The instant Chu Bai's fingertip touched the most twisted, most hideous central rune at the heart of the stone stele, the broken ancient monument, which had lain deathly still for untold epochs, suddenly transformed!
From the dark, dried-out grooves, which looked as though they had been gouged out by sharp claws, an eerie radiance of interwoven scarlet and deep violet erupted.
This was no ordinary glow of spiritual energy. It carried a nauseating stench of blood and utter deathly stillness.
The ancient stele had come alive!
It was no longer a cold, lifeless object, but an ancient beast of resentment startled awake.
An icy energy, invisible to the naked eye yet acting directly upon the divine soul, surged from the depths of the stele like a black torrent bursting through a dam!
It moved too fast. Even Chu Bai's powerful divine sense, which had already reached the threshold of the purple abode, could not fully react before that black torrent engulfed and enveloped him!
Cold.
Bone-piercing cold.
This was not the chill of deepest winter that froze the flesh, but an absolute, deathly cold that struck straight into the depths of the soul, threatening to freeze all three ethereal souls and seven corporeal souls into dust!
The canyon, the stele, and the gray miasma before Chu Bai's eyes instantly twisted and collapsed. His consciousness was forcibly dragged along by the torrent, plunging into a boundless, suffocating abyss of terror.
"Slosh... slosh..."
The sound of thick liquid churning reached his ears.
Chu Bai abruptly opened his "eyes" and found himself standing upon an ocean stretching as far as he could see.
And the water of that ocean was pure, purplish-red blood, so thick it could scarcely flow!
Countless enormous, shattered corpses floated in the sea of blood. There were ancient insects