Chapter 258: Underground Ancient Gate

Sparkfire Blazing Light was driven to its limit, the crimson-gold flowing light stretched out an extremely long golden afterimage in the narrow passage.

Wang Ping transformed into crimson-gold light, his five viscera and six bowels seemed to be burning, each breath bringing a scorching pain.

The winding, heat-radiating underground passage resembled a giant beast's intestines, twisting and turning with no end in sight.

The three Nascent Soul auras behind him were like a bone-deep ulcer, lingering relentlessly; no matter how he relied on the Five Elements Divine Light's special affinity for fire-element environments, cleverly using the scorching airflow to disturb the pursuit,

Or by leveraging the jagged, abrupt rock faces to shift direction instantly, those three powerful strands of divine sense always clung to him like poisonous snakes, impossible to shake off completely.

Prolonged extreme evasion and continuous clashes of divine abilities placed a huge burden on his Mid Golden Core cultivation.

The golden core within his dantian spun faster than usual, emitting a scorching light; vast amounts of spiritual power were drawn into his meridians to sustain the consumption of Sparkfire Blazing Light and any imminent battle.

His meridians transmitted a faint, tearing-like distension, a sign of overloaded spiritual power circulation. He had to divert his focus to cultivate the technique, striving to refine the surrounding violent yet thin fire spiritual power, attempting to replenish a bit of the loss.

A condensed blood-colored finger-light, soundless and traceless like a venomous snake lurking in shadows, shot suddenly from an extremely tricky angle behind his side, with incredible speed, aiming straight for Wang Ping's vital spot beneath his ribs.

Before the finger-light arrived, the foul, corrupting aura of tainted blood and eroding magical power had already descended, causing a chill to run through one's body.

This was the Blood River Ancestor's signature technique, the Blood Finger! The old fiend had clearly lost patience, beginning to employ more vicious means.

Wang Ping didn't even have time to turn fully; driven by combat instinct, a white divine light instinctively brushed out from behind him, spreading a clear, cold Geng-metal qi.

The Azure Gleam Sword Intent merged without reservation, instantly forming a white sword curtain woven from countless minute sword auras, impenetrable as it protected his flank.

Ding-ding-dang—!

The blood-colored finger-light struck the resilient sword curtain, erupting in a rapid, dense crackling like rain on banana leaves.

The white sword aura, unmatched in sharpness, shredded most of the finger-light into void-like blood-colored spiritual energy, yet a thread of the purest yin-cold blood-fiend qi, like a bone-deep ulcer, found a gap to pierce the sword curtain's defense and reach the five-colored body-protecting spiritual light circulating around him.

Zizi—

A grating corrosive sound rose; the five-colored spiritual light fluctuated violently, and that thread of blood-fiend qi stubbornly invaded inward.

Wang Ping let out a muffled groan, feeling a bone-chilling icy pain in his ribs, while his soul also swayed slightly with dizziness.

He dared not delay; the crimson divine light within him suddenly shifted, and a wisp of the scorching essence of the True Sun Fire surged forth, like a blazing sun melting snow, instantly incinerating and purifying that tenacious blood-fiend qi.

However, due to this pause, his fleeing speed inevitably slowed slightly.

Stay here!

At that moment when the old force had just faded and the new had not yet arisen, Jin Yuanzi's cold voice, like ten-thousand-year-old ice, suddenly rang out.

Carrying an air of lofty judgment. He did not draw near, seeming to deem it beneath him to engage Wang Ping in close combat; merely from several dozen zhang away, he launched a distant punch.

As the fist flew, spiritual power surged!

Vast golden spiritual power surged mighty, instantly condensing into a golden jiao dragon nearly ten zhang long, its scales fully visible, lifelike!

This jiao dragon's eyes glared angrily, emitting an almost pure dragon might, instantly crossing the distance, its massive maw opened wide, as if to swallow him whole.

Pressure spiked! The air seemed to solidify. The Nascent Soul cultivator's furious strike possessed power enough to easily severely wound or even instantly kill an ordinary peak Golden Core cultivator.

Wang Ping's gaze was cold and icy; he knew he absolutely could not meet its full force head-on.

He sucked in a breath violently, his chest heaving like a bellows; the yellow divine light behind him, symbolizing heft and bearing, surged forth with unprecedented speed!

The phantom of the Overturn Heaven Seal suddenly condensed and expanded before him, no longer its former petite form.

Instead, it became a structure several zhang across, like a massive ancient shield engraved with mountain-and-river runes, emanating a heavy Dao resonance that suppresses the four extremes and eight wildernesses!

He did not choose to clash head-on with the golden jiao dragon's most ferocious dragon head; instead, he controlled the phantom of the Overturn Heaven Seal, cleverly positioning it diagonally before him to form an angled barrier.

Simultaneously, he covertly employed Gravity Technique beneath his feet, his weight multiplying dozens of times in an instant; his whole body seemed to become a meteor falling from the sky, no longer maintaining level flight but plunging at a near-vertical angle down a narrower side passage where fire spiritual power was unusually active and violent.

This series of movements flowed like drifting clouds and running water, occurring in the flash of lightning and spark!

Boom—!!!

The deafening roar nearly tore apart one's eardrums! The golden jiao dragon grazed the edge of the Overturn Heaven Seal phantom and slammed hard into the side wall of the passage!

In an instant, the earth shook and mountains trembled! The hard, dark-purple-tinged rock wall was easily torn apart like tofu and shattered, leaving a bottomless huge pit whose edges bore the marks of dragon claws ripping apart.

Scorching rock fragments mixed with magma shot outward like a violent rain, blasting the passage into a thousand holes!

Wang Ping, however, relied on the deflected impact force from the successful Overturn Heaven Seal and the sudden acceleration from his Gravity Technique, slipping like a slick fish, narrowly evading that deadly blow; his trajectory traced a strange zigzag in midair, and with a soft thud he slipped into the lower, even narrower side passage that could barely fit a few people side by side, instantly vanishing from the sight of the three Nascent Soul cultivators.

Crafty brat! The Blood River Ancestor gazed at the half-destroyed passage and the vanished target, his blood robe billowing with rage, his gaunt face brimming with killing intent.

He had not expected Wang Ping to be so troublesome, his responses endlessly adaptable.

Jin Yuanzi's face darkened to the point of almost dripping water; he withdrew his fist, the golden jiao dragon phantom gradually dissipating. He fixed his gaze on the side passage where Wang Ping had vanished and spoke coldly:

He won't last long! His spiritual power fluctuations have already weakened by at least thirty percent! He's a spent arrow at the end of its flight!

The ever-silent Qingzhusu lightly tapped the ground with his bamboo staff, an invisible ripple spreading outward, sensing the lingering chaotic qi in the air; his hoarse voice carried a barely perceptible gravity:

This child's combat awareness is astonishing, his grasp of timing exquisite to the finest detail, and he also possesses multiple powerful divine abilities… Were it not for his cultivation limit and insufficient spiritual foundation, in a one-on-one we would probably…

He did not continue, but the other two understood his unspoken meaning.

A Mid Golden Core junior, under the combined pursuit of the three of us Nascent Soul cultivators, not only was not quickly taken down, but instead relied on exquisite divine techniques and unimaginable combat talent to contend to this day, even causing us to suffer setbacks several times.

If this were to spread, it would be shocking to hear. It also strengthened their resolve to completely detain him, seize all his secrets and fortunes! If he is not eliminated, he will surely become a grave future threat!

The three exchanged a glance, each seeing determination and greed in the other's eyes. Without further words, the Blood River Ancestor turned into a reeking blood-light, as if alive, drilling into the cracks of the rock wall.

Jin Yuanzi's body blazed with golden light, like a sharp sword forcibly breaking through the blocking rubble.

Qingzhusu's figure was like a ghost; he pointed his bamboo staff into the void, his form blurred for a moment, then pursued forward in a manner akin to shrinking the earth to an inch.

The three powerful auras once again locked on tightly, pressing into the narrow side passage.

Ahead, Wang Ping's situation was indeed grim. Consecutive high-intensity evasion and use of divine abilities, especially the last hard clash with the aftermath of Jin Yuanzi's fist wind, left him feeling that the spiritual power in his dantian had been consumed by more than half, and the luster of his golden core had dimmed somewhat.

His sea of consciousness also, due to prolonged intense focus, directing his divine sense to resist Nascent Soul pressure and probe the environment, transmitted waves of needle-like fatigue pain.

He unhesitatingly swallowed a handful of Primordial Restoring Pills prepared beforehand for rapid spiritual power replenishment; the medicine dissolved upon entry, and bursts of somewhat violent medicinal power exploded within his body, like sweet rain replenishing his rapidly depleted dantian qi sea.

Yet the evasion art Sparkfire Blazing Light's boost to speed is unparalleled; correspondingly, its consumption of spiritual power is terrifying, and the pill's replenishment is merely a drop in the bucket.

He could only grit his teeth, relying on the Five Elements Divine Light technique's special sensitivity to fire-element spiritual power, in this vast-maze-like network of passages, fleeing desperately toward the direction that felt more abundant, more pure, or rather, more imbued with a certain significance.

The surrounding environment was also quietly changing. The rock walls' color shifted from the original dark purple gradually toward an almost pure black.

The texture became harder and colder, and even began to show some naturally formed, extremely fine silver lines upon it.

These silver markings were not disorderly; they faintly formed some unfathomable pattern and gave off a weak, strange spatial fluctuation, as if echoing with some existence far away in the depths.

The temperature had risen to an unimaginable degree, enough to instantly melt and vaporize the protective aura of an ordinary Golden Core cultivator.

The oppressive pressure permeating the air grew heavier and heavier, like an invisible tide pressing from all directions, affecting not only the flesh but directly pressing upon the soul.

Wang Ping even felt his thoughts becoming somewhat sluggish.

He had completely lost his sense of direction; the pursuing shouts and powerful aura fluctuations behind him seemed somewhat weakened by the increasingly complex and bizarre passage structure, sometimes far, sometimes near, but he dared not relax in the slightest, knowing those three would never give up.

Suddenly, an extreme sense of danger springing from life instinct, like an icy poisonous snake, shot up his spine to his scalp! His body's hairs stood on end.

In the forward direction and the left and right passage mouths within his sight, without any omen, silently and soundlessly, huge masses of black flame surged forth!

This flame was black as ink, deep as the darkest night, reflecting no light at all, instead seeming to constantly devour all surrounding light and heat, presenting an absolute.

It flowed silently, like viscous asphalt, yet without losing speed. The black rock wall, hard as anything and covered in silver patterns, upon contact with this black flame, was as if devoured by an invisible maw, vanishing silently and without trace—not even leaving powder, marks, or energy fluctuations.

An aura of extreme pollution and extreme destruction, specifically targeting the vitality of life and the essence of the soul, spread like a plague in an instant, causing Wang Ping's soul core to tremble and wail uncontrollably.

Earth Core Nether Flame! Moreover, it was of extremely high quality, seemingly containing a fragment of the law of destruction—a terrifying Earth Core Nether Flame!

Such a thing, according to rumor, exists only in some perilous ancient ruins or the deepest source of corruption in the earth's core; even an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator would flee three leagues upon seeing it!

Wang Ping's heart almost stopped, his overwhelming will to live overriding all thought!

Without thinking, acting almost purely on bodily instinct, he sharply turned direction, pushing his Sparkfire Blazing Light to the limit he could endure, like a crimson-gold arrow released from a bow, he recklessly charged toward the sole passage that emitted no black flame but exuded an even more heart‑pounding, ancient and desolate aura.

The black flames behind him, as if possessing some strange collective consciousness, instantly reversed direction, pursuing him like a breached black tide, relentless!

Wherever they passed, the passage's rock walls, residual spiritual energy, even light and sound, were completely devoured, reduced to the absolute.

Wang Ping could even clearly feel that the tip of his escape light, that scorching crimson-gold radiance, seemed to be tugged by an invisible force, its edges blurring and dimming, as if it might at any moment be assimilated and utterly consumed by that absolute darkness.

This passage sloped downward all the way, its angle growing ever steeper, as if leading straight to the legendary Nine Netherworld, with no end in sight.

The surrounding temperature had risen beyond description, yet Wang Ping's Five-Colored Divine Light circulated around him at an unprecedented speed, the various hues flashing alternately, barely managing to keep out the terrifying heat capable of melting gold and iron and the pervasive fire poison.

He even doubted that, were it not for the marvelous Five Elements Divine Light technique, with its five‑phase circulation of mutual generation and inhibition, plus the protection of True Solar Fire,

able to transmute or divert some of the invading harmful energy, he would likely have already been utterly annihilated in this extreme environment, both body and spirit destroyed.

He did not know how long his desperate flight had lasted—perhaps only the span of an incense stick, perhaps already an hour. In Wang Ping's perception, time had become extraordinarily long and vague.

He felt his internal spiritual power about to be completely exhausted, his Golden Core's rotation growing sluggish; even the Sparkfire Blazing Light escape technique began to be hard to sustain, his escape light wavering, its speed noticeably dropping.

Just as he was about to despair, preparing to burn his Golden Core's essence in a final all‑out effort—

The devouring sensation behind him, like a bone‑deep ulcer, suddenly vanished!

He abruptly halted his escape light; the great inertia caused him to stagger forward several steps before he managed to stay upright by bracing his hands on the ground.

A sweetness rose in his throat; a gush of blood tinged with viscera could no longer be contained, spilling from the corner of his mouth to drip onto the icy black ground beneath his feet, the faint sound instantly vaporizing.

He coughed violently, each convulsion jarring the injuries of his five viscera and six bowels, cold sweat beading his forehead, his face ashen as paper. He painfully turned his head to see the terrifying Earth Core Nether Flame, like a living black beast, thrashing and surging at the passage's mouth, baring fangs and claws, yet seemingly held back by an intangible yet unbreakable barrier, unable to cross it no matter how it struck.

For the moment……he was safe.

The taut string in his mind loosened slightly, and a fatigue and weakness that nearly overwhelmed him followed. He panted, wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and, barely holding together his nearly collapsing body, slowly rose to his feet.

Only now did he finally have the opportunity and energy to carefully examine the strange environment he was in.

The next instant, his pupils dilated sharply, his breath ceasing completely, as if even his heartbeat had missed a half‑beat at that moment.

Before him lay a colossal underground space beyond his imagination's limits, too vast to be accurately described in words.

Looking up, the vault soared to an inconceivable height, disappearing into endless, pure darkness; even with his enhanced divine sense, he could not detect where the top lay.

Only scattered, enormous, diamond‑shaped crystals like sleeping crimson eyes were embedded in the boundless dark vault, shedding cold, ancient, emotionless light that barely illuminated this primeval land of death.

Beneath his feet lay a perfectly flat black mirror‑smooth floor, clearly reflecting those icy crimson eyes of the vault, making the whole space seem ever more eerie and vast.

The floor's material was neither metal nor stone; to the touch it was bone‑chillingly cold, not a low temperature but a soul‑piercing, age‑old chill that contrasted starkly with the surrounding extreme heat capable of incinerating a Golden Core cultivator's flesh, forming an extreme, bewildering paradox.

And at the absolute center of this vast expanse, where the gaze focused, there stood

a towering stone gate a hundred zhang tall, seeming to connect heaven and earth!

The gate's body showed a chaotic, dark gray hue that seemed to swallow all light.

Looking closely, the surface was not smooth but covered with countless natural patterns so complex and intricate that a single glance made one's soul spin and nearly induced nausea.

These patterns were none of any known formation or rune system; they were not static but flowed and changed at an extremely slow yet undeniable speed.

Faintly, one could see within them the perpetual exposition of the highest truths—the birth and death of cosmic stars, the flow of the river of time.

Upon the gate's frame there were no concrete patterns, carvings, or characters, only countless minute light specks as fine as grains of sand, varying in size.

These specks, slowly blinking and flickering, together formed a constantly evolving, boundless three‑dimensional star map.

An aura of vastness, ethereality, majesty, and antiquity—transcending the passage of time and towering over ordinary beings—emanated from the stone gate, silently permeating and suppressing the entire space.

Merely standing at a distance from this massive gate, Wang Ping felt himself as insignificant as a speck of dust in a gale, liable to be blown away by that grand aura at any moment.

His internal Five-Colored Divine Light, which normally flowed smoothly as a unified whole, now moved with extreme sluggishness and heaviness, as if bound by an invisible shackle; its radiance dimmed considerably, its speed dropping to less than a third of normal.

This gate…was utterly unlike any relic, treasure, or formation he had seen in the Lower Realm or the Spirit Realm, or read about in books.

What it emitted was an aura almost of the primordial source, lofty and indifferent to spacetime and all beings, as if the gate itself were the embodiment of an eternal principle.

He stepped forward cautiously, one step at a time; even when still several hundred zhang from the stone gate, he clearly felt an immense, invisible resistance.

The closer he advanced, the greater the resistance grew, each step forward demanding tremendous effort.

He tried to extend his divine sense cautiously, but once it left his body by more than a few zhang, it vanished like a mud‑carp into the sea, completely assimilated and devoured by that vast, chaotic aura, returning no useful information.

He exercised his vision technique, gathering spiritual power into his eyes to observe closely.

The stone gate remained tightly shut, its seam perfectly flush, with not a sliver of gap, as if it were born a complete whole, never intended to be opened for anyone.

The flowing patterns and shifting star map on the gate contained unfathomable, inconceivable rhythms of the Great Dao; forced observation only made his soul tremble, his consciousness feeling as if it were about to be sucked into the endless stellar vortex, with a dread of being utterly lost and dissolved within.

This was certainly no thing that ought to exist in the Spirit Realm… Wang Ping's heart surged with tumultuous waves as an unbelievable thought arose—perhaps it did not even belong to the great world we know, nor to this era.

He thought of the vanished immortals; could this gate be related to those legendary, long‑lost beings?