Chapter 369 - 357: Profound Nether Sub-Palace

Chapter 369: Chapter 357: Profound Nether Sub-Palace

Deep within the Ghost Mist Forest, the dense fog was as black as ink.

Li Yuan had been traveling through the forest for the better part of a day. The deeper he went, the thicker the fog became, shrinking his visibility from dozens of yards to less than twenty. The air was filled with a damp, chilling aura. Occasionally, the low roars of Demon Beasts would drift from the distance, only to be swallowed by the dense fog.

His three layers of concealment remained active the entire time.

After traveling for about forty-five miles, the terrain began to drop sharply.

A massive cliff appeared ahead. It plunged abruptly from the thick fog, its face nearly perpendicular to the ground, appearing to be over a thousand feet deep. The base of the cliff was completely obscured by even denser fog, rendering it invisible.

Li Yuan stood at the edge of the clifftop and closed his eyes.

The perceptive net of his Dark Evil Insight spread downward, piercing through the layers of fog and sweeping across the entire cliff face.

The feedback from most areas indicated ordinary rock, with no abnormalities.

But in a spot on the lower-middle section of the cliff face, his perceptive net caught an extremely faint fluctuation of Demonic Qi.

The location was completely covered by a large, dense patch of vines and shrubs, showing no trace from the clifftop. If not for the extreme sensitivity of Dark Evil Insight to Demonic Qi, Li Yuan would never have found it, even if he were standing right in front of it.

Li Yuan did not jump down directly.

He took two steps back, planted his feet firmly on the ground, and activated the Earth Escape Technique.

Spiritual Power enveloped his body, and his figure slowly sank into the rock of the clifftop.

His perception of the earth’s veins expanded fully within the rock. The density, hardness, and fissure distribution of every inch of stone were clearly mapped in his mind. He moved diagonally downward through the rock, avoiding several mineralized zones of abnormal density and a subterranean river.

After traveling for a mile or so, the rock structure ahead suddenly changed.

At the end of the natural rock layer, an artificially excavated cavity appeared. The walls of the cavity had been finely polished, and the rock held the remnants of extremely ancient but still discernible Spiritual Power patterns.

Li Yuan emerged halfway from the rock, stopping at the edge of the cavity.

Before him was a passageway about ten feet wide. At its end, a translucent gray curtain of light completely blocked the path.

A Restriction.

Li Yuan stepped out of the rock wall completely, stood in the passageway, and carefully examined the curtain of light.

The surface of the light curtain was carved with extremely ancient Array Patterns, the style of which was identical to the Profound Nether Sect relics described in the disciple’s journal. In the gaps between the Array Patterns, faint spatial fluctuations alternated with a mixed aura of Spiritual Qi and Demonic Qi.

’A three-dimensionally nested spatial lock.’

Li Yuan did not act rashly.

He first fully released the spatial perception of his Teleportation Stone. The doubled perceptive ability made the internal structure of the Restriction incredibly clear in his eyes.

The surface of the light curtain appeared to be a flat barrier, but under his spatial perception, its true structure was far more complex than it seemed. The entire Restriction was composed of three mutually nested spatial folds, with each layer hiding its key Array Pattern nodes in the crevices of the folded space.

An ordinary Cultivator facing this kind of Restriction wouldn’t even be able to see its structure, let alone break it.

But the Teleportation Stone presented the complete hierarchical structure of the spatial folds to Li Yuan’s perception.

He closed his eyes, and five Divine Sense Lines slowly extended forward.

The first Divine Sense Line slid along the edge of the outermost spatial fold and precisely located the first lock-point in the crevice of the fold. The lock-point was shaped like an extremely fine vortex of Spiritual Power, spinning in the opposite direction of the Array Pattern’s operation.

With a gentle flick of the Divine Sense Line, the vortex stopped spinning.

The light of the outermost Restriction dimmed slightly.

The second Divine Sense Line delved into the second layer of folded space. This layer’s lock-point was hidden deeper, wedged between two intersecting spatial rifts. Li Yuan controlled the thickness of his Divine Sense Line, compressing it to its limit to pass through the gap in the rifts and pick the second lock-point.

The third lock-point was in the innermost layer.

The spatial folding of this layer was the most complex; its three-dimensionally nested structure formed a nearly spherical, enclosed space. The lock-point was located at the very center of the sphere.

Li Yuan slowly advanced the third Divine Sense Line along the curvature of the spherical space, precisely touching the final vortex at the sphere’s center.

Another gentle flick.

BUZZ.

The entire gray curtain of light, like a drape with its frame removed, rapidly disintegrated from the center outward, dissolving into fine gray specks of light that vanished into the air.

The passageway was clear.

Li Yuan retracted his Divine Sense Lines and walked forward.

The passageway wasn’t long, ending after about two hundred feet.

The view before him suddenly opened up.

A vast hall appeared before him. Its scale far exceeded his expectations; it was at least five hundred feet deep, over three hundred feet wide, and had a ceiling more than a hundred feet high. The entire hall was constructed from massive black stone bricks, its walls densely covered with Array Patterns. Although most had dimmed and deactivated, a few still flickered faintly.

’It’s in better condition than I expected.’

Li Yuan did not step inside rashly.

As his feet touched the stone bricks at the hall’s entrance, his perception of the earth’s veins instantly penetrated the ground below.

The structure beneath the stone bricks clearly appeared in his mind.

Thirty feet directly in front of the entrance, a mechanism trap lay hidden beneath the floor tiles. It was triggered by stepping on two specific tiles, which would activate an Array trap.

There were also traps fifty feet from the left wall and in a spot slightly to the right of the hall’s center.

Li Yuan committed the locations of all the traps to memory, then followed a safe path deeper into the hall.

His footsteps echoed in the empty hall.

When he reached the center of the hall, Li Yuan stopped.

A giant Array, about fifty feet in diameter, occupied the center of the floor. Its Array Patterns were incredibly complex, spreading out in layer upon layer, larger than any Array he had ever seen.

The Array was active.

A grayish-white mist seeped continuously from the gaps in the Array Patterns, spreading out in all directions like countless thin snakes. It pooled in every corner of the hall before finally diffusing outward through crevices in the stone walls.

’The source of the Ghost Mist Forest’s fog.’

This dense fog, which covered an area hundreds of square miles wide, was not a natural phenomenon but was continuously released by this Array buried deep underground.

Li Yuan crouched down to carefully examine the Array’s core.

Embedded in the very center of the Array was a fist-sized Jade Bead. The bead’s luster was extremely dim, and its surface was covered with fine cracks, looking as if it might shatter at any moment.

But the Array’s operation depended entirely on this Jade Bead for its power.

Li Yuan used his Dark Evil Insight to probe deep into the Array and quickly discovered an anomaly.

A stream of blood-colored energy was continuously flowing in from a certain direction on the Array’s periphery, following the Array Patterns to converge within the Jade Bead. The energy was extremely weak but uninterrupted, as steady as the blood circulation of a living creature.

However, the Array’s own operation was constantly drawing energy from within the Jade Bead to maintain the release of the fog.

One stream in, one stream out—the input couldn’t cover the output.

The cracks on the Jade Bead’s surface were the result of this long-term deficit.

Li Yuan stood up, his gaze sweeping over the Spiritual Power circuits on the Array’s periphery.

The circuit’s connection points showed clear signs of being broken. Judging from the remaining structure, this Array was originally supposed to have an external power conduit, which would have continuously supplied energy from a Spirit Vein to the Array’s core. But that conduit was now broken; whether severed by someone or due to natural collapse was unknown.

After losing its external power supply, the Array was forced to draw on the Jade Bead’s own energy to keep running. That blood-colored energy might be some kind of backup power source, but it was far from enough to make up for the shortfall.

Li Yuan closed his eyes, using his perception of the earth’s veins to sense the geological strata above him.

His perception pierced through a few hundred feet of rock and touched upon an extremely familiar Spirit Vein.

’The large Spirit Vein of the Mist Forest Marketplace.’

Directly above this hall was the very Spirit Vein node of the marketplace that he tended to every day.

The two were almost perfectly aligned vertically.

’It seems this hall has some sort of mechanism. You can’t sense it from the outside, but it’s easy to sense the outside from within.’

Li Yuan filed this discovery away in his mind without making any rash judgments and turned toward the far end of the hall.

Before the stone wall at the far end of the hall stood a waist-high stone shelf. Several jade slips rested on it, covered in a thick layer of dust, but their Spiritual Mechanism was still reasonably well-preserved.

Li Yuan picked them up one by one, probing them with his Divine Sense.

The first jade slip.

Netherworld Lock Array. A Tier Two High Grade trapping Array. Its core mechanism was to construct a Spiritual Power blockade net with Yin-Sha Qi. Once an enemy was trapped inside, it would continuously suppress their Spiritual Power circulation, making them unable to cast Magic, activate Magical Artifacts, or even circulate energy for self-defense.

The Array’s configuration was extremely ingenious, balanced for both offense and defense.

The second jade slip.

Void-Rending Slash. A spatial attack Magic. It condensed Spiritual Power into an extremely thin spatial rift to inflict cutting damage on an enemy. The rift itself contained no elemental Spiritual Power, attacking purely through the rupture of space, making it nearly impossible to defend against with conventional Spiritual Power shields.

A line of small text was inscribed at the beginning of the jade slip: A common Magic practiced by disciples of the Profound Nether Sect.

’A spatial Magic.’

’The first piece of the puzzle for making the Teleportation Stone permanent.’

The third jade slip.

Annotated Basic Theory of Tier Three Arrays. The content was extremely detailed, written by a certain Array grandmaster. It began with the fundamental differences between Tier Three and Tier Two Arrays, then progressively delved into core concepts like spatial folding, Spiritual Power collapse, and multidimensional nesting. Every key point was accompanied by numerous case studies and annotations.

Li Yuan placed all three jade slips into his storage bag.

He searched the stone shelf again but found nothing else besides a few shattered and useless slips whose Spiritual Mechanism had completely dissipated.

Li Yuan turned, his gaze slowly sweeping across the entire hall.

The giant fog-generating Array was still running with a low hum, grayish-white mist seeping ceaselessly from its Array Patterns. The dim Jade Bead at the Array’s center flickered faintly, like the wick of a nearly spent candle.

He didn’t touch the Array, nor did he touch the Jade Bead.

Until he understood the exact relationship between this Array and the marketplace’s Spirit Vein, rashly interfering could trigger an unpredictable chain reaction.

Li Yuan followed the safe path he had taken on his way in, exiting the hall and returning to the passageway.