The folded royal capital

"Ugh... it stinks terribly."

Crawling out of the filthy blood, Qin Siyu wrung out the hem of her clothes, which were soaked with blood, with a look of disgust, and then wiped her wet hair.

The slightly viscous, sticky blood on her body was already irritating with its stuffy, damp feeling, but the stench of blood made Qin Siyu feel even more disgusted.

Especially considering that this filthy blood was melted from refined corpses...

Qin Siyu dared not think about it further, feeling as if she would vomit if she continued to think about it.

She initially considered refusing to use this method... but when she asked Lin Yu there were any other options, she received a meaningful gaze and a very unsettling answer from him.

"Yes, there is... but as I said, if we want these Dark Guards to stop attacking us, they have to treat us like we're dead."

Qin Siyu ultimately didn't have the courage to ask Lin Yu what the other method he mentioned was specifically.

"Phew, I've seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood before... Leng Jing, Qin Siyu... You still need to cling to that senior's coattails and get back alive to confirm what happened in the Village..."

"It would be best if we could take some treasures with us from this Royal Palace, and even better if we could collect the materials that can remove the Fire Poison on the way back..."

Qin Siyu kept telling herself this, and quickly overcame her fear.

Then, Master Wei Jian, who had crawled out from the other side, had blood dripping from his hair and beard. He coughed lightly twice, but his expression seemed normal.

"What a terrible thing, what a terrible thing..."

Master Wei Jian said, glancing at Lin Yu, "Young hero, this method... is really a bit unorthodox!"

Lin Yu smiled and said, "In times of emergency, we must act expediently, Master... let's go."

With that, Lin Yu raised his Torch and walked deeper into the Royal Palace.

Passing by the Dark Guards who had completely ignored them, they quickly discovered, illuminated by the pale light of the flames...

The "Royal Palace" is now mostly a solemn, deep, and heavy dark black, with dark purple and dark red window frames, pillars, and flags, making the whole Royal Palace look very dull.

For a moment, Lin Yu almost thought that this place might have originally been a different color, but had been blackened by some kind of change.

But judging from his feelings... this place was originally designed with a dark, black color scheme.

Besides the dark atmosphere, another distinctive feature here is... its size.

Here, everything is exceptionally grand, as if to fully embody the concept of "beauty in size." Each stone brick underfoot is as big as half a stadium, the flagpoles are as thick as pillars, and the pillars are even thicker than towers.

Walking through it, although it seems that the buildings are not far apart, it is actually quite tiring to walk around.

"Has this Royal Palace practically hollowed out Nine Cold Mountain?" Qin Siyu muttered, complaining with a slightly exaggerated tone, "Senior, senior—where are we going?"

After all, although the Royal Palace was very large, Lin Yu's pace had been light and his direction firm since the beginning, as if he knew his destination.

Master Wei Jian also spoke up, "Young hero, you acted too quickly just now, I didn't even have time to ask... What exactly are you looking for at the Old God Royal Palace Ruins?"

Upon hearing Master Wei Jian's words, Lin Yu frankly replied, "To be honest, I didn't know what I was looking for at first. I only knew that there was another group of people with ulterior motives plotting something within this Royal Palace... So, I intend to find out what they are planning, and if possible, I hope to thwart their plans."

"But after arriving here... I've gradually come to understand what those people I've been chasing are planning to do here."

Lin Yu stopped walking as he spoke.

From the very beginning, he wasn't following the architecture and paths of the Underground Palace to guide Lin Yu...

It has always been a "Formation".

Lin Yu could clearly sense the presence of the "Formation" mentioned in "Cold Cicada's" Memory.

Because by simply extending one's Mental Power perception slightly into the ground... one can sense Formation that is almost integrated with the entire Nine Cold Mountain and the entire Prison Mountain Realm.

This was the same Formation that Lin Yu had sensed outside—and now, standing in the Royal Palace and on top of Formation, Lin Yu understanding of the Formation became even clearer.

Although he could only glimpse a small part of the Formation, it was enough for Lin Yu to deduce Formation function.

This is still mentioned in Cold Cicada's Memory.

"Seal".

The function of this Formation... is sealing.

As Formation, it surpasses almost any Formation Lin Yu has seen in the Prison Mountain Realm —including the Sect-Protecting Grand Formation of the ancient sect Duxuan Sect, which consists of hundreds of sub-formations. None of them can compare to the Formation under Lin Yu's feet at this moment, which is integrated with the Royal Palace and merged into the Nine Cold Mountain.

And as a seal...

Its scale even surpasses that of the one that sealed Zhu Qiansi, which was built at the cost of the lives of millions in Willow Town and centered around the "Hundred Tribulations Forbidden Art".

The Formation was even reinforced by Jian Cunyi.

Therefore, Lin Yu found it hard to imagine... what kind of Yaomo or other being was sealed inside this seal that existed before the Chaos of Huotian, or even before the fall of the Great Rui Dynasty.

After all...

Although Master Wei Jian provided some "rumors," supposedly about a Yaomo born in the ancient capital of Great Rui, so much time has passed that Lin Yu cannot be sure how much of the legend is credible.

Especially considering what he has seen and heard within the Royal Palace so far... there are still many details that don't match up.

This Royal Palace, this seal... everything seems out of place.

After all... it's absurd that a Dynasty that once unified the Two Mountains and Six Hells would suddenly give birth to a Yaomo in its ancient capital that no one could deal with, forcing it to relocate the capital and abandon the Royal Palace!

Even assuming that things really happened in a hurry back then, and a Yaomo suddenly appeared in this Royal Palace, forcing Great Rui to resort to this desperate measure... why are there no signs of fighting or destruction anywhere in this Royal Palace?

Moreover, as Master Wei Jian just mentioned, these Dark Guards were originally created as "Ritual Artifact" and "Living Gu"...

Why doesn't the royal family of the Great Rui Dynasty hire real bodyguards? Is it because they can't afford it?

Don't they find it unlucky to keep such Ritual Artifact in the palace to protect themselves?

While it could be explained that these "Living Gu guards" are more loyal, this explanation is far-fetched—after all, they can still be manipulated by the "Magical Artifacts," and if the person holding the Magical Artifacts betrays them, the risk to the royal family remains the same.

Moreover... if this royal family truly loses its support and cannot even select a few hundred trusted and skilled personal guards, then this Dynasty will likely collapse quite quickly.

The accumulation of various strange events made Lin Yu realize that... what happened at the Royal Palace ruins of the Great Rui Dynasty back then was definitely not as simple as he had imagined.

But Lin Yu wasn't that concerned about the Truth of what happened back then...

All he cared about was what the "Diviner" intended to do here.

Lin Yu became even more curious after learning that the "emperor" was also involved.

Looking at this Formation, Lin Yu had a vague idea of what was going on.

Regardless of what kind of seal the Great Rui Dynasty created or what happened back then, the "Diviner's" purpose...

They're probably going to release what's sealed inside!

Therefore, after carefully standing at this Formation node and further sensing the direction of the spiritual energy flowing along the Earth Vein within the Formation, Lin Yu quickly locked his gaze on one spot.

"Follow me."

As Lin Yu spoke, he quickly started jogging.

Qin Siyu and Master Wei Jian were taken aback for a moment, but they quickly caught up with Lin Yu.

After running for about fifteen minutes, when Master Wei Jian was so tired that he was panting, Lin Yu stopped again.

This time, he stopped...

It was in front of a small house.

Qin Siyu looked at Lin Yu standing in front of the four-cornered hut that resembled a pavilion and asked, "Senior... what's wrong? Is there something strange about this hut?"

"Why are they focusing on this little house instead of any of the larger buildings?"

Lin Yu said in a low voice, "Because even those larger buildings... although they are large enough, the style is wrong— Master Wei Jian should have noticed this as well."

"Although you are not skilled in architecture, you Artifact Forging for many years and have a good understanding of various fields of knowledge. You should have noticed those things that are not right."

Master Wei Jian nodded slightly upon hearing Lin Yu's words. "I do find it a bit strange... Although those buildings are large enough, they are... not grand enough, not magnificent enough."

"Many are just huge houses... This place is called 'Royal Palace Ruins,' but there's absolutely nothing that could truly be called a 'palace' or 'temple.'"

"Those are just studies, attics, and the like... mostly Warehouse and kitchens, they don't look like the main palace at all."

Lin Yu nodded. "Yes, I noticed that too... so I just discovered something by sensing the flow of the Earth Vein here..."

"The space here is 'folded' by a Formation —just like the 'Yin Side' of the Du Duxuan Sect, a part of the space is not in a place we can currently perceive or directly reach."

"And the method used by the creator of that Formation to smooth out the 'erased' space was to enlarge and stretch the other parts, as if automatically filling them in."

Lin Yu used an analogy that wasn't quite understandable to the two Native of the Prison Mountain Realm, so he paused and rephrased it. "It's like printing a pattern on a piece of elastic, one-foot-square fabric, tying up the very center, and then pulling the remaining four corners back to the one-foot position... You'll see the print on the fabric stretch, deform, and become larger than before—just like now."

At this point, Lin Yu placed his hand on the door of the small house in front of him, causing a ripple to appear.

"And here... is the entrance to the 'folded' section I'm looking for."