Volume 3: Global Vanguard & The Advanced Pinnacle
Chapter 259
Spatial Forbidden Barrier & Subduing the Wraith Soul Crystals
The massive dark bronze gates closed behind them, completely cutting off the eerie howling wind from the bottom of the abyss and the ten thousand terracotta soldiers still prostrate on the stone steps. The atmosphere inside the secret chamber was so deathly silent that the footsteps of the three echoing against the floor sounded harsh and distinct.
This place did not feel like a cramped burial tomb at all, opening up instead into a colossal octagonal grand hall with a perimeter spanning hundreds of meters. The ceiling of the chamber soared high above, half-buried in drifting deep-blue mists that reflected ghostly phosphorescent glows emanating from inlaid jade rocks scattered across the millennium-old stone walls. The air was thick with the scent of ancient sandalwood intertwined with the pristine deathly aura of a dynasty that had perished since primordial times.
“Be careful, there is something unusual about this place.” Elder Lu Zhen lowered his voice in warning, his grey robe sleeves fluttering slightly as Earth-element magic quietly condensed at his fingertips to form a fragile protective barrier around his body.
Lu Zhen had lived nearly his entire life, experiencing countless ancient ruins and life-or-death perils, yet stepping into this chamber made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in continuous waves. The sense of lurking danger did not come from magical beasts or vengeful spirits, but emanated from every single inch of the surrounding air.
Ye Qingwan walked right beside Lin Feng, her hand gently tightening around the hilt of the Ice Soul short sword concealed at her waist. Her crystal-clear, jade-like eyes vigilantly surveyed every hidden corner of the grand hall. Ice-element magic circulated slowly through her blood vessels, helping her maintain absolute composure against any illusions or mental shockwaves.
“Lin Feng, look over there.” Ye Qingwan pointed ahead, her voice clear yet heavy with solemnity.
At the center of the octagonal grand hall, a jet-black stone lotus platform stood loftily suspended about three cubits above the ground. Atop the lotus platform, a rhombus-shaped crystal the size of a fist slowly rotated along an invisible axis.
The crystal bore a deep purple-blue hue like the bottom of a midnight sea, continuously emitting waves of supreme, immaculate spiritual energy. Tiny wisps of black lightning entwined around its body, colliding softly to produce extremely faint crackling sounds. Every single time the crystal throbbed gently like a heartbeat, the surrounding space rippled undulatingly, carrying a soul energy so pure that the Sea of Consciousness of all three people in the chamber vibrated in unison.
“Wraith Soul Crystal...” Lu Zhen trembled as he uttered the name, undisguised astonishment clearly visible in his elderly eyes: “The legendary spiritual supreme treasure of the Underworld Dynasty... Legend has it that a single drop of its essence is enough to heal all injuries to the sea of consciousness, and even elevate a mage’s spiritual realm to an entirely new level!”
A priceless treasure thousands of years old lay right before their eyes, less than sixty meters away. However, between the steps they stood on and the stone lotus platform lay a flat floor paved with obsidian stones as glossy as a giant mirror reflecting clear silhouettes.
On the surface of that obsidian mirror, silver magic grooves intersected with one another, dividing the vast courtyard into hundreds of neat chessboard squares. Each square was roughly two square meters wide, terrifyingly still.
“Wait, do not act rashly!” Lin Feng abruptly reached out to block Lu Zhen just as the Judgement Association elder was about to lift his foot to step forward.
Lu Zhen paused, looking sideways at the youth beside him with mild surprise: “Little friend Lin, did you discover something?”
Lin Feng did not answer immediately. His dark eyes narrowed, his pitch-black pupils suddenly flashing with a hazy silver light of Spatial-element magic. Under normal vision, the obsidian floor was merely a magnificent ancient carved artwork, but within Lin Feng’s spatial perception, the layer of air above the chessboard was churning with the most terrifying undercurrents.
“Let me check.”
Lin Feng flicked his wrist, pulling out a Black Iron heavy sword from his storage ring. This was an intermediate-grade magic tool for self-defense, forged from extremely high-impact-resistant metal capable of withstanding a direct blow from a Commander-level magical beast without deformation.
He swung his arm, throwing the heavy sword toward a chessboard square some ten meters away.
The heavy sword tore through the wind as it flew. But the exact moment the tip of the sword crossed the boundary of the first square, a spine-chilling scene instantly unfolded.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, nor were there any fire traps or protruding spikes.
There was only a very faint, razor-sharp sound like a razor blade skimming across thin silk:
“Swoosh!”
The space above the square suddenly warped into a convex lens shape. Dozens of pitch-black dimensional cracks as thin as hair strands intersected in a fraction of a second and then vanished.
The incredibly sturdy Black Iron heavy sword that flew into that range instantly halted mid-air. No physical resistive force acted upon it, but the entire sword body suddenly disintegrated into thousands of tiny metal cubes, as fine as powdered sand! The black iron dust fell scattered onto the obsidian stone, only to be dragged away by an invisible suction force into the silver magic grooves, disappearing without a trace.
The entire process took less than half a second.
The entire hall fell into a deathly silence.
Lu Zhen looked at the newly dissipated iron sand, cold sweat beading on his forehead, his chest heaving violently. If he had stepped onto that square just then, even with all his magical protective armor activated, his end would have been no different from that sword: minced into scraps of flesh and bone by hundreds of spatial blades.
“Spatial Annihilation Array... No, this scale is far more complex!” Ye Qingwan took a soft deep breath, her voice carrying extreme terror: “This is an Ancient Spatial Chessboard! This entire area is a multi-dimensional labyrinth array. Every single square contains invisible spatial blades moving with independent trajectories!”
“That is correct.” Lu Zhen swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his voice hoarse: “This forbidden barrier combines the laws of the Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Earthly Branches with Void Rifts. The spatial blades do not stand still; they continuously swap positions according to every breathing cycle. To cross this chessboard, unless one is a Spatial Forbidden Mage using forbidden magic to forcibly tear open the entire barrier, otherwise... anyone who steps in will only find a path to death!”
Lu Zhen’s gaze turned toward the central lotus platform, filled with regret and helplessness. The Wraith Soul Crystal was right before their eyes, a treasure that could help the Judgement Association produce more apex spiritual powerhouses, but this sixty-meter distance was like an insurmountable gulf of death.
“Could it be that we must return empty-handed?” Lu Zhen bitterly clenched his fists.
“Not necessarily.”
A steady, calm voice broke the hopeless atmosphere.
Lin Feng stepped forward, standing right at the edge of the first obsidian slab. The cold wind blowing from inside the secret chamber fluttered the hem of his cloak.
“Lin Feng, what are you planning to do?” Ye Qingwan hurriedly pulled his sleeve, her eyes brimming with anxiety: “This array cannot be solved with brute force. If you miscalculate by a tenth of a second or step half an inch off, spatial cracks will slice your body apart instantly!”
Lin Feng turned his head to look at her, shaking his head slightly with a reassuring smile: “Sister Qingwan, rest assured, I am not someone fond of throwing myself into death’s jaws. This array indeed harbors countless lethal intents, but whoever set it up left a single path of survival.”
He reached out to touch his chest lightly.
There, beneath his clothes, the Primordial Dragon Pendant was radiating a warm heat that permeated straight into every blood vessel. From the moment he stepped into the chamber, the Dragon Pendant had continuously emitted strange resonant vibrations. A sequence of hazy dragon-shaped ancient glyphs was becoming clear in Lin Feng’s sea of consciousness, each stroke acting like a needle pointing the way, decoding the magical flow structure of the entire Underworld ruins.
Most importantly, Lin Feng possessed the Spatial element—the most mysterious and noble high-tier magic.
He closed his eyes. Within the deep Sea of Consciousness, the silver Galaxy of the Spatial element suddenly burst into blinding light. Silver star-particles connected with one another to form exquisite trajectories, releasing an invisible ripple of spatial waves that enveloped the entire chessboard area ahead.
When Lin Feng opened his eyes once more, the world in his sight had completely changed.
The glossy black obsidian flat plane vanished. In its place, before him was a dense web of silver threads and tiny black holes constantly warping. The spatial blades, invisible to ordinary eyes, now appeared as sharp gray ribbons sweeping back and forth at terrifying speeds.
Every single square was a magic node. Some squares contained as many as three intersecting spatial blades, while others were spatial sinkholes waiting to swallow all matter.
Yet amidst this chaotic matrix, Lin Feng perceived an extremely sophisticated periodic law. Much like an ancient clockwork with tens of thousands of interlocking gears, every square possessed a short “calm period”—the moment when the spatial blades moved out of range, restoring a stable spatial state for a fleeting second.
“Qian Palace, offset by three ticks... shift to Xun Palace...” Lin Feng muttered his calculations mentally, his spiritual power operation reaching its limit.
“Lin Feng, do you really see the path?” Lu Zhen asked, holding his breath, his heart tightening as he watched the youth lift his foot.
“You two stay here, absolutely do not follow.” Lin Feng instructed concisely in an unquestionable tone: “This chessboard only allows one person to enter. The weight and magic of a second person will disrupt the entire calculation cycle.”
With that, Lin Feng did not hesitate for another split second.
He took his first step!
His foot landed firmly on the third square from the left edge, corresponding to the Kan Water position.
“Whoosh!”
A freezing silver wind swept past the heel of Lin Feng’s boot, missing the leather by less than a finger’s breadth. But exactly as he calculated, the spatial blade that just grazed the outer edge of the square slid along a parabolic curve toward the adjacent square.
The square beneath Lin Feng’s feet remained as calm as still water, the silver magic grooves flashing once before dimming.
Safe!
Behind him, Ye Qingwan subconsciously clenched her hands in front of her chest, her ten fingertips turning pale white with tension. She did not dare blink, focusing all her attention on every movement of the youth before her.
Lin Feng did not stop to catch his breath. He knew well the rules of the Spatial Chessboard: once stepping onto the chessboard, the kill-array cycle would begin to accelerate. If one lingered for more than three seconds on a single square, the barrier would automatically trigger a self-destruct mechanism, crushing that entire square into nothingness.
The second step!
Lin Feng did not advance straight ahead; instead, he abruptly leaned forward, sliding diagonally at a forty-five-degree angle to the right, stepping onto a square flickering with pale blue light.
The exact moment his toe touched the ground, a razor-sharp dimensional blade slashed straight down from the ceiling of the chamber onto the old square he had just left!
“SLASH!”
The obsidian stone where he had stood split open with a deep, pitch-black groove, then quickly closed back up like healing skin. The breathtakingly perilous scene made Lu Zhen outside tremble all over, sweat soaking through his back.
“Coordinates three-dash-seven, decay cycle two-tenths of a second...”
Lin Feng was completely immersed in the world of numbers and magical coordinates. The Primordial Dragon Pendant on his chest radiated heat continuously, granting him extraordinary sensitivity to even the tiniest spatial fluctuations. He felt the flow of dimensional airflow, hearing the whistle of spatial tears before they took form.
He moved nimbly.
At times he took a long stride vaulting across two consecutive squares; at times he paused for exactly a second, lowering his center of gravity to let a spatial shockwave band sweep across the top of his head, ruffling a few strands of black hair; at times he spun on his tiptoes, slipping through a narrow gap less than half a meter wide between two colliding spatial walls.
Every step Lin Feng took was smooth and astonishingly precise, resembling a dancer gliding atop the scythes of death. Each step caused the silver magic grooves on the stone floor to burst with brilliant radiance, emitting resonant chimes like ancient bronze bells.
Ten meters... twenty meters... forty meters...
The distance to the central lotus platform shrank progressively amidst the utter astonishment of the two onlookers outside.
“A genius... Truly a heaven-defying prodigy!” Lu Zhen whispered in admiration, his gaze looking at Lin Feng’s back unable to conceal awe: “Not only does it require a profound understanding of the Spatial Element, but also a rock-solid mindset and calculation accuracy to an absolute degree. This youth... exactly what kind of monster is he!”
Ye Qingwan said nothing, but the corners of her eyes shimmered with boundless pride. The youth she trusted had never disappointed anyone.
At this moment, Lin Feng had crossed over fifty meters, leaving him just three paces away from the stone lotus platform.
Yet, precisely at this moment, a terrifying anomaly occurred!
Perhaps sensing an outsider approaching the core treasure, the final three squares leading up to the lotus platform simultaneously burst into blood-red light. All the surrounding spatial blades stopped moving in ordinary periodic trajectories, instead congregating and spinning crazily to form a colossal funnel-shaped dimensional vortex blocking the path!
“Void Storm!” Lu Zhen cried out in shock: “The final layer’s self-defense barrier! Lin Feng, be careful, do not advance any further!”
The silver vortex whistled piercingly, hundreds of spatial blades warping and frictioning against each other to produce pitch-black lightning bolts tearing apart eardrums. The entire space surrounding the final three paces had completely collapsed, turning into a deadly chaotic zone with no safe squares left to step on.
Retreat?
The lingering time on his current square was down to less than a second. If he retreated, the entire chessboard cycle would be disrupted, and Lin Feng would instantly be swallowed by the kill-array behind him.
The only path was forward!
Lin Feng’s gaze froze, sharp as a newly unsheathed sword. In this life-or-death moment, he did not show a shred of panic.
“Trying to block me? Even a remnant millennium-old barrier dares to try and stop me?”
Lin Feng roared softly in his chest. The Spatial Sea of Consciousness within his body churned violently, channeling all his silver magic into his right arm. At the same time, the Primordial Dragon Pendant on his chest erupted with a resonant dragon roar echoing through the entire chamber!
A hazy golden true-dragon shadow suddenly manifested behind Lin Feng’s back. The coercion of the primordial dragon fused perfectly with the Spatial-element magic, creating an absolute suppressing force.
Lin Feng raised his right index finger, aiming straight at the epicenter of the spatial vortex ahead, and pointed!
—Fixed Space, Determining Mind!”
“HUMMM——!”
A silver column of light mixed with golden radiance shot from his fingertip, accurately piercing the intersection of the three invisible magic gears at the core of the vortex.
That was the “Array Eye”—the sole fatal flaw of the entire Spatial Chessboard that Lin Feng’s divine sense had scanned throughout the fifty-meter journey just now!
The supreme power of the Primordial Dragon Pendant combined with Spatial-element magic precisely struck the vulnerable node. The furiously roaring dimensional vortex suddenly froze mid-air, like water instantly frozen solid!
One-tenth of a second!
A duration so brief that even a blink was too slow, but more than enough for Lin Feng.
His figure transformed into a hazy afterimage, gliding straight past the frozen spatial crack, his right foot stepping firmly onto the final obsidian stone step before leaping upward.
“BOOM!”
Behind him, the entire spatial vortex shattered into tens of thousands of tiny silver light crystals, dissolving completely into nothingness. All the magic grooves on the obsidian chessboard floor simultaneously extinguished, returning absolute stillness to the octagonal secret chamber.
The millennium-old barrier was thoroughly broken!
Lin Feng landed steadily on the black stone lotus platform.
Less than an arm’s length away from him, the Wraith Soul Crystal floated and rotated, emitting a pure purple-blue light as soothing as a full moon illuminating his entire body.
Standing at such close range, Lin Feng fully perceived the wonder of this supreme treasure. It possessed no impurities whatsoever; the entire crystal was as transparent as glass, enclosing a drop of deep purple liquid moving like a conscious living entity. Wave after wave of soul ripples emanating from it caused Lin Feng’s sea of consciousness to vibrate joyfully, instantly dissolving all fatigue and spiritual depletion from the array-solving process like foam.
“Indeed a divine artifact nourishing the soul of the Underworld Dynasty...” Lin Feng breathed a soft sigh of relief, his gaze filled with satisfaction.
He slowly reached out his right hand.
Seemingly sensing the immaculate aura of the Primordial Dragon Pendant on Lin Feng, the Wraith Soul Crystal showed no resistance at all. Instead, it emitted a crisp chime, actively flying toward his palm and obediently landing like a bird returning to its nest.
The moment Lin Feng’s skin touched the crystal’s surface, a piercingly cool sensation instantly surged from his palm through his meridians, rushing fiercely toward his glabella!
“BOOM!”
Lin Feng’s mind shook violently. Within his sea of consciousness, a sea of purple-blue light burst forth brilliantly!
The pure soul energy accumulated over thousands of years within the Wraith Soul Crystal rushed like a burst dyke, pouring frantically into his sea of consciousness. Lin Feng’s stagnant spiritual realm began to crack, the invisible shackles confining his soul being torn apart bit by bit by this massive energy.
His soul power was expanding at a terrifying speed!
Previously, Lin Feng’s spiritual perception range covered only a few hundred meters around him, but now, cleansed and nourished by the Wraith Soul Crystal, each of his soul threads extended outward, permeating every inch of earth and stone, clearly sensing underground magic flows surging ten thousand fathoms deep.
The crystal in his hand slowly melted, transforming into a brilliant purple-blue stream of light that darted straight between Lin Feng’s eyebrows, leaving a faint pale-blue flame-shaped mark on his glabella before sinking deep into his divine soul.
The aura around Lin Feng surged abruptly, an invisible yet mountain-heavy spiritual coercion spreading outward from the lotus platform across the octagonal grand hall!
In the distance, Elder Lu Zhen involuntarily took a step back, his eyes widening in terror: “Such terrifying spiritual coercion... To what level has this kid’s soul realm reached? Even I feel chest tightness and difficulty breathing before his soul fluctuations!”
Ye Qingwan breathed a sigh of relief, a radiant smile blooming on her exquisite, delicate face: “He succeeded.”
Yet, before their joy could linger, another horrifying catastrophe struck.
“CRACK... CRACK... CRACK...”
Deprived of the Wraith Soul Crystal—the core suppressive artifact of the entire chamber—the black stone lotus platform beneath Lin Feng’s feet suddenly developed massive cracks.
The blood-red magic patterns on the surrounding octagonal walls simultaneously lit up in an eerie fashion. The entire colossal secret chamber began to shake violently, stone dust falling from the dozens-of-meters-high ceiling like a heavy downpour.
“BOOM... BOOM... BOOM...”
From deep beneath the earth under the stone lotus platform, a muffled roar carrying boundless fury and an overwhelming deathly aura of an ancient creature suddenly echoed, vibrating intensely enough to pain the eardrums of all three.
The ground beneath the lotus platform split open into a bottomless abyss. From within that pitch-black fissure, thick bloody mist billowed upward, accompanied by the chilling sounds of giant iron chains clanking against one another.
A giant hand covered in sharp black scales and long claws stretched out from the abyss, gripping tightly onto the edge of the stone lotus platform!
Standing atop the lotus platform, Lin Feng’s gaze hardened as he stared down at the newly opened deep fissure. The blue flame mark on his glabella flickered slightly, magic instantly surging to its peak throughout his body.
The true secret of the Underworld Palace was now beginning to reveal itself...