"You've seen it."
Those words fell into the dark red light like a pebble dropped into some liquid heavier and thicker than water. The ripples spread with agonizing slowness.
Yet as they spread, they crushed everything around them out of shape.
Zhang Chu's gaze rested on Lan's gaunt face. He said nothing.
His spiritual power had already spread out.
But here, in the very heart of Underworld Heaven, his three-hundred-li sea of consciousness had been compressed to less than a hundred zhang.
It was like an old cloth folded over and over, every layer bearing a weight invisible to the naked eye.
Lan did not hurry him.
She simply stood there in silence.
Her dark red eyes resembled two pieces of charcoal that had cooled after burning through, dull on the surface yet still holding some ancient warmth within.
After roughly ten breaths, Zhang Chu spoke.
"You said I've seen it."
"Yes."
"When?"
"Long ago."
Zhang Chu's brows stirred slightly.
His gaze shifted from Lan to the dark red platform beneath his feet, then to the pitch-black stele at its center, engraved with the words "Purgatory Heaven."
He had seen too many things.
From the Southern Regions to the Western Regions, from Zhongzhou to the East Sea, from Sea Heart Grotto-Heaven to the Underworld Heaven Ferry.
He had seen the crimson moonlight of the Three Worlds Well.
The Seven-Colored Eyeball of Illusionary City.
The fire of heart image at Red Mountain Temple.
The three gateways in Sea Heart Grotto-Heaven.
The evil god substance surging in the Black River of Return to Ruins, and the skeleton kneeling at the center of the platform at the bottom of God Burial Abyss...
Each possessed a supernatural wonder that martial arts could not explain.
Each had left a question in his heart that remained