No, this was not a gaze.
It was scrutiny.
As though an independent living entity were using the reflection as a medium to appraise the human standing on the ground.
Ye Lin withdrew his gaze, his expression unchanged.
Long Aotian walked at the very front, the Compass in his hand already put away.
By this point, the Compass had lost its use. The power radiating from the ruins themselves was simply too overwhelming, disrupting all sense of direction.
"Stay close, everyone."
Long Aotian's voice was no longer casual, carrying several degrees more gravity.
"The origins of these ruins are mysterious. No one knows what lies inside. Once we enter, your life or death is your own responsibility."
Everyone nodded in unison.
No one shrank back.
Those who had made it this far were all people of unwavering resolve.
Those standing here were each outstanding in their own right, having fought their way out of heaps of corpses.
Ruins suspected to have come from beyond the Boundary Sea—such a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity was worth braving even mountains of blades and seas of fire for.
Since they had come, there was no reason to retreat.
The entrance to the ruins appeared before them.
It was not a door, nor was it an archway, but a rift.
A rift torn open in the Void, as though an invisible giant hand had ripped a gash in the canopy of heaven.
The edges of the rift twisted irregularly. Dark crimson light seeped out from within, like blood gushing from a wound.
The rift was enormous, roughly a hundred zhang high and several dozen zhang wide, enough for dozens of people to enter abreast.
Its depths were pitch-black, revealing nothing at all.
Yet faintly, they could hear a sound coming from within the rift.
It was not