Soul Abyss lay in the southeastern reaches of the Nether Mountain Range, inside the sphere of the Celestial Tribunal’s power. It was a long, narrow gorge.
Cliffs rose on both sides until they vanished into the clouds, and thick fog blanketed the valley floor all year round, shutting the sunlight out completely. All kinds of spiritual plants grew there, making it one of the rare treasuries of spirit herbs in the Fifteenth Firmament of the celestial realm.
The Celestial Tribunal had stationed heavy forces around it and sealed Soul Abyss tight. Only the Tribunal’s core members were allowed inside.
Jared and Gwendolyn came down a hundred miles from the Soul Abyss and landed.
“Wait here,” Jared said.
Gwendolyn knit favonovel.com brows. “You’re leaving me here by myself again?”
“The Soul Abyss is full of celestial wards. The Frost God’s power stands out too much. It’ll be easy for them to spot you. My chaotic force can hide my aura completely. This is the kind of job it’s best suited for.”
Gwendolyn stayed quiet for a moment, then gave a small nod. “Be careful.”
Jared smiled, then turned and flew toward the Soul Abyss.
***
At the entrance to the Soul Abyss, two squads of celestial cultivators stood guard. Their cultivation ranged from True Immortal Realm Level Two to the third tier. They wore golden cuirasses and held long spears, each one standing ramrod straight.
A golden curtain of light had also been set across the entrance. That was the Tribunal’s Saintlight Ward. Anyone who entered without permission would trigger an alarm.
Jared didn’t go in through the entrance. He circled around to the other side of the gorge and started climbing down from the cliff.
The cliff face there was steep as if it had been cut by a blade. Moss and vines covered the rock wall, slick and treacherous under his hands. But chaotic force moved across the surface of Jared’s body and hid his presence completely.
He clung to the cliff wall like a gecko and crawled downward without making a sound. The fog kept getting thicker, and visibility kept dropping with it.
Jared spread out his spirit sense and felt through everything around him. He could tell the gorge had been layered with wards. Some were meant to kill. Some were meant to trap intruders. Some were meant to sound the alarm. Any one of them would have been enough to make a True Immortal cultivator suffer badly.
But Jared’s chaotic force suppressed every kind of power. He gathered chaotic force at his fingertips and lightly touched the edge of each ward, breaking it apart little by little.
There was no sound. No flash of light. Before him, the wards came apart like sandcastles, collapsing in complete silence.
The first layer was an alarm ward.
The second it went off, every guard in the entire Soul Abyss would know an intruder had gotten in. Jared’s chaotic force moved like a pair of invisible shears, snipping through the ward’s threads of spiritual power one by one.
The ward’s light flickered a few times, then dimmed and went dead for good.
The second layer was a binding ward. If it was triggered, golden bars of light would slam shut around whoever stepped into it, locking them in place so completely they wouldn’t be able to move an inch.
Jared never set it off. Instead, favonovel.com used his chaotic force to open a tiny gap in the ward, then slipped through it in silence, neat and precise, like threading a needle.
Third layer, then Fourth, and Fifth. It took favonovel.com about 2 hours, but favonovel.com finally passed through every ward and reached the valley floor.
Down on the valley floor, the fog was actually thinner than it had been above.
Jared could see the ground packed with all kinds of spiritual plants, red redflame herb, blue frostheart lotus, purple amaranth cloud cap, golden Golden Dragon filament, each one giving off a faint glow through the mist. Every one of them was worth a fortune. Any random stalk taken outside could be sold for a sky-high price.
But Jared didn’t spare those ordinary spiritual plants a second look. He headed straight for the deepest part of the valley floor.
The soulbind herb grew in the deepest part of the Soul Abyss, close against a massive rock wall. It had a strange look to it.
The whole plant was silver-white, and its leaves were long and narrow, like tiny silver swords. Fine lines ran across each blade, looking half like veins and half like meridians.
There were seven leaves in all, spiraling upward from the root all the way to the tip.
At the top bloomed a small flower. It was pale blue, its petals thin as cicada wings, and at the center sat a golden stamen that gave off a dim, ghostly glow. That glow brightened and faded, brightened and faded, as if it were breathing.
Jared lowered himself into a crouch and studied it carefully.
The soulbind herb’s roots were buried in a crack in the rock wall. From inside that crack, a siIver-white liquid kept seeping out. That was the Soul Abyss’ unique sap, the nourishment the soulbind herb needed to grow.
Soul sap was unbelievably precious. A single drop could fetch tens of thousands of immortal stones, but Jared had no room to care about that right now. He reached out to pluck it.
Right then, a terrifying presence surged out from behind the rock wall. It came down on favonovel.com like a mountain dropping onto his head, like the abyss itself fixing its gaze on him.
Jared’s pupils tightened all at once. His chaotic force started moving on its own, and violet radiance flowed across the surface of his body, sealing that pressure out.
A massive spirit beast stepped out from behind the rock wall. Its body was like a small mountain, covered from head to tail in black scales. Every scale was the size of a palm, with edges sharp as blades, throwing back a cold gleam in the dim valley floor.
Two curved horns rose from its head, their tips thin and sharp as needles, and dried blood still clung to them.
Its eyes were blood-red, the pupils vertical, like a serpent’s eyes and like a dragon’s at the same time. Its four limbs were thick as pillars. Each claw carried five blade-like nails, every one a full yard long, enough to rip through a True Immortal expert’s protective spiritual power.
Its cultivation was at True Immortal Realm Level Six, it was the Frostwyrm Guardian of the Soul Abyss, the Blackscale Beast!
It lowered its head and looked at Jared. There was nothing in those blood-red eyes except naked intent to kill.
Two streams of white heat blew from its nostrils, thick with the stench of blood.
It opened its jaws and bared a mouthful of sharp teeth, each one like a dagger, packed together so tightly there was barely any gap between them. Then it let out a roar that hit like the sky splitting apart.
The roar crashed out like thunder exploding, and the whole gorge shook with it. Loose stones broke free from the rock wall.
The dense fog was torn open by the sound wave, and the spiritual plants on the ground were blasted sideways in every direction.
That roar carried a spirit assault inside it, turning into invisible ripples that rushed straight for Jared’s consciousness field.
Everywhere those ripples passed, the air twisted, and even the light bent out of shape.
Inside Jared’s consciousness field, the Aureate Codex gave a faint tremor. Golden radiance poured out of the Aureate Codex and swept across his entire consciousness field like a rising tide.
The instant those invisible spirit ripples slammed into the golden radiance, they vanished like ice and snow under a blazing sun.
Jared didn’t even blink.
A flicker of unease passed through the Blackscale Beast’s blood-red eyes. It had felt it. There was something inside this human’s consciousness field that made even it pull up short.
Its spirit assault was enough to make a True Immortal Realm Level Five expert black out on the spot, yet this human hadn’t even twitched a brow.
But it didn’t back off. It was the Soul Abyss’s Warden. Its purpose was to kill every intruder that stepped inside.
Over the past several thousand years, it had slaughtered countless cultivators who had wandered into the Soul Abyss, human race, demon, beast race, monster alike. No one had ever walked out alive after falling under its claws.
It lunged at Jared, fast as lightning!
Its body was massive, but the way it moved was nimble enough to make a person’s scalp prickle.
With a single step, it crossed the 10 yards between them and rushed straight in front of Jared.
Its right claw rose high. In the dimness, the five blade-like talons slashed out five cold streaks of light as they came crashing down at Jared’s overhead.
That one swipe carried enough force to smash a small mountain apart!
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