320: Chapter 320 The True Form of the Sea God is Actually This Thing? Lu Sheng Goes Berserk for Desecrating the Remains of an Ancient Emperor

Applying pressure with his fingertips, that slippery lump of pink flesh exploded in Lu Sheng's hand.

Squelch.

No world-shaking explosion occurred; there was only a muffled sound, like a rotten fruit being crushed. Dark red slurry dripped through the gaps of his fingers, mixed with several twitching nerve bundles, landing on the floor of the bone palace with an ear-grating sizzle.

The flickering high-frequency signal came to an abrupt halt.

The entire palace fell into an eerie silence, and even the humming of the electric currents that had permeated the air vanished.

"Number One?"

Lu Sheng shook his hand and wiped it disdainfully on the paralyzed mecha shell nearby. He walked to the edge of the hole left by the sinking throne and leaned over to look down.

Black.

Pure, non-reflective black.

It was like a gaping maw, waiting for prey to jump in of its own accord. There was no heat from rolling lava below; instead, an extremely complex scent wafted up—a mixture of high-concentration formalin, ancient decaying dust, and a nauseating stench of blood that had been suppressed to the extreme.

"Hidden quite deep."

Lu Sheng did not hesitate. With a tap of his toes, he plummeted straight into the darkness like a lead ball.

"Hey! Young Island Master! The situation below is unknown..." Li Xiaoyao watched the fleeting figure, stamping his feet in anxiety.

Is this kid a honey badger? No matter if it's a mountain of blades, a sea of fire, or the Palace of Yama ahead, he dares to jump down without even casting a scouting Spell?

Dao Yi tightened his grip on the whisk in his hand and looked sideways at the woman in purple beside him. "Miss Luo?"

Luo Tianfei said nothing. The Nine Phoenixes phantom behind her retracted slightly, turning into a close-fitting fire armor, and she jumped down right after him.

"Madmen, they're all madmen."

Li Xiaoyao cursed as he held his broken sword across his chest, gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and jumped in too... The descent wasn't long.

A few seconds later, the feeling of weightlessness ended with a dull thud upon landing.

The sensation underfoot was hard and cold. It wasn't natural rock, but a floor paved with a white crystal similar to high-strength ceramic.

As the four of them landed, the surrounding pitch-black space seemed to sense the presence of living people.

Buzz—

High above, on the dome tens of thousands of meters high, giant pale crystals lit up one by one. The light carried no warmth, as pale as the whites of a dead man's eyes, illuminating this world buried deep underground in vivid detail.

The moment Li Xiaoyao saw the surroundings clearly, he sucked in a breath of cold air, which caught in his throat and nearly choked him to death.

This was a massive, circular downward corridor.

The sides of the corridor were not walls.

They were two transparent ice walls over a hundred meters thick, extending into the darkness at the end of their vision.

And within those ice walls... were people.

Densely packed, layered people.

They weren't just piled randomly; they were like the most precious exhibits in a museum, each individually sealed in an independent ice crystal bubble. Some wore animal skins and held stone axes; some had wide robes and high hats; some were clad in heavy armor, clutching broken halberds.

The only thing they had in common was that their eyes were closed.

They weren't dead.

Their chests were still rising and falling at an extremely slow frequency, almost once a year. Although the spiritual platform at their brow was dim, a faint flicker of the fire of Origin still burned.

But that was the most terrifying part.

Unable to live, yet unable to die.

"This is..." Dao Yi walked quickly to the ice wall on the left, his trembling palm pressing against the bone-chilling surface.

Behind the ice was an old man in a black and white Daoist robe. The old man had white hair and a thin face, clutching a broken jade ruyi in his arms. Even in this eternal frozen state, a faint Taishang Dao charm still lingered around him.

Dao Yi's pupils constricted to the size of needle tips, and his breathing instantly became rapid.

"This... this is impossible..."

He turned his head sharply to the other side, his steps stumbling.

Sealed there was a giant man with bulging muscles, over three meters tall. His skin was bronze, and even through a hundred meters of ice, one could feel the Physical Body pressure capable of moving mountains and filling seas.

"This is also impossible..."

Dao Yi's voice began to crack, his usual composure completely gone.

"What's wrong?" Luo Tianfei looked around warily, Nether Phoenix Black Fire already condensing in her hand.

"That is 'Immortal Master Taishang'..." Dao Yi pointed at the Daoist-robed old man, his fingers trembling. "Kunlun records state that three thousand years ago, he comprehended the Dao of Supreme Emotionlessness and achieved Ascension in broad daylight, leaving behind ten thousand years of Luck for Kunlun."

He then pointed at the giant man.

"That is the 'Overlord'... the progenitor of the Body Cultivator lineage. Legend has it that he achieved Physical Body Sainthood and shattered the Void Realm to go to the Upper Realm long ago!"

"These are... these are all legendary figures who have already achieved Immortal Ascension and become Ancestral Masters!!"

Li Xiaoyao could no longer hear what Dao Yi was saying.

He was slumped on the ground, his eyes glazed, staring fixedly at a corner high up on the ice wall.

There was a swordsman in green.

The swordsman looked young, his brow carrying an arrogance that could not be erased even after being frozen for ten thousand years. He carried a rusty iron sword on his back and a wine gourd at his waist, maintaining a posture of drawing his sword toward the sky.

That was a posture Li Xiaoyao had practiced his whole life.

It was the most profound Sword Intent opening move of the Zixiao Sword Sect—[Green Lotus Sword Song].

"Ancestral Master..."

Li Xiaoyao's voice sounded like it had been sanded down, hoarse and unpleasant. "Didn't you... open the Heavenly Gate with a single sword strike and go to become a god in the heavens?"

"How could you... how could you be frozen here as a specimen?!"

A massive sense of despair instantly crushed the old man.

His lifelong belief in cultivation was to follow in the Ancestral Master's footsteps and one day open the Heavenly Gate with a sword. But now, reality had dealt him a resounding slap.

What Heavenly Gate?

What Ascension?

The so-called heavens were nothing more than a giant freezer.

This wasn't the Immortal Realm; this was the... mortuary for those peerless Prodigies.

"Why..." Dao Yi leaned against the ice wall, his eyes vacant as he muttered to himself. "Sea God... since you have such great power, why trap them here? Why on earth?"

"Why else?"

A flat, somewhat cold voice interrupted everyone's breakdown.

Lu Sheng stood with his hands in his pockets, slowly walking to the ice wall. He didn't feel fear or sorrow like the others; in those Cross-shaped Pupils, there was only an extremely rational, even cold, scrutiny.

He extended a finger and tapped the back of the green-clad swordsman's head.

"Look there."

Li Xiaoyao looked up with teary eyes.

He saw an extremely thin, almost completely transparent tube inserted into the Dazhui acupoint at the back of the swordsman's neck.

Without looking closely, it was impossible to notice.

The tube was deeply embedded in the spinal cord. Inside the tube, tiny, faint, pale-gold specks of light were slowly flowing outward.

It wasn't just the green-clad swordsman.

Everyone here, every so-called "Ascended one," had such a tube inserted into the back of their head.

Millions of transparent tubes converged into a vast and precise neural network, following the dome toward the deepest part of this underground space.

"Juicing."

Lu Sheng spat out two words, chilling to the bone.

"To that so-called 'Sea God,' these aren't heroes or Prodigies."

"They're just a bunch of high-quality, high-energy batteries."

"It fattens people up, lures them in, freezes them, then plugs them in to slowly drain their Origin and their rules to maintain the operation of something."

Lu Sheng turned around and looked at the end of the bottomless corridor, a mocking curve touching the corner of his mouth.

"The so-called Ascension is nothing more than moving from free-range to factory farming."

"This is your god."

Li Xiaoyao's body slumped as he collapsed completely to the ground, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

His Dao Heart shattered.

This was more painful than killing him.

Lu Sheng ignored these traumatized old-timers. The blood in his body was accelerating. It wasn't out of fear, but... excitement.

From the moment he stepped in here, the Ancient Emperor's finger bone inside him had begun to grow hot.

It felt like a wolf that hadn't eaten for three days smelling blood.

"Let's go."

Lu Sheng set off. "Let's go see what that blood-drinking 'god' actually looks like."

Passing through this suffocating "Hero's Tomb," the space ahead suddenly opened up.

It was a circular altar so massive it could trigger megalophobia.

The floor of the altar was no longer that white crystal, but was inscribed with countless complex Immortal Qin Runes shimmering with dark red light. These runes were like circuits on a motherboard, directing all the energy tubes converging from all directions toward the very center of the altar.

And there.

A heart was suspended.

A... deformed, giant heart.

It was a hundred meters tall. The left half was fresh, squirming flesh covered in black blood vessels resembling abyss monsters; the right half was cold machinery, with precise gears interlocking and silver hydraulic rods extending and retracting with the heartbeat.

This was the Sea God?

This was the mastermind who ruled the True Sea, made the Dragon Clan bow, and caused the Spirit Emperor to be parasitized?

It wasn't some supreme being.

It was a... semi-biological, semi-mechanical perpetual motion machine.

Thump.

Thump.

Every time that muffled heartbeat sounded, it sent a visible ripple through the entire underground space. The Origin energy extracted from the ice walls was transformed by the heart into a vital, dark-gold divine liquid, which was then channeled through pipes below to an unknown depth.

"Truly ugly."

Standing at the edge of the altar, Lu Sheng gave an extremely harsh evaluation.

But his gaze did not linger on the heart itself for long.

His eyes were fixed on the things surrounding the heart.

There were eight severed fingers suspended in mid-air, rotating slowly around the heart like satellites.

Even from a distance, Lu Sheng could feel the Aura radiating from them.

Domineering.

Arbitrarily ruling through the ages.

Even though they were broken and tattered, even though they were corroded nearly black by the abyssal Aura, the majesty belonging to an 'Emperor' still warped the surrounding space.

Buzz—!!!

The moment Lu Sheng saw those eight severed fingers, the finger bone hidden in his Dantian, and even the Archaic Heaven Emperor Venerable Dharma Idol deep within his spine, all went into a frenzy.

A towering rage exploded in his mind.

[Warning! Identical Origin components discovered!]

[Detected "Ancient Emperor's Remains" (8/10)...]

[Core components have been severely contaminated... currently being used as "fuel" to maintain high-dimensional mechanical operations...]

[System Judgment: This is a desecration!]

In Lu Sheng's Cross-shaped Pupils, the original dead gray was instantly replaced by a violent dark gold.

So that's how it is.

The reason this broken heart could keep running for ten thousand years without extinguishing, the reason it could suppress the rules of the entire True Sea, wasn't because it was strong.

It was because it... had stolen the power of the Ancient Emperor!

It had used the remains of that Great Emperor, who once swept through the ages, as fuel rods for its core reactor!

"Using someone's ancestor as a battery..."

Lu Sheng looked at the giant heart, a low laugh escaping his throat. The laughter grew louder and louder, eventually turning into wild, unbridled laughter that shook the runes on the altar.

"Good, very good."

"I was worried I'd get diarrhea if I ate you."

Lu Sheng walked toward the edge of the altar step by step, his Aura climbing with every stride.

Dark gold dragon scales emerged from beneath his skin, covering his neck and the side of his face. The air behind him distorted as the thousand-meter-tall Archaic Heaven Emperor Venerable Dharma Idol, though unable to fully manifest due to the spatial suppression here, locked its terrifying intent onto the target ahead.

"Since you've added your own seasoning..."

Lu Sheng stuck out his crimson tongue and licked his somewhat dry lips, the greed in his eyes almost manifesting as it poured out.

"Then this meal..."

"I'm definitely eating it!"