[Mystic Root]'s chance to transform! The mantis stalked the cicada, the oriole waited behind; beyond the oriole lurked a hawk!

Within the black pool in [Blackwater Marsh].

The water was black as ink, yet remarkably clear, without a ripple or a trace of murkiness. It was like an enormous piece of black jade embedded in the mire, utterly unlike its surroundings.

The pool was deep, seemingly bottomless, for not the slightest trace remained of the two Foundation Establishment cultivators who had entered it.

As the saying went, if alive, the person must be found; if dead, the corpse must be seen. Yet there were no floating bodies here, no scraps of clothing or flesh, as though the inky water had digested those two men completely, reducing them to nothingness.

Zhen frowned slightly. Noticing this unnatural "cleanliness," he secretly grew wary.

Under the close protection of the emerald barrier surrounding him, he pushed his divine sense to its limit. Like countless invisible tentacles, it extended around him and below as he probed his surroundings and continued descending toward the dark pool bed.

After all, this was unfamiliar territory. Even as a False Core True Person facing what might merely be a junior at the Foundation Establishment peak, he did not allow himself the slightest arrogance.

He had heard far too many tales of cultivators capsizing in a gutter!

But this water seemed rather unusual, possessing some sort of suppressive force. A False Core cultivator's divine sense, which should have covered at least eight li, was compressed to barely three.

The farther he descended, the dimmer the light became until it vanished entirely, while the surrounding pressure increased sharply. Threads of extremely obscure yet deeply uncomfortable "yin-turbid cold qi" began mingling with the bone-chilling water, constantly eating into his barrier with faint sizzling sounds.

An ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator probably could not have lasted long here.

Moreover, the deeper he descended, the