A misty veil locks the soul, ancient paths bear the marks of time.

Three days later, dawn.

At the edge of the Back Mountain Forbidden Land, the mist was thicker than ever before. It was no longer ordinary mountain fog, but a heavy, gray-white mist that seemed capable of blocking Divine Sense and eroding the mind. This was the first barrier on the periphery of the Forbidden Ground—the Soul-Locking Mist.

Nightmare stood alone before the mist. He had changed into simple, close-fitting attire tanned from some anti-corrosive beast skin, specially prepared by Medicine Old Man.

Inside his space, he had prepared enough anti-miasma pills and detox ointment carefully concocted by Medicine Old Man, as well as an incomplete map of the Forbidden Ground provided by the old village chief, drawn based on the memories and speculations of generations of Contract Guardians.

The old village chief, Medicine Old Man, Stone Tiger, and a few other core villagers stood not far behind him, their faces filled with worry and anticipation.

"Mr. Ye, take care! If the situation is impossible, retreat immediately!" Medicine Old Man urged one last time, handing over an archaic wooden whistle. "If you encounter an emergency, blow this whistle; it might startle away some low-level strange beasts."

Nightmare took it and scanned it, discovering that the whistle was made of a special material containing high-frequency oscillating sound wave rules, making it a decent exotic object in this world. He nodded without saying a word, turned around, and stepped into the rolling gray-white mist.

As soon as he entered, Nightmare felt his whole body sink. The mist not only blocked his vision but also penetrated his defenses, acting directly upon his Divine Soul! A chaotic, whispering intent, mixed with countless negative emotions, surged like a tide, attempting to flood into his Sea of Consciousness. If it were an ordinary Golden Core Cultivator, staying in this mist for too long would likely cause their Divine Soul to be polluted and gradually lose themselves.

But Nightmare only trembled slightly; his Chaos Dao Foundation circulated spontaneously. The gray chaos qi flow, like the most loyal guard, isolated, decomposed, and devoured all external erosive forces of the Divine Soul! The chaotic intent within the mist touched the Chaos, and like a drop of water merging into the ocean, it was instead assimilated, becoming an insignificant nourishment for his Chaos Dao Foundation.

"This mist is actually a supplement for the Chaos Dao Foundation?" Nightmare's expression shifted slightly, feeling somewhat surprised. It seemed that the inclusive and annihilating characteristics of the Chaos Dao Foundation had an unexpected advantage here.

He deployed his Divine Sense, which was greatly suppressed here, only barely able to probe a ten-zhang radius around him. The primal cube's environment analysis module operated at full power, combining the incomplete map and his perception to construct a topographic model of the surroundings in his mind.

Beneath his feet was soft, damp humus soil, covered with twisted tree roots and bizarre fungi. The surrounding trees had also become strange, their branches twisted like ghost claws, and the leaves appearing an unhealthy gray-black. The air was filled with decay and a faint, sulfurous, yet fishy-sweet scent.

Following the map's instructions, he carefully moved in one direction. Each step landed firmly, his gaze vigilantly scanning everything around him.

Suddenly, the mist on his left rolled, and a black shadow pounced silently! It was a monster shaped like a leopard, but its entire body was covered in bone armor, and its eyes flickered with Soul flames—a Soul-Eater Beast! A creature eroded and mutated by the aura of the Forbidden Ground, which fed exclusively on Divine Souls!

The Soul-Eater Beast was as fast as lightning, its sharp claws reaching directly for Nightmare’s back, while it spat out a stream of gray-black breath, aiming straight for his Divine Soul!

Nightmare seemed to have eyes in the back of his head; the moment his intuition warned him, his body had already reacted. He did not block it head-on but instead invoked the spatial charm of the void lotus seed, his figure shifting three feet to the right like a ghost, perfectly dodging both the claws and the breath.

At the same time, he struck out with his palm. chaos qi flow surged in his palm; it was not a rigid palm force but a powerful suction force!

The Soul-Eater Beast missed its strike and was about to change its move, but it felt the space around it freeze, its movements instantly slowing down. Furthermore, a force was forcibly stripping the Soul fire and the mutated, evil energy from within its body! It let out a terrified hiss, struggling to retreat.

But how could Nightmare let it escape? He operated his Chaos Dao Foundation, and the suction force surged!

Poof!

The Soul fire and mutated energy within the Soul-Eater Beast were forcibly extracted, turning into a strand of pure gray qi flow, which was swallowed by the Chaos vortex in Nightmare's palm. And the bone-armored body that had lost its energy crumbled rapidly like weathering, turning into a pile of bone powder on the ground.

"Sure enough, the energy cores of the strange beasts here are also supplements for the Chaos Dao Foundation." Nightmare realized. For him, this Forbidden Ground was not only a dangerous place but also a prime location for cultivation!

He continued to penetrate deeper, encountering several waves of attacks along the way. There were giant man-eating flowers capable of spraying corrosive slime, corpse crocodiles lurking in the swamps with immense strength, and swarms of sharp-toothed Ghost-Faced Bats... These strange beasts were bizarre and varied, but they all shared one common point—they had all been mutated by some force in the Forbidden Ground, becoming extremely aggressive, with energy attributes skewed towards evil and Chaos.

Nightmare either dodged with his movement techniques, blasted them away with the power of his Chaos Dao Foundation, or devoured and transformed their attack energy. Along the way, although there were occasional dangers, everything was resolved without incident, and his space was filled with several energy cores of strange beasts. Meanwhile, his Chaos Dao Foundation became increasingly refined and active through continuous combat and devouring.

As he continued to penetrate deeper, the surrounding mist seemed to thin out a bit, but the environment became even more eerie. He arrived before a ruin.

According to the map, this was once an outpost built by the ancient Contract Guardians. Now, it had long since collapsed, leaving only a few broken walls and ruins covered with thick moss and vines. And among these ruins, Nightmare captured some residual, extremely weak Formation patterns, as well as... a trace of guardian Dao charm that was homologous to the ancient fragment held by Medicine Old Man, but even purer and more ancient!

He walked up to a half-collapsed stone tablet and brushed away the moss. His gaze swept over it, revealing some long-lost ancient characters. The primal cube activated its translation module, barely parsing out a partial meaning:

"...Contract... Guard... Cangwu... Indestructible... Outer Demons... Forbidden..."

The text was incomplete, but combined with previous information, Nightmare roughly understood that this stone tablet recorded the oath regarding suppressing the "demon ancestor origin pact" and guarding against "Outer Demons" (likely referring to existences like Eclipse Moon).

Just as he was carefully observing the stone tablet, his intuition suddenly sent out an extremely strong warning!

It was not coming from the surroundings, but from the earth beneath his feet!

Rumble—!

The entire ruin shook violently, cracks appeared on the ground, and a massive, violent, chaotic, and destructive energy was rapidly surging up from deep underground! At the same time, the surrounding thin mist instantly turned pitch black as ink, and a mental shock ten times stronger than the Soul-Locking Mist rushed toward Nightmare's Sea of Consciousness like a tsunami!

"Was the Restriction triggered? Or... the backlash of the Seal itself?" Nightmare's mind instantly tensed, and his Chaos Dao Foundation circulated frantically at an unprecedented speed!

He felt that this danger was far beyond those strange beasts from before! This was more like the will of the entire Forbidden Ground rejecting and trying to annihilate him, the "intruder"!