"So this is the place!"
After passing through countless resilient energy barriers imbued with the power of heaven and earth, Chu Zhou felt the scene before him suddenly open up.
He had reached the deepest part of these ruins.
There were no ice fields or thunderclouds here, only an empty, silent space, as though some power had severed it from the outside world.
The sky was gray, without clouds or thunder, only an endless expanse of chaotic gray mist slowly churning overhead.
The ground was not made of ice like the world outside, but of translucent, deep-blue crystal. Smooth as a mirror, it reflected the shifting gray mist above, creating the illusion of walking through nothingness.
At the very center of this empty world stood a breathtaking spectacle.
An enormous thundercloud, roughly ten li in diameter, hovered in midair.
The cloud was so dark it was almost pure black, like a vast, dense abyss suspended in the heavens.
Countless serpents of lightning writhed through its layers, giving off one muffled rumble after another. Unlike the sharp, explosive thunder outside, these sounds carried a deep rhythm, like the breathing of an ancient beast. Every rumble made the surrounding space tremble.
At the very heart of the thundercloud, within an area spanning several hundred zhang, the lightning underwent a fundamental change in color.
It was black demon lightning, pitch-black throughout, filled with terrifying destructive power and an overwhelming sense of oppression.
Black demon lightning was an exceedingly rare lightning phenomenon on the Dou Qi Continent. An ordinary cultivator might never see it even once in a lifetime.
Yet here, at the heart of this thundercloud, black demon lightning had gathered across an area several hundred zhang wide.
Unlike ordinary lightning, it no longer took the form of twisting, serpentine bolts. Instead, it