The heavy breathing was deafening here, and even the veil of black light formed by the Tome of Life and Death trembled under its noise.
Lu Yun’s three immortal fires flickered in the din, looking like they were about to go out at any moment. This wasn’t because the Tome or the fires were weak; he was the weak one and couldn’t make use of their true strength.
He could no longer pinpoint the Scaled-Dragon King’s dirt because nascent spirit soil was everywhere. Gaseous grains of sandy dirt surged forward on a torrent of currents.
The Scaled-Dragon King’s soil had been swept up by a much larger stream of its peers, but Lu Yun was finally at his destination. The source of the breathing was right in front of him.
“This isn’t where the celestial master tomb’s source is, though.”
A look at his luopan told him as much. Every indicator showed that the origin was deeper still. However, the source of the breathing was extremely close.
Flurries and eddies of dirt filled the air here. The immortal fires were blotted out, lending their light no longer to their surroundings. Without the Tome of Life and Death protecting him, Lu Yun would be dead already. Not even the celestial emperor corpse puppet could save him. Right now, he didn’t dare move a single finger.
The dirt here was cloyingly thick and bound his body tightly to the ground. Even so, the flying grains moved ever forward according to the rhythm of the breathing, carrying him upon their tide.
“Halt!” He flipped over the compass in his hand. It emitted a faint light, which he bolstered with the Dragonsearch Invocation and Dragonshift Method.
A moment later, the luopan burst into a translucent minor world in midair. The Tome of Life and Death left his fingers and took up a hovering position as well, actively backing up the projection.
A projected minor world was embryonic, at most. It would hardly be able to resist the dirt here, as thick as it was. The breathing? That was in another league entirely.
The minor world itself was far stronger than he was. When used as a conduit, it could also serve as an amplifier for the Tome of Life and Death. But at the same time, the embryonic minor world was quite fragile.
Lu Yun couldn’t hold that state for long. Right now, he was firmly planted where he stood, and the nascent spirit soil couldn’t shake him from his stillness. Inside the minor world, the structure that belonged to the compass began to spin. Heavenly energy gathered inside the world and a hazy figure slowly took shape within it.
The first thing he saw was a great abyss right in front of him, and his toes were barely half a step away from the precipice. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. In this strange place, he was unable to fly at all. If he’d stepped out into the chasm, he would certainly have met a grisly demise.
He was a hundred percent sure that no matter how deep the abyss was, he would reach the bottom in a single instant. He wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough to send himself to hell.
“What is this place?” Lu Yun drew a sharp breath and carefully fiddled with the luopan to begin the analysis.
The minor world created by the feng shui compass had the mysterious ability to copy, model, or outright project layouts, formations, and natural environments into itself. There, the luopan’s power could act upon and evaluate the model.
“Hmm?” Lu Yun furrowed his brow suddenly. The miniature world created by the luopan projected a perfect reflection of the abyss, and what he saw there stunned him.
Desiccated corpses hung upon the sharp cliffs of the abyss, stuck in the uniform pose of an upward climb.
“Those are divine corpses. This is an abyss of divine burial!”
More pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Just like the one beneath Dusk Province, this abyss also buried countless divines.
The airborne dirt obstructed him from seeing the death information of the hanging corpses, but that didn’t take away from his certainty: these really were all divine corpses.
Just like the abyss beneath Dusk Province, countless divines had been suppressed at the bottom of its depths. Still alive despite their condition, they’d followed the cliffs of the abyss and arduously made their way upward, hoping to feel the sun upon their faces again one day. Alas, these divines had also died upon the walls of the cliff in failure.
The invariability of their poses was an important factor. None of them had realized that death was upon them. In other words, the divines had been slain in a single instant.
The abyss of divine burial beneath Dusk Province was sealed off by the Water Altar. The localized fabric of spacetime there was exceptionally muddied and wrinkled, killing all the entrapped divines through exhaustion.
“The breathing… it also comes from beneath the abyss. The dirt is drawn here. According to legend, the Abyss of Divine Burial has existed since time primordial.
“A hundred thousand years ago, it was split into four; the pieces landed in Nephrite’s Dusk Province, Crimson Province, Argent Province, and Azure Province, respectively.” The thunderous clamor of the breathing filled his ears as he murmured, “But this place… houses a fifth!”
Ever since his first time in the abyss beneath Dusk Province, Lu Yun had pursued his investigation with considerable zeal. Several of his envoys had pertinent memories of the matter, including the primordials Su Xiaoxiao and Cangyin. Its existence was older than theirs, after all.
What was curious, however, was that the even older Xingzi carried no recollection of the Divine Burial Abyss.
“If I’m to figure out the meaning behind all this, I’ll need to go down to the ground of this fifth abyss.” Lu Yun spun the model abyss in the minor world with utmost care, intently examining its depths for anything unusual.
“Is that it?” He saw something hazy in the deepest part of the abyss. It expanded and contracted with an odd rhythm, as if it was breathing.
The luopan’s power couldn’t project the thing in its entirety. Evidently, its level was above what the compass could manage. If it was a feng shui layout, it had to be greater than even a grand influence over the world.