The trio continued forward. The middle passage was also 10 kilometers long. At first, they could still see the Divine Eagle Guards’ chaotic footprints. However, the deeper they went, the fewer footprints remained, until they eventually disappeared entirely, as though something had erased them.

Before long, the three arrived at the end of the passage. It was another dead end.

“This shouldn’t be the case. Even if this were a tomb, there ought to be burial chambers. It can’t possibly be an unfinished tomb consisting of nothing but three passageways.” Qi Xuansu spoke while staring at the earthen wall before them.

“Let me try,” Madam Wu said.

Without waiting for Qi Xuansu’s approval, Madam Wu had already made her move.

A horizontal pillar of fire slammed into the earthen wall ahead. Under the intense heat, the soil crystallized instantly. Using flames alone, Madam Wu forcibly carved out a crystalline tunnel.

It appeared that Tantai Ying had been correct. The seemingly unfinished passage truly ended here, and everything beyond it was solid earth.

However, Madam Wu was not the sort to accept such conclusions. Or rather, she firmly believed that sufficient force could create miracles.

Not only did she refuse to stop, but she actually increased the intensity of her flames, continuously turning soil into crystal and extending the crystalline tunnel for roughly another kilometer.

Then, Qi Xuansu realized that they had actually broken through.

Beyond this one kilometer of solid earth, there was an entirely different world.

Tantai Ying had not exactly been wrong when she said there was only solid earth. At such a thickness, it was perfectly reasonable to conclude that the ground was solid.

With a distance that great, it would not have been surprising to tunnel into an entirely separate neighboring tomb.

Qi Xuansu actually disliked investigations of this sort. He preferred dealing with people rather than solving mysteries. He could not help but lament that he should have brought Chen Jianchou along.

The three proceeded one after another through the narrow crystalline tunnel, which was barely wide enough for a single person to pass through while bent over. Upon reaching the other side, they discovered an underground palace.

At the center of the palace was an altar, upon which was a small mountain of corpses—roughly 40 bodies piled together.

Every one of them had withered into a desiccated mummy with twisted and grotesque forms. Yet judging from their clothing, they were precisely the Divine Eagle Guards who had been missing for so long.

They had been sacrificed.

These Divine Eagle Guards were all cultivators, so the quality of their living souls was far superior to that of ordinary people.

A single ordinary living soul was worth the annual output of 1,000 ordinary believers’ incense offerings. A Divine Eagle Guard, at the very least, could be worth ten times that amount. In other words, one Divine Eagle Guard was equivalent to the yearly output of 10,000 ordinary believers, so 100 Divine Eagle Guards were equivalent to the annual output of 1 million ordinary believers. That still amounted to 100,000 devout core believers.

At that point, the number became rather terrifying.

Perhaps to the Daoist Order, a million people was merely a small number, as Jinling Prefecture contained more people than that. Not to mention, Jinling Prefecture was only a fraction of Jiangnan, which was only a part of the Central Plains. Beyond the Central Plains lay numerous overseas territories.

However, the Daoist Order’s expenditure of divine power was also immense, used to sustain its enormous army of Spirit Guards. This army included 12 first-rank Spirit Guards at the Pseudo-Immortal level, 72 second-rank Spirit Guards, and even greater numbers of third-rank Spirit Guards. That was not even counting major consumers of divine power among Daoist priests like Qi Xuansu.

For any individual entity, obtaining such a vast quantity of divine power in a short period of time would be extremely difficult.

What exactly did the mastermind intend to do with so much divine power?

Moreover, divine power acquired through blood sacrifice contained karmic fire, which carried the danger of falling into ruin.

This gave rise to many questions that could not be easily answered.

How had these Divine Eagle Guards crossed through a kilometer of solid earth? Surely, they could not all employ the Earth Escape Method. Also, who had constructed this altar?

Qi Xuansu carefully examined the underground palace and the altar.

Soon, he discovered that the architectural styles of the two were not merely mismatched but were in direct conflict with one another. It could be concluded with certainty that the temple had existed first, and the altar had been added later.

Qi Xuansu approached the altar. Since it was a sacrificial altar, it had to be dedicated to a specific target. Normally, some obvious identifying symbol would be left behind, such as the holy emblem of the deity receiving the sacrifice.

However, he did not find any symbol around the base of the altar. He then moved the corpses aside and exposed the center of the altar, revealing a holy emblem.

It was not Samuel’s holy emblem of the long-handled scythe, skeleton, and crow. Instead, it was a black sun.

Madam Wu also stepped onto the altar. After glancing down at it, she clicked her tongue. “Where exactly did this holy emblem come from? I’ve never seen it during my time in the Southern Continent. Could it really be Zuriel’s symbol?”

Qi Xuansu then examined the Divine Eagle Guards’ corpses. As he expected, black sun tattoos had appeared on their bodies, identical to those found on the corpses kept at the Juesheng Hall.

He let out a long sigh and suggested, “Let’s go and take a look at the other two passages.”

The trio then retraced their steps back to the junction and proceeded down the left passage, the one where Tantai Ying had found the obsidian knife.

Once again, they reached a dead end, another unfinished earthen wall.

Madam Wu motioned for the other two to step back as she prepared to repeat her previous method.

This time, Qi Xuansu stopped her. “Wait a moment. Something doesn’t seem right.”

“What doesn’t seem right?” Multicolored flames were already burning in Madam Wu’s palm as she eagerly prepared to burn the wall in front of her.

Qi Xuansu was not speaking without reason. In that brief instant, the Guizang Lantern, which had remained dormant all this time, suddenly activated.

However, this time, it did not show the future. It showed the past.

Although the earth qi in this underground complex had already been thrown into chaos, making Earth Qi Recall impossible, the Guizang Lantern was unaffected by such limitations. This immortal object viewed the past and future through a higher-level, higher-dimensional method.

In that instant, Qi Xuansu saw more than 30 Divine Eagle Guards arrive at the end of the passage. Their expressions were dazed, and their complexions ashen. They looked like walking corpses. Then they continued forward toward the earthen wall that should have been a dead end.

At that very moment, the earthen wall came alive. It began to writhe and squirm like a slug, a soft-bodied creature filled with fluid.

The first Divine Eagle Guard touched the fluid wall and was immediately swallowed into it. It was as though some external force compressed him, forcing him through a thin membrane and into the viscous interior beyond. But the membrane itself remained completely intact.

The sight was extraordinarily bizarre.

Once inside, the Divine Eagle Guard continued stumbling forward through the slime in a dazed state. The guards behind him passed through the membrane in the same manner and followed.

At last, Qi Xuansu understood how these Divine Eagle Guards had passed through a kilometer of earth. It was not because they used the Earth Escape Method but because the earth itself was abnormal.

The earth was alive, resembling an enormous, semi-transparent kilometer-long slug. Normally, it disguised itself as an ordinary layer of soil.

It was this giant slug that blocked the passage.

Moreover, the creature appeared to move. As it crawled and shifted, it erased the Divine Eagle Guards’ footprints.

Madam Wu’s earlier brute-force excavation had most likely killed one of these gigantic slugs. Her flames had vaporized everything in their path, transforming it into crystal. Who could possibly have imagined that such a creature existed in the world?

In fact, during earlier times, there had been many similar bizarre entities in the Central Plains. No one could clearly explain what they were. Perhaps they were strange beasts from ancient myths. Over time, they adapted to the times and learned to follow the trends of the era, developing all sorts of new tricks. Some pretended to be gods and spirits, boasting grandly, making sweeping claims about the fate of all humanity and proclaiming that they had gazed upon the world for billions of years. Some of them had even begun founding religions of their own.

The common people knew nothing of the truth behind these matters. Taking such claims at face value, they regarded these beings as alien gods and worshipped them with utmost reverence. This often led to cruel and bizarre incidents, causing tremendous harm. Yet these people never stopped to consider one thing. If these creatures truly possessed such immense power, why would they need to hide in the shadows at all?

After the Daoist Order defeated the Buddhist Sect, it finally had the resources to deal with these creatures. Throughout the tenures of three successive Grand Masters, while promoting economic development, they never ceased their efforts to eradicate these demons and monsters, cleansing away the filth hidden within the dark corners and cracks of society. They even deployed the Tiangang Hall when necessary. The tradition of the Tiangang Hall specifically targeting secret societies also originated during this period.

The results were remarkable. Such creatures were rarely seen in the Central Plains anymore. The countless secret societies that had once existed in overwhelming numbers had been reduced to only a handful backed by the Ancient Immortals.

By the time of Qi Xuansu’s generation, even monsters had become rare, while flood dragons were nearly extinct. Most people had never encountered these strange creatures.

The greatest enemy to humankind in the present day was simply other humans.

The Southern Continent was different. It remained relatively untamed, so many undiscovered secrets still lurked there.

Returning to his senses, Qi Xuansu said softly, “This is a living slug. Let’s call it a slug for now.”

Madam Wu was startled. “A slug?”

Immediately afterward, Madam Wu extended her divine sense and began probing the thing before them. Even someone as knowledgeable as she seemed somewhat shocked. “The Southern Continent truly is bizarre. To think that something like this exists here. Though this does remind me of something that happened when we first arrived in the Southern Continent.”

Qi Xuansu asked, “What happened?”

Madam Wu slowly recounted, “Back then, an inner elixir cultivation method became popular in the Central Plains, the Southern Continent, Nanyang, and other regions where Daoists set foot. It claimed that by consuming a special elixir, one’s cultivation could increase dramatically. Some people called these elixirs the Foundation Building Elixir. According to the theory, consuming one would allow a person to build their foundation. After that, one could refine qi, condense energy, and form an elixir or a core, which was an entry into the so-called Golden Elixir stage.”

Tantai Ying interjected, “The so-called ‘golden elixir’ symbolized permanence, indestructibility, purity, and completeness. Ancient Immortals borrowed this name to represent the innate brilliance of true spirit. In Confucianism, this nature is called the Taiji or Supreme Ultimate. In Buddhism, it’s called Perfect Enlightenment. In Daoism, it’s called the Golden Core. Though the names differ, they refer to the same thing. When cultivated by Confucians, it produces Savants. When cultivated by Buddhists, it produces Buddhas. When cultivated by Daoists, it produces Immortals.

“The Golden Elixir Path uses the body as the furnace, essence and qi as the medicinal ingredients, and spirit as the fire. By uniting these three, one attains longevity. The Golden Elixir is not literal alchemy but a realm of attainment. It cannot be seen or touched. It is an abstract concept, not a tangible object. The idea of physically forming a Golden Elixir is obviously something invented by people who misunderstood the words literally and forced their own interpretations onto them.”

Madam Wu agreed. “It was indeed a far-fetched interpretation. Later, we discovered that the so-called special elixir was actually insect eggs. The so-called cultivation process was merely the process of incubating those eggs within the body. The formation of the core was actually the larva spinning a cocoon, and the breaking of the core to give birth to the Nascent Soul was simply the larva emerging from the cocoon as a mature insect. By the time it reached the adult stage, the host’s internal organs would have been completely devoured by the insect. All that remained was an undying shell of a body. At that point, the person became nothing more than a puppet controlled by the insect, and in most cases, there was no cure to be found.”