Chapter 963: Heart Of Guardianship (4)

About three days later.

After flying day and night, the vessel finally reached the Burial Sea. It wasn’t that the boat was slow. It was simply that the Holy Ruins were vast beyond comprehension. Even a single sub-region was as broad as a galaxy.

They could’ve crossed several star systems in three days at the speed they were going, yet they had only made it halfway across the Blade Ruins.

“We’ve arrived.”

The boat descended and everyone leaped to the ground. The vessel dissolved into light and returned to Li Xiaofei’s palm. They were standing on top of a massive metallic cliff. No one could tell how deep the abyss below truly went.

Swirling grey-black mist obscured everything, so visibility barely extended ten meters. In the distance, they could faintly hear the sound of waves lapping against an unseen shore.

The tide rose and fell. It was the sound of the Burial Sea, another extremely dangerous forbidden zone within the Blade Ruins.

"Go," Liu Shaji said as he drew an Immortal Artifact flying sword and sent it streaking into the swirling grey-black mist ahead.

He had intended to guide the sword and scout the interior. But the moment the Immortal Artifact entered the mist, it vanished without a trace, like a clay ox sinking into the sea. All connection to it was severed. It was as if the sword had 'died.'

A grave expression crossed Liu Shaji’s face. This 'funereal miasma' was far more terrifying than he had imagined. It could even 'kill' an Immortal-grade sword.

"Let me try," Zhu Zhixun volunteered, drawing forth a silver broken sword.

It was a damaged Emperor weapon, one that still retained a trace of Sword Immortal Lin Beichen’s imperial aura. Its chances of resisting the miasma were certainly higher than those of an ordinary Immortal Artifact. But before he could act, Li Xiaofei stopped him.

"I’ll do it."

The Blood-Drinking Sword materialized with a thought. It transformed into a streak of light and pierced straight into the grey-black mist. Li Xiaofei extended his divine sense, attaching it to the sword. At last, the scene within the Burial Sea became visible.

What surprised Li Xiaofei most was that the Burial Sea... was not a sea at all. It was a massive basin. The ground was littered with countless white bones. Clusters of ghostly flames flickered within the dim, mist-filled air.

Most of the skeletons were relatively intact, and they were largely human remains. There were also some animal bones scattered among them. The bones were densely piled atop one another, as if they had fallen into an eternal slumber. There was a strange, unsettling silence that hung over the place. There was an eerie stillness that seemed to hum with invisible malice.

The intermittent glow of the ghostly flames only made the entire scene more bizarre and menacing. Li Xiaofei continued to guide the Blood-Drinking Sword through the mist for half an hour, yet even then, he couldn’t fully uncover the secrets buried within the Burial Sea. His Immortal Force had been drained to an extreme degree.

He reluctantly recalled the Blood-Drinking Sword. Then, he pulled out a few Jade Dao Fruits and ate them to replenish his depleted Immortal Force. After recovering a bit, Li Xiaofei carefully recounted everything he had seen inside. Zhu Zhixun and the others were stunned.

“But we clearly heard the roar of waves...”

“And there’s no water in the Burial Sea?”

“Are all those remains the bones of human warriors who died in battle?”

The group began discussing it in hushed, awed tones. The biggest question now was, how to enter the Burial Sea. They could only locate the hidden illusionary seal by entering. There was no time left to delay. Time pressed heavily against them.

Just then, an unexpected shift occurred. Suddenly, a strange spatial energy fluctuation rippled through the air above the Burial Sea. A gate resembling a black hole appeared in the sky.

Then, countless incomplete corpses were thrown out from the black hole, tumbling down into the Burial Sea below like trash being dumped.

“It’s a long-range teleportation gate used by the Reapers,” Liu Shaji said grimly. “They’re dumping the bodies of human powerhouses they collected from the battlefield.”

To the Reapers, the entire Blade Ruins was nothing more than a massive garbage dump. Everything they couldn’t devour such as broken weapons and armor, corpses too corrupted for use was all discarded here. And the Burial Sea, clearly, was the designated dumping ground.

Those human warriors who died on the Star Battlefield, whose bodies had been tainted and were no longer fit to become evolution materials, were gathered and hurled into this section of the Holy Ruins.

The Reapers relied on the suppressive power of the Holy Ruins to extinguish the heroic spirits and battle will of humanity’s fallen. Moments later, the spatial gate vanished. The eerie stillness returned once more.

“I’ll go in and try it myself,” Li Xiaofei declared, making the decision to enter the Burial Sea in person.

“No, it’s too dangerous!”

“Senior, you mustn’t take this lightly!”

The five young warriors instinctively tried to stop him.

They had long regarded Li Xiaofei as their leader, so there was no way they would willingly let him risk himself in a place like this. The resistance forces from the Ancestor Court star system could no longer afford to lose another leader.

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing,” Li Xiaofei reassured them.

He still had the Blood-Drinking Sword, and more importantly, the Spatial Point Theft cheat ability. If things went south, he could instantly teleport out. There was no real danger. Unable to stop him, the five young warriors turned their pleading gazes toward Liu Shaji.

“What are you looking at me for?” Liu Shaji scowled. “When this idiot makes up his mind, even a nine-headed dragon can’t change it... Just don’t go pulling some tragic prodigy-dies-young stunt in there, alright?”

“Don’t jinx me!” Li Xiaofei snapped, instantly annoyed. “Ptui, ptui, ptui!”

This was the Burial Sea. A place filled with ghostly flames. Good omens would never work here, but bad ones always would. Saying something like that was just asking for trouble.

“You better worry about yourselves,” he muttered darkly. “Once I enter, Liu Shaji, you take care of them. I’ve had this uneasy feeling lately... like the Heavenly Eye Guards from the Ancestor Court are getting closer.”

“Ptui, ptui, ptui!” Liu Shaji nearly jumped in frustration. “What kind of cursed nonsense is that, huh? Are you trying to jinx us now? Talking like we’re already getting hunted down by those bastards? Just go already! Looking at you pisses me off.”

The two bickered back and forth. But this bout of sarcastic, mutual roasting somehow eased the tense atmosphere. The five young warriors finally let out a breath of nervous laughter.

Li Xiaofei activated the Blood-Drinking Sword and rode the sword into the Burial Sea. The Blood-Drinking Sword projected a faint crimson shield around him, shielding his body from the corrosive and polluting effects of the funeral miasma.

The consumption of Immortal Force was immense. Fortunately, the sword contained an enormous reservoir of energy within it, allowing it to maintain the protective shield and sustain the flight. But this was truly a last resort.

The energy within the Blood-Drinking Sword was finite. It was his final trump card for surviving in the Holy Ruins. If that internal reserve dropped too low, the sword’s strength would no longer be guaranteed. Should he encounter a level nine Reaper, the consequences would be dire.

He avoided all the areas he had previously scouted during the remote search. Instead, he sped directly toward the deepest, most central part of the Burial Sea. The blazing sword light tore through the air, parting the fog in its path. It stirred up fierce gusts of wind.

Below, the countless ghostly flames were swept into chaos, flaring and flickering wildly, then suddenly bursting apart. Shattered sparks scattered across the bone-filled landscape like a sky full of falling starlight.

Each spark was a flicker of spiritual essence. When they landed on the white skeletal remains, a faint white glow surged over the bones in an instant. It was as if something had been awakened. The once silent, slumbering bones began to stir. Two flickering flames suddenly ignited within the hollow eye sockets of the skulls.

Crack. Snap.

It was the harsh sound of bones grinding together without lubrication, and it wasn’t just one. Countless echoes of that same sound erupted all around him at the exact same moment.

In that instant, all across the Burial Sea, countless white skeletal remains suddenly rose in perfect unison, turning their hollow, flame-lit eyes in the direction where Li Xiaofei had vanished.

The sight was eerie and horrifying. An undead army had formed in a heartbeat. At first, the reanimated skeletons stumbled and swayed awkwardly, but in moments, they adapted, walking steadily, then moving swiftly, and eventually sprinting at terrifying speed.

Once their skeletal bodies had adjusted, they began accelerating, rushing madly toward the central region of the Burial Sea. There were hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands and millions of them. These awakened skeletal undead surged forward faster and faster. They raced like a boiling tsunami, crashing across the bone-covered terrain.

And Li Xiaofei... remained completely unaware.

He was still riding the Blood-Drinking Sword, streaking forward at full speed. Ahead, the sound of waves grew clearer and louder. Finally, at the edge of the grey-black fog, he saw a massive, abyss-like black well.

The rushing sound of water that had echoed to the edge of the Burial Sea was coming from this very pit. The well’s mouth was six meters in diameter, and it was shaped like a hexagon.

There was a chained dragon pillar at each of the six corners. These massive stone columns had dragon mouths clamped tightly onto thick black iron chains. The chains crossed and interwove, sealing the well’s mouth as though imprisoning something within.

The grey-black mist that blanketed the entire Burial Sea couldn’t come within a hundred meters of the well, so Li Xiaofei could see everything with perfect clarity. He remained fully alert as he slowly approached the edge of the well. The chained dragon pillars were white, as though they had endured tens of millions of years. Their surfaces were mottled and weathered, covered in fine cracks.

Faint glimmers of light flickered deep within those cracks, hidden in the stone’s ancient wounds. The chains clamped in the dragon mouths were as thick as a child’s arm, forged from some unknown black metal, radiating a chilling cold that seeped into the bones.

Li Xiaofei extended his senses for a moment but detected no immediate threat. So he stepped up to the well’s edge and leaned in, listening carefully. The roar of raging tides echoed upward.

It was as though an entire sea was hidden within the well. But he heard no other sound aside from the crashing waves. Cautiously, he leaned his head forward, and looked inside.

What he saw made him freeze. There was indeed water inside the well. Its surface was calm. So still, in fact, that it resembled a mirror. And in that mirrored surface... a face appeared. But it wasn’t his. It was someone else entirely.