Darkness Returns, Mysterious Ruins!

The whole process happened so naturally.

But when this scene fell into the eyes of the Douluo crowd outside the light screen, they all looked as if they had seen a ghost.

Especially when that nearly perfect human skin was folded up by the old woman like clothing and tucked into her chest, the crowd completely exploded.

On the field at Shrek Academy, Oscar felt his stomach churn violently.

Soon, unable to endure it any longer, he covered his mouth and ran to a large tree off to the side, then retched with a loud "ugh."

Ning Rongrong and Xiao Wu, the two girls, were so frightened that their faces turned pale. They clutched each other's hands tightly, not even daring to look at the light screen again.

"What... what kind of sorcery is this?" Dai Mubai swallowed, his voice dry and tight.

He was a prince of the Star Luo Empire. Since childhood, he had heard countless strange tales and seen no small number of evil soul masters.

But a method like this—wearing human skin as clothing and perfectly concealing one's true appearance and aura—was simply unheard of.

Yu Xiaogang was completely speechless now.

As for the Ten Core Competencies of Martial Souls he was so proud of, he dared even less to bring them out at a time like this.

A soul beast?

An illusion?

Whose soul beast walked around wearing human skin and could chat with a human child in that kind of elder-scolding-a-junior tone?

The waters in these Great Ruins were far too deep.

So deep that if you so much as poked your head in, you would drown until not even bone fragments remained.

Spirit City, Pope's Palace.

As the pope, Bibi Dong also had her brows tightly furrowed, her eyes carrying a deep sense of wariness.

It was not that the human skin had frightened her.

What truly chilled her heart was the casualness with which that old woman had instantly killed Liu Dao before taking off the human skin.

No soul rings, no martial soul, and there had not even been much fluctuation in the surrounding heaven-and-earth vitality.

With just a light flick of a finger, a level-thirty-five Soul Elder had been separated from his head.

Such exquisite control of power, down to the finest degree, was something even some Title Douluo might not be able to achieve.

And this was merely an ordinary-looking old woman in the Great Ruins!

Just as the entire Douluo Continent was left with tingling scalps from this scene, the image on the heavenly screen gradually darkened.

Immediately after, the announcement representing Liu Dao's death lingered on the screen for a moment, then dispersed like ripples on water.

The scene shifted, and the perspective of the fourth participant lit up.

This time, the one appearing at the very center of the light screen was Li Ziyang, a fallen noble from Fasnuo Province and a level-twenty-one Great Soul Master.

Compared with the previous few people, Li Ziyang was dressed far more carefully.

He wore a tailcoat that had been washed somewhat white, and his hair was combed neatly. Even though he was in this utterly unfamiliar desolate land, he still maintained the dignity a noble ought to have.

The place where Li Ziyang had landed was an enormous, unbroken expanse of Gobi desert.

In the Great Ruins at this moment, the sun hung slantwise at the edge of the sky. Judging by the light, it was already evening, and the setting sun dyed the stones across the Gobi a fiery red.

Li Ziyang stood behind a waist-high boulder, cautiously observing his surroundings.

Though he was a fallen noble, his mind was very clear.

After arriving in this unknown place, he had not run around like a headless fly. Instead, he had first found a hidden place to conceal himself, intending to figure out the situation before doing anything else.

Just as he was calculating in his heart which direction he should head in, a tremendous roar suddenly came from midair.

Li Ziyang was startled and hurriedly lowered his body, then raised his head to look.

With that one look, his whole body froze.

He saw the clouds above the Gobi suddenly tear apart, and an incomparably massive wooden tower ship actually flew down from the sky out of thin air.

This tower ship looked extremely imposing. Its hull was a full hundred-plus meters long, and all sorts of intricate patterns were carved into it.

It had no sails and no wings. The entire ship simply hovered steadily in midair.

At the edge of the ship stood several dozen young people dressed in identical white robes, both men and women among them.

Every one of them carried a longsword on their back, their expressions proud and aloof.

"A ship flying in the sky?"

Outside the light screen, everyone on Douluo Continent also sucked in a cold breath when they saw this scene.

In their understanding, aside from soul masters with flying martial souls, the only things that could fly in the sky were those extremely rare high-level flying soul beasts.

A wooden ship that huge could actually fly through the sky? How enormous a reserve of soul power would it take to support that?

In the image, the imposing tower ship slowly descended onto a relatively flat stretch of Gobi desert.

Before the ship had even come to a steady stop, the young people in white robes dropped from the deck over ten meters up like dumplings into a pot, one after another.

Li Ziyang hid behind a distant rock, not even daring to breathe too loudly.

He quietly released his martial soul. A long, slender silver vine burrowed out from his palm, and two yellow hundred-year soul rings faintly appeared beneath his feet.

He planned to use his soul power to probe these people's strength first.

"No soul rings? Not even the slightest fluctuation of soul power?"

After probing them for a while, Li Ziyang froze.

In his perception, although these white-robed youths had jumped from such a great height without a scratch, they did not have even the faintest trace of soul power on them. They were like ordinary people whose martial souls had not awakened yet.

"Could they just be ordinary nobles traveling with the help of some flying tool?" Li Ziyang wondered inwardly.

But he soon realized just how wrong he was.

Several white-robed youths walked up to a pile of rubble, seemingly finding the huge rocks in the way.

One boy who looked only fourteen or fifteen did not even frown. He brought two fingers together and casually made a strange gesture toward the front.

Clang!

In an instant, a crisp sword cry rang out.

The longsword carried on the boy's back suddenly flew out of its sheath on its own, turned into a dazzling streak of white light, circled in midair, then slashed viciously toward the pile of giant rocks.

The next second, a tremendous boom rang out. Those several chunks of hard stone, which together were as large as a small house, were instantly cut by that flying sword into a shower of fragments filling the sky!

After cutting through the rocks, the longsword seemed to possess a spirit of its own. It traced an arc through the air and landed steadily back into the boy's sheath.

From beginning to end, that boy had not even moved his feet.

Li Ziyang stared, dumbfounded.

Even the silver-vine martial soul he held for self-defense trembled slightly from his shock.

"W-What kind of technique is that?"

"He didn't release a martial soul, and he didn't use a soul skill, but the sword actually flew out by itself to cut rocks?"

Outside the light screen, Sword Douluo Chen Xin of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Clan had eyes that were almost bulging out of their sockets.

He was obsessed with swords and had spent his entire life pursuing the pinnacle of the sword path.

But that fourteen- or fifteen-year-old brat in the image had just displayed the ability to control a sword through the air, completely shattering his understanding of swords.

"Controlling the sword with qi... This is actually the legendary controlling the sword with qi!"

Not only that, he could also sense that what flowed inside that boy was not soul power at all, but a kind of power even more domineering than soul power!

And among those white-robed people, there were at least several dozen youths like him, capable of splitting giant rocks with a single sword strike!

At the same time, just as everyone in Douluo was shocked beyond words by this group of mysterious swordsmen, another old man with a goatee walked down from the deck of the tower ship.

The old man wore a green robe and looked rather dignified.

As soon as he got off the ship, he raised his head and anxiously glanced at the setting sun that was about to sink below the horizon.

"Hurry! Stop dawdling!"

"The sun is about to set! Quickly move the Golden Dragon Pillars down from the ship and set them up! Light the Evil-Warding Talisman Array!"

Hearing the old man's shout, the young people who had seemed somewhat lazy just moments ago also changed expression.

In an instant, dozens of unfathomably powerful swordsmen who could control swords barehanded were like startled quails, scrambling back onto the ship in a panic. They shouldered one thick golden pillar after another and desperately began laying foundations around the camp.

Some people fumbled as they pasted yellow talisman papers, while others even tripped and fell because they were running too quickly.

The old man stood to the side, his forehead covered in cold sweat, urging them on without pause. "Faster! Move faster!"

"If the grand array still hasn't been set up by the time it's completely dark, we'll all be done for in the darkness of the Great Ruins today!"

At the same time, Li Ziyang, who was hiding in the distance, watched this scene with a face full of confusion.

He looked up at the sky. The afterglow of the setting sun was still there, and the sky had only dimmed slightly.

"These guys are so strong. Any one of them picked at random would be comparable to a high-level Soul Ancestor. Why are they scared into this state the moment evening comes?"

Li Ziyang could not help muttering inwardly.

At this moment, he still did not know the terror of night in the Great Ruins.

Because it had still been daylight when he landed, and he had not personally experienced the monsters in the darkness like Wang Xiu had.

Not just him—these explorers within the scene could not communicate with one another, so they had no idea how the previous people had died.

As Li Ziyang watched the busy white-robed swordsmen, a bold thought suddenly sprang up in his heart.

"Since these people can come here on a flying ship, they must be a major power in this world."

"They're in a rush to set up camp right now. If I take the initiative to walk out and befriend them at this moment, with my strength as a Great Soul Master and the etiquette of a noble, I might be able to find a powerful backer in this higher-dimensional world."

At that thought, Li Ziyang straightened the slightly wrinkled collar of his tailcoat and took a deep breath.

He felt that he had waited for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Then Li Ziyang stood up directly, strode out from behind the rock, put on what he considered the most perfect nobleman's smile, and walked toward the goateed old man.

By then, the last trace of the sun's afterglow had already sunk beneath the horizon.

The darkness of the Great Ruins was silently pressing in from every direction.

At that moment, Li Ziyang straightened the slightly wrinkled collar of his tailcoat.

Then he took a deep breath, clasped his hands behind his back, and put on the kind of smile only nobles understood, one carrying a touch of reserve and friendliness.

He stepped forward and walked out from behind the huge rock where he had been hiding.

"Ahem, friends who have come from afar, I am of the Heaven Dou Empire's Fasno..."

Li Ziyang had only just begun speaking, preparing to introduce himself with an elegant opening and, while he was at it, establish ties with this group of powerful white-robed swordsmen.

But before he could get halfway through his words, it was as if something had clamped tightly around his throat.

The last trace of the sun's afterglow sank completely beneath the western horizon at that very moment.

The sky went dark.

The night of the Great Ruins had never followed reason. It had no transitional stage called dusk; it was as if someone had suddenly covered the entire world with a huge black cloth.

Li Ziyang's vision instantly turned pitch-black.

Along with it came a strange sensation.

"Set the formation! Hurry, set the formation!"

Dozens of meters ahead, when the goateed old man saw this, he hurriedly shouted.