Hysilens raised a hand and pointed toward the center of the ruins:
"The sealing stone pillar is right there. My father had always used his own Soul Power to hold down that stone. When they shattered the seal, Father..."
She could not finish.
Ye Qiong patted her shoulder.
"Let's go take a look."
The three of them stepped over shattered coral debris toward the center of the ruins. The deeper they went, the darker the seawater became, shifting from pale blue to deep blue, then to an almost inky black.
Tribbie crouched down, picked up a piece of broken coral, and examined it closely.
"There are residual energy fluctuations on it."
She took a small bottle from her waist, used tweezers to pick up a transparent thin sheet, and dabbed it against the surface of the broken coral. The sheet immediately turned purplish-black.
Tribbie's expression grew grave.
"There really are signs of some kind of abnormal energy erosion. This aura is very wrong—it carries traces of distortion and chaos, as if it had been contaminated by something. I've never seen this kind of energy before. It doesn't resemble the methods of any known soul beast or Soul Master."
"The nature of this energy is extremely strange. It feels like the residue left after several kinds of power were mixed together. It has both an evil aura and something deeper that I can't identify."
Ye Qiong's expression hardened at her words.
Was it really the Abyss? But wasn't that something that happened twenty thousand years later?
He raised his head, sweeping his gaze across the edge of the ruins.
"Be careful. I can feel something approaching."
Before his words had faded, the shadows around the ruins suddenly stirred.
Six figures in black robes emerged from the darkness. The Soul Power fluctuations