Chapter 139: Beacon

One cannot fully trust the words of a devil; this was an iron rule repeatedly emphasized in the Dragon Heritage.

Feinuo appeared elegant, sincere, and perhaps even a bit too enthusiastic. Every word he said seemed to be for your own good, but Sakavi knew that was only because the entrance to a trap was always covered in flowers and honey. But the map he gave was real.

The scent of time on the parchment—the dust, mold, and preservative herbs accumulated over hundreds of years—was not forged.

Sakavi tapped the edge of the parchment lightly with his claw tip. Bitter Sea Jade Marsh, a place name he had never heard of. Feinuo said it was in a corner of the 72nd Abyssal Plane, on a forgotten continent, under the shadow of the Shadow-Erosion Mountains.

But the 72nd Abyssal Plane was as vast as a boundless black ocean; Abyssal Lords carved out their own territories and attacked each other, and even they couldn't clearly state how large this plane was or how many continents it had.

But the Soul Prison... Sakavi's vertical pupils narrowed slightly. He had heard of that place. It was a place that only existed in fragments of the Dragon Heritage and in the hushed whispers of Necromancers.

It was the most terrifying prison known, holding souls that had been enslaved by several Abyssal Lords for tens of thousands of years—warriors, mages, dragons, and even angels. No one knew the exact location of the prison, and no one could bring anything out of it.

Sakavi needed to verify it himself, but he couldn't bring Dragon Beasts, and he couldn't bring anyone. In this 72nd plane where demons held dominance, any large-scale movement could attract unnecessary attention.

Moreover, if Feinuo was lying, if what awaited him in that swamp was not an undead army but a trap, he could ensure his own escape. Sakavi stood up and spread his dragon wings. The old wound at the base of his left wing was still throbbing, but he couldn't care about that anymore.

"Go and see," he whispered. Sakavi flew for two full days along the direction marked on the map.

He flew for two full days. Crossing sulfur deserts, boiling magma rivers, and a smoking basin trampled out by some giant creature.

The dark red sky always pressed down on his head, like a ceiling about to collapse. The smell of sulfur in the air grew stronger, mixed with the stench of blood and burning, making his throat dry.

Occasionally, Winged Demons would dive down from the clouds, but Sakavi ignored them; his size was much larger than the Winged Demons, and his Dragon Might was enough to make most low-level demons take a detour.

On the second day, the terrain began to change. Black magma rock was gradually replaced by gray-white dust, like bone ash, like lime, like something that had been weathered for who knew how many years. The sulfur smell in the air faded, replaced by a sweet, putrid stench—not of demons, but the smell of the dead.

Sakavi lowered his altitude, gliding close to the ground. The dust was kicked up by his wings, rising like gray smoke. The cracks in the ground grew deeper and wider, and from the cracks, one could see dark red things like coagulated blood below. He didn't know what this place was.

He landed on the edge of a cliff.

Below the cliff was a gray-white wasteland, scattered with huge, weathered stone pillars. The shapes of those pillars were very irregular; some looked like people, some like beasts, and some like some unrecognizable, long-extinct creature.

They were not naturally formed; Sakavi could tell. There were carvings on the surface of the pillars, but they had been worn smooth by time, and it was impossible to see what the patterns were.

He crouched down and scraped the rock under his feet with his claw tip.

The rock was very hard but very brittle, like charred bone. He scraped off a layer of stone powder and brought it to his nose to smell. It wasn't the smell of limestone; it was bone powder.

Sakavi's vertical pupils narrowed slightly. He stood up and looked around. Those huge stone pillars, those weathered outlines that looked like people and beasts, were bones. Tens of thousands of bones that had been buried for who knew how many years, crushed, and then re-solidified.

The entire wasteland under his feet was a graveyard.

But he couldn't find anything more. The wasteland was too vast, and there were too many bones, but there was nothing he wanted—nothing he could use to "awaken" the undead.

Those bones had been dead for too long; their souls had long since dissipated or been taken away by some Abyssal Lord, turning into some darker fuel. What remained were just empty shells, just bone powder weathered into stone.

Sakavi circled over the wasteland for a full day. He found more bones, piled in the depths of canyons, sunk to the bottom of dark red lakes, or buried under volcanic ash. Some bones still had fragments of armor and weapons, rusted and crumbling at the slightest touch.

The map didn't mark the name of this area. Perhaps it never had a name, or perhaps everyone who knew its name was already dead. On the third day, he saw the sea.

The color of the seawater was black—not the black of deep night, but a black that made one feel their soul would be sucked in at a single glance. There were no waves on the sea, only a slow, heavy heaving, like a giant beast breathing.

In the distance, where the sea met the sky, there was a dark red band of light, like a wound slowly bleeding. The Red Wave Archipelago, the coordinates of this plane.

Sakavi did not stop. He spread his wings, facing the biting cold wind blowing from the sea, and flew over this dead sea area. There were things swimming under the water, huge in size, occasionally kicking up white water trails.

He flew very high, at least five hundred meters above the water, but he could still feel the gaze of those things—greedy, hungry, as if looking at a piece of meat that had fallen from the sky. To the north of the archipelago was a brand-new continent.

Viewed from the air, this continent looked like a skinned corpse. The gray-white surface was covered with thick dust; there was no green, no black, only boundless gray-white, occasionally broken by dark red cracks in the ground, like fresh bloodstains.

Suddenly, a wind blew from the north, carrying a scent he had never smelled before—a faint scent like the embers of withered leaves burning. He followed the wind direction and looked, and on the northern horizon, there was a faint dark outline: mountains.

Sakavi spread his dragon wings and flew north.

He flew for three days.

It wasn't that the distance was too far, but that it was too dangerous. The further north he went, the more demons there were. They were no longer a group of Lesser Demons gnawing on corpses, but organized armies commanded by some powerful lord.

Berserkers lined up on the plains, Judgment Demons patrolled the sky, and several times, Sakavi felt the aura of a Demigod-Rank demon, like dark red lightning striking from the distant mountains, sweeping across the entire wasteland.

He had to take detours, flying close to the ground, hiding in canyons and cracks, traveling in the gaps of demon patrols. Once, he was almost discovered by a Judgment Demon; the creature flew less than two hundred meters above his head, and he could even see the cracks and pus on its carapace.

Sakavi held his breath, his scales pressed against the rock wall, not moving a muscle. The Judgment Demon's vertical pupils swept over the rock crevice where he was hiding, lingered for less than a second, and then continued flying forward.

Sakavi waited until its aura had completely disappeared before crawling out of the rock crevice. His scales were covered in cold sweat.

On the fourth day, he finally saw the Shadow-Erosion Mountains.

It was a black mountain range, with countless huge, petrified bones piled together to form the skeleton of the range. The spaces between the bones were filled with black volcanic rock and gray-white bone powder, like the corpse of a deformed giant beast forcibly stitched together.

Sakavi hovered at the edge of the mountain range, his vertical pupils scanning those bones. He recognized some of them: dragon ribs, Titan pelvises, and the skulls of creatures he had never seen before, three times larger than a dragon.

These creatures were Legendary, or even Demigod-level existences during their lifetimes, and their bones still emitted a faint pressure even thousands of years after death.

If the Bitter Sea Jade Marsh was here, and if the ancient battlefield Feinuo spoke of was here, then the mountain range under his feet was the tombstone of that ancient battlefield.

Sakavi flew along the southern foothills of the mountain range, looking for any terrain that could be the "Ku Hai Yu Zhao." But at the foot of the mountains, there were only endless gray-white wastelands and occasionally smoking volcanic craters; there was no swamp, no mud, nothing that could be called a "swamp."

Until he flew to the eastern section of the mountain range.

The terrain here suddenly changed. The gray-white wasteland was replaced by a dark green low-lying area, the ground wet, as if soaked in water.

The air was filled with a sweet, putrid stench—not of corpses, but of something more ancient and colder. Sakavi lowered his altitude and landed on the edge of the low-lying area.

His claws sank into the wet, soft soil. The soil was black and viscous, like half-coagulated asphalt. He dug with his claw tip, and beneath the soil was a layer of hard, gray-white things—bones, bones again.

Sakavi stood up, his vertical pupils scanning this low-lying area. It was huge, so huge that he couldn't see the end of it. The ground was covered with a layer of dark green, moss-like things, slippery to the touch, like stepping on rotting skin.

The air was filled with thick fog—gray-white, carrying a sweet, putrid stench—making it almost impossible for him to see anything beyond ten meters.

Sakavi hovered over the swamp, his vertical pupils scanning below. He could feel that there were things beneath the swamp. They didn't belong to demons; it was a more ancient, purer aura of death that had been buried for who knew how many years.

That aura was like cold needles, pricking his scales until they stood up slightly. He lowered his altitude and dived into the thick gray-white mist. The fog was thicker than it looked; once inside, he could barely see anything beyond ten meters.

The air became wet and cold, like entering an ice cellar. Acidic mist condensed into fine water droplets on his dragon scales, carrying a slight corrosive quality and emitting a sizzling sound. Sakavi didn't care; Black Dragon scales were resistant to acid, and this level of acidic mist couldn't hurt him.

He had flown for less than a quarter of an hour when he encountered his first batch of trouble: demons living in the swamp. A group of creatures resembling a mix of giant salamanders and crocodiles lunged out of the mud.

They were over five meters long, their gray-white scales covered in tumor-like nodules and moss, with two curved bone spurs standing on their backs like chimneys emitting white smoke. Their limbs were short and thick, and when their webbed claws spread, they looked like five curved scythes. Their eyes were a cloudy, milky white with no pupils, but a sickly green fluorescence shone from deep within the eyeballs.

Sakavi had seen the name of this creature in the Dragon Heritage: Gray Swamp Lurker.

The apex predator of swamp areas, feeding on carrion and any living thing, full of hostility toward any creature that intruded into its territory.

The first Lurker leaped out of the mud, its open lower jaw revealing two rows of inward-curving, nail-board-like teeth, biting directly toward Sakavi's left hind leg.

Sakavi stopped abruptly in mid-air, his wings flapping backward violently, the huge airflow flipping the Lurker over. It smashed into the mud, splashing a large amount of black water, but immediately rolled and stood up, completely unharmed.

Its scales were too thick; ordinary attacks couldn't penetrate them at all. At the same time, two others pounced from the left and right sides, but Sakavi did not retreat.

He dived down, his right claw hooking the Lurker's upper jaw, his left claw grabbing its lower jaw, and then he tore violently to both sides. The crisp sound of bone cracking echoed over the swamp, and the Lurker's head was torn in two, gray-white blood spraying all over him.

Another Lurker took the opportunity to bite his left hind leg. The teeth pierced the scales and dug into the flesh, making Sakavi tremble with pain. He didn't look back, instead whipping his tail violently.

The bone spur at the tip of his tail precisely pierced the Lurker's eye socket, and it let out a shrill hiss, loosening its grip. Sakavi soared into the air and flew away from that area.

There were four more bloody holes in his leg, black blood dripping down his scales. He lowered his head and took a look; the wounds weren't deep, but they were painful. "Enough kick," he whispered. He continued flying deeper into the swamp.

The further in he went, the thicker the fog became. The gray-white fog carrying the sweet, putrid stench rose from the water surface like countless hands grabbing at his wings. Sakavi's vertical pupils almost lost their function in the fog; he could only rely on his hearing and sense of smell to judge the direction.

There was more than one kind of demon in the swamp. He encountered more Gray Swamp Lurkers—three, five, sometimes even a group. They leaped out of the mud, darted from behind bone-like plants, and suddenly emerged from beneath gray-white foam. Every single one of them wanted to take a bite out of him.

Sakavi killed them one after another. His claws were covered in gray-white blood, his dragon wings were pitted by the acidic mist, and the wound on his left hind leg was still bleeding, but he didn't stop. These demons couldn't stop him; they were just consuming his stamina and patience.

What he was truly looking for was the ancient battlefield Feinuo spoke of. The location marked on the map was in the deepest part of the swamp. Sakavi flew along the marked route for nearly two hours, and the fog finally began to thin—not because the fog had dissipated, but because he had flown out of the fog zone.

Feinuo hadn't lied to him. The ancient battlefield was here. The undead were here too.

But he couldn't find the bones, couldn't find any "key" that would allow him to control these undead. It wasn't because he wasn't strong enough, but because someone, or something, had hidden this key.

Sakavi hovered in the mist, silent for a long time.

The devil had given him the map, pointed him in the direction, and even hinted at the existence of the Soul Prison. But he hadn't given him the beacon. He let Sakavi come to find it himself, discover it himself, and then conclude for himself: without the beacon, he couldn't do anything.

This was Feinuo's calculation.

Without using lies to deceive, he let Sakavi see these undead with his own eyes, hear their wails with his own ears, and touch this forgotten graveyard with his own hands. Then he let Sakavi ask himself: Do you want them? Do you want this power? Then go and take the prisoners in the Soul Prison to trade for it.

When Sakavi flew back to the Purgatory Volcano, the old wound at the base of his left wing tore open. It was caused by him twisting his body violently to avoid a Judgment Demon while crossing the demon patrol area. Blood dripped down his scales onto the black magma rock, emitting a sizzling sound.

He didn't stop to treat the wound. He lay before the map, his vertical pupils staring at those ancient lines, his brain spinning at high speed.

The Soul Prison—what Feinuo wanted were the prisoners in the Soul Prison. Those powerful, and in many cases Legendary-level souls that had been imprisoned by some ancient Abyssal Lord for thousands of years, and the Warden was even a Demigod-Rank existence. ===== CHAPTER 140 =====