Seal at the Bottom of No-Man’s Cemetery
Standing at No-Man’s Cemetery once again to search for the seal Chi Yue supposedly broke out from, Mu Yu inquired, “Xiaoshuai, have you recalled which relative of yours Chi Yue is yet?”
“I will stress it for the thousandth time: it isn’t my relative. None of my relatives look so hideous. I didn’t mean ‘familiar’ as in we’re relatives but as in it’s something I hate the same way you hate ghosties. You’re familiar with their aura, aren’t you?”
“You love calling them ‘ghosties’, huh? It sounds… friendly,” joked Mu Yu, starting to inspect the landscape, planning to cast a formation over the seal if needed to prevent Ghost Gate coming back to use it.
Noticing the ominous mist was gone after doing a lap, the dragon vine commented, “That Flesh-Winged Horny Monster’s self-destruction was a pretty powerful blast. It buried all the rocks around here.”
“Something is weird about the explosion. This valley is supposed to be around six-kilometres deep, at least, and sinks down only ten or so metres, yet the blast was somehow contained to only the edge of the valley. Are you telling me the blast filled up the entire bottom? How many rocks rolled down into the valley? It almost implies that Chi Yue deliberately wanted to block off access to the valley.
“Look out how tough these shattered rocks are; I can’t even crush them with my foot. You’d think these rocks have been around here for ages. It’s only occurring to me now, but I don’t remember damaging any of the rocks at the bottom of the valley during the fight. Actually, they resemble the ones we saw at the bottom of the valley. Do you think… these shattered rocks that are identical to the ones at the bottom of the valley are just there to create a false sense of security while Chi Yue is actually escaping from the bottom of the rocks at the bottom of the valley?
“Judging from Ghost Gate’s reaction, they didn’t know where Chi Yue was sealed. We never saw any corpses down there. Chi Yue and its corpse water came out of nowhere. Where did the water come from?”
“Maybe. Maybe we missed something at the bottom,” proposed Xiaoshuai.
“Hmm, we assumed the rumbling sound was the sound of the river flushing through and inferred the river is in the water from that. We didn’t find any holes or seals, but we didn’t check the rocks and stones at the bottom of the valley. What if… What if the bottom we saw wasn’t the real bottom, and the shattered rocks are hiding another space underneath it?”
“There’s only one way to verify that. We’re going back down there, aren’t we?” questioned the dragon vine.
“Oh, man…” Xiaoshuai grieved.
Although Mu Yu wanted to dig a hole in the rocks, they were as tough as though some special energy glued them together solid enough that not even he could smash through. Nonetheless, using Wood Spirit as a medium allowed them to travel several hundred metres down through the cracks to a dark place.
Mu Yu lit up a pill flame stone, illuminating the ice on the rocky walls and rocks he wriggled through.
“Looks like we’re onto something. Those stones are hovering in the air, which means this unknown energy sealed the rocks at the bottom. Let’s keep going down.”
Mu Yu dug another dozen metres down the same way as before upon encountering the next blockade. At the bottom of the new space wasn’t a narrow valley base but an ocean of golden stars against a black backdrop. The walls in this space weren’t frozen, and the rocks floating above weren’t arranged in a specific order, resulting in them bouncing off each other to drift in other directions, albeit not making a sound.
“Are we in the stars?” Mu Yu asked.
Xiaoshuai found a vantage point on Mu Yu’s shoulder to analyse the surroundings. “It’s very familiar.”
“I agree.”
Mu Yu found that gravity applied to him unlike the floating stones when he vaulted. As he got a closer view of the golden spots in the “sky”, he realised the golden light was actually ancient text that formed a formation.
“This is a formation. Except, the text seems incomplete, and the spiritual energy of the text is waning. If I’m on the money, then this text is separating this section from another zone, and this part is the side where the formation text has been damaged. I wonder if this is the seal Chi Yue supposedly escaped from.”
“Eh?” Xiaoshuai’s hand stopped along the text. “I know this formation! I know who cast it!”
“Who?”
“Old man with the white beard!”
“You sure? Shifu cast it?”
“I’m dead sure! The arrangement of the text here is the exact same as the formation at Mount Dustfallen! I can’t mistake the familiar spiritual energy! Don’t forget how long I spent at the spiritual qi core!”
“Does that mean Shifu sealed Chi Yue here?”
“I was telling you I knew that disgusting freak from somewhere. Old man with the white beard wasn’t trying to seal Flesh-Winged Horny Monster but trying to stop it from coming here from the other side!”
“Other side? Which side is ‘other side’?”
“Mu Yu, we need to repair this formation immediately and stop those freaks from reaching this place. Old man with the white beard hated those uglies since way back in the day.”
“Hold the hell up. Are you telling me there’s more than one Chi Yue?”
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