A young cultivator in the group, who had been holding back for a long time, finally raised his eyes, his brows furrowed, his right hand instinctively pressing against the storage crystal core at his waist. His gaze passed over Chen Yong's shoulder and fell on the deathly still and chilling dark blue pool, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly.
"Senior Brother Chen Yong." His voice trailed off for several breaths before slowly carrying across the room, each note drawn out. The young cultivator's heart sank further, his apprehension growing stronger. "This place is extremely strange. Deep within this icy pool... could the dragon bone, the extraordinary treasure the elder spoke of, truly be hidden?"
Upon hearing this, the other four all looked up, their gazes falling on Chen Yong ahead, awaiting his answer. Chen Yong did not stop, but continued walking along the ridge of the Frosty Crystal Rock for several more steps until he was less than a hundred feet from the pool, at which point he finally stopped.
A wisp of pale blue mist drifted past my feet, originally flowing eastward, but upon passing by me, it suddenly became disordered and stagnant, and after a moment it reversed direction and slowly retreated back to its original position.
His pupils contracted slightly, and he became wary.
The clan elders would never send someone to risk their lives here without a reason, but ever since he stepped into the forbidden area, a strange feeling had been lingering in his heart. It wasn't a warning of danger, but rather that his own judgment of the world, distance, and time was gradually becoming inaccurate and ineffective.
Along the way, he misjudged the distance three times. The worst time, he saw that the icy crystal ahead was only twelve feet away, but when he stepped across, he actually took more than thirty feet. This Nine Nether Cold Pool was silently devouring the very basis upon which people understood the world.
Chen Yong concealed his thoughts and remained silent. In such a perilous situation, it is most dangerous to be agitated or lose one's composure. His mind was clear and still, with only his eyes filled with vigilance. His gaze swept over the still pool and the steep cliff, finally settling on the five people behind him.
"The elder has given his orders for a reason." He slowly raised his right hand, his voice steady and each word weighty. "This is the core boundary of the Cold Pool. From this moment on, no one can afford to be careless. Everyone, summon your natal divine weapons, concentrate your attention, and be ready for battle at any time!"
The five men's expressions simultaneously hardened, and they solemnly obeyed, "Yes!"
The young cultivator who asked the first question flicked his right palm, and a long sword covered with dark purple cracks instantly appeared in his palm. The moment the blade appeared, a circle of purplish-black Dao marks climbed up his arm and landed steadily on his shoulder, his Sha Qi concealed.
The female cultivator on the left placed two fingers together between her eyebrows, and slowly withdrew a two-foot-long silver-gray short sword from her sea of consciousness. The sword's blade was covered with intricate Fate Soul patterns, shimmering with a faint glow.
The remaining three did not hesitate and each used their own methods. One summoned a heavy black ruler, which slammed into the ground; another summoned six ancient mirrors that floated around his body, protecting him with spiritual light; and the last one stretched out his arms, and two narrow silver rings flew out from his wrists, slowly rotating around his body, combining offense and defense.
Clang!!! Several divine weapons rang out in unison, their clear and resonant sounds echoing along the shore of the pool. But before the sound could reach a hundred feet, it was swallowed up layer by layer by the boundless cold silence, vanishing without a trace, and the world returned to deathly stillness.
Upon seeing this, Chen Yong's brows furrowed even more. It was too quiet. The six of them stood there for a long time, the pool still, without a ripple, without a breath, without any change, so deathly silent as to be almost unreal.
Without further hesitation, he raised his hand and summoned his divine weapon. A gray-black spear silently appeared, its tip half a foot long, its sharpness concealed, and its body wrapped with seven dark red rings. The moment his five fingers gripped the shaft, the seven rings lit up one after another, their dark light flowing, revealing a profound power.
He stepped to the side, gun in hand, his gaze fixed on the dark center of the pool. The next instant— Chen Yong's expression changed drastically! The eternally silent Nine Nether Cold Pool stirred.
At first, only a fist-sized dent appeared deep in the center of the pool, silently. Then, the dent slowly rotated, one circle, two circles, three circles. In just a few breaths, the water of the thousand-foot pool was completely drawn by an invisible force, and all of it stirred.
With a deafening roar, the eternal stillness shattered! A colossal vortex, hundreds of feet in diameter, formed abruptly from the center of the pool, with icy blue water plunging wildly down its edge. The previously frozen traces of cause and effect were torn apart and dragged into the vortex. The ancient, frigid crystals on the pool's shore trembled violently, and fine cracks spread rapidly across their surfaces, crisscrossing the surface.
Crack!!! The change came without warning, extremely abrupt! One moment everything Ji Ran, the next the entire icy pool erupted violently! The instincts honed by years of life-and-death experiences overwhelmed all curiosity. Without investigating the bottom of the vortex or exploring the source of the anomaly, Chen Yong whirled around, his spear held horizontally in front of him, and shouted sharply.
"Retreat!" Before the five people behind him could fully recover, Chen Yong's powerful inner energy unleashed a palm strike, engulfing the five of them as they retreated at breakneck speed. "Quick!!!" Whoosh!!! Six afterimages streaked through the air, one hundred feet, three hundred feet, five hundred feet!
Just as the group managed to escape the frosty crystal ridge where they had been standing, that area was completely swallowed up by the sudden surge of dark blue frost, leaving not a trace of crystal. The vortex in the center of the pool continued to expand, with layers of giant waves surging outwards, and deep within the vortex, a pitch-black void slowly revealed itself, unfathomably deep.
Chen Yong landed on the icy cliff, followed closely by the five others. They all stood frozen, silent, their six pairs of eyes fixed on the endlessly spinning giant vortex. The next instant, two points of eerie blue light suddenly shone from the depths of the vortex.
Two points of cold light, dozens of feet apart, were extremely conspicuous. Chen Yong's grip on his gun tightened abruptly, his heart pounding. That wasn't light; it was—eyes.
Immediately following, a vast, ancient, and boundless terrifying aura slowly awakened and rose from the deepest part of the Nine Nether Cold Pool. The causal patterns that had been frozen for eternity on the shore of the pool shattered on a large scale. Above the gray-white sky of the Void Dharma Realm, countless originally ethereal and unconnected causal threads were forcibly shaken into shape, crisscrossing the sky.
A deafening roar! The high-pitched and vast dragon's roar broke through the confinement at the bottom of the pool, soaring straight into the sky, shaking the mountains, and sweeping across the entire Void Dharma Realm! Within the dragon's roar, there was both the supreme awe-inspiring presence of a king who had looked down upon all living beings for millennia, and the endless desolation accumulated over the primordial ages.
A sudden gust of wind arose, causing the robes of the six people to flutter wildly. The faces of the two True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage cultivators turned deathly pale in an instant, their hands holding weapons trembling uncontrollably, their minds filled with horror.
Chen Yong remained silent, his eyes narrowed completely, and his arm holding the gun slowly gathered strength, the gray-black spear held steadily in front of his chest, poised to strike.
The other five gritted their teeth, gripped their divine weapons tightly, and were Ultimate tense. No one asked any more questions, and no one questioned the extraordinary treasure the elder had mentioned.
Beneath that ever-expanding vortex, a colossal, dark, and majestic silhouette, not yet fully revealed, was slowly rising from the depths of the ancient, icy pool. Six figures stood frozen on the precipice, staring intently at the bottom of the vortex, none of them retreating even a step.
In the center of the Nine Nether Cold Pool, the enormous whirlpool covering a thousand feet of water continued to sink, the dark blue water pouring down the rotating walls into the depths, and the two points of eerie blue light at the bottom of the pool became clearer and clearer.
Chen Yong stood at the forefront of the Frosty Crystal Cliff, spear in hand. Behind him, five Annihilation God Clan cultivators had already activated their divine weapons to the point where they could attack at any moment. However, as the massive silhouette gradually broke through the pool of water, the wariness on their faces slowly turned into undisguised shock.
First, two jet-black dragon horns rose from the vortex, extending dozens of feet backward. Several sharp, branching horns sprouted from either side of the main character, each curve bearing the marks of ancient erosion. A cold, azure light slowly flowed along the base of the horns. Then, a gigantic dragon head slowly rose from the deep pool, layers upon layers of dark blue scales covering its forehead and cheeks.
The edges of its scales were sharp and chilling, with large, fine cracks running through them. Deep within these cracks, there was no flesh or blood, only an intensely dense, eerie blue light that moved slowly. Its two dragon eyes were fully open, azure light emanating from their narrow pupils.
The moment the light passed over the shore of the pool, the frozen mist along the way lost its distinction between real and false. Some of it still existed in the world, while some had vanished into nothingness. Yet, no one's Fate Soul perception could accurately distinguish which was real and which was false.
The True Annihilation Realm is a state of complete annihilation, where nothing remains of reality. Upon reaching this realm, one's power can penetrate the extremely blurred boundary between reality and illusion. The demonic dragon before us has already reached the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme, with only one final barrier remaining before the next realm.
With each inch it rose from the Nine Nether Cold Pool, the surrounding world's perception of it became increasingly confused. The enormous dragon head was clearly suspended high above the pool's surface, visible to the six people, yet their Fate Soul perceived it as Emptiness.
The dragon's form, visible to the naked eye, would briefly fade away, while the depths of Fate Soul would clearly perceive a colossal creature hovering between heaven and earth. Reality and illusion constantly alternated and engulfed each other, making it impossible to determine the true state of this being through any single perception.
A thunderous roar erupted from the bottomless pool.
A massive dragon body, thick enough to crush a mountain range, finally burst out of the vortex. Layers of dark blue-black scales overlapped, extending from the dragon's neck into the depths of the Nine Nether Cold Pool. Large, sharp bone spikes, leaning backward, grew along both sides of the dragon's spine, with a ghostly blue-green mist swirling between them. The enormous body spiraled up, one circle, two circles, gradually occupying most of the sky in front of the six people.
Its rear half of the dragon body remained hidden in the whirlpool and icy mist, and even the part that was exposed made the surrounding towering cliffs appear much shorter. Several slender dragon whiskers hung down on both sides, drifting slowly with the cold current. When the dragon's head lowered, a fierce and majestic aura, accumulated over a long period of time, pressed down on the entire shore of the pool.
The demonic dragon did not attack immediately. It simply lowered its head and looked at the six people. In its two dark Azure Dragon eyes, there was no rage, nor the agitation that a typical ferocious beast would show when it saw intruders. There was only a cold and almost indifferent scrutiny.