Chapter 1801 - The Prisoners of the Gods

Kaboom!

Just as the Red Dragon Dao Monarch’s thoughts were in turmoil, a massive, violent impact rang out.

The Corpse-Strewn Ruins seemed to come back to life. Explosive waves of black fog churned, sweeping outward in all directions like mad.

A piercing, hair-raising shriek rang out.

“Don’t leave! Save us! I beg you, save us——!”

The Red Dragon Dao Monarch’s head felt as if it were about to split. Even her soul suffered a terrifying impact. A low grunt escaped her lips, and her beautiful little face contorted with agony.

Su Yi’s icy voice resounded throughout heaven and earth. “You’re seeking death!”

It was just a few words, but they went off like a thunderclap, echoing throughout the surroundings and suppressing that desperate shriek.

The Red Dragon Dao Monarch reacted as if awakening from a nightmare. She breathed in ragged gasps, lingering terror all over her face.

How could that voice... be so terrifying!? Just what kind of disaster befell us earlier?

The Red Dragon Dao Monarch felt a powerful impulse to turn her head and have a look, but in the end, she held back.

Su Yi had commanded her not to look!

“Don’t be afraid. It's just a bunch of old-timers trapped in a mysterious forbidden ground. They’re no different from prisoners, and they cannot chase us,” said Su Yi. His warm voice soothed the Red Dragon Dao Monarch.

But it was then that——

A stingingly bright, blood-red divine flame appeared in front of them. The flames were utterly bizarre. Shockingly, they clustered to form an elderly face, which opened its mouth and said, “Save us! We’re the enemies of the gods. Free us, and we can help you kill them!”

Su Yi reacted immediately. His left hand covered the Red Dragon Dao Monarch’s eyes, while his right hand raised the Sword of the Human Realm and attacked furiously.

Bang!!!

The bundle of divine flames split.

That raspy, aged voice rang out. This time, it was tinged with fury. “Don’t you realize the gods are already targeting you? You’re sure to face endless trials and tribulations on the road ahead. The gods are our enemies too! Saving us is saving yourself!”

The voice spread throughout heaven and earth.

But Su Yi ignored it. He just shot out of the ruins at top speed. Along the way, black fog churned, relentlessly trying to intercept him and keep him trapped in the Corpse-Strewn Ruins.

This was enormously troublesome. The black fog was manifested from strange death qi, and although Su Yi wasn’t afraid of it, it still impacted his movements.

Suddenly, a woman’s infuriated roar rang out.

“Daoist Brother, hurry up and stop him! We absolutely cannot let him escape!!”

Immediately afterward, a clamor of voices rang out as others chimed in.

“That’s right! That sword can destroy even the most taboo and calamitous of tribulations. Even the gods were helpless against it. I’m sure it can shatter our divine prison!”

“Hurry! Let’s work together!”

....The voices were frantic, and they made no attempt to hide their hostility.

The entire Corpse-Strewn Ruin shook violently. Space was thrown into disarray, and fog blanketed the sky and blotted out the sun. Terrifying powers surged forth like waters at high tide and tried to envelop Su Yi.

The Red Dragon Dao Monarch’s petite frame quivered. Su Yi had pulled her into his arms, and she couldn’t see anything at all.

Even so, the commotion was so enormous that she knew that something utterly terrifying had happened!

Su Yi’s brow furrowed. He sensed a threat too. Without any further hesitation, he took a deep breath and circulated the full extent of his Miracle Realm cultivation base.

Boom!

The endless, inscrutable light of the Grand Dao surged around Su Yi’s tall, upright figure, sweeping in all directions. The power of an Immortal King shattered the encroaching black fog.

And when Su Yi raised the Sword of the Human Realm, endless light interwove around him. The indescribable aura of a Dao Domain surged forth, and in the end, the illusory outline of a Dao Sword condensed above the Sword of the Human Realm.

At that moment, formless sword force blanketed the entire Corpse-Strewn Ruin. Without exception, the corpses throughout the ruins felt instinctual terror.

The sky trembled violently, buzzing and ringing.

Deep within the Corpse-Strewn Ruins, within that massive spatial rift, pairs of eyes appeared amidst the black fog. All of them were wide with astonishment and disbelief.

And when Su Yi swung his sword...

“Break!”

Boom——!

Where his slash landed, heaven and earth split like canvas, creating a perfectly straight chasm in midair.

The sky collapsed on both sides of the chasm, and the destructive power of the Dao of the Sword swept outward. Mountains fell, rivers broke, and the ground cracked and split.

Who knew how many ancient corpses failed to hide in time? Countless undead were reduced to ash. The dense fog covering heaven and earth was rent apart; the end of the chasm led directly outside the Corpse-Strewn Ruins!

“Let’s go!”

Su Yi dashed through the opening, carrying the Red Dragon Dao Monarch. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Some time passed before the chasm vanished.

The Corpse-Strewn Ruins were deathly silent. The dispersed fog gradually reappeared, bit by bit, but there was no sign of the ancient corpses.

At the heart of the ruins, within that massive spatial rift, pairs of eyes revealed indescribable confusion, astonishment, and bitterness.

“Was that seriously an Immortal King’s Dao of the Sword?”

“Just... Just who was that?”

“Dammit! In the end, we couldn’t keep him here.”

“We’ll just have to wait a little longer. Over the past few years, the people exploring this place have started talking about the unprecedented developments soon to transform the Immortal Realm. They say that the path to divinity will re-enter this world. When the time comes... the power of the gods will reappear too!”

“You still have faith in the gods? If not for those heartless, unjust bastards, how could we possibly have been imprisoned here in the Primeval Era?”

The conversation continued, but the voices grew softer and softer.

Dense black fog enshrouded the Corpse-Strewn Ruins once more.

......

Churning waves rose and fell as a little boat raced along the surface of the water.

It was only after Su Yi finally relaxed that he noticed he was still carrying the Red Dragon Dao Monarch. Her petite, supple figure was still in his arms.

Her face was buried in his chest, and her little, jade-like hands clenched the lapels of his clothes with obvious lingering terror.

Su Yi couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you plan to cling to me forever?”

Outwardly, Su Yi teased her, but inwardly, he thought,

I wouldn’t have guessed it, but she’s got quite the figure. Tall and upright, yet soft and supple...

“Uh...” The Red Dragon Dao Monarch’s petite frame quivered, and she hurriedly relaxed her grip and stood up.

Her youthful face flushed red with embarrassment. She lowered her head, completely flustered. “Your Excellency, I...”

“It’s fine. We’re safe now.” Su Yi sat casually on board their little boat and took out a jug of wine. A gentle fragrance still lingered on his fingertips, like the soothing smell of grass in a secluded valley after the rain.

As for the Red Dragon Dao Monarch? She stood there, awkward and reserved, with none of the usual majesty of the ruler of the Black Dragon Market.

Some time passed before she managed to calm herself. She casually tied her disheveled hair into a bun, then said softly, “Your Excellency, what exactly happened earlier?”

A solemn look appeared on Su Yi’s face. He could never have anticipated this development.

After thinking it over calmly, he roughly understood the situation. That mysterious, unknown forbidden ground deep within the Corpse-Strewn Ruins imprisoned numerous terrifyingly powerful experts!

Moreover, it seemed the gods had imprisoned them in the place they called a divine prison.

This was shocking, completely unexpected news.

In his past life, Wang Ye had explored the Corpse-Strewn Ruins too, but a taboo power had sealed the divine prison off completely. Even at the peak of his power, Wang Ye had no means of entering. Yet now, the place had obviously changed. The confined experts still couldn’t leave, but they

could

interfere in events outside of the divine prison!

“A bunch of cultivators imprisoned by the gods, and they view the fogs with enmity?”

Su Yi thought back to their attempts to intercept him, and to the way the prisoners of the gods had begged for help.

The very idea seemed ridiculous. If they were really the gods’ enemies, why had they merely been imprisoned? Why hadn’t they been killed?

There were undoubtedly secrets behind it all!

Su Yi thought for a moment, then shared his hypothesis with the Red Dragon Dao Monarch. “What I can say with certainty is that those captive experts aren’t the benevolent sort. That said, no matter how strong they are, they’re at most Great Realm experts. No need for excessive concern.”

The Red Dragon Dao Monarch nodded. A big part of why she’d been so terrified earlier was that she’d had no idea what had happened.

After hearing Su Yi’s explanation, she was nowhere near as frightened.

Great Realm experts? Soon, I’ll be a Great Realm expert too!

“Your Excellency, where are we going next?” asked the Red Dragon Dao Monarch.

“The Blood Whirlpools,” Su Yi said without even pausing to think.

There were still ten days until the expedition into the Ruins of the Dragon Palace began. He wanted to seize the time they had left to visit the Blood Whirlpool Zone and see if he could find any traces of the Fuyou Boat.

If he found it, he could find the place where his fifth incarnation, Li Fuyou, went into seclusion——Spiritual Desolation Mountain!

Before long, the little flat boat carried Su Yi and the Red Dragon Monarch off.

Su Yi sat cross-legged and continued absorbing Dao-Refining Pearls to stabilize his foundations, so the Red Dragon Dao Monarch took over as the navigator. Along the way, she unleashed her draconic majesty, intimidating the terrifying life forms lurking beneath the waves.

Three days later, a blood-red stretch of ocean appeared.

Howling windstorms swept over the turbid, blood-red waves. It was like a churning sea of blood. Thunderclouds surged beneath the dome of heaven, and lightning ran rampant. From time to time, lightning fell, tearing countless rifts open in the sky.

This was the Blood Whirlpool Zone!

One of the most dangerous places in the far reaches of the Eastern Sea. According to that jade slip, the Fuyou Boat had been spotted here just half a year ago!

At the time, the Fuyou Boat had apparently been locked in combat with a terrifying entity. The boat was just about ten feet long, but the chaos energy emanated from it seemed to split the skies and cause the dome of heaven to collapse.

A terrified, despairing voice resounded from the depths of the Blood Whirlpool Zone.

“How many years has it been? Fuyou Boat, why must you haunt me like this? Why must you insist on my demise?”

It was this sentence that made the witness suspect that this was the legendary Fuyou Boat that wandered these waters in the Primeval Era!

“The Blood Whirlpool Zone covers at least thirty thousand miles of ocean, and it happened half a year ago. I’m afraid it’ll be hard to find any leads....”

Su Yi had only just thought this when he seemed to sense something, and he gazed deeper into the Blood Whirlpool Zone.