72: Chapter 72 The Last Door

The two turned simultaneously and rushed toward the ice wall behind the remains.

The sound of the ice dome collapsing was like the sky falling; every muffled thud was accompanied by a massive cascade of ice shards. The deep blue ice fragments rained down like a meteor shower, striking the black stone floor and bursting into countless tiny specks of light.

Lin Yun's angry shouts grew closer, carrying the unique pressure of Luck belonging to a Child of Destiny. Even through dozens of zhang of thick ice, one could feel that suffocating oppression.

Xia Lengbai charged ahead, the Tomb Guardian Seal on her forehead flickering with a faint light. Fragmented information from the Legacy regarding the structure of this place flooded into her Sea of Consciousness. She stopped abruptly, turned to the seemingly seamless deep blue ice wall behind the remains, and said urgently, "The exit is there! The terminal said so!"

Shen Xiao followed two steps behind her. The frostbite on his left shoulder and the internal injuries throughout his body screamed in agony under the strain of the intense movement; every step felt like walking on the edge of a blade.

He tried to speed up, but due to his injuries and the sluggishness caused by the System being forcibly marked, he stumbled. His knees buckled, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.

Xia Lengbai looked back at him.

Shen Xiao raised his head and met her gaze.

There was no plea for help in his eyes, no begging, not even a trace of weakness.

There was only a cold, almost ruthless assessment. At this moment, this woman, who had just obtained power but was also bound by shackles, was his only, unreliable ally.

There was no trust between them; there was only a common enemy and a shared desperate situation.

Xia Lengbai received this look.

She didn't waste words or hesitate. She gestured with her left hand, and the newly acquired "Ice Soul Profound Light" surged from her palm.

It was no longer pure ice-attributed spiritual energy, but a more refined Advanced energy tinged with silver radiance. It flowed between her fingertips like liquid moonlight, emitting a heart-stopping chill.

She pressed the Profound Light toward the ice wall.

Hum—

The moment the ice wall made contact with the Profound Light, ripples spread across its surface like a lake disturbed by a thrown stone.

On the previously seamless deep blue ice wall, silver lines appeared out of thin air, interlacing and spreading until they outlined the entrance to a narrow, upward-sloping crystalline passage.

A chill poured out from the depths of the passage, several times more intense than that in the ice dome, carrying an ancient and silent aura.

"Go!" Xia Lengbai let out a low shout and stepped into the passage first.

The blue-black toxin on her right wrist looked even more eerie under the glow of the Profound Light, as if some living creature were crawling under her skin, but it was firmly suppressed below her fingertips by the Ice Soul Profound Light, unable to stir up any trouble.

Shen Xiao followed closely behind.

The moment before stepping into the passage, he looked back.

The completely silent female remains were still sitting upright on the ice, hands forming a seal, face serene, as if ten thousand years of time had never left a mark on her.

The collapse of the dome above had spread to the center of the ice dome. Large swaths of deep blue ice shards fell like severed fangs, crashing around the remains and kicking up clouds of ice mist.

She remained motionless.

It was as if everything in this world—whether the sky was collapsing or pursuers were arriving—had nothing to do with her.

Shen Xiao withdrew his gaze and let his eyes fall on the ice wall at the entrance of the passage.

Inside his Dantian, the cracked Dark Gold Core seemed to have been fitted with invisible shackles after the System added a layer of silver border monitoring. Every time he absorbed and circulated spiritual energy, it felt like dancing in chains—stiff, sluggish, and restricted at every turn.

But shackles aside, it could still weakly absorb the pure, cold spiritual energy from the surrounding environment.

Shen Xiao sneered inwardly.

Were this "monitoring" and "constraint" not just another form of "connection" and "exposure"?

The Gravekeeper terminal had hung a lock on his System and even installed a GPS on that lock.

Every move he made would likely be transmitted continuously through that silver border to some high-dimensional database he couldn't possibly comprehend.

Since that was the case.

He gritted his teeth and deliberately drove the Dark Gold Core—not to absorb spiritual energy, but to operate in reverse. He forcefully "stamped" a trace of spiritual energy fluctuation, extremely weak but carrying the unique frequency of the Dark Gold Core, onto the ice wall at the entrance of the passage.

The fluctuation was so weak it was almost imperceptible, but like a drop of ink falling into clear water, it would continue to spread and amplify in the subsequent flow of spiritual energy.

Since he had been marked, he might as well leave behind more "traces."

Let the pursuers who come later have a headache too.

Shen Xiao stepped into the passage. The ripples on the ice wall behind him quickly smoothed out, turning back into a seamless deep blue ice surface, completely concealing the entrance.

The crystal passage was narrow and cramped, only wide enough for one person to pass through sideways.

The ice walls on both sides were as smooth as mirrors, reflecting their disheveled figures.

A faint, deep blue light shone from the depths of the crystals, dyeing the entire passage in an eerie deep blue, as if they were inside the blood vessels of some colossal creature.

The passage was not a straight path.

Every ten or so zhang, it branched off. Some sloped upward, some wound downward, and some simply vanished in front of a dead-end ice wall.

The entire passage System was like a giant labyrinth made of crystals; one wrong move and they would be lost within it.

Xia Lengbai relied entirely on the faint guidance from the Tomb Guardian Seal on her forehead to choose the direction.

Whenever she encountered a fork, she would pause for a moment, the mark on her forehead flickering as if receiving some invisible signal, and then she would choose one path without hesitation and continue forward.

Shen Xiao followed closely behind, his steps unsteady, but he gritted his teeth and persisted.

He did not waste his energy observing the passage, but instead immersed almost all his focus into that "marked" System.

In his Sea of Consciousness, outside the halo representing the System, that faint silver border still emitted a cold aura, like an eye that never closed, monitoring his every move at all times.

But Shen Xiao no longer tried to invoke those greyed-out functions. Those function icons were now like striking electricians, stuck there motionless, and no matter how he tried to activate them, there was no response.

What he stared at intensely was the glaring red prompt in the System log: [Unknown high-level protocol mark attached.]

And the extremely tiny, constantly flickering energy spectrum code next to the mark.

That code was composed of countless dense runes and numbers, changing every breath, yet following some secret pattern.

Shen Xiao forced himself to memorize it and compared it with the flow of spiritual energy in the surrounding passage ice walls.

The flow of spiritual energy in the ice walls was slow and stable, like blood flowing through veins, carrying an ancient, unchanging rhythm.

And the spectrum code of the silver mark had a subtle synchronization with the flow frequency of the ice wall's spiritual energy—not exactly the same, but like two parts in a harmony, independent yet echoing each other.

A vague guess gradually formed in Shen Xiao's mind.

This mark might not just be for monitoring.

It was more like a part of some "key" or "identification code." Through this mark, the Gravekeeper terminal had incorporated him into some larger, more fundamental System.

Did the Gravekeeper terminal's "Legacy" really only go to Xia Lengbai?

Ice Soul Profound Light, Tomb Guardian Seal, Legacy memories... these were the gifts on the surface.

And that silver mark, those restricted System permissions, that constantly flickering energy spectrum code—could these be another form of "gift"?

A gift that could only be activated and used under specific conditions?

Shen Xiao had no answer.

But he memorized every change in that string of code.

Just when they thought they were about to escape, Xia Lengbai, who was leading the way, stopped abruptly.

Shen Xiao almost bumped into her back, barely managed to stop himself, and looked up.

The passage had reached its end.

But it was not an exit.

Before them was a mirror-smooth ice wall, completely different from the one that had concealed the entrance. This ice wall contained immense spatial fluctuations—distorted and violent, like a spatial rift forcibly compressed to the extreme, ready to burst at any moment.

On the surface of the ice wall, a complex circular portal pattern composed of countless ice-blue runes was slowly rotating.

Those runes were so precise and intricate that they made one's scalp tingle; each rune emitted a faint silver radiance, interlacing and connecting to form a perfect teleportation array.

But in the center of the portal, there was a keyhole-like indentation.

That indentation emitted a dark red glow that was completely out of place with the surrounding runes, its edges jagged as if it were a gap forcibly chiseled open by some external force.

The spatial fluctuations leaking from the gap were chaotic and violent, forming a stark contrast to the stable teleportation array around it.

The Tomb Guardian Seal transmitted clear information, like a piece of cold iron slamming into Xia Lengbai's Sea of Consciousness.

[One-way teleportation array exit.]

[Core array eye damaged.]

[Spatial coordinates shifted; teleportation channel cannot be stabilized.]

[Forced activation, consequences unknown.]

Xia Lengbai's face instantly turned pale as paper.

She looked back at Shen Xiao, her lips moving a few times before she squeezed out a hoarse sentence: "The door... is broken."

At the other end of the passage behind them, the roaring sound of shattering ice grew closer, like the footsteps of death approaching.

Lin Yun's pursuit, carrying vast Luck, was already faintly audible.

"Shen Xiao!"

"Xia Lengbai!"

"Heavenly Dao guides; this place shall be your burial ground!"

The voice was like rolling thunder, penetrating layers of ice walls and shaking the entire passage.

Shen Xiao stared at the damaged teleportation array wall, then looked at Xia Lengbai's pale face, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled into an arc that could hardly be called a smile.

"Broken is good," he whispered.

Xia Lengbai was stunned for a moment, not understanding what he meant.

Shen Xiao did not explain.

His gaze fell on the keyhole-like dark red indentation in the center of the portal, then swept over the silver border in his Sea of Consciousness, and the energy spectrum code flickering next to the border.

A crazy idea formed in his mind.

Since the System had been marked, and since that mark originated from the same source as the Gravekeeper terminal.

Could it be used as a "key"?