"Perhaps it really was the Underworld!"
Li Ling quietly sensed the aura projected through these void rifts, and a glimmer of understanding dawned on him.
His conjecture was not an arrow loosed without a target. He had once seen the Underworld's blood river in Lin Rouniang's dream, and had also read many accounts of its rivers and blood sea in the Gazetteer of the Ten Thousand Nations.
The most renowned feature of that realm was its blood sea, which occupied more than ninety percent of the entire Underworld.
Numerous rivers ran across the Underworld's land. Almost every one was a turbid waterway flowing with blood, a vein carrying the mortal world's yin baleful qi and sinister powers.
The aura here closely resembled that of the Nether River in Li Ling's memory. Although he had never truly entered the Underworld, the powers Lin Rouniang and the others had previously displayed gave him enough clues to make an educated guess.
He could even smell blood in the nearby air. It came from the sinister qi drifting through the rifts and accumulating here.
The evil influences from the Underworld had already polluted the river, turning it into a blood river. Strange, vaguely humanoid shadows could be seen writhing within it, but they lacked physical forms. None of the drowned corpses and resentful spirits found in the blood sea were present.
Drawing on his knowledge, Li Ling guessed that these shadows were mental impressions unconsciously emitted by those resentful spirits. They had yet to condense into spirit bodies, but already possessed projections in dreams.
As Li Ling silently watched the blood-red river, the blood mist floating above it and the ink-like rifts within that mist suddenly writhed, moving as though alive.
"Hm?"
Li Ling's mind stirred. In a flash of intuition, an ominous premonition