286: Chapter 284 Selfish and self-serving, treating the lower realm as worthless

As soon as these words were spoken, the surrounding air seemed to instantly freeze into blocks of ice.

"What do you mean?!"

Su Hongling shouldered her great sword and leaned in, staring fixedly at those few ancient divine scripts, her brow furrowed into a tight knot.

"Old Man, Eldest Senior Sister didn't misread them, did she?

This dilapidated place, filled with dead men's bones and mud everywhere, is the Ascension Reception Platform?

How is that possible! What happened to the ethereal Immortal music and heavenly maidens scattering flowers?"

Within Luo Ximei's platinum-colored right eye, light flickered violently.

She had a sliver of True Immortal Origin fused within her body, making her the most sensitive to this kind of Upper Realm aura.

"Revered Master..." Luo Ximei's voice also took on a hint of dryness,

"The residual rhymes of the Laws here are indeed superior to our Lower Realm. But... but this scene..."

Su Lin stood with his hands behind his back, remaining silent for a long time.

"I am not entirely sure either."

After a long while, Su Lin finally spoke slowly, his voice deep.

"However, according to the fragments of rumors I saw in an extremely ancient Secret Realm in my previous life... after Cultivators of the Lower Realm endure a thousand hardships and cross the Nine Heavens Heavenly Tribulation, the Heavenly Gates will open, and Guiding Immortal Light will descend."

"Ascending along that Immortal Light does not mean reaching the vast and boundless lands of the Immortal Realm directly.

Instead, one first arrives at a transit point."

Su Lin reached out, pointing at the massive, dried-up pools ahead that were filled with dark-brown bloodstain crystals.

"In the rumors, that transit point is the [Ascension Reception Platform]."

"Cultivators who have just ascended have not yet completely transformed their mortal bodies; Karma and turbid Qi from the Lower Realm still remain within them.

They would be arranged by the Guiding Immortal Officials to step into the [Immortal Transformation Pool].

The waters of the Immortal Transformation Pool contain the purest creative vitality of the Immortal Realm, capable of cleansing the Divine Soul and reshaping the Immortal Body.

Only after completely shedding the mortal coil and washing away all impurities in the Immortal Transformation Pool can one truly possess the qualifications of an Immortal, and then be assigned to the various Immortal Domains of the Immortal Realm via the Guiding Platform."

Su Lin turned around, looking at his pale-faced disciples.

"And here, there is a square paved with Immortal Jade, dried-up Immortal Transformation Pools, and this jade monument carved with the four words 'Ascension Guiding'."

"This place... seems to be the legendary Ascension Reception Platform."

"But!"

Chu Weiwei shouted excitedly, still clutching that silver needle stained with dark-brown residue, her entire body trembling slightly, "Why would the Ascension Reception Platform be here?!

Why is it a ruin?! Why has it fallen into the abyss of the Void Realm's cracks?!"

"Yes, Revered Master!"

Ye You's dark-green vertical pupils constricted into slits as she looked around at the massive Divine Beast skeletons and the broken top-tier Magic Treasures everywhere. "If this is a Holy Land for guiding Immortals, how could it become this Shura field of mountains of corpses and seas of blood?

What exactly did these experts who died here and these broken weapons experience?!"

"Do you all remember the information we obtained through Soul searching that ghost Cultivator named Yue Xiaoxiao?"

Su Lin did not answer directly but asked a question in return.

As soon as these words were spoken, the several extremely intelligent disciples reacted instantly.

"[Great Harvest]..." Mu Qingxue's cold voice echoed across the empty ruins like a bone-chilling wind. "Those Grey-Robed Figures said that this world is nothing more than a farm.

Our Cultivation World is a breeding ground they use to cultivate something. And they are the hounds, the harvesters."

"Myriad Corpse True Person also said before he died..."

Cold Moon clenched her fists, her nails digging deep into her flesh,

"The path to immortality... was personally severed by the people of the Upper Realm.

They have turned this place into a cage!"

"So..." Luo Ximei sucked in a cold breath, her platinum-colored heterochromatic eye filled with an irrepressible mix of fear and rage.

"So this isn't some Ascension Reception Platform at all! This is a... slaughterhouse?!"

"Correct. A slaughterhouse."

Su Lin closed his eyes, hiding the sky-toppling Killing Intent deep within.

"Think about it. When a Lower Realm Cultivator, after thousands of years of bitter cultivation and slaying countless powerful enemies, finally survives that life-or-death Ascension Lightning Tribulation."

When he is filled with a longing for eternal life and visions of the carefree Immortal Dao, bathing in the Guiding Immortal Light, arriving here with a heart full of joy..."

"He thinks he has finally jumped out of the well and welcomed a new life. He steps into that so-called Immortal Transformation Pool without any defenses, opening his Divine Soul and Physical Body, preparing to receive the baptism of Immortal Qi."

"However, what awaits him is no Guiding Immortal Official, nor any creative vitality."

Su Lin snapped his eyes open, his gaze sweeping across those massive pits like lightning.

"Instead, it is a butcher's knife prepared long ago, and a Formation designed to pull out tendons and strip bones!"

"At their weakest, most defenseless moment—even immersed in extreme euphoria because they are about to achieve Immortal Ascension—those high and mighty Immortals descend with their slaughter."

"Like slaughtering pigs and sheep, they pin those peerless Prodigies who have just ascended into the Immortal Transformation Pool, draining their essence blood, stripping their Spiritual Roots, and gouging out their Dao Fruits and Divine Souls!"

Su Lin's words were like weeping blood, every sentence piercing the heart.

Silence.

Su Hongling's hands were trembling, not from fear, but from extreme anger.

She suddenly smashed her fist against a nearby broken Immortal Jade pillar. With a 'crack', that incredibly hard Immortal Jade was actually smashed with dense cracks by her.

"These beasts!!!"

Su Hongling spoke through gritted teeth, her eyes red. "What do they take us for?! Cabbages planted in a field?!

Harvesting a batch as soon as they're ripe?! To hell with the Immortal Realm! To hell with Ascension!"

"Luring people up, and then striking them down when they are most full of hope..." Chu Weiwei's face, which usually wore a sweet smile, was now so dark it looked like it could drip water.

She looked at the silver needle in her hand that had changed color from the black mud. "This method... even the most vicious evil Cultivators of the Thousand Poison Valley couldn't think of it.

The things in this pool aren't some residue at all; this is a curse mixed from the flesh, blood, and despair of thousands upon thousands of peerless Prodigies!"

"Revered Master, let's look around."

Cold Moon took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the Imperial Dao rage surging within her, regaining the Empress's calm and decisiveness. "Since this is an abandoned, or even shattered and fallen Guiding Platform, there will always be some clues left behind.

I want to know what exactly happened back then to turn this slaughterhouse into this state."

"Spread out and investigate, but don't go too far from me.

Do not touch anything that looks intact, and do not use Divine Sense to forcibly crack any remaining Formations."

Su Lin gave the order.

"Yes, Revered Master!"

Su Lin himself walked toward the back of that broken 'Ascension Guiding' jade monument.

The destruction here was the most severe.

The originally flat white jade square seemed to have been torn apart here by some indescribable giant object, forming a massive abyssal fault.

At the edge of the fault, there remained traces of cutting from extremely violent spatial turbulence.

"Old Man! Come over here quickly!"

Not far away, Su Hongling shouted in front of a collapsed, massive bronze door.

Su Lin's figure flickered, and he instantly appeared beside her.

It was a giant door half-buried in the ruins, carved with complex ancient Auspicious Beast totems, but now, the heads of these Auspicious Beasts had all been smashed by someone using extremely violent means.

"Look at this weapon."

Su Hongling pointed to a massive skeleton in front of the bronze door that had almost weathered into ash.

This skeleton was ten zhang tall; even after being dead for unknown tens of thousands of years, the bones still emitted a faint golden glow, clearly having been a Body Cultivator expert who followed the path of achieving sainthood through the Physical Body in life.

In the hand bones of this skeleton, a broken giant battle-axe was gripped tightly.

The material of this battle-axe was extremely special, neither metal nor stone, and the axe blade was covered in jagged notches.

Su Hongling squatted down, reaching out to touch the handle of the broken axe, her eyes full of shock.

"Revered Master, this axe... weighs at least ten thousand catties.

Moreover, on this axe, I feel an extremely pure [Heaven-Splitting Law].

This person... this person in life was definitely a Body Cultivator Senior!"

She pointed to the deep axe mark on the bronze door, "Before he died, he didn't aim his weapon at the Immortals who were killing him, but used all his strength to strike this door with one axe blow!"

Su Lin followed her finger; that axe mark was several feet deep, nearly splitting this indestructible bronze door in half.

And around the axe mark, there were still traces of extremely tragic blood spray patterns.

"He wasn't attacking the door."

Su Lin squatted down, looking at the skeleton with twisted bones that clearly suffered great pain before death, his voice low, "He was covering a retreat."

"Covering a retreat?" Su Hongling was stunned.

"Look at the posture in which he fell."

Su Lin pointed at the skeleton, "He is facing away from the door; he was covering someone, or something, escaping from here.

He used his own body of flesh and blood to block the pursuers, and finally used all his strength to destroy the teleportation Formation patterns on this door to cut off the enemy's pursuit route."

Hearing Su Lin's words, Su Hongling fell silent.

She could imagine that scene.

A Body Cultivator expert who finally ascended after enduring a thousand hardships, originally full of joy, only to find that what awaited him was a bloody slaughter.

In extreme despair and anger, he did not yield, but burned all his vitality to cover his companions' retreat, finally dying in battle before this cold bronze door.

"A true man." Su Hongling gritted her teeth and bowed deeply to the skeleton.

"Revered Master! There's a discovery here too!"

On the other side, Chu Weiwei and Mu Qingxue stood beside a relatively intact Immortal Transformation Pool, their expressions exceptionally grim.

Su Lin and Su Hongling walked over quickly.

This Immortal Transformation Pool was larger than the previous ones, and the pool water had long since dried up, but at the bottom of the pool, Formation patterns were densely carved.

"Revered Master, I just carefully studied these Formations."

Chu Weiwei held a small trowel, gently scraping off some black powder from the Formation's grooves, sniffing it at the tip of her nose, and furrowing her brow in disgust.

"This isn't an Immortal Formation for cleansing the Divine Soul at all. This is an improved version of the long-lost [Spirit-to-Blood Grand Formation]!"

As a Medicine Immortal, Chu Weiwei's research into various vicious Formations and poisons was at the pinnacle.

"The sole purpose of this Formation is to instantly lock the five senses and spiritual power of the person inside the Formation, and then, like a press, forcibly strip the essence blood, Spiritual Roots, and even Dao Fruits from the human body!"

She pointed to an outlet in the center of the pool, "The extracted essence would flow away through this opening.

The remaining residue and valueless Souls would then be burned to ash by the Baleful Fire at the bottom of the Formation, settling at the bottom of the pool, becoming the black mud we saw earlier."

"What a poisonous method!"

The air around Mu Qingxue had already frozen into frost, her pale-blue eyes filled with Killing Intent. "Treating living Cultivators like fruit in a juicer... these Immortals of the Upper Realm are more demonic than the most vicious demonic Cultivators!"

"What exactly do they want to do with the essence of so many high-level Cultivators?"

Luo Ximei also walked over, fiddling with a broken Jade Slip she had picked up from the ruins.

"To maintain some kind of balance, or rather... to fill a massive hole."

Su Lin stood up, his gaze deep as he looked toward the end of these ruins.

"Previously, in the depths of the Nanyu Divine Dynasty, that so-called [scar of heaven] still required Cold Moon to use Imperial Dao Dragon Qi to suppress it.

That was merely a hole smashed by a fragment that broke off and fell from the Upper Realm."

"If I'm not mistaken... the true Upper Realm itself has likely long since developed a major problem."

"Selfishness, treating the Lower Realm like grass."

Luo Ximei let out a cold laugh, the Demonic Fire in her hand instantly burning that broken Jade Slip to ash. "Since they broke the world themselves, why should we be the ones to pay for it?"

"Revered Master."

Ye You, who had not spoken, was now squatting beside a massive stone step at the edge of the square.

Her dark-green long hair fluttered slightly in the void wind, her vertical pupils staring fixedly at a scratch on the stone step.

"Something... escaped from here."

Hearing this, everyone immediately gathered around.

The edge of the stone step should have been a bottomless void turbulence.

But now, on that smooth white jade edge, there was an extremely deep and long scratch, extending into the darkness beyond where the eye could see.

This scratch did not look like it was left by a weapon; it was more like some desperate creature, at the last moment of falling into the abyss, using all its strength to grip the stone slab tightly, only to eventually be dragged into the abyss, leaving behind a claw mark.

"In this scratch..."

Ye You slowly squatted down, reaching out a fair finger to gently wipe that scratch, then placing it at the tip of her nose.

"There is a faint life fluctuation, and the scent is very mixed."

Ye You snapped her eyes open, "This vitality did not dissipate in the void turbulence, but followed the direction of this scratch, forcibly tearing open an extremely tiny spatial crack and escaping!"

"Escaped?!"

Su Hongling shouldered her great sword and leaned in, peeking down, "Below this is a void dead-end that would crush even someone at the Mahayana Stage. What kind of thing is tough enough to escape from here?"

"If it were an ordinary creature, it would naturally be certain death."