609: Chapter 609 No one who enters will return

"This is..." Su Ming's pupils constricted sharply.

He immediately closed his eyes, ceasing to use his physical vision, and instead sank his entire consciousness into his Sea of Consciousness to accept that resonant force.

Within the Chaos of his Sea of Consciousness, the flame of the solitary lamp reflecting the light swayed wildly. A blurry, incomplete, yet coldly mechanical piece of information forcefully squeezed itself into his memory. This was practically an "operation manual" carved into the Origin of the True Seal.

Su Ming's lips parted slightly, and he subconsciously muttered the decoded information: "Use the turtle-knobbed small seal as the key to heaven and earth, use the border guarding true seal for Bloodline authentication, and channel Water Spiritual Energy as the medium for guidance..."

He opened his eyes abruptly, a flash of realization crossing his gaze, but it was immediately replaced by deep wariness.

"All three must be activated simultaneously within the same breath to unlock the reorganization password of these 3,600 Array Patterns and lock onto the boundary gate coordinates."

"A three-in-one activation condition? Emperor Yan Wuji's methods for preventing thieves are certainly ruthless." Lin Yu snorted coldly, his soul body hovering in the Void Realm. "What, is there danger in this process?"

"The danger is secondary." Su Ming frowned deeply, his expression turning ugly. "According to the feedback from this resonance, once this process is set in motion, it will instantly drain nearly half of the border guarding true seal's Origin energy. Furthermore, this energy cannot recover naturally in the short term, which is equivalent to crippling half the power of the True Seal."

The border guarding true seal was one of his greatest trump cards at the moment; it was the core of the array principles for the seventy-nine great arrays in the Northern Territory and an excellent "humanoid radar." Losing half its Origin meant he would lose his keen ability to sense danger. Once he encountered a crisis, his room to maneuver would be greatly diminished.

Was it worth it?

Su Ming's brain raced as he began to weigh the pros and cons in his mind.

Just as Su Ming was lost in thought.

"Chirp! Chirp chirp!" The Mystic Shadow Crow "Ying," which had been quietly perched on Su Ming's shoulder, suddenly leaped down and landed on the bluestone floor of the Star Observation Platform.

Its pair of pitch-black claws paced restlessly on the stone slab, its throat emitting impatient cries, while the metallic-sheened tail feathers behind it flicked back and forth anxiously. In Ying's eyes, a second golden pupil ring had fully manifested. At this moment, those golden pupil rings reflected the miniature Array Patterns slowly flowing across the stone carving.

"What is it?" Su Ming came back to his senses, his gaze falling upon Ying.

Ying ignored Su Ming and quickly circled the four characters "Spirit Court Boundary Road" twice. Suddenly, its bird beak, sharp enough to pierce fine iron, pecked fiercely downward!

"Ding!" A slight, crisp sound rang out.

The spot Ying pecked was not a spiritual power node of the Array Patterns, but a blank space on the stone slab in the bottom right corner of the character "Court," which was almost invisible to the naked eye.

Su Ming immediately stepped forward, focusing his gaze.

Under the vision of "Micro-Observation," he finally discovered that the place Ying had pecked hid a tiny crack, ten times thinner than a strand of hair. At this moment, following Ying's peck, strands of dark red energy particles, like dried blood powder, were slowly seeping out from deep within that crack.

A pungent, nauseating smell of blood, mixed with some ancient resentment, instantly permeated the Star Observation Platform.

"Hmph—" From within the xuantian ring, Lin Yu let out a loud, mocking scoff.

"This glutton's nose is even sharper than the spirit-seeking hounds of Beast Peak." Lin Yu's voice carried undisguised mockery and disdain. "I thought Emperor Yan Wuji had some great Divine Ability to create a cross-boundary anchor point out of thin air. After all this, the underlying driving force turns out to be such a base method."

"Blood sacrifice?" Su Ming looked at those dark red particles, his eyes cold to the extreme.

"Not just blood sacrifice. Judging by the concentration of resentment, I'm afraid thousands of living Souls were forcefully stuffed in." Lin Yu's soul body emitted a green light, seemingly extremely disgusted by this smell. "No wonder this password is a living entity; it's because countless vengeful Souls are sealed inside, performing the calculations and operations for it."

Su Ming did not hesitate. He flipped his hand, and the Jade Slip of the "Great Yan Array Canon" flashed in his palm and then vanished.

"Since it is a stagnant pool of resentful blood, then I shall drain and dissolve it."

With a thought from Su Ming, the Ruoshui Spiritual Power within his body instantly surged out along his Meridians, turning into a fine thread of Water Spiritual Energy thinner than the crack itself as it flowed from his fingertips.

"Drainage Technique, reverse!"

He shouted in a low voice. He did not violently strike the dark red energy; instead, he used the Water Spiritual Energy's extreme permeability and inclusive nature to slowly moisten and seep into the crack. Water can give birth to all things, and it can also cleanse filth.

As the Ruoshui Spiritual Power operated in reverse, the dark red energy particles were gradually diluted and stripped away. The crack, originally blocked by the resentful blood, gradually revealed its true appearance.

Su Ming's Divine Sense probed deep into the cleaned crack.

Three inches below the crack, he "saw" a crystal-clear jade tablet that had been thoroughly sealed. The jade tablet was entirely semi-transparent in a strange way, with no spiritual power fluctuations on its surface, yet it gave one a dangerous feeling.

On the front of the jade tablet, two words were deeply carved in an ancient Spirit Race script: "Qiming."

And next to these two words, someone had left a line of tiny annotations in the ancient seal script of the Human Race: "Qiming sets the coordinates, using blood as a sacrifice and Souls as a guide."

"Using Souls as a guide..." Su Ming took a deep breath. His Divine Sense, like an invisible giant hand, followed the crack and forcefully extracted the jade tablet.

The moment the jade tablet fell into his palm, a chilling coldness surged up his arm, heading straight for his heart meridian. Su Ming did not hesitate to sweep his Divine Sense through the interior of the jade tablet.

"Boom!" A Star Domain map, vast to the extreme, exploded in Su Ming's Sea of Consciousness.

This was definitely not the territory of the Great Yan Dynasty, nor was it any continent known to the Human Race Cultivation World. This was a completely unfamiliar Chaos Star Domain filled with fragments of violent Laws.

In the very center of this domain floated a huge, incomparably dim "star." This star was like a giant that had died many years ago, its surface covered in crisscrossing, massive rift valleys. And what was most shocking, even terrifying, was—

Around this dim star, countless unimaginably thick, dark golden chains were coiled! These chains extended from the endless Void Realm, tightly locking this star in place. On every single chain, terrifying runes capable of suppressing everything flickered.

And on the edge of the star map, there was a line of small, blood-colored characters that looked as if they had been gouged out with fingernails, the handwriting scrawled and desperate: "This path is not for immortality, but for atonement. Those who enter shall not return. Proceed with caution."