231: Chapter 231 The Mysterious Voice at the Bottom of the Canyon

The canyon walls on both sides rushed upward past him, and the stone gall and stone crystals embedded in the cliff walls dragged out streaks of colorful light arcs in the darkness, like a meteor shower flowing in reverse.

The further down he fell, the darker the surroundings became; the fluorescence on the cliff walls gradually grew sparse, eventually vanishing completely into the thick darkness.

Only the ancient aura surging up from the bottom of the valley grew thicker and heavier around him, like an invisible giant hand slowly clenching shut.

Jiang Changge's expression remained calm, and his Divine Sense condensed into an invisible barrier around his body, isolating the suppressive force.

The System prompted him that he could use the power of the newly refined chaos stone essence to resist this pressure, but he had not yet felt any obvious discomfort.

The chaos stone essence was one of his greatest trump cards for this trip, so he would save it if he could.

After descending for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, his feet finally touched the ground at the bottom of the valley.

The moment he landed, an extremely strange sensation came from beneath his feet; it was not the hardness of rock, nor the softness of sand and soil, but a texture somewhere in between—slightly elastic, like stepping on the scales of some massive creature.

The surrounding light was extremely dim, and even with his Tribulation Transcendence Stage eyesight, he could barely see the scene within a radius of ten zhang.

The ground at the bottom of the valley presented an extremely ancient dark gray color, its surface covered with ravines and cracks of varying depths, and in some cracks, dark red light faintly flowed.

The air was permeated with an extremely ancient and rotten aura, mixed with a faint scent of blood and the metallic smell of Ore, making one feel mentally oppressed upon smelling it.

What truly made Jiang Changge frown was the thick fog permeating this valley bottom; the mist was dark gray and extremely thick, surging slowly around him as if it had substance.

He tried to spread out his Divine Sense, but discovered that once it left his body by more than three feet, it would be silently devoured by that layer of dark gray mist, and he could detect nothing.

Jiang Changge tried to activate Star Web Myriad Phenomena, but the result was the same; he could not detect the situation in the surroundings at all.

He looked around, but could only see the range within ten zhang of his body.

The distance was shrouded in thick fog, and from time to time, extremely faint sounds came from the mist—sometimes like metal colliding, sometimes like the breathing of some creature, and sometimes like a low chant of ancient Buddhist hymns, but when he listened carefully, he could capture nothing.

Jiang Changge took a deep breath and grasped the xuanchen whisk in his hand, and the silver-white light of the whisk opened up a halo about a zhang in radius within the thick fog, isolating the uncomfortable, rotten aura.

He did not rush to take a step, but stood in place, mobilizing all his senses to the extreme, carefully discerning the aura that had been pulling him ever since he stepped onto the edge of the canyon.

Now that he was at the bottom of the valley, that pulling force became clearer than ever; it was right ahead, in the deepest part of the dense fog.

Jiang Changge tightened his grip on the xuanchen whisk and took the first step.

The ground beneath his feet sank slightly with his footsteps, and that strange sensation between rock and scales kept him in a state of high alert.

The dark gray mist surged slowly around him, pushed back a zhang away by the silver-white light of the whisk, but it swirled unwillingly around the edge of the halo, as if it had life, waiting for the moment the light curtain extinguished to pounce.

The further forward he walked, the thicker the mist became; at first, he could barely see the outline of the ground ten zhang away, but after walking over a hundred steps, visibility had shrunk to within five zhang.

The dark gray ground beneath his feet began to show some regular patterns, no longer the chaotic ravines and cracks from before, but more like some extremely ancient runes, with their edges worn away by the passage of time, leaving only shallow traces.

Jiang Changge stopped and lowered his head to examine them for a moment.

He had never seen these runes in any classic; they were neither common array patterns from the ancient era nor symbolic manifestations of Law.

They were more like some kind of script that was even older and more primitive than the ancient times, with every stroke exuding an aura of wilderness.

He tried to inject a wisp of spiritual power into the ravine of one of the runes; the rune lit up slightly, then dimmed again.

He did not continue to probe, straightened up, and continued walking in the direction from which the pulling force came.

The sounds in the fog gradually became clearer; at first, there were only occasional clashing sounds of metal and faint breathing, but now he could distinguish a certain rhythmic pattern.

The sound was extremely low, as if someone were beating a large drum in the fog far away; each sound was accompanied by a slight tremor of the ground, and each sound made the rotten aura in the air more intense.

Jiang Changge walked along the direction of the sound, and after walking for about another half an hour, the fog in front suddenly became a bit thinner, and his field of vision widened slightly.

He saw a huge outline looming in the thick fog, like a black mountain peak growing out of the ground, standing quietly in the deepest part of the canyon.

He quickened his pace, and as the distance closed, the outline of that mountain peak became increasingly clear.

That was not a mountain, but a skeleton.

A skeleton so massive that it exceeded all his understanding, lying quietly in the center of the canyon bottom.

The length of the skeleton was measured in li, and even just those ribs were several times thicker than the thickest stone pillars he had seen in the Nine-Orifice Stone Forest.

They pierced obliquely from the ground toward the sky, like a row of sky-supporting giant pillars blackened by time, exuding an ancient and heavy sense of oppression amidst the entanglement of thick fog.

The skull of the skeleton was half-buried in the dark gray ground, and the hideous crack on the skull that ran diagonally across the entire head was clearly visible even through the thick fog, like a canyon carved into the earth.

Jiang Changge stopped in front of the skeleton and looked up at the massive remains.

Just then, an extremely old and hoarse voice slowly sounded from the depths of the thick fog.

The voice was not loud, but it sounded as if it had transmigrated through time and space from endless eons ago; every syllable carried a heaviness that made one's Soul tremble slightly.

The thick fog surged violently with the sounding of that voice, as if to make way for the speaker.

"How long has it been? Finally, someone has come here."

Jiang Changge tightened his grip on the xuanchen whisk, the silver-white light circulating ceaselessly around his body.

He did not retreat, but cast his gaze through layers of thick fog, looking toward the direction from which the voice came—beneath the skull of the giant skeleton, into that shadow shrouded by the thick fog.

"Young man."

The ancient voice sounded again; this time, there was a trace of an extremely faint fluctuation in the voice, as if something that had been sleeping for too long was slowly waking up.

"Come to me."