109: Chapter 109 The Echoes in the Passage Will Bit You

That flickering no longer contained fear of the "new scent" or any lingering recognition of the "protocol," but rather something deeper and more obscure.

It was like bubbles rising from the bottom of a stagnant pool, carrying the stench of silt and some indescribable hunger that had been suppressed for far too long.

But it hid too quickly and sank too deep; almost the next instant, the Light Cocoon resumed its docile, almost fragile, drifting posture.

The ice-blue patterns glowed steadily, still guiding the way forward.

Shen Xiao did not move.

He didn't even spare the Light Cocoon another glance; instead, with his peripheral vision, he precisely caught the slight tensing of Xia Lengbai's fingertips. She had felt it too.

Behind that overly "pure" and "thorough" obedience, a different kind of aura faintly emerged.

No communication, no exchange of glances.

A certain tacit understanding based on temporary interests and shared danger led them both to choose not to mention it.

Now was not the time for infighting or exposing secrets.

The ominous feeling radiating from the passage itself was far more urgent than an ancient prisoner with inscrutable motives.

Shen Xiao simply let his already taut heart sink further, sinking into an even colder state of vigilance.

He checked the fragile balance between the dim Silver Pattern and the energy imprint in his Dantian one last time, confirming that he could still barely switch between "detection" and "emergency response."

"Move."

He mouthed silently to Xia Lengbai, then stepped back half a pace, planting himself more firmly in the rearguard position.

Xia Lengbai did not respond; she simply controlled the wisp of ice-blue energy guiding the Light Cocoon with greater precision.

The cold radiance emitted by the Tomb Guardian Seal was no longer bright but extremely restrained, forming a soft yet highly penetrative halo that illuminated the twisted passage three feet ahead.

Wherever the light touched, the rolling gray-black mist seemed to be pushed aside by an invisible barrier, revealing the true appearance of the "wall surface" beneath.

It was not rock, not soil, and not even any solid entity.

It was more like a layer of solidified, flowing "oil paint" mixed with countless murky colors, or rather... a sediment of energy residue.

Dark red, gray-black, murky yellow, sickly green—they flowed and writhed slowly and stickily, occasionally puffing up a bubble that would burst silently, releasing an even colder, more nauseating aura of emotion.

Despair, resentment, greed, fear—all sorts of negative emotions had been stripped of their concrete forms, leaving only the purest, corrosive mental residue.

They adhered to the "boundaries" of the passage, forming the very space that resembled a writhing intestine.

The "ground" beneath their feet was the same—soft and spongy, possessing a scalp-tingling elasticity; every step felt like treading upon countless frozen, inelastic internal organs.

The faint glow of the Silver Pattern spread closely against this "ground," sensing the anomalies in the energy flow below.

There was no fixed "path," only relatively speaking, gaps where the flowing "oil paint" was slightly thinner and the emotional residue appeared slightly more "peaceful," which could be used to pass through.

Shen Xiao walked at the rear, his Silver Pattern's perception range compressed to the limit, covering barely a ten-foot radius around him.

He was not "looking" at the road, but "listening"—listening to the pulsations of this energy swamp beneath his feet, distinguishing which were natural, relatively harmless sediments, and which were dangerous zones that had suddenly become active and might accumulate into "Echoes" nodes.

Xia Lengbai was in the lead, responsible for clearing the path and providing protection.

She did not walk fast; before every step, the radiance of the Tomb Guardian Seal would sweep ahead. When it touched the overly thick "oil paint," the light would slightly refract, automatically selecting a "cleaner" gap.

Her spine was straight, and the ice-blue shimmer flowed around her, isolating the cold aura that permeated the passage and tried to seep into every pore, while also carefully protecting the Light Cocoon whose glow was becoming increasingly docile behind her.

The Light Cocoon hovered, its ice-blue patterns pointing toward the depths of the passage.

It was very quiet—too quiet. Even the faint flickering that had previously represented its internal state fluctuations had stopped; it just glowed steadily, like a silent guide light.

They had advanced about a hundred yards.

The scenery around them had not changed fundamentally; it was still the flowing, murky "oil paint" walls, the rolling gray-black mist, and that omnipresent, heavy oppressive feeling of negative emotions.

The sense of time became blurred here; only the fatigue of their bodies and the tension of their minds reminded them that they had indeed advanced.

Cold sweat seeped from Shen Xiao's temples.

Sensing with the Silver Pattern against the ground consumed not just energy, but mental focus.

Those constantly writhing residues, mixed with fragmented emotions, were trying to bore into his consciousness through the connection of the Silver Pattern every second, bringing fragmented illusions and whispers.

He needed to constantly filter and resist in order to keep his judgment clear.

Just as he felt the energy imprint in his Dantian begin to heat up slightly, warning him that his load was approaching a critical limit...

Xia Lengbai, ahead of him, stopped without warning.

It was not a slow deceleration, but a sudden halt.

The radiance of the Tomb Guardian Seal contracted inward violently. It was no longer a soft halo but instantly condensed into a slightly dim yet more solid translucent ice-crystal shield, standing between her and the passage ahead.

Almost at the same time, the "pulsation" transmitted by Shen Xiao's Silver Pattern underwent a drastic change.

It was no longer a smooth flow; the "oil paint" below suddenly boiled!

No, not the entire wall surface, but that small area ahead illuminated by Xia Lengbai's radiance—those viscous, slowly writhing dark colors seemed to have been suddenly injected with violent vitality!

They frantically contracted and gathered inward, breaking free from the constraints of the wall, twisting and taking shape in mid-air!

In just two or three breaths, several blurry human faces, composed entirely of murky "oil paint" and boiling emotional residue, were floating in the center of the passage.

The human faces had no fixed features, only rough outlines and constantly shifting "expressions."

One moment it was a silently grinning mouth full of greed, the next it twisted into a hole of painful wailing, and the next it might turn into a gaze filled with resentment.

They had no physical form; they were pure energy condensations, yet they emitted mental fluctuations far more aggressive than those static "oil paints."

Cold, chaotic, and filled with endless hunger.

These "faces" seemed to be attracted by the cold radiance emitted by Xia Lengbai's Tomb Guardian Seal, as well as the steady ice-blue light of the Light Cocoon, and they suddenly "looked" toward them.

The next second, the attack came.

There was no sound, only a piercing screech on the mental level that was sharp enough to pierce the eardrums!

Several human faces "pounced" suddenly, their trajectories eerie, ignoring the barriers of space, like maggots clinging to bones, striking directly at Xia Lengbai and the Light Cocoon behind her!

Before the faces even arrived, that materialized mental pollution and cold erosion had already descended!

Shen Xiao felt as if his brain had been stuffed into a high-speed rotating drum filled with ice shards and broken glass; countless chaotic, desperate, and malicious thought fragments washed over his consciousness.

What was even more troublesome was that the wisp of energy residue belonging to Xia Lengbai in his Dantian suddenly jumped, triggered by this mental fluctuation which, while of the same Origin (though different in nature), was far more aggressive!

Like a sleeping viper awakened by the scent of its own kind, it began to stir uncontrollably, resonating faintly with the "Echoes" emitted by the human faces outside, attempting to break free from its restraints and "merge" with them.

Shen Xiao let out a muffled groan, his vision blackening, and the soft "ground" beneath his feet seemed to turn into a real swamp, about to swallow him whole.

The faint glow of the Silver Pattern flickered violently, its detection function instantly disrupted into chaos.

It was not just Xia Lengbai and the Light Cocoon that were the targets.

Among the several human faces that had pounced out, at least three "branches" with grayer, more twisted forms suddenly turned, like leeches smelling blood, and attacked Shen Xiao!

Before the attack even arrived, the mental pressure of the two-pronged assault, combined with the tearing sensation brought about by the "Echoes" being triggered within his body, made Shen Xiao's movements half a beat slower.

At this critical moment.

"Hmph!"

Xia Lengbai's cold snort was like ice beads falling onto a jade plate.

She did not turn back to look at Shen Xiao, but her left hand, with a speed so fast it left an afterimage, made a vague grabbing motion backward!

The target was not the attackers, but Shen Xiao's chest!

More accurately, it was grabbing at the wisp of energy residue inside his body that was stirring and attempting to resonate with the external "Echoes"!

Shen Xiao only felt a chill in his Dantian, as if an invisible ice needle had pierced in, precisely "hooking" that wisp of restless Xia Lengbai energy.

Before he could react, a wisp of that energy had already been forcibly extracted by an irresistible, icy-cold will!

Not all of it, just a wisp, thinner than a hair, yet it condensed the most "Origin" and "purest" trait of her energy.

A grayish-blue glimmer flashed at her fingertips.

That wisp of energy was instantly compressed and purified, turning into a point of ice-crystal-like light.

Inside the crystal, a faint, extremely tiny rune resembling the Tomb Guardian Seal flashed and vanished.

Xia Lengbai didn't even look, flicking her fingertip.

"Swish!"

That point of grayish-blue ice crystal, like an arrow released from the string, shot precisely at the three "human face branches" pouncing on Shen Xiao!

The moment of contact, there was no earth-shattering explosion.

Those three twisted, grayish human faces, like snow touched by a red-hot iron, or low-level creatures encountering their natural predator, suddenly froze!

Immediately following was a soundless, yet heart-wrenchingly sharp, screech!

This screech did not act upon the ears, but exploded directly on the mental level, filled with incomprehensible pain and terror.

The "expressions" of those three human faces instantly froze in the most extreme terror, and immediately, the murky "oil paint" and emotional residue that composed them, like inferior paint splashed with strong acid, rapidly faded, disintegrated, and dissipated!

Power of the same Origin, and more "pure," became the most effective catalyst and nemesis.

Almost at the same time Xia Lengbai flicked out the ice crystal, Shen Xiao, enduring the mental tearing and the exhaustion brought about by his internal energy being extracted, moved.

The Silver Pattern no longer attempted to detect the ground.

That dim glimmer suddenly "sprang" up from the ground, like a silver spirit snake with its own life, lashing out violently!

It was not lashing toward the main bodies of the human faces that were pouncing on Xia Lengbai's Tomb Guardian Seal shield, but accurately and incomparably "whipping" at the nodes where those "human face branches"—which had just disintegrated and were trying to reintegrate into the residual energy of the passage wall—connected to the wall's "oil paint"!

"Snap!"

A faint sound, as if some viscous substance was being forcibly torn apart.

This "whip" from the Silver Pattern was not strong, but it was extremely tricky.

It severed the last thread of connection for the disintegrated human face energy as it attempted to return to its Origin and draw replenishment.

It was like cutting the string of a kite, leaving the anchorless, disintegrated energy with no choice but to accelerate its dissipation into the gray-black mist, unable to be recovered or utilized by the "oil paint" of the passage walls ever again.

The crisis was temporarily eased.

The several main human faces pouncing toward Xia Lengbai were blocked forcibly by the shield of the Tomb Guardian Seal.

The ice-crystal radiance on the surface of the shield flowed rapidly, emitting a "hissing" sound; that was the sound of energy clashing and mental pollution being purified.

The human faces were frantically biting and eroding the shield, but they could not break through for the moment.

Shen Xiao staggered back a step, his back pressing against the cold, writhing passage wall, panting heavily.

The cold sweat on his temples mixed with the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth again, his face terrifyingly pale.

The Silver Pattern retracted completely into his Dantian, its light so faint it was almost invisible; that lash just now had almost squeezed out its last bit of usable energy.

Xia Lengbai's complexion was also visibly paler.

She had forcibly triggered the residual energy belonging to her within Shen Xiao's body; while it resolved the siege, it also amounted to actively deepening her energy entanglement with Shen Xiao, and at this moment, the mass of polluting energy within her own body that needed to be digested also stirred a bit.

The consumption from flicking out that bit of pure energy was also not small.

In the passage, there remained only the muffled sounds of the human faces hitting the shield, and that teeth-grinding sound of purification.

Then, the human faces seemed to "realize" something.

They stopped their futile attacks, and those blurry, shifting "faces" turned in unison toward the direction where Xia Lengbai had flicked the ice crystal and where Shen Xiao's Silver Pattern had lashed—that area which appeared thinner and duller in color due to the energy dissipation.

"They are attracted by their 'own kind'... or rather, attracted by the 'Echoes' remaining on you and me."

Shen Xiao said in a hoarse voice, quickly stating his judgment, confirming everything that had just happened.

Those human faces were the manifestation of highly concentrated "emotional Echoes" deposited in the passage, and they had an instinctive, frantic desire to devour fresh "Echoes," especially those bearing specific imprints (such as Xia Lengbai's energy traits, or that triggered residue within Shen Xiao).

The human faces hovered outside the shield, not retreating, but instead began to rotate slowly. The flow of the murky "oil paint" accelerated, and the mental fluctuations they emitted became colder and more malicious.

They seemed to be "re-evaluating," "brewing."

And just in this brief stalemate...

From the depths of the passage, in the darkness further away that was barely illuminated by the radiance of Xia Lengbai's Tomb Guardian Seal.

A sound came.

It was no longer a faint whimpering, no longer a fragmented sobbing.

It was a tide.

A surging, viscous, tangible... mental tide composed of countless chaotic roars, painful wails, greedy ravings, and resentful curses!

It was as if the combat fluctuations here just now, like a stone thrown into a dead, deep pool, had finally awakened something larger and more terrifying sleeping even deeper within.

Shadows began to surge from the end of the passage, like a breached tide, slowly but unstoppably... rushing toward them.

Shen Xiao snapped his head up, looking at the rolling, surging darkness.

He could feel his Silver Pattern in his Dantian frantically warning him; what it transmitted was no longer a pulsation, but a sharp, near-collapse stinging pain.

The light of Xia Lengbai's shield, against the backdrop of the surging shadows, appeared so weak, so thin.

The ice-blue patterns of the Light Cocoon still pointed steadily toward the depths, toward the source from which the shadows were surging.

Shen Xiao's fingers tightened unconsciously, his nails digging deep into his palms, yet he felt no pain.

He turned his head and glanced at Xia Lengbai beside him, whose expression was equally grave but in the depths of whose eyes a sliver of cold Battle Intent had ignited, then glanced again at that silent "guide light" that seemed completely unaware of the impending destruction.

He opened his mouth; a thick taste of blood and rust welled up in his throat.

In the end, he only spat out two words, so soft they seemed as if they could be blown away by the incoming mental tide at any moment:

"It's here."