He fell swiftly. Wind howled past his ears, while deathly energy surged up from below, so thick it was like water.
Root Severer's radiance forced open a space roughly ten feet across in the darkness, illuminating the pit walls—black rock covered in dark-red runes that flickered on and off.
The runes were arranged just like those in the Northern Frontier Ruins, only larger, denser, and more ancient.
After falling roughly a hundred zhang, the pit walls changed. They were no longer rock, but bone.
Bones packed tightly together—human bones, beast bones, and bones from creatures he could not name—all embedded in the pit walls like inlaid jewels. Cracks ran across the bones, and deathly energy seeped from them, black as oil.
Another fifty zhang down, his feet touched the ground.
It was not hard ground, but soft. He looked down—beneath his feet lay a thick layer of black liquid, viscous as asphalt.
The liquid flowed slowly toward the center of the pit. There was something there, huge and tall, its shape obscured by deathly energy.
[Reached seal core. Target: Undead Monarch avatar (main-body level). Realm: half-step Reincarnation (weakened state). Seal core energy: 11%. Recommendation: Kill target before the seal collapses.]
Lu Chen held Root Severer horizontally before him and walked toward the center of the pit.
Before he had taken a hundred steps, he saw clearly what stood at its center.
It was a tree.
Its trunk was black, thick enough that ten people would need to link arms to encircle it, and roughly fifty zhang tall. It had no leaves, only bare branches, like countless fingers pointing at the sky.
Chains wrapped around the trunk, silver-white and covered in runes. Yet most had already broken; only a few still hung there, swaying in the deathly energy.
There