Volume 3: Global Vanguard & The Advanced Pinnacle
Chapter 261
Underworld Cult Appears at the Bottom of the Killing Abyss
Inside the rough basalt stone chamber located just off the west side of the Ming King’s rear hall, the silvery-purple rays of light gradually subsided, sinking deep into Lin Feng’s skin.
He sat cross-legged on the moss-covered stone dais, his eyes half-closed, his breathing as steady as the heartbeat of a millennium-old mountain range. Within his boundless, vast spiritual sea at this moment, an unprecedented and magnificent scene was unfolding.
Four sprawling Star Seas pulsing with immense magical energy were arranged in a rock-solid, four-pillar formation. In the eastern corner, the dark purple Lightning Star Sea rumbled with thunder, bolts of Nirvana Lightning churning like ancient pythons waiting to tear the heavens apart. In the southern corner, the Fire Star Sea burned fiercely with the deep crimson flames of the Primeval Dragonflame, having reached the Advanced Tier 2 realm; the heat radiating from it warped the spiritual space.
And most impressive of all were the two brand-new star seas that had just been nurtured after fully absorbing the essence of the Wraith Soul Core: the Shadow Star Sea, pitch-black and as deep as the universe’s bottomless abyss, where darkness seemed to flow silently with a will of its own; and the Summoning Star Sea, sparkling with a mysterious platinum brilliance, carrying the ancient covenant breath linked to the wild beast plane.
Four Advanced Star Seas coexisting simultaneously in a single body!
If news of this were leaked to the Shenzhou magic community, even those hundred-year secluded monsters at the Forbidden Curse Council would likely spring up in sheer terror. A young mage not yet twenty years old possessing four elements simultaneously reaching the Advanced Tier, with a magical energy reserve ten times denser than an ordinary person—this was a heaven-defying miracle without precedent in the history of human magic.
Lin Feng slowly opened his eyes. His jet-black pupils were unfathomably deep and as calm as an unrippled mirror, but hidden deep within was the sixth-realm spiritual pressure that caused the surrounding air to tremble faintly. He clenched his fists, feeling torrents of mighty magical power circulating rhythmically through his seven hundred and twenty acupuncture points.
“How is it, Lin Feng?”
A soft voice rang out beside him. Ye Qingwan stepped closer, holding a pure pale-green jade magic wand that radiated a clear light. The girl’s autumn-water-clear eyes intently observed him, the worry from earlier now replaced by a sigh of relief.
A few paces away, Elder Lu Zhen stood leaning against a stone pillar carved with coiling dragon patterns. His ash-gray robes fluttered slightly in the subterranean drafts. The old man stroked his white beard, his deep gaze resting on the young man’s chest:
“Your internal aura is restrained, and your magical energy is as solid as a rock. You little brat are truly a rare, heavens-defying monster. Absorbing the Wraith Soul Core is extremely perilous, yet you completed the flawless fusion in less than a quarter of an hour; your Spiritual Might has even honed an extra layer of sharpness. This trip down to the Killing Abyss, this old man can say he chose the right person.”
“Many thanks to the Elder for guarding my meditation.” Lin Feng stood up, lightly dusting the stone dust from the hem of his black battle robe. He smiled faintly at Ye Qingwan: “I am fine. My current strength is completely consolidated; if we encounter that pack of Corpse God Giants again, a single fusion spell of Lightning and Fire will be enough to send them packing to the netherworld.”
Qingwan chuckled softly, dimples appearing faintly on her cheeks: “I know you’re powerful, great hero who saved the city.”
However, the smile on Lin Feng’s lips suddenly vanished.
His brows abruptly furrowed tightly. His ears twitched slightly, and the exceptional, keen senses of his sixth-realm Spiritual Might instantly caught an abnormal anomaly that had just swept across the space.
A bone-chilling subterranean wind blew from deep within the fissure behind the rear hall wall. The wind carried the moldy earth scent of an ancient tomb, but mixed within it was an extremely bizarre stench that immediately pulled Lin Feng’s nerves taut like a bowstring.
It was the suffocatingly thick stench of fresh blood. The blood of the living—foul, greasy, tightly intertwined with the characteristic burning sulfur stink of the most filth-ridden heretical rituals.
This smell... Lin Feng could absolutely never forget it!
That blood-drenched memory from Bian’an City years ago instantly surged into his mind. On that fateful stormy night, the underground streams were poisoned, hordes of fiends tore through the city walls, and the heartbreaking cries of thousands of innocent compatriots fell into the beasts’ maws... All of those tragedies originated from this very same repulsive stench!
“The Underworld Cult!”
Lin Feng ground each word out through his teeth. The deep, rumbling voice contained a chilling murderous intent that caused the temperature in the stone chamber to plummet by several degrees.
Ye Qingwan started violently, the jade sword in her hand vibrating slightly: “What did you say? The Underworld Cult heretics? How could they possibly appear ten thousand fathoms deep at the bottom of the Killing Abyss?!”
Lu Zhen’s expression also changed instantly. The old man strode toward the crack in the stone wall, closing his eyes to sense the ancient magical seals of the Ming King’s Palace. After only three breaths, the gray-haired Elder’s brows knitted into a deep groove:
“Not good! The ancient barrier protecting the center of the mausoleum is being eroded! Someone is using a massive amount of fresh blood and nether heretical poison to shatter the underground magical sealing veins! This blood stench is shockingly concentrated... This isn’t the blood of just a few people, but of thousands of lives!”
“Damned beasts!” Lin Feng’s hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles cracked crisply.
Those civilian laborers, those hunting squads, those border patrol units that had mysteriously vanished outside the Ancient Capital’s city walls over the past half-year... It turned out they hadn’t died in the jaws of wilderness fiends at all, but had all been secretly kidnapped by these cultists and dragged down here!
“Let’s go! Let’s go see what kind of demonic tricks these sewer rats are pulling underground!”
Lin Feng flicked his sleeve. At that very moment, his newly-minted Advanced Shadow Star Sea unleashed its miraculous prowess.
A pitch-black mist without a single speck of impurity quietly poured out from beneath his feet, swiftly enveloping Ye Qingwan and Elder Lu Zhen. This was Advanced Shadow magic combined with the precise control of Spatial Telekinesis: Shadow Hiding!
All three of their figures instantly faded and completely dissolved into the deepest shadows of the stone walls. Their heartbeats, breathing, and even the fluctuations of elemental magic energy on their bodies were thoroughly nullified by an invisible membrane of the void. Even if a Super Mage were standing a few paces away without using specialized sensory magic to probe every inch of ground, they would still be utterly unable to detect the trio’s movements.
“Controlling the Shadow Element with such exquisite precision...” Lu Zhen inwardly marveled. The old man gave a slight nod of acknowledgment.
Three shadows glided silently along the narrow corridor behind the Ming King’s rear hall. This path sloped steeply downward, plunging straight into the magma depths below the palace complex.
The deeper they went, the more the air temperature rose bizarrely. But it wasn’t the warmth of a blazing fire; rather, it was a stifling, sweltering heat like entering a colossal slaughterhouse filled with long-rotting entrails. The thick stench of fresh blood rushed straight into their nostrils and congealed in their throats, forcing Ye Qingwan to silently circulate her Healing magic to purify the toxic air for the three of them.
The smooth granite walls on both sides were now scratched and mangled. Across the pitch-black stone, countless blood-red rune characters had been scribbled crudely using human blood mixed with demonic cinnabar powder. Those characters twisted and spasmed like countless grotesque earthworms writhing to absorb death energy from the void.
That was the notorious “Blood Demon Bone Script” prohibition of the Underworld Cult—a heretical technique that used the grievance of the dead before they drew their last breath to defile sacred barrier veins!
Passing the final bend of the steep sloping tunnel, a colossal underground cavern suddenly opened up before Lin Feng’s group.
The three of them pressed themselves against a rugged rock protruding from the high cavern vault, casting their gaze down to survey the panoramic scene below. The sight that unfolded caused all three of them to clench their fists, rage surging turbulently in their chests.
It was a man-made underground cave spanning thousands of square meters, hollowed out directly beneath the foundations of the ancient palace. In the center of the cavern sat a colossal octagonal black stone plaza.
At the center of the plaza, a nine-tiered obsidian stone altar reached straight up into the air, radiating a dim, ghostly red light. Surrounding the nine tiers of the altar, hundreds of stone ditches about half a meter wide were meticulously carved, intertwining like a spiderweb.
Inside those channels wasn’t water, but crimson-red fresh blood that was boiling violently, bubbling and emitting thick gray smoke reeking of a foul stench!
Suspended above the blood channels by thick iron chains were dozens of colossal, rusted iron cages. Packed tightly inside each iron cage were dozens of human beings.
They were ordinary civilians of the Ancient Capital, wounded soldiers, wretched hunters. Their bodies were emaciated and skin-and-bones, their eyes dazed and lifeless from prolonged torture and starvation. Piercing through their wrists and ankles were demonic dark-bronze drainage tubes.
Whenever a cultist standing on the ground violently yanked a chain, fresh blood spewed from the miserable victims’ bodies along the tubes, gushing heavily into the stone ditches below!
The feeble groans and heart-wrenching cries of those lives teetering on the edge of death echoed throughout the underground cavern, blending with the savage, frantic laughter of the cultists below to create a hair-raising picture of earthly hell.
“Beasts... Heartless beasts!” Ye Qingwan bit her lower lip until it bled. She gripped her magic staff tightly, her knuckles turning white from exerting too much force. If not for Lin Feng’s warm hand gently resting on her shoulder to hold her back, the young girl might not have restrained her fury and unleashed a storm of Wind magic to instantly crush those heretics.
“Calm down, Qingwan.” Lin Feng transmitted his voice into her consciousness, his tone low but as cold as millennium-old ice: “Don’t let your murderous intent expose our movements. We must observe their entire layout, find the ringleader, and then strike with a single destructive blow.”
Lin Feng swept his gaze across the entire black stone plaza.
The number of cultists below was shockingly large. There were at least three hundred wearing dark gray robes—Black-robed Cultists, most of whom were Primary and Tier 1 Intermediate Mages brainwashed by heretical arts. Holding leather whips embedded with sharp barbs, they continuously lashed out at the iron cages to stimulate the victims’ extreme terror, because according to their evil doctrine, blood filled with despair and resentment was the most potent catalyst for their black magic.
Stationed alternately around the nine tiers of the altar were over thirty individuals wearing dark blue robes trimmed with black thread—Blue-robed Envoys! Each Blue-robed Envoy possessed peak Intermediate Tier or half-step Advanced strength, holding magic staves topped with shriveled infant skulls, their mouths murmuring bizarre incantations in a distorted ancient tongue.
Yet, what held Lin Feng’s gaze the longest was the entity reigning at the very peak of the nine-tiered altar.
On the ninth tier, where all the blood channels converged at a single point, sat a colossal coffin over thirty meters long!
That coffin was not made of wood, nor stone or metal, but was pieced together from the bleached white rib bones of a primeval arch-dragon! Each dragon rib bone curved like eerie Gothic vaults, their surfaces covered in a thick layer of slimy purple-black moss.
Thousands of liters of the victims’ fresh blood, after flowing through the nine tiers of the altar, were entirely sucked into the cracks of that dragon-bone coffin like a bloodthirsty vacuum pump. Wherever the blood flowed, the bright red veins on the dragon skeleton instantly bulged, throbbing rhythmically like the blood vessels of a living creature awakening from slumber!
Along with every single beat, a brutal, ancient, and supremely evil death pressure began to pervade the underground cavern. That pressure was so heavy that the rock strata on the cavern ceiling rattled and cracked, sending stone dust cascading down. Even the space surrounding the coffin produced tiny, pitch-black fractures, resembling a shattered mirror on the verge of exploding!
“That is...” Lu Zhen’s pupils constricted violently, the hundred-year-old old man’s breathing suddenly becoming rapid. He transmitted his voice to Lin Feng with extreme shock:
“The Dark Bone Emperor! Heavens above... These lunatic cultists actually dare to excavate the mausoleum to awaken that monster!”
“What is the Dark Bone Emperor, Elder?” Lin Feng transmitted back, his gaze still glued to the dragon-bone coffin.
“It is an ancient Undead Monarch who ruled over this entire Ancient Capital plain three thousand years ago!” Lu Zhen said in a low voice, his tone carrying terror from the depths of historical consciousness: “It is a Supreme-level Undead Monarch that slaughtered dozens of dynasties, turning a whole stretch of Shenzhou land into a sea of white bones. Back then, the great Forbidden Curse Mage who was the patriarch of the Ming King school had to sacrifice his very life, executing a sealing forbidden spell just to trap its indestructible skeleton within this Dragon Bone coffin, suppressing it permanently beneath the Ming King’s Palace!”
Lu Zhen gnashed his teeth fiercely: “These heretics are taking advantage of the Killing Abyss’s upheaval, using the fresh blood of thousands of living people to wash away the ancients’ sealing imprint! Once the Dark Bone Emperor smashes the coffin and breaks out, its necromantic power will assimilate the entire magnetic field of the Killing Abyss, dragging this abyss of death to swallow the entire Ancient Capital in an instant! At that time, without any exterior fiends attacking, the two million residents of the Ancient Capital will instantly become food for the zombie horde!”
Hearing Lu Zhen’s explanation, Lin Feng felt as though his chest was being crushed by a thousand-ton boulder.
So this was the true conspiracy of the Underworld Cult!
From luring the Corpse God Giant horde to attack the North Gate to attract the attention of all the Ancient Capital’s military and elites, to secretly infiltrating the bottom of the Killing Abyss to erect the altar... All of these were interlocking moves calculated meticulously down to hair-raising detail! They wanted to turn the millennium-old Ancient Capital into a sea of blood to offer up to the Undead Monarch!
“We absolutely cannot let them complete the ritual!” Qingwan clenched her fists tightly, the Wind magic mana within her body already beginning to circulate silently around her fingertips.
“That’s right, but we mustn’t act rashly.” Lin Feng kept his mind at peak composure. His brain whirred like a sophisticated combat machine, analyzing every angle of the battlefield.
“Look, those nine tiers of altar form an interlocking formation.” Lin Feng pointed at the energy nodes flickering with red light: “Fresh blood flows into the coffin through the nine mana-gathering points at the nine corners of the altar. If we strike directly at the coffin, the backlash of the Dark Bone Emperor’s death aura could cause this entire underground cavern to collapse, burying the thousands of innocent people hanging up there.”
He turned to look at Lu Zhen and Qingwan, swiftly mapping out a blitz combat plan:
“We will split into three simultaneous attack prongs:
Prong One: Elder Lu Zhen, you are a master of ancient prohibitions. When I launch my attack to distract their attention, you will immediately use sealing forbidden arts to break the nine mana-gathering points at the base of the altar, severing the fresh blood supply to the Dragon Bone coffin. As long as it loses the nourishing stream of fresh blood, the Bone Emperor’s awakening process will be stalled.
Prong Two: Qingwan! You will use Advanced Wind Domain to wrap around all the iron cages in mid-air, cut the chains, and gently lower the cages down to a safe area behind this stone wall. Then use White Magic to purify the toxic miasma and save the lives of those who are still breathing.
Prong Three: That’s me! I will use Shadow and Lightning-Fire to wipe out all thirty Blue-robed Envoys and destroy the central altar!”
Hearing Lin Feng’s clear, decisive, and comprehensive plan, Lu Zhen couldn’t help nodding in praise: “A very tight plan! This old man can use the ‘Magical Locking Formation’ to seal the base of the altar within ten breaths. But Lin Feng, you must be careful; the combined battle array of those thirty Blue-robed Envoys is no joke, not to mention...”
Before Lu Zhen could finish his sentence, the corners of his eyes suddenly contracted.
“Crack... Crack... Crack...”
Crisp, shattering sounds suddenly echoed from the vault of the underground cavern over fifty meters high.
The space above the summit of the altar suddenly distorted violently. A void black hole about five meters in diameter slowly ripped open in mid-air. From within that black hole, a dense ash-gray fog billowed out, carrying an oppressive aura cold, demonic, and stifling ten times over all thirty Blue-robed Envoys combined!
Under this terrifying pressure, hundreds of Black-robed Cultists below instantly dropped their leather whips, collectively dropping to their knees on the black stone floor, kowtowing frantically like puppets:
“Welcome the Cult Leader’s descent! May the eternal darkness of the Underworld forever shelter the world!”
“Welcome the Cult Leader!” The thirty Blue-robed Envoys also respectfully knelt on one knee, holding their skull staves high above their heads.
Amidst the bone-chilling cheers of the heretics, a figure slowly stepped out from the ash-gray fog.
It was a tall, thin man draped in snow-white robes—a pristine white that radiated an eerie, ghostly quality to the extreme amidst the dark space at the bottom of the deep tomb.
On the chest of his white robe was embroidered a jet-black crescent moon dripping with crimson blood. His face was concealed behind a silver mask carved with a demonic skull, revealing only blood-red eyes that flickered like two wisps of ghost-fire.
The aura around him surged like a roaring ocean, pressing the surrounding space to fracture into jagged black strips.
Advanced Peak! Even... Half-step Super!
Hiding in the shadows, Lu Zhen’s pupils trembled, his voice choked in his chest:
“White-robed Cult Leader... It’s the Underworld Cult’s first chief enforcer... Ming Sha!”
At the very peak of the dragon-bone altar, the white-robed figure slowly descended and landed beside the Dragon Bone coffin. He reached out a white leather-gloved hand to gently touch the violently vibrating dragon ribs, letting out a series of shrill laughs like metal scraping against glass:
“The taste of fresh blood is truly exquisite... Awaken quickly, Lord of the Night. The entire Ancient Capital city above... is waiting for you to come tear it apart for appetizers!”
A towering murderous intent enveloped the entire ten-thousand-fathom deep tomb. The life-and-death battle deciding the fate of the Ancient Capital’s two million souls had been pushed to the brink of ultimate explosion!