54: Chapter 54 The True Face of the Ghost Realm, the Ancient Altar Reveals its True Form!

Chapter 54: The True Face of the Ghost Domain, the Ancient Altar Reveals Itself! The Gear Giant swung its giant scythe, and every slash was aimed not at Lin Ye's current position, but where he was about to move.

It could read the future a few seconds ahead, its attacks always landing one step ahead on Lin Ye's evasion path.

The Vertical Pupil's six pairs of wings vibrated continuously, the resonance beams weaving into an invisible force field net in the air.

If Lin Ye stayed in place for more than a quarter of a second, his body would be torn in half by the rapid changes in the flow of time.

The White-robed Woman was the most lethal.

She didn't need to predict, nor did she need a force field.

Every tick of hers was an area-of-effect time deprivation; after just three ticks, the architectural debris on the plaza had completely weathered into sand, and even the ground was constantly collapsing.

If any other Three-Star Trialist had appeared on this plaza, they would have already died of old age at the very first tick.

Xu Zhiwei leaned against the furthest wall of the Side Hall, doing her best to steady herself, no longer trying to analyze the battle.

Because in the judgment of most War Zone High Commands, this kind of battle shouldn't even be happening.

Yet Lin Ye was not only fighting, he was suppressing them.

She watched Lin Ye's figure continuously dodge and weave among the three core incarnations.

Even though his psionic peak on the status panel was still at the three-star level, the force of his every staff strike was enough to shatter the defense of a High-Tier Ghost.

The precision of his every dodge shattered the future that the giant had read in advance.

She suddenly realized that all her previous perceptions of a "three-star ceiling"...

...no longer held true after seeing this guy.

This man simply had no ceiling!

The joint suppression of the three core incarnations was still escalating.

The Vertical Pupil raised the frequency of its resonance beams to dozens of times per second, and the flow of time on the plaza turned completely chaotic. When his front foot landed, time flowed normally, but by the time his back foot followed, it had already been aged by tenths of a second.

The Gear Giant read Lin Ye's potential evasion routes, expanding its prediction range from a few seconds to within ten seconds, covering a fan-shaped area.

The White-robed Woman tapped her fingers faster, and the ticking sounds began to grow dense, like torrential rain tapping on a window.

Lin Ye smashed his staff against the Gear Giant's knee joint, crippling its entire lower leg. Liquid metal splashed everywhere, and the sound of shattering gears was extremely ear-piercing.

Immediately after, he spun around and used the end of his staff to deflect the resonance beam shot by the Vertical Pupil. The beam was deflected onto a stone lion in the corner of the plaza, which instantly weathered into sand.

The ticking of the White-robed Woman exploded in his ears, and he felt the surface of his skin dehydrating and aging at an extremely rapid pace.

But in the next second, the Origin of Houtu activated on its own. An earthy yellow light surged from the chalcedony pendant on his chest, instantly repairing all the aging damage.

However much you drain, I will replenish.

Lin Ye drew a short blade from his waist with his left hand, throwing it to pin into the edge of the Vertical Pupil's pupil.

The Vertical Pupil recoiled in pain, and the resonance frequency of its six pairs of wings missed a beat at the exact same moment.

"Now's the time..."

Temporal Divine Power erupted—six seconds!

The Gear Giant's movement as it lunged toward Lin Ye's flank with its giant scythe froze mid-air.

The beam generated by the resonance of the Vertical Pupil's wings condensed into a static, transparent tear in the air, frozen by the time-stop before it could even reach Lin Ye.

The White-robed Woman lowered her lethal finger. The ticking sound had just escaped her lips, but it stopped before it could spread even a meter around her.

A six-second time-stop.

Lin Ye's figure flashed and vanished, slamming violently into the Gear Giant's abdomen.

The zhulong staff was thrust out like an armor-piercing spike in his hand, its tip smashing into the giant's chest and blasting a gaping hole clean through the liquid metal.

The second second before the time-stop ended.

He shifted his steps, lowered his body, and circled directly beneath the Vertical Pupil, locating its resonance core amidst the frozen time.

It was the most inconspicuous of the six pairs of wings, hidden on the innermost side, with a frequency different from the other five.

He punched straight into the resonance center, and at that exact moment, the time-stop ended.

The Gear Giant's upper body maintained the posture of swinging its giant scythe at empty air, but everything below its waist had completely disintegrated.

The loss of its prediction ability caused its movements to fall completely out of alignment, its attacks reversed in sequence, rendering prediction entirely unnecessary.

The Vertical Pupil finally realized the danger. A rare trace of intelligent fear flashed through its pupil as it drove its remaining wings to retreat frantically.

But with the resonance core of one pair of wings shattered, it didn't dare to gather energy again, only able to barely maintain its defense with short bursts of beams.

The White-robed Woman wasn't idle either; she tapped with both hands, and dozens of ticks erupted within a single second.

The surrounding environment was blasted into nothingness by this wave of time deprivation. Almost all the bluestone slabs on the plaza vanished, and the ground sank by a full half-meter.

Lin Ye charged forward right into the torrential rain of the White-robed Woman's ticks.

The zhulong staff spun in his hand, smashing sequentially onto the time nodes of the eight falling ticks. Intercepting each tick a split second early, he dismantled the White-robed Woman's counterattack layer by layer.

Immediately after, he stepped on the ruins of the Side Hall, using the leverage to soar into the sky.

His target was not the White-robed Woman on the bell frame, but above the frame...

The Ancient Bell on the top floor of the Bell and Drum Tower that was continuously shrieking!

The zhulong staff swung in a perfect arc in mid-air. Carrying all the force accumulated over the six seconds and the golden light of his fully unleashed Temporal Divine Power, the staff slammed brutally onto the surface of the Ancient Bell!

A hairline crack split down the middle of the Ancient Bell.

The crack rapidly spread across the entire surface of the bell, and then it exploded!

Shards of the bell flew in all directions, each piece wrapped in a dense, almost solid, time-attribute evil energy.

BOOM!!!

The entire Bell and Drum Tower collapsed.

Blue bricks, wooden beams, tiles, the bell frame, bronze bell shards, and residual array patterns—everything collapsed inward at the same moment. Like a giant toy block tower with its pillars removed, it crashed down layer by layer from the top floor. Dust and smoke soared into the sky, shrouding the entire plaza in a gray haze.

Outside the Ghost Domain.

The loud rumble of the Bell and Drum Tower's collapse penetrated the boundary of the Ghost Domain, muffled like distant summer thunder.

The hundreds of citizens outside the police cordon fell silent at the same time.

The children stopped crying, the old woman's wailing ceased, and the middle-aged man holding a little girl stared with wide eyes toward the Ghost Domain.

His mouth opened and closed, unable to utter a single word.

"This commotion..."

A staff officer took off his tactical headset and walked quickly to Lu Zhanyou's side.

On the tablet screen he held, the psionic concentration curve on the outskirts of the Ghost Domain was soaring rapidly at a completely abnormal slope, the very peak of the curve already exceeding the upper limit of the screen.

"The psionic reaction inside the Ghost Domain has broken past the critical threshold! This value has never appeared before! This is a sign that the core has been awakened!"

Someone in the crowd yelled first, "Didn't they say only two people went in?"

"Two? Even that four-star team couldn't hold out just now. What can two people do if they go in?"

"This commotion is clearly the Ghost Domain's core erupting... The people from the Demon Suppression Division said before that there are only two possibilities for the Ghost Domain's core to be activated: either a trialist touched the core and got killed, or the merger has been completed..."

"Those two must be dead..."

"What a pity, so young. I heard that Three-Star Trialist just killed a demon seed yesterday, only to perish here today."

Lu Zhanyou paid no attention to these discussions.

He stared intently at the rising psionic curve on the tablet, his eyes unblinking.

Suddenly, his pupils contracted sharply.

On the tablet, the red curve symbolizing the Ghost Domain's psionic concentration suddenly cut off.

First came a violent, jagged oscillation, the curve jumping wildly between the highest point and zero, before plummeting in an almost vertical line, finally landing at the very bottom of the screen, hitting zero.

The Ghost Domain's psionic core signal had vanished!

The staff officer opened his mouth, "Could it be... our equipment was broken by the shock?"

Lu Zhanyou did not answer, his eyes still fixed on the screen.

Under his gaze, the dark red light membrane that enveloped the entirety of Qiaotou Town was peeling off piece by piece.

...

The dust settled.

Xu Zhiwei struggled to stand up from the ruins of the Side Hall, covered in dust and grime, with several cuts on her body.

She looked at the ruins of the collapsed Bell and Drum Tower, letting out a long sigh of relief.

"Is it over?"

Lin Ye stood at the edge of the ruins and said something that sent a shiver down Xu Zhiwei's spine, "Or maybe it has only just begun."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the ground beneath their feet suddenly sank.

The entire plaza seemed to have its support pulled out from the bottom. Bluestone slabs, ruins, broken tiles of the Side Hall—everything fell downward simultaneously.

Xu Zhiwei felt the ground vanish beneath her feet. Falling weightlessly downward, she instinctively reached out to grab something, but there was nothing to grasp.

A hand clasped around her wrist.

Lin Ye stabilized his body in mid-air, thrusting the zhulong staff upward. The staff wedged into a gap between the falling stone slabs, abruptly slowing their descent.

He swung with the momentum, landing with Xu Zhiwei on a relatively intact stone slab fragment. The slab continued to slide downward, but at least they had a foothold.

Darkness surged from all directions.

Even breathing carried a chilly weight.

Even stranger, this darkness was actively repelling light...

Xu Zhiwei turned on the backlight of her tablet screen, but the light traveled less than a finger's width before being swallowed by the darkness.

"It's useless," Lin Ye's voice rang out in the darkness. "Your light is useless."

He raised his left hand, loosely curling his fingers.

A cluster of crimson-gold flame ignited from his palm.

The flame wasn't large, only about the size of a fist, but wherever its light reached...

The darkness was forcefully torn open, leaving a massive gap several zhang in diameter.

Temporal Crimson Fire.

It was more than enough to deal with this darkness condensed from evil energy.

Xu Zhiwei froze for a moment, knowing this was absolutely no ordinary flame.

She thought, just how many trump cards does this guy have left?

The stone slab crashed to the ground.

The light of the Zhulong Crimson Fire spread in all directions, clearly illuminating the contours of the entire space.

Xu Zhiwei gasped.

This was a massive Underground Altar.

The area was many times larger than she had anticipated, stretching at least several hundred meters from one end to the other.

It was large enough to house an entire palace.

The dome hung extremely high overhead, far beyond the reach of the firelight, allowing only a faint glimpse of thick, crisscrossing stone beams.

The ground was paved with massive, solid bluestone slabs, each carved with dense runes. The runes were an extremely dark, dull red, like blood that had coagulated for centuries.

In the very center of the altar stood a stone sacrificial platform, with a black-and-red stained stone pillar tied to it. Rusted chains that were almost broken still hung from the pillar.

Countless skeletal remains were scattered around the platform, some still maintaining complete skeletal structures, while others had crumbled into powder.

The postures of all the skeletons faced the platform, as if they had been bowing in worship toward a certain direction before they died.

Inscriptions were carved onto every step of the platform. Xu Zhiwei squatted down to quickly scan a few lines by the firelight, her expression growing increasingly grim.

"The font of these inscriptions... is a mix of clerical and seal scripts, making this a ruin from at least two thousand years ago... Moreover, the format and context of the inscriptions aren't official sacrificial documents at all, but rather seem like something circulated privately among the common folk..."

Before she could finish, the altar trembled.

The surrounding air distorted, and the stone beams on the dome rippled like water in their vision.

Immediately after, images emerged on the stone walls around the altar, as if projected onto the walls in some ancient manner.

The images depicted a sacrificial ritual.

A sea of people, over a thousand of them, crowded beneath the altar. Men, women, young and old alike, dressed in ancient coarse hemp clothing, some even wearing shackles, all trembling in fear.

The few standing at the very front were tied to the stone pillars of the platform, while a middle-aged man in a black robe brandished a bronze sword, muttering incantations.

Then came the fire.

The bronze sword fell, and the people on the pillars were cut down one by one, while the kneeling commoners around them wailed to high heaven.

But the sacrifice was not yet over; more people were pushed onto the platform.

The scene shifted.

The commoners, pushed to their absolute limits and covered in wounds, led by a young woman, turned the tables and bound the Black-Robed Evil Cultivator to the stone pillar.

The evil cultivator let out earth-shattering roars from the pillar, cursing the heavens, until finally, a strong farmer plunged a blade straight into his heart.

His eyes remained wide open even in death, staring like two peeled eggs, filled entirely with hatred.

"Human sacrifice... This is the human sacrifice of an ancient evil cultivator!"

Xu Zhiwei looked at the bloody scenes on the stone walls, her voice trembling slightly. "He was refining some kind of evil art, requiring the essence, blood, and souls of living humans as a catalyst. But then a riot broke out. The oppressed people woke up and turned the tables, sacrificing him instead!"

The images on the stone wall finally froze on a hair-raising scene.

The evil cultivator's corpse was tied to the platform, surrounded by over a hundred people, each lighting a ghostly green oil lamp. The eerie green flames reflected his face, his eyes still wide in death.

After his death, his soul, filled with resentment and unwillingness, never dissipated, instead merging with the altar.

"His obsession was too deep, and his resentment too heavy. After death, his soul attached to the altar. With the modern revival of demons and the rampant spread of ghostly energy, his soul was reawakened, becoming the core of this Ghost Domain."

Xu Zhiwei lowered her voice.

At this moment, a voice echoed from the depths of the altar.

It was so raspy it didn't seem to come from a human throat, but rather drifted up eerily from some massive, extremely deep cave far beneath the earth.

"Young man... you are not like those mediocre fools. You do not need to be bound by secular rules like them, nor do you need to fight for so-called justice like them. Join me, and I can help you ascend to immortality. Transcend reincarnation, become indestructible through ten thousand tribulations, and live as long as heaven and earth. Whatever you want, I can give you..."

The voice surged from all directions, layering over itself, sometimes distant, sometimes near.

The same words were repeated in countless tones: there were the resentful wails of malicious ghosts, the ethereal and detached promises of immortals, and the loving, gentle advice of an elder.

There was also the most primal, teeth-gritting roar of the evil cultivator himself from when he was alive.

All the voices overlapped, making one's scalp tingle with dread.

"Ascend to immortality?"

Before Lin Ye could speak, Xu Zhiwei sneered first.

"A piece of trash like you is worthy of speaking of immortality? In ancient times, you used the lives of ignorant commoners to fuel your evil arts. Now that you're dead and turned into the core of a Ghost Domain, you're using three thousand seven hundred human lives as your power source. What kind of immortal are you trying to become? You black-hearted, utterly conscienceless dog!"