Soul Searching Inquiry

Young Master Wang slumped in the cold mud, the wet, fishy smell from his crotch making him want to die of shame and indignation, but what terrified him more were the unfathomable eyes of the young man in grey before him.

Those eyes were so cold they didn't seem to belong to a living person, as if merely scrutinizing an insignificant object.

"I... I am Wang Teng, a direct descendant of the Wang Family of Black Mountain City! My father is Wang Xiong, the Patriarch of the Wang Family! You... if you dare to touch me, the Wang Family will never let you go!" Wang Teng yelled, trying to intimidate the other party with his Family background, but his voice trembled uncontrollably.

"The Wang Family?" Nightmare raised an eyebrow slightly, searching his memories; he had no impression of them, likely just a small Family in this remote area. "Why are you here?"

"For... for the land of Zhang Family Village... and... I heard there were Spiritual Plants in the mountains..." Wang Teng dared not conceal anything, stammering out the reasons, including Steward Liu's hasty escape.

Nightmare understood after listening. So, it was the escaping steward who had brought trouble. It seemed Zhang Family Village could no longer be returned to, and Physician Zhang would likely be implicated because of him.

"Were there two other people above just now?" Nightmare asked indifferently.

"Yes... yes, they were my guards, Zhang Long and Zhao Hu... they might have..." Wang Teng's face grew even paler at the thought of the terrifying Mad Fiend Wolf; those two Early Foundation Establishment Stage guards were probably doomed.

Nightmare's Divine Sense had already quietly spread out. At the edge of the sinkhole, apart from the dead Mad Fiend Wolf, there were no other living auras, only the faint sound of another Yao Beast gnawing on a corpse in the distance. The two guards had clearly perished.

Trouble. Nightmare disliked trouble. The Wang Family had lost two Foundation Establishment Stage guards and a direct descendant Young Master; they would never let the matter rest. Once a large-scale search of the mountains began, this sinkhole would eventually be found. Although Nightmare was not afraid, it would inevitably disrupt his Cultivation and might even expose the secret of this sealed place.

Nightmare's gaze returned to Wang Teng, still cold, but with a hint of calculation.

Wang Teng felt a chill run down his spine, and a huge sense of crisis enveloped his heart. He suddenly kowtowed and begged for mercy: "Senior! Esteemed Expert! Please spare my life! I was blind and failed to recognize your eminence! I offended you! As long as you let me go back, my Wang Family will definitely reward you handsomely! Spirit Stones, Medicinal Pills, Magical Artifacts, anything you want! I swear I will never reveal your existence!"

"Oh?" Nightmare seemed to be swayed, his tone softening slightly, "Can you make the decision?"

"Yes! Absolutely! My father dotes on me the most! As long as I speak..." Wang Teng saw a turn for the better and quickly promised.

"Very good." Nightmare nodded and slowly approached.

Just as a sliver of joy at surviving a calamity rose in Wang Teng's heart, he saw Nightmare suddenly extend a finger, pointing at his forehead with lightning speed!

"You..." Wang Teng's pupils constricted, wanting to dodge but having no time at all!

Nightmare's fingertip gently touched Wang Teng's glabella.

Soul Shattering Finger — not annihilation, but **soul searching**!

Against a small Qi Refinement Stage Cultivator like this, Nightmare didn't even need to use the complete Soul Searching secret technique; with just the exquisite control of the Soul Shattering Finger, he could forcibly extract fragments of the opponent's memory!

"Ahhh—!" Wang Teng let out an extremely shrill scream, his eyes rolled back, his body convulsed violently, and he foamed at the mouth. Memories, like a brutally torn scroll, surged frantically into Nightmare's Sea of Consciousness.

The layout of Black Mountain City, the distribution of the Wang Family's power, the Old Ancestor with the highest cultivation (Late Foundation Establishment Stage), the location of the Family treasury, Wang Teng's past grievances... a large amount of chaotic information was quickly filtered and read by Nightmare.

A moment later, Nightmare withdrew his finger.

Wang Teng collapsed to the ground like a pile of mud, his eyes unfocused, saliva drooling from his mouth; his Divine Soul was damaged, and he had become an idiot.

"As expected, a wastrel, his memories are full of messy things." Nightmare frowned slightly. From Wang Teng's memories, he didn't find much valuable information about the abnormalities in the Black Mountain Range; the Wang Family seemed to only regard it as an ordinary dangerous place. However, some recent developments concerning Black Mountain City caught Nightmare's attention.

According to Wang Teng's memories, in recent months, several unfamiliar Cultivators with cold auras had arrived in Black Mountain City, living in seclusion. Even the Wang Family Old Ancestor treated them with courtesy. The City Lord's Mansion also paid special attention to these individuals.

"It seems this Black Water Pool is muddier than I imagined." Nightmare mused.

He glanced at the idiotic Wang Teng on the ground, then at the corpse of the Mad Fiend Wolf at the edge of the sinkhole, and a plan formed in his mind.

Nightmare picked up Wang Teng and leaped onto the sinkhole. He threw Wang Teng aside, then walked to the Mad Fiend Wolf's corpse.

Nightmare circulated his Demonic Essence, formed hand Seals, and drew the surrounding dense poisonous miasma and Death Qi, slowly injecting them into the Mad Fiend Wolf's corpse. At the same time, Nightmare forced out a trace of his own 본명마혈 (Demonic Blood of Life) containing Xiangliu Poison, dripping it into the wolf corpse's wound.

After doing all this, Nightmare dragged Wang Teng and quickly traveled a distance deeper into the mountain range, finding a place with obvious signs of struggle and another Yao Beast (which was gnawing on Zhang Long or Zhao Hu's corpse). He threw the idiotic Wang Teng there, deliberately leaving some fragments of Wang Teng's clothing and the fallen, dimly glowing Golden Light Mirror.

Subsequently, Nightmare concealed his aura and quietly retreated to the vicinity of the sinkhole, observing silently.

Soon, the Yao Beast gnawing on the corpse discovered the fresh Wang Teng, let out a low growl, and pounced... Two days later.

In the Wang Family Ancestral Hall in Black Mountain City, the soul lamp representing Wang Teng suddenly extinguished!

The Wang Residence was in chaos!

Wang Xiong was furious and personally led people into the Black Mountain Range to search. Finally, guided by a special Magical Artifact, they found the tragic battlefield.

Only some broken clothes, fragments of Magical Artifacts, and three unrecognizable, incomplete skeletons remained at the scene. Beside one of the skeletons, Wang Teng's Golden Light Mirror had fallen.

What alarmed Wang Xiong even more was that the largest skeleton, suspected to be the Yao Beast that killed Wang Teng (the Mad Fiend Wolf processed by Nightmare), was entirely black, exuding a dense poisonous miasma and Death Qi. A terrifying, strange poisonous power, completely different from common Yao Beasts in the mountains, even lingered on the bones!

"It's... it's a mutated Yao Beast from the depths of the poisonous miasma!" a knowledgeable Wang Family Guest Elder said in horror. "Looking at this residual poison, it has probably reached the third-tier! Young Master and the others... probably strayed into its territory..."

Wang Xiong was heartbroken but had to accept this "fact." The depths of the Black Mountain Range were inherently dangerous, and the appearance of unknown powerful mutated Yao Beasts was not strange. Wang Teng insisted on going in himself and met with misfortune, so he could only blame his bad luck. Could they really organize people to hunt down a potentially non-existent third-tier poisonous beast in the depths for revenge? The Wang Family could not afford that price.

The matter was ultimately suppressed by the Wang Family, treated as an unfortunate accident.

Meanwhile, news about a terrifying mutated poisonous beast appearing in the depths of the Black Mountain Range quietly spread among the Cultivators of Black Mountain City, causing everyone to feel insecure. For a short period, no Cultivator dared to easily venture deep inside.

At the bottom of the sinkhole, Nightmare sensed the Wang Family's arrival and departure, and the mountain range returned to silence. A cold arc curved at the corner of his mouth.

Diverting disaster, striking fear. For now, no one should come to disturb him.

Nightmare turned, his gaze once again falling on the deep cave entrance and the broken stone tablet.

The trouble was temporarily resolved; it was time to go further. Nightmare needed more refined evil Qi to accelerate his recovery, and he also needed to investigate what exactly was sealed beneath this altar.

Nightmare came before the stone tablet and sat down cross-legged. This time, Nightmare was no longer content with absorbing the scattered evil Qi. His Divine Sense slowly extended, carefully touching the remaining Seal Restriction, attempting to find its operational law (pattern) and possible gap (crevices).

The Myriad Poison Demonic Scripture operated to its extreme, and the Demonic Nascent Soul phantom in his Dantian trembled slightly, producing an extremely subtle resonance with the evil aura seeping from inside the cave.

Nightmare's Divine Sense, like the most nimble tendril, slowly penetrated inward along the damaged patterns of the Restriction... Suddenly, Nightmare's Divine Sense seemed to touch something extremely cold, extremely vast, filled with an endless will of resentment!

A blurry and bloody image violently rushed into Nightmare's mind:

Endless darkness... twisted chains... On a massive altar, it seemed to be enshrining a... **slowly beating, pitch-black heart covered in bizarre demonic patterns**!

Each beat of that heart emitted monstrous evil and Death Qi!

The image stopped abruptly!

Nightmare suddenly opened his eyes, his face slightly pale, but an excited and dangerous arc uncontrollably lifted at the corner of his mouth.

"So... this is what was sealed..."

본명마혈