149: Chapter 149 The Pact to Die, Using a Trick to Enter Dragon Ravine

That bone-chilling cold traveled straight from his fingertips to his heart, like a basin of freezing water mixed with ice shards, extinguishing the last spark of hope that had just risen in Lin Chen's mind.

Just moments ago, this rough stone ring had been burning hot with an intense craving for the 'Geng Metal Shards' beneath the Boundary-Suppressing Stele, yet now it radiated a hair-raising chill like a dead object.

This extreme contrast in temperature, within Lin Chen's razor-sharp intuition for fortune and misfortune, translated into only one incredibly clear signal—a dead end.

An absolute dead end.

Inspector Feng Xingyun might not be lying, and that so-called 'benefactor' Xuan Jizi might truly exist.

But within the complex abyss of power in Tianshu City, the transmission of information itself was the most lethal weapon.

How could an old fox of Deputy Chief Huangfu Ming's caliber allow an Inspector, blinded by rage, to easily contact a powerful figure capable of breaking the deadlock?

Behind this message transmission, it was undoubtedly a killing Formation set up by Deputy Chief Huangfu Ming, using borrowed strength and going with the flow.

Perhaps, at this moment, Inspector Feng Xingyun himself had likely become a bloody piece of bait, kept completely in the dark, used to lure him into the trap.

The so-called Luoyan Slope in the west of the city was likely already a net spread wide, just waiting for him, the reckless prey, to dive right in.

Lin Chen's face was as calm as water, and he shifted his gaze away from the messaging talisman flickering with a faint red light.

He did not touch it, nor did he allow even the slightest trace of his Divine Sense to probe it, simply letting that earnest light gradually dim in the night, eventually returning to complete, deathly darkness.

The night wind swept up fallen leaves at the edge of the square, making a rustling sound.

Lin Chen turned around, leaving his back to the towering Boundary-Suppressing Stele that radiated endless suppressing power; his figure, like a drop of ink silently merging into the deep sea, slipped back into the complex and gloomy alleys of Tianshu City.

By the time he returned to the abandoned underground Earth Vein node, the night was as deep as ink.

The faint fluorescent light emitted by the second-tier warning Formation Plate barely provided a very limited field of vision within the dark and narrow cave.

The air was filled with the smell of damp earth and a hint of pungent blood that had not yet fully dissipated.

Lin Haoyu leaned against the cold rock wall, his eyes tightly shut, his brows slightly furrowed due to the pain of the torn Meridians remaining in his body, but his breathing frequency was no longer as faint as before.

Lin Chen did not deliberately soften his footsteps.

Hearing the familiar, steady footsteps, Lin Haoyu snapped his eyes open. In those clear eyes that originally belonged to a youth, there was now a sharpness and calmness born from the baptism of life and death, like a blade tempered by raging fire.

He struggled to stand up, but Lin Chen raised his hand and pressed down on his shoulder.

Lin Chen looked down at this face that was seventy percent similar to his own, without a shred of tender pleasantries.

He reached into his robes and pulled out a Jade Slip emitting a gentle green light, which still retained a faint warmth from him having forcibly recorded information with his Divine Sense throughout the night.

"Keep this safe." Lin Chen's voice was extremely low, yet it struck like a heavy hammer in this cramped space.

Without allowing any argument, he pulled his son's hand and forced the Jade Slip into his palm.

As their fingers brushed against each other, the rough stone ring inevitably grazed the youth's skin, bringing a heart-palpitating chill.

"Inside this are all the core Cultivation Techniques of the Lin Family, as well as all my insights and deductions on cultivating the Golden Core Stage to its peak and how to knock on the door of the Nascent Soul." Lin Chen's gaze was like a physical entity nailed to Lin Haoyu's face, not missing a single trace of emotional fluctuation. "Tomorrow's journey is a matter of nine deaths and one life. This is a gamble where even I cannot see the full picture. If I do not return, this Jade Slip will be the last and only Foundation of the Lin Family in this world."

Lin Haoyu's hand stiffened abruptly. He stared fixedly at the glowing Jade Slip in his palm, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

In the world of cultivation, this kind of unreserved imprint of Cultivation Techniques and Divine Sense Legacy usually only meant one thing—arranging one's affairs before death.

"I do not need you to make any declarations now, nor do I need you to make any poisonous oaths of living and dying together." Lin Chen straightforwardly tore away the last veil of affection between father and son, his tone cruel to the point of being cold-blooded. "If you survive, even if you have to lie in the mud like a wild dog playing dead, you must find a way to live and bring this back to the Southern Territory, back to the Family. This is the Karmic Obstruction you must bear as the eldest son of the Lin Family, after enjoying the countless resources piled up by the Family. Do you understand?"

There was no hysterical roaring, only an absolute calmness that placed life and death outside of consideration.

Lin Haoyu's face, already pale from his severe injuries, was now as white as paper, but he did not cry out, nor did he show the slightest weakness.

His chest, not yet broad, heaved violently several times as he tried to suppress the surging blood Qi within his body.

Then, his five fingers, stained with mud and blood, closed like iron pincers, gripping the Jade Slip tightly, his knuckles turning a glaring, stark white from the excessive force.

He raised his head, meeting his father's bottomless gaze, and without speaking, he simply nodded heavily and without a hint of hesitation.

In those bloodshot eyes, there was no fear of death, only a ferocity and resolution that erupted completely after being pushed to the brink, much like the Lin Chen of years past who stood alone outside the Qingmu Sect and vowed to carve a bloody path out of a desperate situation.

After separating the most important Legacy, Lin Chen took advantage of the night before it had fully faded, and like a bodiless ghost, quietly slipped back into the guest house heavily monitored by the Sky Patrol Division's eyes and ears.

Qin Ruowei had been waiting there all along.

This Chief Steward of the Lin Family was currently sitting by the dim candlelight, with several extremely complex communication Formation Plates placed on the table in front of her, along with a pile of intelligence Jade Slips densely recording the movements of various forces in Tianshu City.

Hearing a faint, subtle distortion in the air of the room, she instantly raised her head in alert, the Flying Sword in her sleeve already on the verge of being activated.

But upon seeing that it was Lin Chen emerging from the shadows, her tense body relaxed quite naturally.

"Family Head." Qin Ruowei stood up, not asking about the earth-shattering slaughter at the Ancient History Library, nor asking about Lin Haoyu's whereabouts.

She only looked at the results, and the fact that Lin Chen could stand here now, completely unscathed and with steady breathing, was the best result.

"Time is tight, I will say this only once, you go do it immediately." Lin Chen walked to the table, his slender fingers precisely pressing down on a Jade Slip representing the terrain on the outskirts of Tianshu City, his gaze as deep as stagnant water. "Immediately mobilize all the covert lines we have just established on the outskirts of Tianshu City, and according to that 'trap route' previously provided by Sect Master Tie Kuang, go search for 'Baicao Valley' immediately."

Qin Ruowei was stunned for a moment, and for the first time ever, a flash of extreme astonishment crossed those eyes that were always as calm as an ancient well and full of reason.

The route regarding Baicao Valley provided by Sect Master Tie Kuang had long been personally deduced and confirmed by Lin Chen to be a fatal trap specifically designed to lure Southern Territory Cultivators into the game.

At this critical juncture when they were surrounded by enemies on all sides, to actively send people to step into a trap?

"Family Head, this is no different from a moth flying into a flame; those who go will absolutely have ten deaths and no life." Qin Ruowei instinctively spoke to remind him, but immediately, her sharp brain captured the anomaly hidden in Lin Chen's words.

According to the Family Head's usual style of doing things, even if it were sending people to their deaths, he would definitely make it make a sound.

"You must go with great fanfare." The corners of Lin Chen's mouth slowly curled into a cold, temperatureless arc; it was the cruel smile of a hunter casting bait. "Do not use any concealment. Be as arrogant as possible, you can even deliberately leak a few Formation diagrams. I want all the forces in Tianshu City watching our Lin Family, including those pervasive secret agents of the Sky Patrol Division, to clearly and plainly see that the Lin Family's main force is desperately breaking through to the outside of the city for some extremely rare life-saving resources."

This was an extremely risky and vicious open conspiracy.

He wanted to use the lives of those outer covert lines under his command to pave a layer of smoke screen that was thick enough and realistic enough.

In the world of cultivation, the more one acts like a fool who has been forced into a desperate situation and is hungrily biting the hook, the more those high and mighty big figures will believe it without doubt.

"I understand." Qin Ruowei took a deep breath of the air in the room, which was mixed with sandalwood and the cold night wind, and without any hesitation, she accepted this instruction that sounded almost crazy.

She knew Lin Chen too well; this Family Head never did business that would result in a loss.

This smoke screen, stained red with blood, was to cover a more lethal operation, an ultimate plot that required everyone to believe that Lin Chen was "not present" or "had gone to step into the trap."

"Go do it, remember, when putting on an act, do it completely." Lin Chen waved his hand and turned to merge back into the thick night.

There was less than an hour left until dawn, and the horizon was already faintly revealing a trace of extremely weak, pale fish-belly white.

Lin Chen returned to that cramped underground space once again.

By this time, Lin Haoyu had already hidden the Legacy Jade Slip close to his body and was sitting cross-legged, breathing and exhaling, like a young wolf licking its wounds, trying to squeeze even a sliver of Spiritual Qi from his dried-up Dantian.

Lin Chen walked in front of him, squatted down, and took out an extremely special object from the deepest part of his Storage Pouch.

It was a Formation Plate that presented a dark yellow luster, with its surface engraved with extremely complex patterns that exuded an ancient, bloody scent.

This was not an item exchanged from the System, but a broken Formation map that Lin Chen had risked his life to retrieve from an ancient ruin years ago. After years of constant deduction and repair, it had barely taken shape as the "Burning Blood Martyrdom Disk."

"Take this." Lin Chen handed the Formation Plate to Lin Haoyu.

Lin Haoyu reached out to take it. The moment his fingertips touched it, he felt an extreme weight, as if he were not holding a piece of jade, but a miniature mountain of ten thousand jun.

What shocked him even more was the violent aura faintly emanating from the core of the Formation Plate, which resonated intensely with the newly injured and withered Wu Earth True Source within him, as if some bloodthirsty Yao Beast had caught the scent of blood.

Lin Chen took a deep breath, gazed into his son's eyes, and finally revealed the ultimate truth: "Tomorrow's journey is not just a death trap set by Deputy Chief Huangfu Ming using Inspector Feng Xingyun's hand; it is also our only chance to completely overturn the board in this desperate situation. I am not going to Luoyan Slope, nor am I going to Baicao Valley. We are going to the Dragon-Falling Ravine."

Lin Haoyu's pupils contracted to the extreme the moment he heard those three words.

Dragon-Falling Ravine—a place marked as an absolute blood-red Forbidden Ground on maps within a ten-thousand-mile radius of Tianshu City, a death trap rumored to be avoided even by Golden Core Late Stage Great Perfection Cultivators, shrouded year-round in eerie miasma and the remnants of ancient killing Formations.

"I am taking you with me, not because I expect you to kill the enemy. With your current broken body, even the most ordinary Foundation Establishment Early Stage Cultivator could easily crush you to death." Lin Chen's expression was unprecedentedly serious. He spoke word by word, as if trying to chisel each one into the depths of Lin Haoyu's Soul: "I need your Wu Earth True Source. At the most critical moment of life and death, I want you to activate this Formation Plate without hesitation, and squeeze out all the Origin power within your body—including your Lifespan and your Foundation—in a single instant."

Lin Chen paused, his voice becoming hoarse yet conveying an irresistible will: "I do not ask you to kill the enemy, only for absolute defense. I need you to buy me 'one breath' of time."

One breath—normally, it is just a short inhalation.

But in a life-and-death struggle of that level, one breath is enough for a Nascent Soul Cultivator proficient in the Law of space to complete a fatal teleportation, and enough for Lin Chen's Chaos Golden Core, refined to the extreme, to complete a total overload operation.

That is one breath capable of deciding the life and death of millions, capable of overturning the entire chessboard of the Central Continent.

And the price is that after forcibly stimulating his Origin and overloading the Formation Plate, Lin Haoyu would very likely become a cripple with shattered Meridians, or even have his Soul disintegrate on the spot, resulting in death and the dissipation of his Dao.

Lin Haoyu did not hesitate at all. He fiercely clutched the heavy, dark yellow Formation Plate to his chest, and on his pale, bloodless face, he pulled a slightly sinister yet incomparably brilliant smile.

"Rest assured, Father." The youth's voice was hoarse, yet it carried a chilling calm: "Even if it means being crushed to pieces, I will die only after that one breath."

This was a madness of seeking life through death, a profound madness flowing deep within the blood and bones of the Lin father and son, completely ignited by this cruel cultivation world.

The next day at dawn.

The morning mist over Tianshu City was like a thick layer of lead-gray, pressing down heavily upon the sprawling complex of buildings, allowing not a single ray of morning sunlight to pierce through.

The air was filled with a suffocating dampness and oppression.

Lin Chen still ignored the communication talisman from Inspector Feng Xingyun, which vibrated violently in his Storage Pouch at regular intervals, like a death warrant.

He changed into a drab robe, the most common among low-level Loose Cultivators, and wore a wide, tattered bamboo hat that obscured most of his face.

He led a common scaled-horse beast cart, a vehicle seen everywhere in the marketplace for transporting low-quality spiritual ore. Like a laborer rising early to toil for a living, he silently drove out of the west gate of Tianshu City from a remote alley filled with mud and filth.

The carriage was tightly covered by a heavy, thick tarp that emitted a pungent, musty odor.

Lin Haoyu sat cross-legged inside in silence, his hands clutching the dark yellow Formation Plate tightly. He was like a broken stone statue on the verge of collapse, yet still desperately guarding its final position, his breathing suppressed to the extreme.

The beast cart moved steadily along the wide, flat official road, its wooden wheels grinding against the white jade gravel, emitting a monotonous and rhythmic creaking sound.

Occasionally, a few streaks of sword light flashed past, belonging to other Cultivators who were also traveling early in the morning.

No one's Divine Sense would pay attention to this dilapidated beast cart that looked as if it could fall apart at any moment and had no fluctuations of Spiritual Qi.

According to the current direction of the beast cart, this road led straight to the shelter Inspector Feng Xingyun had mentioned—Luoyan Slope.

However, just as the beast cart passed an extremely hidden fork in the road overgrown with tall locust trees, Lin Chen's wrist, holding the reins, gave a sudden flick.

A trace of extremely subtle yet overwhelmingly domineering Spiritual Qi instantly traveled along the reins and pierced into the Sea of Consciousness of the seemingly docile scaled horse.

The scaled horse let out a low, painful whinny. Without a moment's hesitation, it exerted force with all four hooves, pulling the heavy carriage as it forcibly veered off the wide official road and plunged headlong into a desolate, overgrown path nearby—a path that never saw sunlight and reeked of rotting leaves.

At the end of that path, swallowed by endless shadows, lay the Dragon-Falling Ravine.

As the beast cart ventured deeper, the surrounding scenery began to become desolate at a visible rate.

The low-level Spiritual Plants that could be seen along the official road had completely vanished, replaced by unnaturally tall, dead ancient trees with bark resembling black scales.

The twisted branches of these ancient trees were like ghost claws reaching desperately toward the sky, completely blocking out the already weak light.

The air began to fill with an extreme, damp, and putrid scent from years of lacking sunlight, mixed with a faint, chilling, fishy coldness that made one's skin crawl.

When the entrance of the Dragon-Falling Ravine, resembling the gaping maw of an ancient Vicious Beast, gradually revealed itself in the morning mist, the scaled horse pulling the cart began to tremble violently and uncontrollably.

It snorted uneasily, its hooves trampling anxiously on the ground covered in black gravel, refusing to take another step forward no matter what.

A beast's instinct for danger is far sharper and purer than a Cultivator's; it had caught the scent of a thick, overwhelming smell of death that could make a Soul tremble.

The cliffs on both sides of the Dragon-Falling Ravine towered into the clouds, as if they had been forcibly split apart by a giant axe that could cleave the heavens.

The ink-black rocks were barren, with only a few dark red water stains that had been dried for unknown eons, resembling the congealed blood of some unknown, gargantuan creature.

"Go in." Lin Chen's voice was not loud, but it carried a terrifying, unquestionable pressure.

A wisp of materialized Spiritual Pressure belonging to a Golden Core Cultivator pierced directly into the scaled horse's Sea of Consciousness like a steel needle, forcibly extinguishing its instinct to retreat and compelling the poor beast to move its trembling limbs.

The beast cart crushed a few pale, withered bones at the valley entrance. Just as it drove into the thick, tangible shadows of the Dragon-Falling Ravine, a sudden change occurred.

The dense fog that was originally just somewhat cold and quietly drifting seemed to gain life in an instant, becoming as viscous as ink and beginning to churn and surge madly.

A teeth-aching "crack" sound suddenly came from the air; it was the wail of the originally stable space being forcibly twisted, squeezed, and torn apart by some extremely massive and terrifying force.

Lin Chen did not look back; he remained sitting steadily in the driver's seat.

But his [Earth Pulse Perception] was struck as if by thousands of steel needles at this moment, emitting a shrill, piercing shriek like the tolling of an alarm bell.

He clearly felt the scene at the valley entrance behind him shake violently, like the surface of water into which a giant boulder had been thrown.

Immediately afterward, the originally wide path of retreat was instantly sealed off completely by an invisible, intangible, yet indestructible wall of Qi.

The faint, natural rhythm in the surrounding Earth Veins was completely cut off by a Formation pattern that was extremely overbearing, complex, and exuded an ancient aura of slaughter.

The entire Dragon-Falling Ravine had, at this moment, become a massive, inescapable cage of death, cut off from the outside world.

Lin Chen slowly pulled on the reins, bringing the terrified scaled horse to a halt.

The surrounding fog had become so thick that he could not even see his own hand in front of his face. Apart from the wailing sound like ghosts crying and wolves howling as the cold wind passed through the narrow, long canyon, the surroundings were so quiet that not even the slightest rustle could be heard.

This was an absolute silence that had stripped away all signs of life.

He reached out and, with movements extremely slow and composed, took off the wide, tattered bamboo hat from his head and casually tossed it into the churning dense fog beside the cart.

The bamboo hat, woven from tough vines, had barely touched the fog when it was as if it had been doused in the most potent bone-dissolving acid. Amidst a piercing "hissing" sound, it instantly dissolved into a wisp of black, poisonous smoke.

Lin Chen took a deep breath of the cold air filled with a murderous and corrosive aura. In his eyes, deep as ancient wells, there was no panic or surprise.

His gaze swept calmly across the unfathomable canyon ahead, which seemed to hide countless eyes. Facing the empty, dense fog, he spoke in a flat, indifferent tone, almost as if making small talk: "Your Excellency went to such lengths to set up this trap, even bringing out such an ancient, heaven-sealing, earth-severing killing Formation. Why not reveal yourself?"