42: There is no key to the underground palace, but the stall can draw the door

The moment the second gate of the underground palace swung open, time seemed to be frozen by the gushing cold mist.

"The liquid has been drunk, the Souls have gathered... The Three Caves shall open."

The voice did not sound human; it was more like countless Souls overlapping and grinding on the same syllable. It carried a metallic emptiness and deathly silence as it seeped from the bottomless darkness behind the gate, drilling into everyone's eardrums and piercing their Divine Souls.

Immediately following that was the first utterance from the figure on the Stall Cloth.

"Master of the Cloth, Entering the Game."

This voice was entirely different—it was grand, ancient, and devoid of any emotion, as if it were a proclamation of the laws of the Heavenly Dao.

Every word was like an invisible great bell, suddenly tolling in the hearts of Xuan Weizi, Su Qingzhu, and Gongshu Yin, shaking them so hard their Qi and blood surged and their heads spun.

Xuan Weizi's whole body shook violently, forcibly dragged out of the massive blow of his brother's betrayal by this voice.

He jerked his head up to look at Zhang Xuanyi, his eyes bloodshot and filled with unbelievable terror.

"Master... Master of the Cloth? Entering what game?!"

This had already exceeded his scope of understanding.

Underground palaces, sacrifices—before the words "Entering the Game," they all seemed like a clumsy rural ghost story.

Behind this, there seemed to be a terrifying truth involved that he couldn't even touch with his imagination.

A Yuan was still kneeling on the ground, his body trembling slightly from exhaustion.

He heard those words, and his thin back suddenly stiffened.

He didn't understand what "Entering the Game" meant, but he could feel the majesty contained in that voice that transcended life and death.

He subconsciously lifted his eyeless face, his empty sockets "looking" toward Zhang Xuanyi. His lips moved, but he couldn't make a single sound.

Only Zhang Xuanyi still stood perfectly straight.

His expression hadn't changed in the slightest, as if those two earth-shattering sentences were nothing more than a light breeze by the roadside.

He didn't even blink his eyelids much, merely casting a faint glance at the slightly hot Stall Cloth in front of him.

The outline of that back remained blurry. After saying those words, it fell silent again, as if it had never spoken.

"Game?" A very faint curve hooked at the corner of Zhang Xuanyi's mouth, his smile as cold as the freezing wind blowing from behind the gate. "Whose game it is... isn't certain yet."

Ignoring the shock of the three people behind him, he stepped forward, the first to walk toward the wide-open stone gate.

"Boss Zhang, wait!" Su Qingzhu was the first to react. Suppressing the throbbing in her heart, she stepped forward quickly. "The situation inside is unclear, and that voice..."

"The voice is a warning left for those who can understand," Zhang Xuanyi's footsteps didn't stop, his voice drifting back steadily. "It is also an invitation... left for those who cannot see clearly."

One of his feet had already stepped inside the frame of the second gate.

A blast of Yin Qi ten times stronger than before hit him in the face. It was no longer mist, but a cold current solidified into substance, sharp as a knife, scraping painfully against his cheeks.

Gongshu Yin felt as if his entire body's blood was about to freeze, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

In this cold air, there was also an indescribable smell mixed in.

It wasn't the rot of a corpse, nor the fishy smell of mud, but a kind of... ancient aura of despair originating from the depths of the Soul.

It was as if hundreds or thousands of Souls imprisoned for millennia were wailing day and night here. Their sorrow and resentment had soaked into every inch of the air, turning into this bone-chilling "scent."

"Mas... Master..." A Yuan let out a dream-like murmur from behind. Pushing off the ground with both hands, he actually struggled to his feet and followed, stumbling along.

The aura behind that gate held a fatal attraction for him, as if it were summoning something missing from his body.

Xuan Weizi's eyes were vacant. He looked at Zhang Xuanyi's back, then at the stone statue that had returned to deathly silence. The void left by his collapsed faith was filled with massive confusion and fear.

He didn't know what he should do—whether he should flee this place of trouble that had subverted everything he knew, or rush in to demand an explanation from the brother he once respected most.

Finally, he gritted his teeth. As if all his strength had been drained, yet also as if he had summoned the greatest courage of his life, he dragged his heavy steps and followed at the end of the line.

He had to know the truth, even if the truth would utterly crush him.

After Zhang Xuanyi stepped into the second gate, he didn't rush to go deeper.

He stood at the edge of the darkness inside the gate, as if adapting to the light and temperature within.

He fished a crumpled piece of yellow paper out of his pocket. Unlike before, there were no runes on this yellow paper; it was just a blank piece of straw paper.

With a casual shake, the yellow paper ignited without fire. What rose was not a green flame, but a ball of warm, bright orange-yellow light.

This light was like a small sun, instantly dispelling the darkness and cold within several meters, illuminating a corner behind the gate.

Only then did everyone see clearly that the path beneath their feet was no longer rough rock, but a kind of highly polished black stone slab. The slabs were carved with fine patterns, like some sort of guiding Formation or a type of descriptive script.

These patterns shimmered with a faint, eerie light under the firelight, extending all the way into the deep darkness ahead.

And what made people's scalps tingle the most were the walls on both sides.

Those weren't stone walls.

At least, not entirely.

The orange-yellow firelight swept across the walls, reflecting off countless crystal-clear points.

Gongshu Yin's breathing stopped instantly. As a descendant of the Gongshu family, he knew various materials like the back of his hand.

Those weren't gemstones, nor were they colored glass. That was... bone polished with extreme craftsmanship!

"This... this is..." His voice became sharp and piercing due to extreme shock.

Su Qingzhu also saw clearly, and the documents in her hand scattered to the ground with a clatter.

The cold words recorded there about the "seventeen missing Qi-sensitives of the Mausoleum Guard Department" seemed, at this moment, to turn into a living, flesh-and-blood mockery.

The firelight continued to move, revealing the full view of the wall inch by inch.

On that wall, densely packed from the floor to the ceiling, were embedded hundreds or thousands of crystal-clear... human skulls!

Each skull had been treated like a crystal work of art, flawless, to the point where the delicate internal bone structure could be seen clearly.

And the most terrifying part was that these crystal skulls were not empty.

In their hollow sockets, a pair of eyeballs was embedded.

No, those weren't real eyeballs, but a kind of black crystal. However, under the illumination of the firelight, countless tiny points of light seemed to flow deep within the crystals, like the reflection of a profound starry sky.

Hundreds and thousands of crystal skulls, hundreds and thousands of pairs of black "eyes," just quietly "stared" at everyone who stepped into this place.

There was no sound, no movement, yet it brought a sense of pressure more terrifying than the wailing of ten thousand ghosts.

It was as if every deceased person was using their eternal, cold gaze to scrutinize the Souls of these uninvited guests.

"The walls... are watching us..." A Yuan's voice shook beyond recognition. Although he couldn't see, the feeling of being locked onto by countless gazes simultaneously was more real and terrifying than any visual impact.

Holding the burning yellow paper, Zhang Xuanyi walked forward slowly.

His gaze calmly swept across those crystal skulls. There was no fear, no surprise—only a hint of realization.

He walked to a wall and reached out a finger to lightly touch one of the skulls.

Cold, hard.

The sensation from his fingertip confirmed the hypothesis in his heart.

"This isn't an ordinary sacrifice." Zhang Xuanyi withdrew his hand, his voice echoing in the deathly silent passage and clearly reaching everyone's ears. "This is 'Soul Nourishing.' They refined the skulls of Qi-sensitives into 'Soul Vessels,' then used the Yin Qi of the Dragon Vein's death point to nourish them day and night. Using their remnant Souls as a guide, they are waiting for a... vessel that can carry all the Soul Power to appear."

Just as he finished speaking, a series of light "clack, clack" sounds suddenly came from the darkness deep within the passage.

The sound was very light, like someone tapping the ground gently with their fingernails. It came from far to near, neither hurried nor slow, each tap precisely hitting the gaps between everyone's heartbeats.

In this deathly silence and under the gaze of countless eyes, this sudden sound became the final straw that crushed everyone's nerves.

Gongshu Yin suddenly pulled out the mechanical short crossbow from his back, aiming it toward the direction of the sound.

Su Qingzhu also drew her gun instantly, assuming a defensive stance.

Only Zhang Xuanyi slowly turned around to face that profound darkness.

The firelight from the yellow paper in his hand flickered, stretching his shadow on the ground.

He smiled.

In that smile, there was an unmasked hint of contempt and cold killing intent.

"Finally willing to come out, are you?"

He spoke softly, as if he weren't whispering to an unknown terror, but issuing a death invitation to an old friend who had arrived late.

"After guarding for so many years, it's time to change locations, Old Herb Boy."