Chapter Twenty-Six: Devouring Bones at the Abyss's Depth

"Go... to the Immortal Burial Abyss!"

Zhou Xiaoxiao’s hoarse cry, raw as ice scraping steel, was the last sound Lin Mo heard before plunging into the thick mist. Then came utter weightlessness. His body, like a rag carelessly discarded, was wrenched downward by invisible hands into the abyss. The wind roared at his ears like the wailing of ghosts, carrying a stench of rot and death that bit into his exposed skin like knives, flooding his nostrils and drowning his fading consciousness in numbness.

Below, the churning mists were not merely gray and white; they bore a dense, despairing undertone of ink-black, as if he were plunging not into an abyss, but into the viscous, icy gastric juices of some colossal beast. The deathly miasma, thick beyond measure, was purer, more ancient, and hungrier than anything that had ever invaded the menial disciples’ quarters.

In his chest, the silent “stone”—the remnant of the Void Heaven Scripture—reacted the instant it touched that pure, ancient death energy. It erupted, like an ice cube dropped in boiling oil, with a violent, chilling hostility unlike anything before—not merely the instinctive self-defense it had shown during the formation’s onslaught, but a visceral, inborn revulsion! Its heavy pulsation became a billion icy needles, stabbing madly into Lin Mo’s organs and meridians, as if determined to expel the invading deathly aura from his very bones.

“Ah—!” The agony was so intense he arched mid-fall, a shattered scream torn from his throat. For a fleeting moment, the pain drove away the vertigo of the descent.

At that very instant—

The strange, vivid green at the edge of the cold “stone”—the “Reverse Seed”—erupted with a wholly different reaction. A blinding emerald gleam flared, a demonic flame burning in the dark! A force mingling vibrant vitality with chilling evil surged forth, greedily reaching out to embrace the dense death energy enwrapping him.

Sss—ss—

A strange sound echoed inside Lin Mo, like a red-hot brand plunged into icy water. The frigid, ferocious power of the Void Heaven Scripture and the Reverse Seed’s greedy suction clashed and tore at each other within his cramped body! One sought to expel and annihilate the death energy, the other to devour it ravenously.

These two forces battled within Lin Mo’s near-shattered body, the pain far surpassing anything he’d ever endured. He felt like a torn sack, stretched and compressed to the breaking point, about to burst apart. On his skin, an uncanny sight appeared: near his heart, frost patterned in deathly gray-white spread, while between chest and abdomen, an eerie, flickering emerald glowed, like ghost-fire struggling to burn in dead ashes.

Down he fell, endlessly.

Time lost meaning. Only the eternal howl of wind and the torture of ice and fire within him remained. As Lin Mo’s consciousness teetered on the brink of collapse from this dual torment—

Bang!

A muffled crash, accompanied by the crisp snap of breaking bones.

His descent halted abruptly!

Lin Mo’s body slammed into something hard, slanted, and slick with thick moss. The impact blacked out his vision; it felt as if every bone had shattered. Hot blood, mingled with fragments of his organs, gushed from his mouth, soaking the dark green moss beneath him. He slid, limp as mud, down the inclined, slippery surface, unable to stop.

He was not on solid ground, but on a colossal stone beam jutting from the cliff wall—perhaps the remnant of an ancient structure. Its surface was coated in centuries-thick, slimy moss and wet, black fungus, exuding an earthy, decaying reek.

He slid rapidly, the wind shrieking past. Survival instinct was all that remained of Lin Mo’s awareness; his only mobile right hand clawed desperately at the slippery moss. Nails ripped away, fingers bloodied, but only handfuls of cold, green slime came loose—his fall did not slow at all.

Below, the inky, impenetrable mists churned. At the beam’s end seemed to gape the very entrance to Hell.

Just as he was about to slip over the edge and plunge once more into the endless death-fog—

Schlurp!

His right hand, in agony, suddenly dug into a softer patch—a chunk of heavily weathered, honeycombed stone beneath the moss!

His fall jerked to a halt!

He hung, as if torn, from the edge of the stone beam, his entire weight supported by that mangled, bloodied hand buried in the weathered holes. The wounds on his back tore wider, blood soaking his tattered clothes and dripping into the mist below.

Lin Mo gritted his teeth until his gums bled, snarling like a trapped beast. The pain nearly made him faint, but his will to live kept him clinging to consciousness. He forced his head up to look at his lifeline.

His vision blurred, but he could make out his form dangling from the beam’s massive, mountain-like end. The beam stretched upward into the suffocating fog, destination unknown, and downward into an abyss boiling with black death energy.

Directly below, the cliff wall at the beam’s edge was not smooth but riddled with countless holes, large and small, their depths lost in darkness. The edges of those holes were preternaturally smooth, as though eroded over ages by some viscous liquid, and they exuded an indescribable, coldly sweet, earthy stench.

All was deathly still. Only his ragged breathing and the sighing flow of mist far below broke the silence.

But the stillness did not last.

A drop of warm, blood-reeking fluid—Lin Mo’s own blood, from the cuts on his leg—fell straight into one of the millstone-sized black holes below.

Drip.

The sound was magnified to infinity in the utter quiet.

And then—

Ssss...

A hair-raising, bubbling sound, as if countless sticky blisters burst in slime, surged from the depths of the hole. The noise grew, greedy and urgent.

Lin Mo’s heart clenched in terror, a chill racing up his spine.

From the edge of that black hole, the corroded, smooth rock suddenly writhed. A mass of viscous, semi-transparent matter, filled with cloudy filaments, oozed out like a startled slug woken from slumber.

It had no fixed shape, a living, creeping sludge, its surface constantly bulging and shrinking with sticky bubbles that hissed as they burst. Where it flowed, the rock sizzled faintly, left behind even deeper, smoother scars. An aura of corrosion and soul-malice, as real as icy water, filled the air around.

The glutinous thing was drawn to Lin Mo’s blood, wriggling, adjusting its course, countless tiny, semi-transparent tendrils stretching greedily toward his dangling body. Deep within its core, a faint, chaotic red glow flickered, hungry and wild.

Soul-Eating Rock Leech!

The name exploded in Lin Mo’s mind. It was one of the most terrifying legends whispered in the menial disciples’ quarters—creatures said to dwell only on the sheer cliffs at the very heart of the Immortal Burial Abyss, feeding on earth-vein yin and the souls and blood of living beings. Its slime melted bone and gold alike—contact meant instant death. And now, it had awoken.

Terror gripped Lin Mo’s throat like an icy giant’s hand. He wanted to flee, but his battered body hung by one injured hand. He tried to climb, but the mossy beam was too slick to grip.

Sss—!

The Soul-Eating Rock Leech fixed on him, wriggling faster. Where it passed, the rock softened and caved like hot wax. Several sticky, foul-smelling tendrils, venomous as serpents, lashed out at Lin Mo, aiming for his bloodied right hand.

They were fast—death was upon him.

Lin Mo’s pupils shrank; despair drowned him.

And then—

Vmmm!

In his chest, the cold remnant of the Void Heaven Scripture, enraged by the overwhelming death energy and monstrous presence, erupted like a volcano repressed for millennia—its icy surge more violent and ferocious than ever before, now laced with a subtle but domineering intent: devour and dissolve.

The frozen torrent rushed into Lin Mo’s right hand.

With a jolt, his hand turned numb, as if thrust into ten-thousand-year-old ice, but was instantly filled with wild power. A thin layer of grayish-white radiance coated his bloodied hand, exuding a terrifying chill.

Sizzle!

The leech’s tendrils whipped around his wrist and forearm. There was no expected agony of corrosion. Instead, as the tendrils touched the grayish light, they hissed as if red-hot iron plunged into ice water, emitting rank, blue smoke. The viscous flesh withered and grayed before his eyes, losing all vitality.

The Soul-Eating Leech convulsed, the red light in its core flickering wildly, shrieking in anguish like a chorus of wailing souls. It tried to recoil, but too late.

The force within Lin Mo surged, the gray-white light on his hand flaring. A cold, domineering suction was unleashed.

Sss...!

The withering tendrils dissolved like wax in acid, their essence drawn in by the greedy gray light, transformed into pure, chilling death energy that surged along Lin Mo’s arm into the cold “stone” in his chest.

“Ugh!” Lin Mo grunted, as a biting, venomous energy poured into him, like countless icy needles laced with filth tearing through his fragile meridians. Agony and a nauseating sense of soul-pollution wracked him.

Yet, at the same time, the Void Heaven remnant in his chest, after devouring the leech’s essence, pulsed stronger, as though some of the fatigue from his earlier trials had been dispelled. A more violent, frigid power fed back into him.

The Soul-Eating Leech, grievously wounded, shrieked and withdrew, its core flickering with terror, trying to retreat into the depths of its lair.

A fierce gleam flashed in Lin Mo’s eyes; survival instinct trumped pain and nausea. As the leech recoiled, he mustered the last of his strength, gripping the rock and swinging his waist upward.

“Up—!” he rasped. Harnessing that savage surge, he vaulted like an ape onto the relative safety of the stone beam’s upper side.

His body crashed onto the cold, mossy beam. He gasped, each breath thick with blood and the pain of death energy ravaging his organs. Looking down at his right hand, he saw the gray-white glow had faded, but circles of deep, bone-revealing corrosion marked his wrist and arm, the flesh rolled back, the wounds edged with an ominous gray pallor. Yet, the corrosion did not spread further, as if the gray light had frozen the harm in place. The pain was excruciating, the chill biting to the bone.

He struggled to sit up, back against the cold, rough wall, eyes fixed warily on the dark hole below. The Soul-Eating Rock Leech had retreated, leaving only the slickly corroded rock and a lingering scent of death and sweetness.

Safe—for now?

The thought was swiftly broken by turmoil within. The Void Heaven fragment, after devouring the death essence, lapsed into a brief, silent digestion, no longer transmitting its savage power. But the Reverse Seed, attached to it, grew active again.

A faint emerald glow, firefly-like, flickered in Lin Mo’s chest. A subtle suction reached out, targeting the gray, bone-deep wounds on his right arm that still seeped death energy.

It was... absorbing the leech’s venom and death energy from his wounds?

Astonished, Lin Mo realized the Reverse Seed could not only devour filth and foul auras, but even the lethal venom and death energy of the Soul-Eating Rock Leech, deep within the Immortal Burial Abyss.

A faint, sinister warmth seeped into his wounds as the Reverse Seed absorbed the toxins; the icy pain and corrosion eased slightly. At the wound’s edge, a hint of living pink seemed to return.

What in the world was this thing?

The relief of survival was instantly replaced by a deeper dread. He looked down into the mist-choked abyss and then up toward the shadowy unknown above the beam.

Zhou Xiaoxiao’s last words were branded on his heart:

“Go... to the Immortal Burial Abyss!”

Panting, he tore a strip from his tattered shirt with his one working hand, wrapping the deep wounds on his right arm tightly to stifle the Reverse Seed’s greedy pull. Then, leaning on the cold, slick wall, he forced himself to his feet.

His gaze fixed on the beam above, shrouded in mist and darkness.

He could not stop. To stop was to die.

Dragging his leaden, pain-wracked body, he moved step by agonizing step up the vast, slippery, lifeless beam, deeper into the mist above. Below yawned the endless abyss, around him the cliff’s deadly, lurking holes, and inside, the parasitic struggle of ice and corruption.

With every step, he trod upon the bones of the Immortal Burial Abyss.

He did not know how long he walked—perhaps only dozens of steps, but it drained every last drop of his strength. The mist grew still thicker, dense as mercury, making each breath a labor. The beam broadened a little ahead, its incline easing.

As Lin Mo felt himself about to collapse again, he glimpsed, through the swirling mist, objects scattered on the beam ahead.

Not rocks, nor moss.

He staggered closer, his movement stirring the mist aside.

His pupils contracted sharply.

Bones.

But not those of beasts. Human remains—several skeletons, bleached and gray, stained by the ages and death energy, lay scattered on the beam’s flat surface. Most were incomplete: some missing skulls, others with severed limbs, their postures twisted in agony, as if they had died in torment and struggle. A thin layer of ashen moss covered their surfaces.

And amidst those scattered bones, on a relatively flat patch of the beam, were carved a set of enormous, ancient characters, exuding boundless violence and sorrow.

The inscription was deeply etched into the stone, each stroke as if hewn by axe or blade, bearing the weight and ferocity of ten thousand years. Even mostly covered by moss, their savage despair and fury were unmistakable.

Lin Mo’s heart clenched as if gripped by an invisible fist.

He stumbled forward, heedless of the bones, frantically scraping away the moss with his left hand.

The moss fell away.

Four ancient, blood-forged characters, brimming with iron and slaughter, were revealed stark and clear in the gloom, like four blood-drenched swords stabbing into Lin Mo’s eyes—

REBELLION! IMMORTAL! REGICIDE! EMPEROR!