CH 287

Time slipped by.

Su Yi paced alongside the walls. It seemed he’d already discovered something, and he looked lost in thought.

Enough time passed to brew a cup of tea before he stopped beside a mural on the eastern wall. Although the image was damaged and indistinct, they could still dimly see mountains shaped like a massive, coiling dragon.

It looked extremely similar to the dragon-shaped ridge they were on now. However, the peak of the ridge depicted in the mural didn’t have a nine-storied tower. Rather, it depicted an entrance to an underground world!

“Hm?” Su Yi could tell at a glance that although the painting of the underground world was damaged, it had what looked like a floating, blood-colored vortex depicted in it.

And beneath the vortex was a lotus platform. A Buddha sat atop it.

The images were indistinct, but when Su Yi saw this, he suddenly recalled—

The underground world deep within Bloodthistle Yao Mountain had a massive crimson whirlpool too, as well as an ancient ritual ground and sacrificial altar!

“Is there another spatial barrier sealed below the Prajna Meditation Garden?” Su Yi’s eyebrows shot up. Wherever there was a spatial barrier, there was a path between two worlds!

“Fellow Daoist, quick! Look at that!” Ning Sihua suddenly exclaimed.

Su Yi followed her gaze and saw that the blood flowing from the Shanglin Temple monks’ corpses was soundlessly disappearing.

Wherever the liquid sank into the earth, unearthly and mysterious crimson runes floated into the air.

Su Yi walked up and evaluated it for a moment. Then, as if enlightened, he said, “This is the ‘gate’ to the seal. A blood sacrifice is required to open it.”

The gate to the seal? Just as Ning Sihua and company were pondering this, they saw the massive, lotus-shaped stone at the center of the floor silently disappear.

Before long, a thirty-foot-wide entryway appeared!

“Just as I expected, the tower is a distraction. The true mysteries are hidden below the dragon-shaped ridge….” said Su Yi. “Let’s go have a look.”

With that, he led the way down.

They passed through the entryway, down a long stone staircase. Every thirty feet, there hung a bronze lantern lit with a Buddha’s fat, which dispersed the darkness.

Su Yi and company walked a little less than ten minutes, down countless stairs, before finally arriving at a cave reminiscent of an underground world.

The space was extremely vast, with one towering statue after another, a whole series of them. Each was fully ninety feet tall.

Some sat on their knees and plucked flowers with a smile.

Some sat astride divine beasts holding magic jars.

Some were glaring, furious temple gardens with three heads and six arms

And some….

At a glance, it was like a sea of deities. The sight was exceptionally shocking.

“Be careful. Judging by the statues’ arrangement, those above correspond to the thirty-six heavenly spirits, while those below correspond to the seventy-two earthly fiends. Their arrangement includes the nine palaces, six harmonies, and four symbols, as well as yin, yang, and void. As they manifest, they change…”

Su Yi’s gaze swept across them. “This formation is similar to the one hundred and eight altars we saw at Bloodthistle Yao Mountain. They’re a sealing formation.”

Ning Sihua and Mu Xi glanced at each other; they’d just realized the implications. “Fellow Daoist. Don’t tell me there’s another spatial barrier sealed here?”

“Most likely, yes,” said Su Yi. As he spoke, he led them ahead, right through the various Buddhist statues.

If you watched closely, you’d see that Su Yi led them along a winding route. From time to time, he leaped. Other times, he took several steps back and made a detour.

The constant twists and turns left his companions a bit dazed. They looked at each other and sighed; without Su Yi to guide them, they couldn’t possibly have traversed such a complex and mysterious restriction.

“Wait a moment.” A little less than ten minutes later, Su Yi suddenly stopped before a certain statue.

It depicted a Buddhist cultivator. He, too, was ninety feet tall, and he sat cross-legged, his hands forming lotus seals in front of him while a dragon coiled around his back, resting on his shoulders and raising its head.

This statue looked different from the others; its features were handsome and soft, and the monk depicted had a calm, tranquil expression on his face.

“So, it really is you….” The image of the white-robed monk riding a true dragon through the stars appeared within Su Yi’s mental sea.

Now, he dared say with certainty that that monk, whoever he was, came from the Prajna Meditation Garden!

“A faction of cultivators built in a mundane place like the Great Zhou countless years ago gave rise to an expert mighty enough to ride a true dragon through the stars? The Azure Continent really is getting more and more interesting…” Lights flashed in the depths of Su Yi’s gaze.

“Fellow Daoist, my apologies.” Su Yi faced the statue and lowered his head. Then, he rose into the air, formed seals with his fingers, and unleashed a streak of cryptic blue light.

Boom!

The statue instantly burst into light.

From his companions’ perspective, the statue seemed to awaken from the serene darkness of eternity. Its eyes opened, and it unleashed peerless majesty difficult to describe in words.

They didn’t quite know what hit them, but their hearts shook and their minds went blank. An unknown amount of time passed before they recovered from their shock. Only then did they discover that the phenomenon they’d witnessed earlier had disappeared.

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The Buddhist statue still stood amidst the darkness. There wasn’t anything even remotely strange about it.

Turning their attention toward Su Yi, they realized he was sitting cross-legged off to the side, meditating.

They could tell at a glance that he’d expended an enormous amount of energy; his presence was weak, and he was nowhere near as calm and composed as before.

A stick of incense worth of time later, Su Yi awoke from his meditation. He’d already returned to his peak condition.

Ning Sihua had been waiting all this time, and she couldn’t help but ask, “Fellow Daoist, is this statue the core of the restriction formation?”

“That’s right.” Su Yi nodded.

Just now, it was because he’d refined this “core of the foundation” that he’d come dangerously close to exhausting all of his energy.

Fortunately, he managed to fully refine it in the end.

This foundation was called the “Burning Heaven Restricting Demon Formation”. It had been here, restricting this underground world for countless years.

“Let’s go.” Su Yi continued without any further delays.

Every time a Buddhist statue blocked their path, he waved his sleeves. The space around the statue would ripple with the mysterious fluctuations of the restriction, and a new path would appear.

This scene left Ning Sihua and the others certain that this mysterious sealing formation was already entirely under Su Yi’s control!

Before long, the group passed through the formation and arrived at a massive, blood-colored vortex.

The vortex hovered in the air, and it was fully three thousand meters across. It looked like a hovering, gaping maw as it slowly whirled above them. The space around it distorted, producing low, rumbling booms.

Beneath the vortex was a lotus platform. It was about nine feet long, and made entirely of black jade. Crimson detritus was scattered across its surface, like broken pieces of eggshell.

It was just like the scene Su Yi saw in the murals when he initially entered the first floor of the tower.

Except that the lotus platform in the mural had a Budda sitting atop it, while this platform had nothing but bits of broken red “eggshell.”

“This place really is just like Bloodthistle Yao Mountain! It really is sealing another spatial barrier!” Ning Sihua and Mu Xi’s expressions both turned grave. They were with Su Yi when he found the first spatial barrier, and they were naturally well aware that an unknown world was on the other side of the vortex!

It was then that Lan Suo couldn’t help but chime in, “Deep within Ten Thousand Poisons Yao Mountain, I saw a vortex like this too. It was exactly the same!”

Ning Sihua and Mu Xi were both surprised. There’s a spatial barrier deep within Ten Thousand Poisons Yao Mountain too?

“It was when I got close to the vortex that the Spirit Parasite Devilworm latched onto me. If Young Lord Su hadn’t saved me, I’m afraid I would have already…” Lan Suo glanced at Su Yi. Who knows what she was thinking, but her face flushed red.

“So does this mean that all of the Great Zhou’s Eight Great Yao Mountains hide a similar spatial barrier?” muttered Mu Xi, a bit startled.

“Something’s not right,” said Su Yi out of nowhere. He’d been busily evaluating the lotus platform, but now, he furrowed his brow. “It seems someone else was here years before us!”

“What?” Ning Sihua and the others all came over, bewildered expressions on their faces. This underground area was sealed by a formation. Even they had only made it here by following Su Yi.

Who else could have had the skill needed to achieve this?

“These fragments are the remnants of a Dao Cocoon,” said Su Yi. He walked up the lotus platform and picked up a blood-colored object, which he evaluated as he spoke. “Unless I mistake my guess, an otherworld cultivator once used a Dao Cocoon to send a portion of his soul into our world and possess an expert’s body.”

He reached out and rubbed one of the red pieces, then estimated, “It likely happened within the past few decades, thirty years at most, because the aura of this fragment of Dao Cocoon has yet to truly disperse.”

His companions looked at each other. Terror coursed through their hearts.

A cultivator from another world had possessed someone here just a few decades ago?

Whoever had done the possession almost certainly came from the world on the other side!

But… just who had he possessed!?

“There’s a jade tablet here,” said Ning Sihua suddenly. She leaned over and picked up a three-inch piece of jade carved with phoenix and luan totems. “Take a look, Fellow Daoist.”

Ning Sihua couldn’t discern anything from it, so she passed it to Su Yi. He examined it, then said, “It’s just a tablet carved from blue jade glass. It’s as ordinary as it gets, and it’s no treasure. If I’m not mistaken, the possessed expert most likely left it here.”

Mu Xi said, “Does that mean that, so long as we determine the jade tablet’s owner, we can figure out whether or not he was possessed by an otherworld cultivator?”

Back at Bloodthistle Yao Mountain, an otherworld cultivator had once used a Dao Cocoon to possess the Spiritmartial Marquis, Chen Zheng, in an attempt to enter their world.

In the end, Su Yi ruined his plans.

As a result of this incident, both Ning Sihua and Mu Xi realized how serious this problem was—

It was highly likely that a cultivator from another world was already living in the Great Zhou!

Just who was it? Who had come here, only to wind up possessed?

Whoosh!

Just as the group was pondering this problem, a dazzling streak of crimson light suddenly shot out of the darkness, straight for the black jade platform where Su Yi now stood.

Clang!

A deafening impact followed as Su Yi just barely blocked the incoming crimson light with the Abstruse God Sword.

However, the clash sent him flying from the platform.