Chapter 136 The Chamber of Cadavers (1/2)
A frightened scream from one of the female disciples after an hour's trek confirmed Xiao Chen's suspicion: one of the girls had found scraps of bones and teeth under her feet; the company's journey in the tunnel was filled with reverberating noises of bones being crush under their feet.
The company could hardly believe that they had trodden upon a path literally laid out with the remains of countless dead people that even as practitioners trained in arcane skills, some of them, especially the female disciples, began to vomit with disgust.
Xiao Chen was the only one unperturbed by the horrific epiphany; it was not his first time encountering such a spectacle, although he did not expect that the master of the Wuwang Wind Cloud City, like the leader of the Skygale Sect before him, was trying to set up the Blood Soul Formation to resurrect a dead person.
Activating the Blood Soul Formation would require a price of countless human souls in addition to a vast amount of spirit energy. That would explain the reason the Wuwang Wind Cloud City had seized control of an Earth Spiritual Meridian.
”Amitabha...” Xu Gu muttered mournfully, his palms still clasped before him as his head shook sideways. ”I cannot believe that the Wuwang Wind Cloud City had committed such an abomination...” He sighed with a slight note of defeat.
”So it is true then; they are one of the Devil's Practice...” Xiaoyue muttered in a frigid voice.
But a sudden tremor in the tunnel cut her off; rocks and boulders shook above them, threatening to crash down on them. ”We must leave. NOW.” Xiao Chen said, his hands swiftly performed several seals and his hands were immediately shrouded with a faint white radiance. He slammed his palms upward, helping Luo Shangyan keep away from the falling rocks..
There was no more time to think what else was under the feet; the company sped on as quickly as they could. There was no way they would survive the collapse of the tunnel, Core Forming Realm cultivators or not.
Everyone jostled against one another, shoving and nudging off others for their own survival as the shaking grew stronger. At last, they made it out of the tunnel. The company found themselves in a subterranean hall, filled with hundreds of neatly-arranged stone sarcophaguses.
Deafening crashes boomed from over their shoulders; the tunnel had caved in and the earthquake had stopped. Looking back the now-collapsed tunnel where they came from, the company could not help shedding cold sweat with their close shave with Death. A few more paces slower, and they might have already been dead.
But when Xu Gu began to make another headcount, they found only sixteen people remaining: Liu Chengfeng was missing.
At the mention of Liu Chengfeng, strange stares fell almost simultaneously upon Xiaoyue. Everyone had heard Liu Chengfeng's argument with her earlier about Lu Jianxing's disappearance.
Xu Gu breathed heavily. But before he could barely say anything, the same disembodied voice boomed over the air again, ”Interesting. I suppose it's Heaven's will that you were able to make it this far. I'd thought that the Primordial Phantasm was enough to ensnare you all; it seems I was mistaken.
”Devious evil! What are you; man or ghost! Show yourself if you dare!” Ye Wuhen, being the most ill-tempered of the company, was the one to yell.
”Nay, I am neither man nor ghost. But nobody enters the Chamber of Cadavers and walks out alive. Feel free to inspect the contents of the sarcophaguses yourselves; you might find some occupants that you knew before...”
After these words, the voice vanished like it was never there. The eyes of everyone in the company shifted slowly to the rows of sarcophaguses before them. Nobody could verify the claims that the voice made, but there had been no less of disappearances of warriors, swordsmen, as well as other practitioners of the arcane arts through the years. Were they all here, lying dead and disheveled in these coffins?
But Xiao Chen felt a tug in his gut somehow. Not only did he noticed the hundreds of stone sarcophaguses arranged on the ground, but his eyes were also looking with an unspeakable dread at another three which was hovering up high in mid-air in the middle of the hall.
Just only last year, his grandfather, Perfected Immortal Zixu, and Master Lingjue had embarked on an ill-fated journey to investigate the situation of the Soul-consuming Evil Flowers and no word was heard from them since and no one had ever seen them. The sight of the three sarcophaguses hanging in mid-air only strengthened the feeling of foreboding welling up inside him.
Instinctively, he turned to look at Luo Shangyan. She too, was staring hard at the three stone coffins looming over them, her eyes were wide open, held fixed in expectant horror. ”Senior Sister Luo,” he whispered to her, ”Perfected Immortal Zixu is a powerful person himself. Moreover, he has my grandfather and Master Lingjue with him. With their powers and abilities, I cannot imagine them being trapped here.”
Luo Shangyan only nodded silently, while a few curious but confused stares looked at Xiao Chen, not knowing what he was talking about.
”There must be means of egress from this great hall. We should not approach the stone coffins lest we awaken something undesired. Just concentrate on looking for an exit,” Xiao Chen said to everyone. Despite his throbbing curiosity to find out the identity of the people that could be lying within the three stone coffins, Xiao Chen could not bring himself to do so; Luo Shangyan would instantly crumble if his fears indeed come true.
These were stones best left unturned, he mused; at least Senior Sister Luo would continue her life with hopes that the person she sought might still be around. Luo Shangyan might even lose the sheer will to continue living if news of her beloved teacher's death were to come now.
It was a sentiment Xiao Chen could not have known better: he himself furtively harbored hopes and wishes that his teacher, Ling Yin still lived. It was a hope that had fueled him until now. He sometimes wondered if he would plunge into darkness and despair if he were to discover his teacher's death. Maybe he would also lose any hope of living.
The company came to a unanimous agreement, leaving safely was the paramount decision for now. There was no need to disturb the coffins and invite more trouble. But just when the company was about to begin searching, a huge bang shook the chamber; a stone lid was tossed into the air and a figure began to emerge from one of the stone coffins.
An air of chilly deathliness accompanied the climb of the figure out of the sarcophagus as he stared only in the direction of his front with his blank and lifeless eyes. This was a corpse of a person long dead for many years. No, Xiao Chen realized, this was not even an ordinary corpse. It was a Corpse Puppet; akin to the one he had encountered at Falling-jade Glow.
Yi Tong had once told him before when he visited Falling-jade Glow that a Corpse Puppet with a grudge of more than a decade alone was already very powerful. The one before him, he pondered, would at least carry a two-decade grudge for it to emanate such aura.
”Careful,” he cautioned the others, ”Cadavers like this feel no pain at all, and ordinary weapons are utterly useless against it.” But it was as if the corpse had heard him; without allowing him to finish, the Corpse Puppet had leaped into the air, lunging at the company with lightning speed!