time in ages, he felt a genuine, bone-deep fear.
The sheer number of dead cultivators in this sea of ice was simply staggering.
Shang Shaojun couldn't even begin to fathom where they had all come from.
The number of cultivators buried here probably exceeded the entire population of the Xuanhuang Realm!
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan, for his part, feigned being terrified by the scene. His body trembled slightly, his face a mask of horror.
“Commander, don't make any sudden moves. We must be cautious,” he said after a moment, pretending to have regained his senses as he tried to calm Shang Shaojun.
Shang Shaojun’s expression remained grim. He scanned their surroundings constantly, as if expecting some unknown enemy to emerge from the shadows.
“Something... isn’t right here. Do you hear anything?” Shang Shaojun asked via voice transmission.
Shang Shaojun’s face darkened. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so long in the Roaring Abyss, but I’ve become sensitive to any sound. Ever since we entered this Maze Domain, I’ve been hearing a faint whisper. It comes and goes. You haven’t heard it?”
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan narrowed his eyes.
This wasn't his first time here.
He had even guided various other cultivators to this very place.
But none of them, like Shang Shaojun, had ever claimed to hear a mysterious sound in the dead silence of the frozen sea.
A different thought began to form in his mind. “What’s your assessment, Commander?” the Sacred Embryo Li Fan asked gravely. “This place certainly involves a great secret. But by the same token, investigating it will surely come with immense risk. Should we leave now, before we’re discovered, or should we press on and uncover the truth?”
Shang Shaojun didn't answer immediately. His ear twitched slightly, as if he was trying to pinpoint the sound he’d heard.
After a moment, he sent a voice transmission. “Brother Li, follow me. I have a feeling that tracing the source of this sound might unravel some of the mysteries here.”
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan nodded slightly. A shadow of his sword materialized, circling to guard them both.
“Let’s proceed with caution.”
The two of them moved through the endless, frozen sea.
In truth, Li Fan was already intimately familiar with the overall structure of the Reversing Life and Death Grand Array.
But since he was pretending this was his first visit, he didn't point out that Shang Shaojun was leading them in circles within the formation.
He simply followed along in silence.
Yet, as Shang Shaojun stubbornly pressed forward in a single direction, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan began to notice subtle changes in their surroundings—changes so minute they had previously eluded even the analysis of his Final Dissociation Disc!
“There’s a hidden variation within the grand array?” Li Fan marveled inwardly. “Truly worthy of a formation that can grant Longevity.”
They continued their advance.
It felt as though they were walking in place, yet the frozen coffins in the sea of the dead were steadily rotating around them.
The deeper they ventured, the faster the scenery spun.
“Brother Li, be careful. I think the source of the sound is just ahead!” Shang Shaojun’s voice was laced with tension.
It was like traversing a long, narrow tunnel through spacetime. The sheer speed of their passage blurred their surroundings into a dizzying vortex of overlapping lines.
As they burst through the tunnel's end, the countless circles converged into a single point.
Then, the point exploded outward in their field of vision.
The world opened up before them.
But the air around them had grown colder still.
So cold, in fact, that both the Sacred Embryo Li Fan and Shang Shaojun felt their bodies beginning to stiffen.
Exhaling a cloud of white mist, they circulated their spiritual energy, trying to dispel the bone-piercing chill.
The two men carefully surveyed their new surroundings.
They appeared to be inside a silvery-white sphere. Apart from the faintly visible, blurry boundaries, the space was utterly empty.
But when they looked back the way they had come, what they saw made their pupils contract in shock.
A small, rotating sphere, resembling a yin-yang symbol, floated silently in the air.
From its darker half, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan could faintly sense the aura of the silent, frozen sea of ice they had just left.
And within this white sphere, there were eight more of these yin-yang orbs.
Nine in total, arranged in a peculiar pattern.
Shang Shaojun swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry.
Just one of those orbs contained an uncountable number of the dead.
If that number were multiplied by nine...
They exchanged a look, each seeing the raw terror reflected in the other’s eyes.
Even their telepathic communication became cautious and hushed.
They were terrified of disturbing the nine yin-yang spheres.
“Commander, the sound you heard before...”
“It’s gone. It stopped the moment we entered this place. It just... vanished. Wait...” Shang Shaojun suddenly froze, his head snapping to look in the opposite direction of the spheres.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan followed his gaze, but saw nothing.
“Careful.”
It was the only word Shang Shaojun uttered before falling silent.
His body went rigid, his aura diminishing to an almost imperceptible whisper.
It was only then that the Sacred Embryo Li Fan sensed it: an invisible presence was descending into the space.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Though there was no physical sound, the heavy footfalls echoed like a drum against Li Fan’s very soul.
The presence drew nearer.
It paid no mind to the two intruders, instead proceeding directly toward the nine yin-yang spheres.
A soft, breath-like sound whispered through the void.
The space around the yin-yang spheres rippled and distorted with a strange heatless shimmer.
As if being brought to a boil, the light and dark halves of the nine small spheres began to rotate around each other, their boundaries growing sharper and more distinct.
Then, Shang Shaojun and Li Fan watched in horror as wisps of what looked like frozen corpses were gently blown by the unknown entity’s breath, flowing into the nine yin-yang spheres.
The entire, utterly bizarre process did not last long.
The oppressive weight of the footsteps gradually receded, and the silvery-white space slowly returned to normal.
The nine yin-yang spheres also settled, their rotations slowing until they were once again calm.
A long time passed before either of them dared to communicate again.
“What... what was that just now?”
“A sense of danger like a thousand needles piercing my skin, my spiritual sense screaming warnings at me. I felt like a catastrophe could strike at any moment... I doubt even a Longevity Heavenly Venerate could inspire such terror, right?”
After those few brief words, they fell into a heavy, oppressive silence.
“The sound I heard earlier... it must have been an echo of that unknown being’s footsteps,” Shang Shaojun speculated. “Even after it had long departed, the sound lingered here.”
“And the countless frozen corpses inside the yin-yang spheres... that must be its handiwork. But I still don’t understand. Where could it have gotten so many bodies? And what lies beyond this silvery-white space?”
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan had no answers to these questions.
He had assumed this place was merely the dojo of the Rebirth Heavenly Venerate. He had never imagined that, in this lifetime, a chance encounter would lead him to uncover a far deeper, more terrifying secret hidden behind it.
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