Chapter 728
Ren Xue
"Thank you." After saying that, Bibi Dong turned to the three of them. "Let's go."
"Wait a minute," Tang Wulin suddenly said, staring at the dark staircase, a golden glint flashing in his golden dragon eyes. "There's something down there, something very powerful, and... it's alive."
Before the words were finished, a deep roar, as if from the depths of the underworld, came from the depths of the stairs.
The roar contained such pure malice and hunger that the entire forest of Soul-Eating Trees began to tremble, and leaves fell like rain.
Edwin's expression changed.
"Impossible... the seal there should still be intact... unless..."
"Unless what?" Qian Renxue pressed.
Edwin looked at Bibi Dong, his eyes filled with terror: "Unless your teacher can no longer suppress 'it'. Rakshasa, if your teacher is really still alive, then she may no longer be the same person. The power of the abyss is eroding everything, including those who once tried to control it."
Bibi Dong's body trembled slightly.
But she did not hesitate and was the first to step onto the downward stairs.
"No matter what she has become, I want to see it with my own eyes."
Qian Renxue, Tang Wulin, and Dai Chengfeng followed closely behind.
Behind them, the crack in the Tree King slowly closed, Edwin's face gradually blurred, and finally only a faint sigh remained:
"May true light guide you out of this eternal darkness..."
Darkness swallowed everything.
The stairs were very long, seemingly endless. The four of them could only rely on Qian Renxue's sacred fire for light, but that light could only illuminate a few meters around them; beyond that, there was pure darkness that absorbed all light.
The air was thick with a musty smell, a mixture of rust, mold, and some indescribable sweet, fishy odor. The walls on either side of the stairs were damp and cold, covered with a layer of slippery moss that, upon closer inspection, appeared to be slowly wriggling, as if alive.
“This wall… is alive,” Dai Chengfeng said in a low voice. He dared not touch the wall, but only used the wind to sense the surrounding environment.
“It’s not just the walls.” Bibi Dong’s voice was exceptionally clear in the darkness. “The steps beneath our feet, the supporting structures on both sides, even the air we breathe, all contain faint life fluctuations. Everything here is… a part of some enormous being.”
"Like the Tree King?" Tang Wulin asked.
“Larger, older, and… hungrier than the Tree King.” Bibi Dong stopped, a purple crystal appearing in her hand, emitting a faint glow. In the light, one could see that the steps ahead were covered with dense, vein-like protrusions, which pulsated rhythmically, transporting some kind of dark red liquid deep into the steps.
"It's 'feeding'." Qian Renxue felt a wave of nausea. "What's down there?"
“The Abyss’s ‘Stomach’.” A strange voice suddenly rang out. The voice did not belong to any of the four of them, but came directly from all directions, deep, hoarse, and with a metallic, abrasive quality.
The four immediately went into battle mode, standing back to back in a circle, warily looking in all directions.
"Who?" Tang Wulin shouted, and the Golden Dragon Spear burst forth with dazzling golden light, dispelling some of the surrounding darkness.
“I am the guard here, and also the prisoner here,” the voice replied, its tone devoid of any emotion. “You can call me the ‘gravekeeper,’ though that’s not quite accurate. I’m not guarding a grave, but a ‘gate.’”
"What door?" Bibi Dong asked.
"The gate connecting the abyss and the realm of the gods." The tomb keeper's voice drew closer, and a silhouette slowly emerged from the darkness ahead.
It was... a difficult-to-describe being. It had a roughly humanoid shape, but its entire body was covered in dark golden bone armor, with sharp bone spikes extending from its joints. Its head had no facial features, only three deep, triangularly arranged openings. Its left arm was a massive bone blade, while its right arm was completely mutated, transforming into dozens of constantly writhing tentacles with suction cups at their ends. And behind it, a pair of broken, bat-like bone wings unfolded.
“A creation of the abyss.” Bibi Dong made her judgment, but a hint of doubt flashed in her eyes. “But your aura… is very peculiar. It’s not entirely from the abyss; it also has divinity.”
“I was once a god,” said the gravedigger. “Ares, the god of war, if you have ever heard of that name.”
Qian Renxue gasped. Ares, the God of War, was one of the oldest and most powerful gods in the divine realm. According to the historical records of the divine realm, he perished during the first Ragnarok, leaving no trace of his body.
“You are not dead,” Tang Wulin said.
“Worse than death,” Ares—or rather, the being who was once Ares—said calmly. “My divinity was corrupted by the abyss, my divine body was eroded, and my consciousness was twisted. But with my last strength, I sealed myself by this door, and in this ugly form, I have guarded it for thirteen thousand years.”
He turned to the side, pointing his bone blade at the end of the stairs. There, the darkness deepened, but a massive door, constructed from countless bones, could be vaguely seen. The door was ajar, and a dark red light shone through the crack, a light that instinctively evoked fear and disgust.
“That is the Gate to the Abyss, the ‘result’ of that experiment from back then,” Ares said. “Edwin, Rakshasa’s teacher, and other rebellious gods tried to open a controlled passage to the Abyss to draw power from it. But they failed. The gate opened, but it couldn’t be closed. The power of the Abyss surged out like a flood, polluting large areas of the divine realm, and also polluting us, the guardians.”
Bibi Dong stared at the door for a long time before asking, "Where is my teacher? Where is Isis, the goddess of life?"
Ares remained silent.
"She's behind the door, isn't she?" Bibi Dong's voice trembled slightly.
“Yes,” Ares finally admitted. “She used her last divine power to construct a seal behind the door, temporarily halting the Abyss’s full-scale invasion. But thirteen thousand years have passed, the seal is weakening, and the power of the Abyss is increasing. And Isis herself… she is being assimilated. Every moment, her humanity is being eroded by the Abyss’s malice. When I could still communicate with her, she told me that her time was running out. In three hundred years at most, the seal will completely collapse, and she will become the Abyss’s first ‘lord’ here.”
"So we're late?" Qian Renxue asked.
“No, you’ve come at the right time,” Ares said. “Isis has been waiting for someone. She said that only that person can truly close this door and end it all.”
"Who?" the four asked almost simultaneously. (End of Chapter)