Looking at the scene within the Heart of the Secret Realm, Lin Xiao's eyes gradually turned red.
He first looked up at Sun Yigao before turning his head to look at Venerable Pantu, his eyes filled with an indescribable heaviness.
Venerable Pantu was completely baffled by this stare.
"What is suddenly wrong with you?"
Lin Xiao took a deep breath, opened a rift in the space of the Heart of the Secret Realm, stepped aside, and said to him,
"See for yourself."
Venerable Pantu did not understand the reason, and Sun Yigao also wondered what had happened. The two of them looked together at the spatial entrance that had suddenly opened beside Lin Xiao.
Inside this entrance was a moderately sized space, where over a dozen people lay haphazardly on the ground.
More importantly, every single one of these people was emaciated to the bone, and some even looked like mummified corpses!
Scattered across the ground were numerous fishbones, as well as human bones.
Bite marks could even be seen on the human bones.
As for those still alive inside, all of them had extremely faint breathing.
The person inside who looked the most human saw the spatial door open and slowly turned his head to look over.
Then, he saw Venerable Pantu outside. A bizarre light suddenly flashed across his originally numb and lifeless eyes, sending chills down the spine of even an experienced Nascent Soul cultivator like Venerable Pantu!
Other than this person, no one else inside had the strength to pay attention to anything. They all lay on the ground, relying on their faint breaths and the spiritual energy in their bodies to desperately cling to their lingering lives.
Like Lin Xiao, upon seeing this scene, Sun Yigao could not help but get red-rimmed eyes, his heart filled with sorrow.
This sight was truly too tragic!
Anyone who saw this would feel a heavy blockage in their chest.
Just what kind of despair had these people suffered through...
Having mastered the Heart of the Secret Realm, Lin Xiao already knew the cause through the scenes recorded by it.
The Heart of the Secret Realm could record all scenes within the entire secret realm, including its own space. As long as Lin Xiao wished, he could view everything that had happened inside here over the years.
And those currently lying in the space of the Heart of the Secret Realm were all Qi Condensation cultivators who had been thrown into the lake by Venerable Pantu over the past few decades!
At that time, after suddenly being thrown into the lake, they were sucked into the small space by the immense, unconscious suction force of the Heart of the Secret Realm.
Within this space, which was only the size of a few rooms, it was completely empty. Other than the four walls, there was nothing.
After being sucked inside, they could only survive on the fish, shrimp, and lake water that were occasionally sucked in.
If no one controlled the Heart of the Secret Realm to open it, this space was an absolute dead end where one could only enter but never leave!
Thus, these people stayed inside, relying on fish and shrimp, and relying on the humans who were sucked in year after year...
Out of dozens of people, only a dozen or so still had breath left today.
But they were basically just barely breathing.
At a glance, the place was already utterly lifeless. They could only lie on the ground, exhaling weakly.
And the cultivator who still had the strength to turn his head and look at Venerable Pantu now had bloodshot eyes, looking as if he wished he could eat him alive.
He was filled with so much hatred!
It was this person who caused them to linger on their last breaths and turn to cannibalism in this despair-inducing space.
When he came in last year, he was shocked by a scene that was not much different from today's.
At first, he still had the mind to feed water and food to those on the ground who still had breath. Later, unable to even fend for himself, he could no longer take care of them.
Once, he was even almost bitten out of a large chunk of flesh by someone nearby who he thought had completely lost all strength.
Although they were all Qi Condensation cultivators and would not easily starve to death even if they did not eat often, they were, in the end, only Qi Condensation cultivators.
They still could not survive without food for long periods.
They would get hungry and thirsty.
He would never forget how he crawled on the ground like a dog, licking the little bit of lake water spilled on the floor that was occasionally sucked into this space.
Despite this, looking at the stark white bones on the ground with clearly visible bite marks, and those on the ground who were reduced to nothing but skin, he still suppressed his desire to consume his own kind.
The others also endured it, enduring until someone lost their breath, at which point they would swarm over and devour the breathless person completely.
They would only leave the bones, so that one day, if they could ever get out again, they could take their ashes to be buried.
This was the agreement between every newcomer and those who came before them.
Over the past year, despair had been swallowing him every single moment.
He thought that if he were not a cultivator, without the support of his cultivation beliefs, he might have been unable to hold on and would have ended his own life long ago.
And the source of all the tragedies in this cramped space came from that half-human, half-ghost monstrosity outside!
Lin Xiao fell silent for a moment.
He controlled the Heart of the Secret Realm to release these people, along with the white bones.
Then, Lin Xiao turned his head and spoke in a deep voice to Venerable Pantu, who was still in shock and unable to recover his senses for a long time:
"I am sorry, but I don't think I can unseal you anymore."
Looking at the tragic scene before him that could be said to be single-handedly caused by Venerable Pantu, Lin Xiao suddenly felt that it was only right for him to be sealed here year-round.
Even though their sect might be in dire need of such an experienced and knowledgeable senior, he could not accept a person who had personally caused all of this.
Venerable Pantu was utterly shocked. He looked at these people and asked Lin Xiao:
"They are..."
Lin Xiao took a deep breath and said:
"After you threw them into the lake, they were all sucked into this space by the Heart of the Secret Realm. If they hadn't been able to come out today, perhaps that place would have been their tomb."
It was just like a tomb for the living.
Hearing this, Venerable Pantu fell silent.
Ever since he began cultivating, fighting, killing, taking lives, and the concept of the winner becoming king while the loser becomes the bandit, were the most normal things in the world.
However, he had never thought of inhumanely torturing others.
Yet, facing the situation before his eyes that was indeed caused by him, he could not argue.
He originally wanted to open his mouth and say that it wasn't his fault. If they hadn't encountered the Heart of the Secret Realm and been sucked in, wouldn't they have been fine? Furthermore, the Heart of the Secret Realm was not controlled by him, and it was never his original intention for things to turn out this way.
But in the end, he chose to remain silent.
Sun Yigao noticed that many of them were wearing the exact same long red robes as the two people they had met earlier named Yuan Qing and Xu Juan, so he said to Lin Xiao with a somewhat hoarse voice:
"I will go find their fellow disciples."
Hearing this, Lin Xiao walked over to the person who had been glaring resentfully at Venerable Pantu; this was the only person who remained conscious.
He asked softly:
"Do you have a token? So that we can help you find your fellow disciples."
Hearing his voice, the person's gaze barely left Venerable Pantu.
He slowly turned his head, evaluated Lin Xiao and Sun Yigao with a glance, and then lowered his head to look at his waist.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
to panic—he has a system. As long as an investment target dies, he can claim a reward. And since he is immortal, the one thing he has plenty of is time. ... Countless years later. “Immortal Emperor of Longevity? I invested in him.” “Supreme Celestial Venerable? I invested in him.” “Undying Empress? I invested in her.” “...” “Heh. Once they’ve all died, even the Heavenly Dao will have to kneel and call me Dad.”
