The Blade-Wielding Legend

"Too dangerous!"

Wang Daoxuan immediately objected, "The Evil Qi in this Pool Water is heavier than anything I’ve ever seen! It may be highly poisonous, or hiding something even more vicious!"

"I know."

Li Yan’s tone was calm as he shook his head and said, "But we don’t have enough dry rations, and we’re surrounded by the beast horde. We can only pin our hopes on this one variable."

"Don’t worry. My Water Attribute is the best, and I have the North Emperor Mysterious Water Escape protecting me. I’m the most suitable one to go down and scout. You all stay up here and keep watch."

With that, he glanced once more at the suffocating sea of beasts on the periphery, and at the worried faces beside him. He took a deep breath, hesitated no longer, and the spell of the North Emperor Mysterious Water Escape instantly began circulating within his body!

A layer of nearly transparent Water Mist Gang Qi instantly covered his entire body.

He stepped forward, as if casting himself into thick ink, and slipped silently into that pitch-black, ice-cold Pool Water, leaving only a few ripples on the calm surface that quickly faded away.

The instant he entered the water, Li Yan felt the difference.

What lay below was far more dangerous than what his probe from above had revealed.

The Pool Water was cold to the point of searing pain, far beyond imagination, as though countless ice needles instantly pierced through the protection of his Water Element Gang Qi and stabbed straight into his marrow.

The dense, clotted Yin Sha was like a living thing, frantically trying to burrow into his pores and erode his meridians.

Fortunately, he had in his mouth a Purification Pill refined by Wang Daoxuan at Qiankun Academy, constantly releasing a pungent tang that kept him clear-headed.

He didn’t dare pause for even a breath. Forcing himself to endure that chill that seemed intent on freezing even his Divine Soul stiff, he urged on his Water Escape and drove himself downward with all his strength.

The water pressure surged sharply; darkness engulfed everything around him, his outstretched hand vanishing before his eyes. Only the Protective Gang Qi circulating around his body barely held the assault at bay.

The deeper he went, the thicker and more viscous that Yin Sha became, as if turning into countless ice needles, relentlessly stabbing at his Protective Gang Qi.

Each breath grew abnormally difficult, his heart pounding like a drum.

The sensations of his body were rapidly turning dull and numb. His limbs felt as though they had been filled with heavy molten lead, each stroke costing him great effort.

The bone-deep cold was racing along his limbs and skeleton, eroding every inch of muscle and bone. His eyelids grew incomparably heavy, as if glued by invisible frost; his vision began to blur and sway.

Even the pungent taste of the Purification Pill seemed to be fading...

"This is bad..." A fierce warning blared in Li Yan’s heart as he desperately tried to stir up more Gang Qi, but at this moment his meridians were like a riverbed split by frost, the circulation unbearably sluggish.

That Yin Sha surging up from the depths of the Pool Water carried an indescribable power of corrosion and sinking, steadily crushing his resistance bit by bit.

Finally, after he had sunk down to an unknown depth, a vaster, purer surge of icy cold slammed into him!

It was like an invisible giant hammer smashing down on his Divine Soul.

Li Yan only felt darkness swallow his sight, his last shred of consciousness like a guttering candle in the wind, snuffed out with a soft puff. His heavy eyelids shut completely, his body instantly losing all strength, turning stiff as an ice sculpture.

Only the instinct of the North Emperor Mysterious Water Escape still barely maintained the weakest trickle of Gang Qi, like some hibernating serpent or insect, just barely shielding his heart meridian from being completely frozen.

His body, in this boundless darkness and ice, completely slipped from his control. Like a Puppet with its strings cut, he slowly sank toward the even deeper, even more deathly still bottom of the Pool...

"Plop."

A dull, muffled sound broke the eternal silence at the bottom of the Pool.

Li Yan’s rigid body finally touched down on the Pool’s floor.

Below was filled with soft silt. The Dragon and Snake Card flared faintly to life, emitting a weak spiritual light that barely illuminated a small patch around him.

The scene within that glow made his scalp prickle.

The Pool bottom was unexpectedly paved with piles upon piles of white bones!

These remains had lain here for who knew how many years; their original colors had long faded, leaving only a pallid or ashen hue eaten away by time.

Their forms varied, twisted and shattered. Some maintained postures of struggle, fingers dug deep into the hard mud of the Pool floor; some were curled into balls, as if resisting a final chill...

Still others had skeletons unnaturally tall and thick, not human-shaped at all, with broken ribs like huge curved blades slanting from the ground...

Layer upon layer, densely packed, they extended out into the darkness beyond where the light could reach.

This place was clearly a vast graveyard that had lain silent for untold years, burying countless "Immortal Seekers" who had tried to explore this place and ultimately sunk into oblivion.

And just as Li Yan’s physical body sank like a stubborn stone among the corpses at the Pool bottom, his Divine Soul—stilled utterly by the impact of the Yin Sha—suddenly "awoke" in a strange sensation of separation!

It was not his flesh awakening, but his awareness returning.

It felt like he had passed through a cold, viscous membrane, and also like he had been flung by an invisible giant wave. Li Yan’s Divine Soul experienced a violent vertigo and tearing, and then the scene before his eyes abruptly shifted.

No longer was it the freezing, corpse-strewn, pitch-black Pool bottom.

He discovered he was "standing" in a strange, desolate space shrouded in a faint grayish-white mist.

Beneath his feet were shattered, massive bluestone slabs, with twisted, oddly colored moss-like plants stubbornly pushing up through the cracks.

Looking up, the sky was an oppressive leaden gray, with no Sun or Moon, no stars—only a dead, hazy pall.

Li Yan understood at once.

This was the interlayer between the Daluo Law Realm and the Human World.

The true ruins of Penglai Immortal Island!

Yet before him there were none of the legendary towers of jade and halls of jade, no clouds of Immortal aura. What met his gaze was an endless stretch of utterly abandoned palace ruins.

Broken, colossal white Jade pillars jutted from the rubble like the ribs of giant beasts. Halls that had once been resplendent with gold and jade were reduced to shattered walls and collapsed eaves, their exquisite carvings blurred beyond recognition by time and some unknown force.

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