51: Chapter 51 Bro, do you want the corpse or not?

The sensation of weightlessness lasted for only three seconds.

*Bang!*

Hard. Cold. It felt like slamming directly onto the steel plate of a mortuary.

The three of them crashed onto the ground. Before they could even cry out in pain, a face-full of black wind hit them. This wind defied reason; it made no whistling sound, yet it felt like countless tiny, dull knives sawing directly into the gaps between their bones.

"Hiss—"

As soon as she landed, Lin Sa let out a muffled groan and collapsed to her knees. Her habitually cold and elegant face turned deathly pale in an instant, and a layer of grayish-white corpse frost formed on her eyebrows.

Driven by instinct, she reached back and drew her pair of S-rank lethal weapons, the "blood kiss." These daggers, usually brimming with murderous intent, now seemed like Chihuahuas facing a natural predator in that eerie black wind. Their red glow trembled violently, on the verge of being extinguished.

"There's something wrong with this wind... it's gnawing on my bones!" Lin Sa's teeth chattered, and her entire body shook uncontrollably like a sieve.

Just as the chill was about to freeze the three of them into ice sculptures, the seemingly ordinary black jade pendant on Pei Duo's chest vibrated slightly, as if it had been woken up and was feeling a bit impatient.

*Buzz—*

A circle of soft black light radiated from Pei Duo, "popping" open a semi-transparent "air-conditioned room" three meters in diameter.

The yin winds, cold enough to crack rocks, slammed into the shield but could not advance an inch.

Inside the shield, the temperature instantly rose.

Xu Mo panted heavily as the agonizing pain, which felt like his brains were being frozen solid, finally eased. He pushed up his non-existent glasses and quickly scanned the surroundings by the light of the jade pendant.

Beneath their feet was a reflective obsidian floor that stretched as far as the eye could see.

In the far distance, rolling ranges of pale white mountains loomed. Upon closer inspection, those weren't mountains at all, but a mass grave piled high with countless giant femurs and ribs.

"This place is... Mictlan."

Xu Mo's voice was dry as his mental database whirred into high gear. "The ninth level of hell in Aztec mythology, the final stop for the dead—the Hell of Extreme Cold."

As he spoke, he habitually reached for his waist, intending to grab a first-aid spray.

The next second, Xu Mo froze.

His hand passed directly through his waist pouch, grasping nothing but air.

It was like a clipping error in a video game.

Xu Mo's eyelid twitched violently. He turned and barked, "Lin Sa! Cut your finger! Fast!"

Without a word, Lin Sa swiped her dagger across her fingertip.

There was no blood.

What drifted from the wound wasn't red liquid, but blue points of light like fireflies that vanished in an instant.

"As I thought..." Xu Mo's face looked as sour as if he'd swallowed a fly. "Our physical bodies have been stripped away. We are currently in a pure spiritual state."

"Spiritual bodies?" Pei Duo curiously raised her hand to look. Aside from being slightly translucent, she didn't feel much different from before.

"Your Highness, this is no joke." Xu Mo pointed at the black winds outside. "This is called the 'Flesh-Scraping Wind,' and it specifically targets souls. If it weren't for your jade pendant, Lin Sa would have already 'deleted her character and restarted' by now."

He took a deep breath and delivered an even worse conclusion: "Moreover, this is a double death countdown—either our spirits are scattered here, or our physical bodies outside will become vegetables due to being separated from our souls for too long."

Lin Sa's fingers gripping the daggers turned somewhat transparent from the force, yet her gaze became even more fierce.

"Since there's no way back, let's fight our way through." Lin Sa pointed toward a massive shadow ahead. "There's a shelter over there. Let's head there first."

That was the only "mountain" at the end of their line of sight.

To escape the wind, the three of them sprinted toward the shadow despite the pressure. But as they ran, something felt increasingly wrong. The sense of oppression was like a hydraulic press falling from the sky, making Xu Mo's and Lin Sa's knees creak.

When they finally stood at the foot of that "shadow," their legs buckled, and they nearly fell to their knees on the spot.

What kind of mountain was this?

By the faint light of the jade pendant, the three of them finally saw the full extent of this thing—

It was a corpse.

A divine corpse tens of thousands of feet tall, clad in tattered bone armor, kneeling on the ground!

Even though it was thoroughly dead, that massive body still radiated a terrifying divine pressure. Just the lingering aura made Xu Mo feel as if his soul was about to be crushed.

"This is..." Xu Mo looked up with difficulty, his gaze following a shin bone as tall as a skyscraper.

Above the corpse's shoulders, there was nothing.

It had no head.

At the neck's cut, which was as smooth as a mirror, there remained a trace of an extremely domineering, dark sword intent. With just one glance, Xu Mo felt a stinging pain in his eyes, as if his soul were about to be split open by the resonance of that single strike.

"Mictlantecuhtli... the chief god of the Aztecs, the supreme deity who controls death."

Xu Mo swallowed hard, feeling his years of materialistic education screaming in alarm. "This is a chief god-level being. But he's dead? Decapitated like someone was just chopping vegetables?"

Who did it?

Xu Mo stared fixedly at the sword scar, and the image of a black-robed figure on Luofeng Mountain instantly flashed through his mind.

The Underworld Son of Heaven, Pei Fei.

The "flavor" was too distinct; it was exactly the same as that Majesty's!

"So this is... what big brother meant by 'dismantling her hometown'?" Pei Duo looked up at the colossal divine corpse. There wasn't a hint of fear in her eyes; instead, she looked like she had seen a job well done by a family member, her eyes sparkling with worship.

"But... Your Highness, the path is blocked." Lin Sa was drenched in cold sweat.

This divine corpse was like a Wall of Sighs that had to be smashed through. The surrounding space was locked by some kind of rule. Want to go around? Unless you can teleport.

Force their way through? Given their current spiritual strength, they would most likely be shattered by the divine corpse's lingering pressure.

"A spawn kill? This dungeon difficulty is completely unreasonable!" Xu Mo gritted his teeth. This was an absolute dead end.

While the two pro players were caught in their desperate analysis, Pei Duo let go of her hand covering her nose.

She stared at the corpse that was too large to see the end of, and her brother's words before they entered the dungeon suddenly echoed in her mind—

[When to perform the sacrifice, what to use as a bargaining chip... that's for you to decide.]

Pei Duo's eyes lit up.

This wasn't a roadblock; this was clearly a delivered-to-the-door performance bonus!

"Strategist Xu, although this thing is a bit ugly and even smells a little, it should be quite valuable, right?" Pei Duo suddenly spoke, her tone as relaxed as if she were browsing a second-hand market.

"Huh?" Xu Mo was stunned, his brain feeling a bit overloaded. "It's valuable, alright. This is a chief god's corpse, full of divine materials, but..."

Before he could finish saying "we can't move it," Pei Duo had already strode forward.

Under the VIP protection of the black jade pendant, the pressure that could crush souls automatically parted to make a path. Pei Duo walked up to a toe bone larger than a house, reached out her fair little hand, and slapped it with a *smack*.

"Fengdu Sacrifice Technique, rise!"

The girl's crisp voice echoed through the deathly silent hell.

The next second, she shouted a sentence into the void that caused Xu Mo's and Lin Sa's worldviews to collapse:

"Brother! There's a big guy blocking the way and I can't move it. Do you want it?"

Boom—!!

As soon as she finished speaking, the black jade pendant in Pei Duo's hand erupted with a beam of black light that pierced the heavens and earth. The originally lifeless ninth level of hell shook violently, as if some supreme being had been connected by this "delivery call."

Deep in the void, crossing countless dimensional barriers, a chuckle that was somewhat lazy yet peerlessly majestic rang clearly in the ears of the three:

"So the corpse has returned to the divine kingdom. Granted."

Around the colossal divine corpse that had driven Lin Sa and Xu Mo to despair, the space suddenly shattered like a mirror. A massive black vortex appeared out of thin air, like a giant mouth of the abyss.

*Whoosh—*

The divine corpse that had been so overbearing just a moment ago was like a tiny shrimp swallowed by a giant whale. Without even a splash, it was instantly sucked into that black hole leading to the Eastern Underworld!

An obstacle that had blotted out the sun one second was turned into flat ground the next.

Swift and decisive.

This was the efficiency of the Underworld.

Immediately after, the black hole did not disappear; instead, it began to reverse.

*Clatter—*

A sky full of Golden Light of Merit and a Nether Purple Qi so thick it wouldn't dissipate poured down from the black hole like a waterfall, instantly dyeing this pitch-black hell into a sacred, opulent gold.

It was a doting return gift from her brother.

"Rewarded."

The golden light dissipated.

A purple qiankun bag, embroidered with gold thread cloud patterns and radiating ancient fluctuations, drifted down in front of Pei Duo.