Everyone stared at the dark abyss beneath their feet, as though it devoured every trace of light. A bone-chilling cold suddenly shot up their spines—it was not mere darkness, but the gaze of something dormant and immensely powerful, as if the abyss itself were peering back at the breath of the living.
"The sealing array should be down there." Neji's voice was especially clear in the deathly silence.
He suppressed the restless Primordial Bagua Diagram in his Sea of Consciousness. His pale blue eyes glimmered faintly in the darkness as he stepped onto the stairs first.
The stone steps were unnaturally dry. Some force swallowed their footsteps, leaving only everyone's restrained breathing.
They walked for perhaps a quarter of an hour, or perhaps only an instant had passed. The silent surroundings swallowed their sense of time.
At last, at a certain moment, Neji stepped onto the final stair.
The instant Neji's toes touched the underground floor—
Boom!
A blinding white light exploded from below. In the instant everyone instinctively shut their eyes, the entire underground space seemed to be suddenly ignited by a god's hand!
Dozens of crystals embedded in the walls and pillars erupted with azure-blue light at once, like stars hanging upside down, shredding the darkness to pieces.
Wherever the light reached, a magnificent complex revealed its true form—
Bronze pillars dozens of yards high connected heaven and earth, their surfaces etched with ancient incantations long since lost; the ground was paved with entire slabs of black obsidian, purple streams of energy flowing through every seam like molten gold, as though they were the veins of the earth itself.
Yet the most breathtaking sight was the sealing array covering the center of the entire space.
The array, more than thirty yards in diameter, was formed from countless twisted,