“It seems the elders of the Spiritual Void Cave Heaven have all been alarmed. They are coming one after another.”

By this time, night had fallen. The sky above was scattered with countless stars.

The two pressed forward for several more li and, without realizing it, arrived at a stretch of devastated and desolate terrain. Not a single blade of grass grew here — utterly scorched earth, with only cracked foundation stones and shattered rubble, and nothing else whatsoever.

In the darkness of night, a mysterious aura permeated this place, with faint wisps of black mist drifting about.

“Thousands upon thousands of years have passed — over ten thousand years — yet no plants have grown in these ruins. That’s truly strange. It’s genuinely a barren and desolate wasteland — a place where not even birds would bother.” Pang Bo grumbled with some dissatisfaction. He was feeling a bit hungry and thirsty at this point — and could not even find wild fruit to eat.

No sooner had he finished saying this than he was struck by some tremendous force, stumbling and lurching, crashing with a heavy thud to the ground in the darkness. Ye Fan stared, eyes wide, barely able to believe what he was seeing. Pang Bo scrambled to his feet with a start and looked back — and his scalp instantly crawled. He retreated rapidly.

Just ahead, a cold, stiff corpse lay silently across the ground — dried flesh clinging to bones, like withered, dead firewood — a desiccated corpse.

“This… what’s going on? Where did this mummified corpse come from?” Pang Bo felt uneasy. Being struck by a mummified corpse out of nowhere was enough to unsettle anyone.

Ye Fan was equally bewildered and unsure. He had not seen how the corpse appeared. They kept looking all around — the scorched and charred ruins were entirely open and empty, with nothing but rubble on the ground. And yet the emptier it seemed, the more difficult it was to feel at peace. This was an ancient site abandoned for untold ages — perhaps things that were not entirely wholesome truly did exist here.

The night grew darker and darker. Starlight dimmed, the surroundings of the ruins sank into pitch blackness, and thin wisps of fog drifted through the air.

“Why is it getting so eerily cold… colder and colder…” Pang Bo was feeling a bit uneasy, a chill running all over his body. “Where on earth did this corpse fall from…”

“Let’s get away from here.” Ye Fan felt something was wrong — this was not a place to linger.

“What kind of wretched place is this — what’s wrong with it!” Pang Bo said in a low voice, chills running down his spine.

“Boom!”

At that moment, Pang Bo was knocked flying again. He scrambled back up — and beside him was now a second mummified corpse.

“Who… who has so little decency as to throw corpses around like this.” The joke was far from funny. Both of them were running cold all over, covered in goosebumps, eyes scanning frantically in all directions.

Two desiccated corpses lay across the ground. Their clothing clung to them in tatters — a light touch reduced it to powder. No telling how many years they had been here.

“Whatever you are — come out and show yourself!”

“Boom!”

Yet another corpse appeared, knocking Pang Bo flying.

“Damn your ancestors — you think Pang here is a pushover?!” Pang Bo was both frightened and aggrieved. Ye Fan was standing right there — yet not a single blow had landed on him.

“Whatever ghost this is — come out right now!” Ye Fan called out in a low, sharp voice.

“Boom!”

Suddenly, the ancient ruins erupted in a great earthquake — Ye Fan himself was flung bodily through the air, and Pang Bo tumbled rolling and pitching a great distance away.

“Boom — boom — boom…”

This time, it was not only Pang Bo — Ye Fan, too, was struck again and again. Ancient corpse after ancient corpse fell from the sky, knocking the two of them off their feet repeatedly. Had these been ordinary human bodies of flesh and blood, by now their bones would surely have been shattered. It was only because of their extraordinary constitutions that no real harm came to them.

Dozens of corpses now littered the ground. The air here was heavy with a sinister chill — cold as a pit of ice — both of them with their hair standing on end, unable to understand why any of this was happening.

“Swish!”

In that instant, Ye Fan felt every hair on his back stand straight up — as though something was closing on him with terrifying speed from behind. Without turning to look, he immediately surged forward, then rapidly shifted his body sideways, fast as a lightning bolt.

Two beams of ghostly green light grazed past him and came to a halt dozens of meters away, flickering like spirit fire, pulsing without pause. At the same time, the entire ruin plunged into darkness as black as ink — impenetrable, impossible to see one’s hand in front of one’s face. The stars in the sky above were swallowed up entirely and could no longer be seen.

“There are actual ghosts here!” Pang Bo instinctively reached beside his body — only to remember that the copper plaque of the Great Thunder Sound Temple was not with him.

At this moment, aside from those two ghostly green beams of light, they could see absolutely nothing. A black mist had completely blanketed the entire ruin. The two orbs of green light were each roughly the size of a washbasin — like two balls of spirit fire, or a pair of enormous eyes — pulsing with cold malevolence in the black mist.

“There truly is something unclean here!” Both Ye Fan and Pang Bo tensed up at once.

“Swish!”

This time, the two orbs of green light moved with extraordinary speed, reaching them in an instant — and still flying directly at Ye Fan. Pang Bo tried to help, but four or five mummified corpses came crashing into him and sent him flying.

The green light grew faster and faster, completely locked onto Ye Fan — shifting left and right all around him — until finally the radiance flashed, both beams of green light disappeared, and they both sank into his body.

“Ye Fan!” Pang Bo cried out — but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

At the same moment, Ye Fan felt his Bitter Sea turn to glacial cold — as though it had been frozen solid. He immediately channeled the mysterious method recorded in the Dao Scripture — and in an instant, a flicker of golden light blossomed from within.

“Boom — boom — boom!”

The sound of a surging tide erupted as Ye Fan’s Bitter Sea transformed into a vast golden ocean, churning and crashing with wild force, sweeping the two orbs of green light up into the highest heavens.

“Boom!”

A sharp quake — and the two orbs of green light recoiled as though struck by terror, bursting free of Ye Fan’s Bitter Sea and retreating far away. At the same time, Ye Fan’s Bitter Sea instantly returned to calm — a single point of golden light, no bigger than a soybean, remained there like a divine lamp, perfectly still.

“Swish!”

The green light blazed forward with tremendous speed. The moment it burst free of Ye Fan’s Bitter Sea, it flew straight at Pang Bo and sank into his body in an instant. Pang Bo only managed to get out a single curse before dropping straight and stiff to the ground — and Ye Fan was jolted with alarm, rushing over.

“Pang Bo — what’s happening to you?”

But before he could reach him, Pang Bo flipped himself upright and sat up. His eyes had turned a ghostly, glowing green. He rose instantly to his feet, let out a low, rumbling roar like some wild beast, and stared coldly at Ye Fan — holding that stare for a full several minutes before finally looking away.

“Whatever you are — leave his body.” Ye Fan’s voice dropped low and sharp.

“Boom!”

At that moment, the wind howled and surged. The entire ruin erupted in swirling sand and stones, and black mist churned. Pang Bo stood there, his hair whipping wildly — and then he suddenly strode away in great steps. The dozens of mummified corpses all around floated up off the ground and followed him, flying together toward the depths of the ruins.

The area cleared instantly. The stars across the vault of heaven reappeared in the night sky. From a distance, one could see that Pang Bo had gone like a gale, surrounded by swirling black mist and tumbling dust, the dozens of ancient corpses trailing behind him, growing more distant by the moment.

“Pang Bo!” Ye Fan let out a shout and immediately gave chase.

But Pang Bo’s speed at this moment was tremendous — comparable to those elders who rode the divine rainbow — swift as the wind and fast as lightning, and in an instant he had vanished completely from Ye Fan’s line of sight.

With Pang Bo’s body seized and occupied, his life or death uncertain — in this moment Ye Fan was wracked with anxiety. But there was nothing he could do; he simply could not catch up.

Ahead lay nothing but emptiness and vastness. Ye Fan had no other choice. He began moving toward the deepest part of the ruins — with no capacity to spare a thought for how dangerous what lay ahead might be.

By deep into the night, Ye Fan no longer knew how many li he had walked. He finally drew close to the very innermost depths of the ruins. Here, the dull, muffled sounds were even more powerful, ringing out at ever shorter intervals. Each one was like a hammer blow to the human heart — Ye Fan’s face was snow-white, and he staggered as he walked. Even with his constitution, by the time he reached this place, he could barely hold on through sheer force of will. An ordinary person’s heart would have already burst and shattered.

Here, the trees grew sparse and thin. The broken remains of ancient structures appeared with increasing frequency. The spiritual energy grew denser and richer, filled with a surging and vital life force — even more of a sacred land than the Spiritual Void Cave Heaven itself.

“Boom!”

Another dull, muffled sound rang out. Ye Fan scaled a towering mountain and gazed forward. What was called the “innermost depths of the ruins” lay just ahead — a dense and sprawling complex of ancient structures, all of them half-collapsed and reduced to ruins, yet one could still imagine the grandeur and majesty they had held in former times.

And most astonishing of all — the unbroken expanse of ancient buildings was arrayed all around a volcano. Flames blazed skyward from its summit, and within the ring-shaped crater, rolling lava churned and boiled. It had not flowed out — but it was terrifying enough already, dyeing half the sky a deep, smoldering red.

This endless, magnificent expanse of ancient structures surrounding a volcano was deeply unsettling to behold.

In that moment, Ye Fan was struck with profound shock — for he saw a scene that defied all belief. As the boiling lava surged and shifted, a grand and magnificent ancient hall — entirely translucent and crystalline — rose and fell, rising intermittently from within the volcano’s depths.

“Boom!”

The dull, muffled sound rang out once more — and it came from within the volcano itself. Or more precisely: it came from that luminous, crystalline ancient hall floating in the lava, radiant and gleaming with a flow of aged and timeless air, streaming with divine radiance on all sides.

In the ancient building complex beneath the volcano, a divine bird — five meters long, its entire body blazing with golden light, arcs of electricity curling around its form — was exactly the Thunder Bird that had battled the Scale-Ape King two days prior. It appeared here completely unharmed. The fate of the Scale-Ape King required no imagination.

The Thunder Bird was a truly supreme and terrifying creature. Elder Wu Qingfeng had said that even he would have to go around it if they crossed paths — and it held sole dominion over that section of the building complex, with no other creature daring to approach.

And of course, it was not the only one there. Distributed throughout the other portions of the building complex were close to twenty more ferocious birds and savage beasts — all of them rare and extraordinary varieties, most of which had never been seen or heard of before, each one mysterious and wondrous in its own way.

Among them: a centipede bearing silver wings — as thick as a human arm and two meters in length, its entire body gleaming like it had been cast from solid silver — lying utterly still among a stretch of ruins, while no other creature dared cross within even half a step of its territory.

And there was a ferocious beast with the body of a massive bull, the head of a lion, and its entire body covered in dense blue scales — ten-odd meters tall, like a small mountain — standing alone in its section of ruins, claiming sole dominion of that area.

Close to twenty such terrifying creatures — a testament to the dread that permeated the depths of these ruins. At this moment, they had surrounded the volcano, gazing with taut attention at the ancient hall that continued to rise and fall within the lava.

At this moment, Ye Fan finally spotted Pang Bo — standing in a stretch of ruins below the volcano. He let out a long breath of relief. At this moment, Elder Wu Qingfeng and several other elderly figures had surrounded him — without having made a move yet — but they had him hemmed in.

Close to twenty elders from the Spiritual Void Cave Heaven had arrived — a number roughly equal to the ferocious birds and beasts. The two sides were evenly matched.

“That is…”

Suddenly, Ye Fan realized he had undercounted. On the slope of the volcano itself there were more beings — a great man two meters tall, his arms covered in overlapping scales, gleaming brilliantly in the light of the lava. Beside him stood a young woman with no arms at all — only a pair of golden wings in their place, and her full head of hair shimmering like golden silk, flashing and radiant. Standing alongside them as equals was a great serpent — a horn upon its head and sharp claws beneath its belly — far beyond the category of a mere serpent: this was what the legends called a Jiao dragon.

Ye Fan’s heart clenched. He immediately understood — these were the legendary great demons, those who had already achieved the ability to take human form.

“And there…” Ye Fan was startled again. On the other side of the volcano were three more beings that appeared to be great demons. Among them, one towering giant was built in a manner of extraordinary magnificence — standing three meters tall, in a complete human form, but with a pair of bull horns growing from his head.

At the same time, Ye Fan also spotted four or five figures who were genuinely human. One of them appeared to be the Sect Master of the Spiritual Void Cave Heaven — a man he had glimpsed once from a great distance in the past. Beside him stood four elderly figures with white hair and white beards, also positioned not far from the crater’s edge.

The division was entirely by strength and level. Below the volcano were more than a dozen ferocious birds and beasts, along with a cluster of elders from the Spiritual Void Cave Heaven. On the volcano itself were existences of a higher order — their purpose entirely unified: all of them were here for the ancient hall in the lava.

All the powerful figures watched the crater with intense and taut attention. There within, the lava boiled and churned — and the ancient hall blazed with divine radiance, rising and sinking, as though the power of time itself flowed through it, giving off a sense of an ancient and primordial aura.