The mist over the northern region of the Seventeenth Firmament had not yet cleared when Morgana personally led Jared and Master Wellspring onward.
With morning dew underfoot, the three of them went straight for the deepest reaches of Beastmoor Ridge, toward the entrance to the Elder Soulborn Forest. Along the way, countless beasts lay low, and spirit birds folded their wings tight.
An ancient, strange spirit aura filled the air, heavy enough that even Master Wellspring, a Level Three Golden Immortal adept, kept his face set and did not dare let down his guard for even a moment.
The entrance to the Elder Soulborn Forest lay hidden in a gorge in the heartland of Beastmoor Ridge. It was no ordinary road in, but a massive stone door that had stood there for a thousand years. The stone door rose about 10 yards high and stretched 5 yards wide. Its entire body had been built from some unknown black stone, its surface smooth as a mirror, yet carved all over with dense Elder Soulborn runes.
Those runes twisted and wound across the stone like rushing rivers, and also like spirit serpents coiling over one another. In the dim gorge, they flickered with a faint blue glow, carrying an ancient authority and a strange chill, as if they were silently warning every intruder that danger waited everywhere beyond this point.
Beneath the stone door stood two beast-folk adepts in black beast armor. Their bodies were straight as pines, their faces set in cold severity, and the aura gathered around them was dense and controlled; both possessed True Immortal Realm Level Nine cultivation.
Each guard gripped a pitch-black spear. The spearheads gleamed with a cold, severe light as they held the threshold of the Elder Soulborn Gate, not even blinking, like two stone statues stripped of all softness.
Morgana did not slow down. She walked to the stone door, swept favonovel.com gaze over the two guards, and spoke in a flat voice that allowed no refusal. “Open…”
The moment favonovel.com word fell, the two beast-race guards showed not the slightest hesitation. At the same time, they drove their spears hard into the grooves set in the ground, and spiritual power surged violently around them, pouring without pause into the slots.
In that instant, the elder runes on the stone door seemed to wake. Blue light flared, at first only as faint motes of light, then brighter and brighter until it stabbed at the eyes. The blue radiance wove through itself, forming a huge net of light that covered the entire stone door.
With a deep rumble of stone, the door slowly opened inward. From the widening crack rushed a darkness and spirit aura so thick it seemed to hit them in the face.
Inside, there was no ground and no sky. There was only endless black, like an abyss that swallowed everything. In that darkness, narrow paths could barely be seen crossing and weaving through one another. They twisted like a labyrinth, leading into unknown depths, with no end in sight and no way to know how many killing traps lay hidden inside.
Morgana’s voice came from behind him, carrying both warning and scrutiny. “The First Trial is the Elder Soulborn Labyrinth. This labyrinth is no ordinary maze of paths. Inside, it is filled with Elder Soulborn wards and illusion arrays… Touch a ward, and it will injure you…”
“An illusion array can mislead your spirit, twist your senses, make you lose your direction, and finally trap you inside the labyrinth until your spirit is eaten away bit by bit. Only by holding fast to your true self, seeing through the illusion array, and finding the real exit can you enter the Second Trial. Remember this… When the heart falls into disorder, the spirit follows. Once the spirit falls into disorder, death is certain.”
Jared’s violet soul trembled slightly. He had no extra words to waste.
At this moment, empty talk meant nothing, only by passing the trial could favonovel.com obtain the Elderheart Soulwood, rebuild his body, and settle the hatred carved into him.
After the briefest hesitation, favonovel.com became a condensed violet streak and rushed into the stone door without looking back. In the next instant, endless darkness swallowed favonovel.com whole.
Everything around favonovel.com dropped into dead silence in an instant. There was no wind. No light, no shadow. He could not even catch hold of his own existence. Only endless darkness remained, closing around favonovel.com like a tide, pressing down until his spirit turned faintly heavy.
Jared’s soul hung suspended in the void. The Aureate Codex’s gentle golden radiance lit on its own, barely pushing back the darkness within 3 feet of him. In all that black, it became the only light. It also became the only thing favonovel.com could rely on.
He pulled himself together, drove his spirit forward, and tried to fly ahead.
But after only several dozen yards, the narrow path before favonovel.com split sharply into three. Each road looked exactly the same. Each one led into bottomless darkness. There were no markings, no differences at all, as if the labyrinth itself were mocking how little favonovel.com knew and how small favonovel.com was inside it.
Jared did not choose blindly. He gathered his focus, kept his spirit still, and urged the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance outward, trying to probe the aura of the three paths. But the moment the golden radiance stretched out, an unseen force inside the darkness blocked it. It could not sense even the smallest trace.
With no other way forward, favonovel.com could only trust his instinct. He chose the path on the far left, turned into the violet gleam, and shot down it at full speed.
He had flown less than 100 yards when a pitch-black stone wall suddenly appeared ahead. The wall stood tall and thick, built entirely from mysterious black stone. Its surface was carved full dense Elder Soulborn soul-runes. The sigils gave off a faint blue shimmer and the strange aura of a ward seeped from them.
Jared’s chest seemed to sink inward. He knew favonovel.com had run into the first ward inside the labyrinth. He did not stop. He drove the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance around his own spirit and tried to pass through the stone wall.
But the instant the golden radiance touched the wall, the soul-runes upon the wall flared to life. A violent wave of black spiritual power erupted at once and slammed hard into the golden radiance. With a muffled boom, the golden light shook wildly.
Jared’s soul was knocked back with brutal force, and a stabbing pain tore through the depths of his spirit, nearly scattering it apart. It was not a solid wall. It was a soul-ward, built specifically to launch a spirit assault.
Jared did not dare test it recklessly again. He could only retreat slowly to the fork in the path, his expression pulled tight.
The first road was blocked, so favonovel.com could only choose the middle one!
This time, favonovel.com moved with far more care. He slowed down, stayed alert to every shift around him, and kept the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance expanded to its limit guarding himself without the slightest opening. He flew much longer than before, pushing several hundred yards into the path.
The darkness around favonovel.com grew thicker and thicker, like black ink turning solid. The Aureate Codex’s golden radiance was compressed again and again shrinking from 3-feet down to 1 foot, and its glow dimmed by a large margin. Worse than that, a strange force began eating into his spirit.
His awareness blurred little by little. Around his ears, countless tiny whispers seemed to rise from nowhere. Some voices sounded familiar. Others were strange, ragged howls. They wrapped around his spirit like countless invisible hands, tearing at his awareness, dragging at his soul, trying to pull favonovel.com into an endless fall.
It’s… An illusion array!
Jared’s whole spirit snapped taut. In that instant, his awareness cleared by a fraction. He knew what would happen if favonovel.com sank into the illusion array. Once his mind gave way, the labyrinth would swallow his spirit completely.
He clenched down hard and endured the stabbing pain in his spirit. Then favonovel.com pushed the Aureate Codex with everything favonovel.com had. The spiritual power still left inside favonovel.com poured wildly into the golden radiance.
Buzz… Hum…
A deep Dao tone rang out. The Aureate Codex’s golden radiance surged violently, like a blazing sun, scattering the darkness around favonovel.com for one fleeting instant.
In that blink of light, Jared vaguely saw the outline of the exit. It was 100 yards ahead. A faint blue glow flickered there, marking the way out of the labyrinth!
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