Xiao Ning'er's head rested against his shoulder, her hair brushing his neck. Through his clothes, he could feel her body slowly regaining its warmth. Shen Fei did not look back. Keeping his steps steady, he headed toward the flat stone platform at the edge of the formation.
He had only taken a few steps when Xiao Ning'er stirred on his back.
First, her fingers curled, the hand resting against his chest drawing in slightly. Then her lashes fluttered a few times and her brow shifted, as though she were slowly rising from the depths of the water.
When she opened her eyes, her vision was a little blurred. The first things she saw were the contours of Shen Fei's neck and shoulder. The fabric over his shoulder had been rubbed into wrinkles and stained with dust and dark green slime.
She froze for a moment, then realized she was lying on Shen Fei's back, both hands resting against his chest, her entire weight pressing down on him.
Her face heated at once. From the roots of her ears to her cheeks, it felt as though a flame had licked across her skin, leaving it burning.
She blinked twice in quick succession to make sure she was not seeing things. Then she lifted her fingers from his clothes and gently patted his shoulder, so lightly it was as though she feared startling something if she used too much force.
Feeling the movement on his shoulder, Shen Fei stopped and turned his head to glance at her. "You're awake?" Without saying anything more, he bent down and carefully lowered her to the ground.
Xiao Ning'er's legs were still weak when her feet touched the ground, and her knees buckled slightly. Shen Fei reached out to support her arm and only let go once she was standing steadily.
She lowered her head and straightened her clothes and hair. The blush had not yet faded from her face, and the tips of her ears were still hot. She kept her eyes lowered rather than looking at Shen Fei. After two seconds, she nodded gently without a word.
Her lips moved as though she wanted to say something, but she swallowed the words back down, and the red in her face deepened instead.
Shen Fei glanced at her and spoke. "Sorry. You passed out just now. The Netherlight Behemoth's poison had paralyzed your whole body, so I had to carry you out first."
Xiao Ning'er nodded again. She did not say it was all right or that she did not blame him. She simply stood there with her head lowered, her fingers unconsciously twisting the fabric at the hem of her clothes. The heat in her face slowly subsided, though it had not vanished completely.
She cleared her throat, her voice a little softer than usual. "It's fine. Let's go."
Shen Fei said nothing more and turned to walk ahead. Xiao Ning'er followed two steps behind him. Her footing was still a little unsteady, but she could walk on her own now.
Up ahead, Lu Piao and Xiao Xue had already left the formation and were standing on the stone steps, looking back toward them. Du Ze crouched at the formation's edge, gathering his iron needles, while Nie Li stood at the very front with his back to them.
Shen Fei looked up just as a small bird with gray feathers flew out of a crack in the stone overhead and flapped its way deeper into the passage.
Startled, Lu Piao instinctively took half a step back. "How are there birds in here?" Beside him, Xiao Xue patted his arm. "Don't make such a fuss. Be careful."
They set off again, with Lu Piao at the front, his steps considerably lighter now.
They had not gone far when Lu Piao suddenly stopped. He tilted his head and listened for a moment, then turned back and gestured to the others. Lowering his voice, he said, "I think I heard something up ahead. There must be something over there."
They all stopped and held their breath. Sure enough, a muffled sound came from the far end of the passage, like something moving, or the low moan of wind blowing through a crack.
Nie Li took two steps forward and stood beside Lu Piao, peering toward the end of the passage. "Let's take a look." He strode ahead, and Shen Fei followed.
The farther they went, the darker the passage became. The ghostly blue ore embedded in the walls grew increasingly sparse, and the ground beneath their feet began to turn rough and uneven.
After several dozen steps, the space ahead suddenly opened up into what seemed to be a downward slope, with an expanse of gray-black ground below it.
Lu Piao was about to continue down when he suddenly felt an oppressive force spreading up from below, as though something immensely powerful lay dormant in the darkness.
He halted and said quietly, "That's an aura of pressure." It was not particularly strong, but they could clearly feel it radiating from somewhere below, surging upward in wave after wave like the tide.
Just then, a rustling came from the darkness beneath the slope, followed by a dense patter of footsteps, like countless feet striking stone all at once.
Nie Li crouched at the edge of the slope and looked down. After watching for a while, he said, "The Red Ghosts are fleeing."
The Red Ghosts seemed to have been frightened by something. They were scattering from the flat ground below the slope and fleeing deeper in, their dark red figures jostling together as they scrambled farther underground.
Lu Piao said, "Let's hurry down and have a look." Nie Li rose and headed down the slope. The pressure was still there, a little stronger than before, but still within what he could withstand. "I can handle this pressure. It shouldn't be anything too outrageous."
The slope grew steeper and steeper. Up ahead, Nie Li stopped at the bottom and raised a hand, signaling the others to stop as well.
At the foot of the slope lay a stretch of gray-white sand, like a riverbed left behind after the water had dried up. Not far ahead stood a pitch-black gravestone, roughly the height of a person, its face smooth and its edges neatly polished.
Sand and gravel lay scattered around the gravestone's base, as though someone had walked through here long ago, packing down the ground before the wind scattered sand over it again.
Nie Li stood two steps from the gravestone and suddenly froze. Leaning forward slightly, he fixed his unblinking gaze on its face, his brow slowly tightening.
His lips moved faintly, as though he were silently reciting something-or as though some force had seized his mind. He stood there without moving.
Shen Fei straightened and walked to one side of the gravestone, positioning himself where he could see its face. The moment he drew near, an exceedingly faint vibration came from deep within his soul, rising from his Dantian all the way to the crown of his head.
The vibration was slight but unmistakable, like a string being gently plucked.
He studied the gravestone's face. It must once have been covered in writing, but most of the characters had been scraped away. Crisscrossing gouges left vicious scars across its surface, with only a few surviving strokes near the corners still barely recognizable.
The scraped areas exposed the underlying stone, which was darker than the surface, indicating that the scratches had been there for a very long time.
Shen Fei gazed at the gravestone and sensed the wisp of aura clinging to its face. That aura and his spiritual power shared an unmistakable origin, like two tributaries branching from the same river.
When he circulated the Dark Prison Reincarnation Art, the spiritual power in his Dantian naturally shifted in that direction, like two magnets sensing each other through a thin cloth.
That wisp of aura had endured for a very long time. Judging by the stone's material and degree of weathering, the gravestone had stood here for at least several hundred years.
The aura had clung to it for nearly as long as the gravestone itself had existed. It must have been repeatedly infused and reinforced to remain intact for so long.
The person who had left this aura possessed an exceptionally profound cultivation, at least at Legend Rank. Someone at Legend Rank couldn't have left their aura on a stone stele by accident, he thought.
A powerhouse at that level would already possess exquisitely precise control over their spiritual power. Letting their aura leak out would be an extremely elementary mistake. That left only one possibility: the person had deliberately sealed this wisp of aura here.
He was waiting for someone to come, waiting for someone who shared his origin to stand before this gravestone and sense the aura's existence.
But the question was what this person wanted. If he meant well, why had he left no written explanation, only a wisp of aura? If he meant harm, what lay hidden beyond this shared aura he had used to lure Shen Fei here?
Shen Fei stood silently before the gravestone for a long time, turning these questions over and over in his mind.
Xiao Ning'er walked up beside Shen Fei and followed his gaze to the black gravestone.
She studied it for quite a while without discovering anything. All she could see were the deep gouges where the writing had been scraped away and the scattered strokes remaining near the corners. She did not understand why Shen Fei had stood motionless before this gravestone, staring at it for so long.
She turned to Shen Fei and asked, "What happened?" Shen Fei shook his head and said in a hushed voice that he was not entirely sure either.
He only knew that something was wrong with this gravestone, that something on it weighed on his mind. As for what exactly was going on, perhaps only Nie Li himself knew.
He glanced at Nie Li beside him, who remained motionless in the same posture. Shen Fei looked away and sighed, adding, "This might be more dangerous than anything we've faced before."
Xiao Ning'er quietly listened to him finish and remained silent for a moment before speaking. "No one becomes strong by always sailing with the wind. Danger or unanswered questions, we've already come this far. There's no turning back now. Rather than worrying about what lies ahead, we should first find a way to understand what's right in front of us."
Shen Fei turned to look at her. Her tone was calm, as though she were stating something perfectly natural. Her face still bore the pallor of someone who had only just regained consciousness, and her lips were dry, but her gaze was steady, without hesitation or retreat.
The corners of Shen Fei's mouth lifted slightly, then quickly settled again. "You're right."
After saying those words, he returned his gaze to the gravestone. The surviving strokes along its edges vaguely formed the outlines of a few characters, but they had been scored apart too thoroughly for him to make out any complete words.
He placed his hand against the edge of the gravestone. He could feel the wisp of aura that shared his origin lying dormant deep within the stone, like an eye that had slumbered for ages, studying him across the long stretch of years.
His fingers tightened, then relaxed. Finally, he lowered his hand and stepped back, waiting for Nie Li to awaken from that state.
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