My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 624 – First Ancient Hall - Part 3

Li Yuan began pacing the edges of the space.

Next time he came in, he’d bring Meng Xingxian or Han Feng with him to see if either could recognize the strange energy permeating the ancient hall. It might give them a clue.

He trailed his hand along the smooth, black wall that curved like the inside of a natural cavern. It was cold, polished, and indestructible.

And yet nothing in the world exists without cause.

Who had built this ancient hall? What kind of force could shape a place like this? And for what purpose? What was this place meant to be?

None of those questions had answers.

Then, Li Yuan’s eyes caught something unusual in one corner of the chamber: a shriveled mass of roots.

Ping’an followed his father’s gaze and explained, “That used to be a spirit flower, far beyond anything we’ve ever seen. But by the time we found it, it had already withered. The former Earth Hall Master took the flower, but the roots remained.”

Li Yuan asked, “Have you found anything else here?”

Ping’an nodded. “A few strange materials. Some other withered spirit flowers and herbs. And what looked like fragments of extremely high rank artifacts, badly damaged, but clearly once very powerful.”

Li Yuan fell silent for a moment, then said, “I’ve heard that, aside from the secret art steles, there’s also a painting, a piece of soul art, used in a soul-immersion ritual. That painting came from this very ancient hall. Have you seen it?”

Ping’an shook his head. “I imagine it’s deeper inside. The steles might date back to the Age of the Ancient Gods. And those ancient gods...they could reach places far beyond what we’ve explored. If the painting exists, it’s probably in there.”

Li Yuan had, in fact, seen paintings from a few different clans. Those paintings were merely copies, simple rubbings, really. They depicted people, animals, plants, and the ordinary cycle of life, such as birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Yet even so, they possessed a mysterious power. They could aid in third rank cultivation.

Li Yuan had reached his level purely through innate talent, taking giant strides others could only dream of. But for everyone else, progress required painstaking effort, and those paintings became essential tools along that slow climb.

“The depths of the ancient hall...” he murmured.

He paused, then pulled out the sarira and gave it a firm squeeze.

Inside, Shi Jialan’s twisted, weakened face emerged, contorted in both pain and rage.

Li Yuan held the sarira up, turning it slightly as if letting it glimpse its surroundings.

“You know where this is, don’t you?” he asked.

And before Shi Jialan could respond, Li Yuan tossed the sarira without hesitation.

Ping'an caught it mid-air.

“Ping’an,” Li Yuan said, “have one of your clones take this thing into the depths of the ancient hall.”

Ping’an immediately split off a clone, which took the sarira and began walking down the corridor. It had barely reached the threshold when a panicked voice burst out from the sarira.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t!”

Li Yuan raised a hand, and the sarira was retrieved once more.

Shi Jialan’s voice trembled. “I’ll tell you, whatever you want to know. Just...let me out. I want to live. I want to cultivate, too. You’re the leader of the Immortal Alliance now. I wouldn’t dare go against you.”

His face twisted into a bitter smile. “Truth is...if I’d known how terrifying you’d become, I never would’ve tried to oppose you in the first place.”

Li Yuan gave a small nod. “I’ll hold to my word.”

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

One day later.

Everyone seemed to have reached their limits with cultivation. Their energy was spent, their faces weary. One by one, they withdrew from the ancient hall, as smoothly as if it were routine.

“Father, how was it?” Meng Xingxian darted over, eyes wide with anticipation.

She’d been eyeing the ancient hall all day like a starving fox staring at a banquet. This was why she’d come in the first place, to enter the Hall of Life.

“Next time,” Li Yuan told her, “I’ll bring you and Han Feng in.”

“Thank you!” Meng Xingxian beamed sweetly.

The others needed time to digest the strange energy they’d absorbed inside the ancient hall.

However, Li Yuan had absorbed nothing. He knew what it meant to lose the future of one’s cultivation path. He would never carelessly consume some unknown aura that might trap him in stagnation again.

Besides, he had near-endless lifespan now. Unlike the others, he didn’t need to gamble everything for a slim chance at advancement.

He followed Shi Jialan to a secret coastal location.

This hidden place could only be reached during low tide, through a concealed path beneath the beach.

Ping'an sent a clone ahead to scout, ensuring that if Shi Jialan tried any tricks, they’d be rendered useless.

But everything proceeded smoothly.

Beneath the passage was a strange realm.

It felt like a bubble suspended off the edge of the main world, reachable only from this exact point. It resembled the ancient ghost street or Underworld, though this space was far smaller.

“This is the ruins of the Radiant Treasure Monastery,” Shi Jialan said. “The power that our Faculty of Ghosts inherited...it all came from here. There’s aqua here, formed from highly concentrated Yin energy. But strangely, it’s not dangerous to enter.

“That’s because this place once held the Ghost Sealing Pagoda of the Buddhist sects. The tower imprisoned countless ghosts. So many of them were sealed here in one place that their Yin energy pooled into aqua over time.”

Ping'an blinked. “Meng Xingxian once mentioned that the Radiant Treasure Monastery existed even before the Xia Dynasty. That would make it from the Age of the Ancient Gods, wouldn’t it? But weren’t those times overflowing with spiritual energy? How could ghosts even exist back then?”

To him, the Age of the Ancient God had always seemed like a golden age, abundant in energy, balance, and power. The existence of malevolent ghosts in such a time felt contradictory.

From within the sarira, Shi Jialan replied, “Where do you think the Grand Formation of Severance came from? Ancient texts, of course. Those formations were invented by the ancient gods themselves. Naturally, they already knew how to use Yin-Yang disruption to produce elemental extremes, aqua and flame.

“You know about the nine nails, right? But here’s what you don’t know, there aren’t just nine. I suspect there’s another one buried beneath this Ghost Sealing Pagoda. A nail that disrupts Yin and Yang, anchoring the ghosts, which in turn generates aqua....

“As for flame, the Yang energy here is too diffuse. It never condensed enough to form flames. Flame is far harder to generate than aqua. Places like the Western Extremes, those are one of a kind.”

Ping'an asked, “What about the flame gods?”

“No clue,” Shi Jialan answered flatly. “Those freaks of nature appear and disappear like a natural disaster. You can’t predict it.”

“Then why did they create an environment like this in the first place?” Ping’an asked.

Shi Jialan scoffed, “How should I know?”

“Was it for cultivating the Heaven Soul and Earth Soul?” Ping’an pressed.

Shi Jialan muttered, “Maybe. The environment’s probably different in each place. I don’t know. But I’d bet it’s possible. Some of those secret art steles come from even further back, after all.”

As they talked, the group had arrived at the foot of the Ghost Sealing Pagoda.

The tower rose nine stories high, each level wrapped in rusted floating chains. Unlike the ancient hall or the Deathless Tomb, the surface of this pagoda wasn’t made from some impossibly indestructible material.

Li Yuan extended a finger, conjuring a crimson lotus between two fingertips. With a gentle motion, he sliced toward the wall of the pagoda.

With a boom, a hole was punched straight through the yellowed wall.

Shi Jialan jumped. “Your Majesty! Don’t, please don’t! There’s a ghost tide in there! A ghost tide, do you hear me?!”

Ping'an and Sheng'er instantly went on high alert, ready for anything.

Even Li Yuan looked a bit sheepish. He had just come from the ancient hall, where the walls were so absurdly tough they made him question if he was even that strong anymore. So here, he thought he’d test it casually, just a little touch.

He hadn’t expected his light tap to break clean through.

From his palm, a black lotus bloomed.

Twelve petals unfurled, each one glowing with a bead-like radiance, soft and bright. The lotus slowly opened, calm, deliberate, and dangerously beautiful.

138,800 ghosts opened their eyes.

A shrill, distorted wail echoed from the hole in the tower wall. It was as if the ghosts sealed within had just been released.

Dark winds howled as pitch-black specters surged out of the breach, only to be instantly pulled into the waiting black lotus hovering just outside.

Li Yuan raised his hand slightly, letting the lotus float calmly in place at the edge of the opening.

Inside the Ghost Sealing Pagoda, the imprisoned ghosts had already formed a true tide, a flood of snarling, grotesque faces surging like rotten ink under pressure, blasting out in waves.

But unbelievably, instead of being overwhelmed, the black lotus absorbed the assault and began to grow. It expanded slowly but surely, taking on a more sinister, hypnotic beauty, as though the ghost tide were feeding it.

Looking closer, one could see the ghosts being devoured.

Each ghost caught on the lotus petals was like prey swallowed whole by a python. The petals thickened, swelled, distorting into something bloated and monstrous, yet still unnervingly beautiful.

Shi Jialan stared, dumbfounded. He let out a long sigh and muttered, “I’m such an idiot... Why did I ever try to oppose you? Why?”

Seeing him so thoroughly humbled, Li Yuan softened a little.

“It’s not really your fault,” he said, his tone gentle.

“Hah...” Shi Jialan sighed again, even longer this time.

By the time some moments had passed, the smoke spewing from the breach had thinned significantly.

So these legendary ghosts, stored and sealed for ages, turned out to be no different than the rest. In the presence of Li Yuan’s black lotus, they were just...fertilizer.

Li Yuan withdrew the lotus, feeling his entire body humming with energy. A surge of power welled up inside him, an unmistakable sign of a coming breakthrough. He was on the verge of reaching the fifth stage of the Earth Soul Realm.

At the second stage, the black lotus had manifested, but the lotus bore blind, slumbering ghosts.

At the third stage, the ghosts opened their eyes.

At the fourth, the lotus began to resonate with both his Heaven Soul and Human Soul, transforming into a full twelve-petal black lotus throne.

Now, what would the fifth stage bring?

Li Yuan couldn’t help but smile. An unexpected gift, but a welcome one.

He tamped down the urge to break through for now, and behind him, a towering Immortal Form unfurled, a thousand feet tall.

Compared to it, the nine-story Ghost Sealing Pagoda looked like a child’s toy.

The Immortal Form reached forward and began dismantling the tower, layer by layer.

Li Yuan stood at a distance, hands clasped behind his back, quietly watching.

To learn what lied within a sealed space, he didn’t always have to enter. Sometimes, all he needed to do...was take the walls down.

This was his preferred method of exploration.

It was how he had planned to explore the Deathless Tomb back then.

Before long, the Ghost Sealing Pagoda lay in pieces.

The Immortal Form continued digging downward until, finally, a trickle of black liquid surfaced, shadowy and shimmering like a flowing smear of ink beneath the earth.

Li Yuan stared at it, momentarily stunned, then turned away and began searching through the rubble.

Eventually, tucked within the ruins, he uncovered a small golden statue of a Buddha, no larger than an infant’s palm.

The statue’s hands were clasped in a sacred mudra, its expression one of joy and serenity.

And though the entire pagoda had crumbled into ruin, the statue remained pristine, untouched.

That alone spoke volumes.