Another Anomaly, the White Bone Forest, and a Golden Core Powerhouse Appears

Three days slipped by in a haze of muddled thoughts and unease.

You vaguely remembered that your conversation with Chen Qingyan three days earlier had seemed to touch upon some Heaven-shaking secret.

At the time, you had seemingly snapped awake, filled with indescribable terror, unconsciously murmuring

unsettling words like, "It's a True Lord. It must be a True Lord!"

Yet the next moment, a vast, irresistible will had seemed to resound directly in the depths of your soul,

soothing your terror, erasing that fleeting clarity, and returning you to a numb state in which "everything was normal."

Now, your memory of that conversation's details had blurred, leaving only one core instruction: "Follow Chen Qingyan into the secret realm to resolve your fatal fortune."

You met Chen Qingyan at the secret realm's entrance and stepped into the bizarre, shimmering portal with him.

Along the way, you both tacitly maintained your silence. The atmosphere was subtle and heavy.

What struck you as strange was that, despite traveling for so long through this vast secret realm, you had not encountered a single other competitor.

The secret realm was certainly expansive, but such emptiness still felt abnormal.

Even more unexpectedly, Chen Qingyan did not head south to search for a heaven and earth wonder as you had anticipated. Instead, he headed north without hesitation, venturing ever deeper.

You suppressed your doubts and followed closely.

As you walked, a wave of disorientation washed over you. Your perception of time blurred; it felt as though you had walked for ages, yet also as though only an instant had passed.

Only when Chen Qingyan stopped and said indifferently, "We're here," did you abruptly come back to your senses and carefully examine your surroundings.

The sight made your heart jolt!

You were standing in the White Bone Forest! Everywhere you looked,

there were stark skeletons of every shape, belonging to humans or demonic beasts—you could not tell. They lay piled like mountains, exuding an air of desolation and deathly silence.

A suffocating sense of oppression hung in the air.

"Where are we?" you could not help asking, while quietly activating your Wind-Listening Ears divine ability and straining to sense your surroundings.

Yet all that came back was deathly silence. Aside from dense deathly energy and resentment, you could sense no fluctuations of spiritual energy or signs of any opportunity.

Chen Qingyan ignored your question. He stood quietly beside a particularly towering skeleton, his gaze deep, as though waiting for something.

Time ticked by. The surroundings remained deathly still, save for the mournful whistle of cold wind through gaps in the bones.

Suddenly, Chen Qingyan raised his head. His gaze seemed to pierce through layer upon layer of white bones, fixing on somewhere in the void. His voice was calm, yet held a barely perceptible trace of mockery as he spoke:

"What? Still refusing to show yourself?"

He paused, then raised his voice slightly, his tone taking on a challenging edge:

"Or... do you not dare?"

At those words, your scalp instantly prickled.

Was he... speaking to the Golden Core Powerhouse from the Blazing Fire Sect who had orchestrated all this?!

You stared at Chen Qingyan in alarm and uncertainty, utterly unable to understand what he relied upon to dare openly provoke a mighty Golden Core cultivator!

Even more inconceivably, his words seemed to suggest that he believed that Golden Core Powerhouse... did not dare enter the White Bone Forest?!

What exactly was this place?

Why would even a Golden Core Powerhouse fear it?

And what was Chen Qingyan's real purpose in bringing you here? Countless questions churned through your mind.

Suddenly, something stirred in the void.

"Ah..."

That sigh seemed to come from the endless void, yet also seemed to be everywhere at once. It instantly made your hair stand on end, and even your soul trembled!

A Golden Core Powerhouse!

He really came!

The mere manifestation of his will made you, a middle Qi Refining cultivator, feel as though you faced the oppressive might of Heaven and earth itself.

You instinctively looked at Chen Qingyan, only to find his expression as calm as ever, as though he had anticipated this. Beneath that calm, there was even a hint of... detached mockery.

"You should not have come here..." The voice sounded from the void again, carrying a hollow, deathly stillness that seemed unchanged since time immemorial.

"Here... there should only be death..."

You did not understand those words, but they clearly confirmed your suspicions.

There was indeed something terrifying in the White Bone Forest that even this Golden Core Powerhouse feared—something that made him unwilling to set foot here in person!

Hearing this, Chen Qingyan merely gave a self-deprecating smile, laden with complicated emotions.

"Should not have come?" He repeated those words, then his tone abruptly became cold and resolute, as though proclaiming some ancient law:

"This place has only ever had one rule—bear ten thousand karmic burdens, face death to find life!"

He looked indifferently toward somewhere in the void, his tone carrying a barely perceptible trace of regret:

"You and the Blazing Sun True Lord behind you could have stayed out of this. What a pity..."

"A pity?" A faint ripple seemed to enter the voice in the void.

"The supreme fruit position fell from beyond Heaven into this world. Across all the heavens and myriad worlds, who could truly stay out of it?"

Chen Qingyan offered no rebuttal.

The instant those words faded, the space before you began twisting and trembling violently!

The figure of an old man in gray robes was forcibly "squeezed" out of nothingness, slowly becoming solid.

Vast spatial fluctuations radiated from him, as though he himself were part of space.

Chen Qingyan looked him up and down, his voice carrying a faint yet piercing disdain:

"So you cultivate the space fruit position." His tone shifted, sharp as a blade. "Then you still chose to be a dog?"

The space fruit position?!

Shock rocked your heart! In the previous simulation, had the Golden Core cultivator controlling the Chen Ming puppet and mentioning the illusion-reality fruit position not been this man?

There was more than one Golden Core cultivator pulling the strings against Chen Qingyan—and perhaps even several True Lords were involved?!

The gray-robed elder did not grow angry at Chen Qingyan's mockery. He merely replied calmly, though profound helplessness lay beneath that calm:

"A choice? What choice do we have? You once stood high above, looking down upon all living beings. Yet now, haven't you still been driven to this state by a mere Golden Core cultivator...?"

"By you?" Chen Qingyan interrupted him outright. Light flickered in his eyes, as though he were rapidly calculating something, before finally giving way to a cold laugh.

"It seems you, too, are merely... an unawakened piece in this game."

His gaze swept over the gray-robed elder, yet seemed to pierce through him and see something deeper.

"Then let us begin the trial first, so that all of you... can wake up!"

Before his words had faded—

BOOM!!!

A sudden upheaval swept through the entire White Bone Forest!