Chapter 1739 - 878: Sacrificing to Heaven and Earth, the Winds and Clouds Stir

The cold wind rolled up fine snow foam, lashing at everyone’s faces like knives.

The three elders of the Five Immortals Hall recounted the past of the "Dark Five Immortals," every word steeped in blood and chill.

After listening, Li Yan shook his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the Juxian Hall opposite, and said in a deep voice, "It seems these degenerates not only cultivate an Evil Technique, they have already joined hands with Jianmu."

With that, he raised his hand and pointed to the tightly shut doors of the Juxian Hall, "Let’s first see what has happened here."

After the commotion just now, the two remaining elders no longer had the slightest doubt on their faces.

They nodded silently and led everyone toward the main altar of the Five Immortals Hall, enclosed by blue-brick walls and laid out in the style of a Guandong courtyard.

Pushing open the heavy black-lacquered wooden doors, a chill aura mixed with stale incense and bestial rankness rushed forth.

A spacious courtyard came into view, the ground paved with blue bricks, the piled snow swept into the corners.

Facing the main gate stood a three-bay main hall with a ridged roof, its top covered in green tiles. At the corners of the eaves crouched small stone beasts in various forms, already somewhat eroded, mostly foxes, weasels, rats, snakes, and hedgehogs—the very symbols of the Five Immortals outside the border.

On the east and west sides were slightly lower side rooms, their doors and windows tightly shut.

There were no flowers, plants, or trees typical of a common courtyard; only several huge stone troughs were placed beneath the veranda of the main hall. Inside them were frozen-hard, unrecognizable remnants of offerings; a few purple sables and gray rats with dull fur and cloudy eyes shrank into the corners, watching the intruders with a gaze that was both wary and numb.

Stepping into the main hall, the light within was dim, relying only on a few ever-burning oil lamps to cast a wavering yellow glow.

Directly ahead stood a huge, lacquer-peeling offering table, upon which countless spirit tablets were densely arranged.

The tablets were of various materials—wood, jade, bone—and of mixed ages, some old, some new.

On them were inscribed all kinds of titles: "Seat of Grandmaster Hu of the Hu Lineage, Hu Tianshan," "Seat of Granny Chang of the Chang Lineage, Chang Cuiyun," "Seat of the White Sect Leader of the Bai Lineage, Bai Yuanqing"... These were the spirit tablets of the successive Immortal Ancestors and outstanding disciples of the Five Immortals Hall, all of whom possessed Dao and received incense.

Above the offering table hung a large Black Wood plaque, carved with four archaic characters: "Spirits Gathered Here."

"Strange," Wang Daoxuan’s brows knit tightly. The pointer on the Turtle Shell Compass in his hand was frantically swaying left and right, at times spinning rapidly clockwise, at times trembling erratically counterclockwise, like a headless fly, utterly unable to settle on a direction.

"Yin Sha? Doesn’t feel like it. Evil energy? Not purely that either... This Compass is acting like it’s gone mad—nothing can be clearly sensed, yet everywhere reeks of wrongness." He twirled his beard, circling halfway around the offering table, his gaze sweeping over every corner. Aside from that lingering chill and staleness, there was indeed nothing visibly abnormal to the naked eye.

Li Yan did not answer.

He was standing before the offering table, his gaze grave as it swept over those silent tablets.

Suddenly, his chest burned hot!

Li Yan instinctively reached out to press the Hook Paper burning in his bosom, and his vision instantly blurred.

The scene of the main hall before him, filled with countless spirit tablets, suddenly twisted and faded, like a painting soaked through with water.

The elders’ low murmurs, Sha Lifei’s complaints, the faint sound of Wang Daoxuan twirling his beard... all vanished, replaced by an absolute, suffocating silence.

The world before his eyes changed color and peeled away.

It was still that main hall filled with countless spirit tablets, yet the sight was entirely different.

Behind those cold wooden, Jade Plate, and Bone Token tablets, there was no longer a void of emptiness. Instead, there appeared densely packed, overlapping, indistinct figures!

They were of all forms and shapes; some vaguely retained human form, clad in archaic robes; some were enormous shadowy foxes, weasels, snakes, rats, and hedgehogs, their spiritual light flickering; still others were of ancient, indescribable shapes, exuding auras that were by turns majestic, lively, or deeply weathered by time.

These were the many Immortal Spiritual Bodies enshrined by the Five Immortals Hall, existing by relying on the spirituality of the Changbai Mountain ancestral vein!

They ought to have been enjoying incense here, sheltering this region.

Yet at this moment, these Immortal figures, which should have been radiant with spiritual light, had grown blurry and indistinct, flickering in and out of sight.

What was even more unsettling was that on each of these silhouettes there coiled anywhere from several to dozens of chains formed from thick, congealed black smoke!

These chains bit deep into their Spiritual Bodies, writhing and tightening like venomous serpents.

Every contraction made those shadows twist in agony and dim a little further.

Countless such chains of black smoke did not hang in the air but, like ugly black roots, extended from beneath the feet of each bound Immortal figure, eventually converging into several even thicker torrents of black smoke, radiating boundless malice, which plunged deep into the ground beneath the main hall.

That was precisely where the Earth Veins connecting to the Changbai Mountain ancestral vein lay!

The black smoke, like greedy parasites, was continuously drawing some sort of power from the Earth Veins, then channeling its pollution and fetters back, through the chains, into the imprisoned Immortals.

A murky aura, mingling despair, fury, pain, and the defilement of vast spirituality, surged like an invisible tide and crashed fiercely against Li Yan’s Divine Soul.

His Daluo Dharma Body instinctively began to operate, barely managing to withstand this strike that went straight for his very soul.

The vision came swiftly and faded just as fast.

The scene before his eyes snapped back into clarity: the cold, silent main hall, the wavering oil lamps, the densely packed spirit tablets, and the puzzled, worried faces of his companions returned to his sight.

In his ears once more sounded Wang Daoxuan’s muttering and the faint snap of Sha Lifei spitting out a stalk of grass.

"Hoo..." Li Yan let out a long, turbid breath. "Behind the spirit tablets... are the True Spirits of the Immortals. Densely packed, beyond counting."

Everyone was stunned at these words and, by reflex, looked toward the empty space behind those tablets, naturally seeing nothing at all.