Dou Mu Xie led them through the ruins, twisting and turning down several streets and bypassing multiple collapsed palaces before finally stopping in front of a massive building.
This building was relatively well-preserved, but most of the surrounding structures had lost their shape, leaving only blurry outlines as if they had been melted by something.
The death qi here was incredibly thick, yet something felt off about it.
Chen Zhou felt as if the energy was being suppressed by something; its flow was extremely sluggish, almost completely stagnant.
To suppress death qi, it had to be either a higher-tier power or some sort of special rule.
Chen Zhou recalled the moonlight chessboard he had seen on the lake's surface earlier. It seemed Xuan Cai had laid down more than just one layer of seals in Qingzhou.
Truly cautious.
After walking forward a bit longer, Dou Mu Xie halted. He raised his head, and the silver-white glow on his single horn flared intensely.
The moonlight surged forward, illuminating a vast area.
Chen Zhou walked up to his side and looked ahead.
Ahead lay an open clearing, and right in the center of it stood a gate.
To call it a gate was not entirely accurate, as it was actually lying flat on the ground.
The gate was cast from bronze and was massive, measuring about three zhang long, two zhang wide, and at least one chi thick, with several characters carved onto its surface.
A small portion of the bronze gate had already been stained white.
The white discoloration spread from one corner like an ugly scar, crawling across a third of the gate.
White slime was slowly seeping out from the crevices of the gate.
Chen Zhou walked over to the bronze gate, squatted down, and reached out to touch it.
The surface was freezing cold, but other than that, there was nothing unusual.
Lian, who had been chatting and laughing earlier on Dou Mu Xie's back, had now grown incredibly quiet.
She kept her head lowered, not daring to look at the gate.
From the moment she stepped into the square, she had felt it.
Something far below was watching her.
That thing knew her.
But she did not know it.
The sensation made her highly uneasy, so much so that even breathing became difficult.
Chen Zhou carefully examined the divine script on the gate.
The characters had been eroded by the white stain and blurred by time, making some of them illegible, but Chen Zhou could still make out the general meaning.
“God-Sealing Formation Eye, Tomb of Myriad Souls.”
“That which is guarded is indescribable.”
“None but the bloodline of the Emperor's Daughter may open this gate.”
Just a few simple lines, with no further explanation.
Dou Mu Xie let Lian down from his back. As her feet touched the ground, her body swayed, and she nearly lost her balance.
Dou Mu Xie walked around behind her, gently nudged her back with his head, and pushed her toward the bronze gate.
Lian froze, looked up at the bronze gate ahead, and then quickly lowered her head again, her body trembling.
“N-No... please.”
Lian's voice was tiny, almost inaudible.
She took a step back, but Dou Mu Xie held his ground against her, refusing to let her retreat.
“No... I don't want to go over there...”
She did not know why, but she instinctively shrank from approaching that gate; whatever lay inside terrified her.
It was as if the gate locked away the one thing she least wanted to face, and once opened, everything would be ruined.
Yet, with Dou Mu Xie nudging her forward and her Lord standing ahead, the realization gave Lian a small sense of security.
At least she was not alone right now.
She took a deep breath, wiped away her tears, and forced herself to calm down.
She was already her Lord's subordinate deity, and her Lord had even been able to resolve the curse of the Western Region, so there was nothing to fear.
She could not be this cowardly, fearing to face even what lay behind the gate.
Lian knew that if she spoke up, her Lord would certainly not force her and would find another way.
But she also wanted to be of help to her Lord. She needed to be stronger, more useful. Otherwise, how could a speck of dim dust hope to follow in the wake of the sun?
It was just a gate. She could do this.
Lian gritted her teeth, lifted her feet, and walked toward the bronze gate step by step.
But when she was still three zhang away from the bronze gate, Lian stopped.
She found herself unable to move forward; an invisible force pressed down on her like a great mountain, leaving her gasping for air.
She bent over, hands propped on her knees, panting heavily.
Sweat and tears mingled together, dripping onto the ground.
Chen Zhou had long noticed Lian's abnormality. With her seventh-stage cultivation, there was no way she would be panting like this after just a couple of steps. Was this also because of the gate?
Did it not only require her bloodline, but also carry a trial for opening it?
Chen Zhou quietly activated Faith Conferment, temporarily boosting his and Lian's stages by a minor sub-stage, and then gave Lian a gentle push.
Lian felt a surge of warm power pour into her skeletal remains, supported by a cold horn at her back and a pair of strong, reassuring hands.
Her control over her body was slowly returning, putting her even more at ease.
Lian forced herself up, straightening her back, and walked all the way to the front of the bronze gate in one go.
The copper rust on the gate was mottled and uneven, and the white pollution crept inward from the edges like patches of white mold clinging to the green rust.
Lian squatted down and reached out her hand.
Her hand was shaking, trembling violently.
When her fingertips were just an inch away from the bronze gate, she paused.
She could feel something inside the gate calling out to her.
“Come...”
“Open it...”
“Give it back to me...”
Lian slammed her hand flat against it, suddenly shouting in anger, “What kind of monster is playing tricks here? Get away from me!”
The instant her hand touched the bronze gate, Lian's body shuddered violently.
A bone-chilling coldness surged in from her palm, spreading up her arm and throughout her entire body, as if she had been plunged into an ice cellar.
The bronze gate was touching her soul, probing and verifying.
Then, the divine script on the gate began to glow.
First were those characters: “None but the bloodline of the Emperor's Daughter may open this gate.”
A blood-red light welled from the characters, crawling up Lian's fingers, over the back of her hand, past her wrist, and up her arm, coiling and snaking across her skin.
When the characters reached Lian's shoulder, they suddenly sank into her body and vanished.
Lian's body began to tremble. Her entire skeletal remains responded to those bloody characters, vibrating, breathing, and resonating in unison with the bronze gate she touched.
The sensation was wondrous, as if something that had lain dormant within her, sleeping for a hundred thousand years, had suddenly awakened.
And then, the memories came.
Fragments of memories emerged from the darkness, flashing rapidly before her eyes.
Through the haze, Lian saw a goddess clad in green standing atop a high mountain.
She was peerlessly elegant, with a beauty that could captivate the world.
Her face was gentle and radiant, her eyes curved in a smile, yet her expression held a trace of profound sorrow, as if she had long known her fate but had no choice but to carry on.
All around her stood auspicious beasts.
They were multi-colored and bizarrely shaped; Lian recognized none of them.
She only saw that these auspicious beasts were covered in wounds, yet they all stood by the goddess, surrounding her with their heads facing outward and tails inward, acting like a living fortress wall to shield her in the center.
Opposite them stood a massive white beast, whose appearance was nearly identical to the small white beasts spawned by Lou-Metal Dog's infection.
Except it was far larger, and its aura was infinitely more terrifying.
Lian stared at the flashing memories, her body freezing in place.
A wave of groundless sorrow welled up from the depths of her heart, overriding her previous fear.
The heavy grief pressed down on her from all sides, making it hard to breathe.
Bloody tears welled from her sockets, making her two gray, hazy eyes seem on the verge of falling out.
No matter how simple-minded Lian was, she knew who that was.
That was the past life of her skeletal remains.
That polluted goddess, the protector of the Ancient Kingdom of Southern Tang, the daughter of the God Emperor.
“So... it really was you...”
Lian murmured to herself, her voice barely a whisper.
She had always known that the owner of these skeletal remains could not have been an ordinary person in life; she must have been a beautiful, powerful goddess with countless believers.
But she had never imagined she would be a figure of this caliber.
The daughter of the God Emperor.
An ancient true deity.
Controlling the living soil, commanding auspicious beasts, and protecting the common people of an entire nation.
“So beautiful...”
Lian looked at the peerlessly elegant goddess in the memory fragments, felt a sudden pang of envy.
That was the true goddess.
Surrounded by countless auspicious beasts like a bright, pure moon, radiant and beautiful beyond compare.
Born to be adored and surrounded by all things beautiful.
Unlike her.
She was just a little monster born in filth, covered in black spots.
She was a dirty thing.
She was mold growing on these skeletal remains, a maggot crawling out of a rotting corpse.
She could bring no beauty, only endless calamity.
She was not worthy of occupying this body.
She should disappear.
And let the true master return.
Lian's expression began to contort.
Sorrow turned into self-blame, self-blame turned into self-loathing, and self-loathing spiraled into madness.
Squatting before the bronze gate, she pressed both hands against it, her body trembling violently as incoherent murmurs slipped past her lips, sounding like words yet carrying no meaning.
The black spots inside her body began to run rampant.
Black slime welled up from beneath her skin, flowing down her arms and onto the bronze gate.
Upon contact with the black spots, the white pollution on the gate fused with them and began to spread wildly.
The white section seemed to come alive, expanding rapidly until it covered half the gate in the blink of an eye.
From the crevices of the gate, a massive amount of white slime gushed out.
The slime coalesced, writhing and reshaping into countless white tentacles that reached out from the crevices, lunging toward Lian.
The tentacles moved with terrifying speed, arriving before Lian in an instant.
Dou Mu Xie reacted even faster.
He lunged forward, the silver-white glow on his horn flaring as moonlight poured down to shield Lian.
Some of the tentacles dissolved upon hitting the moonlight, but the rest bypassed the shield, flanking from both sides to bind Dou Mu Xie's limbs.
Dou Mu Xie struggled, but could not break free.
The tentacles tightened, biting into the crevices of his bones as the white pollution began to crawl upward.
Making a swift decision, Chen Zhou expanded his Ghost Domain. Gray-white mist surged from his body, enveloping both Lian and Dou Mu Xie.
Upon contact with the mist, the white tentacles began to melt, dissolving into pools of white liquid.
However, the liquid quickly coalesced again, reforming into tentacles to resume the attack.
Chen Zhou frowned.
The pollution inside this gate was somewhat different from Lou-Metal Dog's.
Lou-Metal Dog's pollution was a pure conversion—once touched, it turned white, and once white, it mutated.
But the pollution in this gate seemed to possess another trait: though its corruptive power was less frenzied, it was capable of regeneration.
As long as the source remained, it could regenerate infinitely.
Chen Zhou glanced at Lian.
Her state was highly abnormal.
She squatted before the gate, hands pressed against it, her eyes hollow and pupils unfocused as she muttered continuously.
“I'm not worthy...”
“I'm a dirty thing...”
“I should disappear...”
“And let the master return...”
Chen Zhou's frown deepened.
Her emotions were being manipulated by the entity inside the gate.
It was amplifying the deep-seated inferiority and self-loathing in her heart, driving her toward self-destruction.
Chen Zhou took a deep breath and raised his hand, condensing a dark Seed of Resentment at his fingertips.
With a flick of his finger, he shot the seed into the center of Lian's brow.
Lian's body shuddered violently.
Then, Chen Zhou activated Evil God Whispers, speaking softly into Lian's ear.
“Lian.”
“Look at me.”
Lian's eyes flickered, then slowly focused as she looked toward Chen Zhou.
“Do not let that thing control your emotions. You are an independent, complete individual, not a replacement for anyone or anything.”
“Think of Tuoba Feng, think of Xiaoyun. The one everyone loves is you.”
“You are no longer that corpse-transformed monster of the Western Region. You have a name, you have a family, and you have a brighter future ahead.”
“Wake up.”
Chen Zhou's voice was calm, and the vacancy in Lian's eyes gradually receded, focus returning.
She looked down at her hands, then at the bronze gate, and abruptly tried to pull them back.
But her hands would not budge.
It was as if they were welded to the gate; no matter how hard she pulled, they remained stuck.
Lian panicked, straining backward with all her might, but her hands refused to release.
“Lord... my... my hands...”
Chen Zhou walked over, squatted down, and grabbed Lian's wrists, pulling outward with force.
They wouldn't budge.
On the bronze gate, the blood-red divine script began to shift.
The characters seemed to come alive, swimming across the surface and rearranging themselves into new sentences.
“Soul of the Emperor's Daughter, return to your seat.”
“The seal is about to open.”
“The living soil awaits its master.”
Lian's body began to glow.
Black light surged from beneath her skin, intertwining with the blood-red glow on the gate.
The black spots inside her were rushing out frantically, flowing down her arms and into the bronze gate.
The speed of the drainage was incredibly fast, so much so that Lian's expression warped.
Her already emaciated body became even more withered at a visible rate.
Her skin clung to her bones like paper.
Lian felt her power draining away, along with her very life, sucked dry by the gate.
“Lord... I'm so cold...”
Lian's voice was extremely weak, as if she were on the verge of expiring.
Chen Zhou's expression darkened.
He mobilized the death qi in his body, trying to channel it through his hands into Lian's body to help stabilize her.
But the moment the death qi entered her body, it was immediately sucked away by the gate.
Sucked completely clean, not a single drop remaining.
Chen Zhou's brow knitted tightly into a knot.
Right at that moment, another line of divine script emerged on the bronze gate.
“Nüba.”
“Eldest daughter of the God Emperor.”
“When the Heavenly Tribulation descended, she suppressed it with her own body.”
“The pollution entered her body, and she sealed herself here.”
“Awaiting the return of the Emperor's Daughter's bloodline, upon which the seal may open and the living soil may emerge.”
“Should the one who opens it not possess the soul of the Emperor's Daughter, the seal shall remain eternal, and those who attempt to open it shall die.”
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