Wind.
Wind and sand covered this world.
The wind was a shrieking, bitter nether wind.
The sand was deathly white.
In Ninefold Nether, the bodies of the dead were worn to powder by the wind. That powder was this white sand.
Great Desert.
Xu Yuan stood amid the sand and looked around.
A restroom mirror had become a passage leading straight to this Fragment World of the Ninefold Nether Underworld.
A typical use of the Netherworld Passage Art.
But Xu Yuan was no longer the man who had only just achieved Path Entry and stood at the Qi Refining First Layer.
A storm surged through his heart.
Granted.
He, too, had mastered the Netherworld Passage Art and could create a "point" connecting two worlds.
But...
This Netherworld Passage Art had been cast from who knew how far away. Xu Yuan did not even know where his father was, yet it had succeeded. How had his father done it?
The figure's voice sounded again.
"Go... cross the sand dune ahead. Beneath those bones, you'll find something I left for you."
"My child, from here on... you're on your own."
The voice vanished.
The strange look in Xu Yuan's eyes disappeared completely.
His father had gone.
Xu Yuan raised his gaze.
The dune was not high. He could cross it quickly.
But...
Why would his father still not appear?
What was he busy doing?
Xu Yuan walked slowly through the desert until he crossed the dune and saw the skeleton.
It was not large. In fact, it looked a little smaller than Xu Yuan.
Beneath the bones.
Xu Yuan crouched and dug out a palm-sized box.
He opened it.
Inside were three blood-red Emblems.
"Blood Devour Emblems."
"Quantity: 3."
"Possessing this Emblem means the All Things Unity Society permits you to kill