Cultivation Begins with Daily Intelligence Reports

331: Zhan Tai WushuangThe corridor was also constructed from that eerie blue ice crystal, with walls on both sides carved with even older, more abstract murals and totems filled with a savage aura, radiating a desolate and ancient atmosphere.

Above was a towering dome, embedded with some gems emitting a faint blue light, providing illumination. The temperature in the air was lower than outside, but it was a cold of eternal, dead silence, rather than the violent chill of wind and snow.

Lin Jingyu had successfully entered, having made his way inside the Ice Cliff behind the mysterious and dangerous temple.

The ice soul stone in his hand made a ”click” sound, a crack appeared on its surface, and its light dimmed completely; clearly, it had consumed a massive amount of energy.

Lin Jingyu carefully put it away, feeling a bit of complicated gratitude in his heart for the remnant soul of the Frost Tribe Prophet.

He retracted all his energy signatures, like a ghost in the dark night, cautiously exploring inward along the corridor.

The corridor branched in all directions like a maze and was terrifyingly silent, with only his extremely light footsteps echoing in the vast environment, adding to the eeriness.

His Divine Sense from the Spirit Refining Art was compressed to a range of less than ten zhang, but his perception was even clearer.

He could feel a purer and more bizarre ice-type energy permeating the air, mixed with a faint but palpable pressure that made his Divine Soul tremble.

The source of that pressure was in the deepest part of the temple.

He tried to feel his way toward the central area of the temple based on the sense of direction he had observed earlier from the outside.

Along the way, he passed some side halls and rooms, most of which were empty, containing only some broken ice sculptures of unrecognizable original shapes and frozen artifacts, as if they were telling of past glory and present dead silence.

Suddenly, when he passed a huge side hall with a half-open door, his figure stopped abruptly, and his pupils contracted sharply.

Inside the side hall, it was not empty.

Instead, there were over a dozen corpses lying helter-skelter. These corpses were not guardian deities, but... the remains of human Cultivators.

They were wearing various costumes, some of which could even be identified as standard robes from certain Sects or Families, but at this moment, they had long been covered by a thick layer of ice, frozen in the terrified struggle or desperate posture of their last moment before death.

Their Magical Artifacts were scattered all over the ground, most of them also having lost their spiritual light, sealed by the cold ice.

”These people... are they the Cultivators who entered the Secret Realm earlier?” Lin Jingyu was horrified.

Judging from their clothing and the faint residual aura, there were many experts at the Foundation Establishment Stage among them.

They had actually all died here, turning into ice sculptures.

Lin Jingyu walked into the side hall cautiously, avoiding the corpses, and investigated carefully.

These Cultivators had died miserable deaths, seemingly frozen instantly by extreme cold, with even their Divine Souls failing to escape.

There were no obvious external wounds on their bodies; it was more like... they had been instantly wiped out by some kind of area-of-effect terrifying Spell.

What killed them? The temple’s automatic defense mechanism? Or... the existence awakening in the depths of the temple?

According to previous intelligence, Temple Guardians would perform Possession on human Cultivators who entered from the outside.

Were these people killed, placed here, and subjected to some kind of modification?

And then transformed into those giant humans, the Temple Guardians, over a meter tall?

Just as he was preparing to leave the side hall and continue forward, an extremely faint, intermittent voice, as if coming from a distant place, abruptly sounded deep in his mind:

”Latecomer... be careful... the ritual... cannot... be completed... He... is about to... awaken... stop it... must... stop it...”

This voice was ethereal and uncertain, full of pain and anxiety, yet carried an indescribable sense of weakness, as if it would dissipate at any moment.

Lin Jingyu’s hair stood on end! This was definitely not a hallucination!

The Spirit Refining Art was extremely sensitive to fluctuations in the Divine Soul; this was clearly a transmitted Divine Thought of a remnant soul.

”Who is it?” He immediately responded with his Divine Thought, while his Divine Sense spread out like a tide, alert to the extreme.

However, the voice never sounded again, as if it had never appeared.

But that message was like a red-hot branding iron, deeply imprinted on Lin Jingyu’s mind.

He carefully stepped forward to investigate, in front of a handsome young Cultivator.

He paused for a while, and saw the word ”Wushuang” on the identity token on his person.

After hesitating for a moment, he still took down the jade token.

He had spoken with Zhan Tai Mingyue before.

He had privately said that he had an elder brother named Zhan Tai Wushuang.

His talent and Aptitude were far superior to his own.

He could be called invincible among the same rank in the entire Qinglan Sect.

He had even entered the top ten of the hidden dragon ranking list.

And possessed a special Divine Soul talent.

During the Qi Refining period, he could sweep away Foundation Establishment Cultivators with Divine Thought attacks.

However, ten years ago, he disappeared without a trace.

The Nascent Soul Old Ancestor of the Zhan Tai Family came forward to divine his whereabouts, but could not find a single trace.

Unexpectedly, he had actually entered the Profound Ice Secret Realm.

A genius of heaven-defying talent had died here silently.

Yet his Divine Soul obsession was still able to give a final reminder to those who arrived.

If not for Lin Jingyu having learned everything early through the intelligence System.

I am afraid that, just as predicted in the intelligence about the future, he would have ended up the same way as these people.

A cold sneer appeared on the corner of Lin Jingyu’s mouth.

Whether it was the Great Wind Tribe or the Frost Tribe.

It all seemed to be arranged by an invisible hand behind the scenes.

But since that was the case, Lin Jingyu had nothing to fear.

Before the dust settled, it was unknown who would emerge victorious.

Lin Jingyu’s eyes became incomparably firm.

He no longer investigated slowly, selected a direction, and headed toward the core of that pressure, the place that also felt the most dangerous, speeding up as he stealthily moved forward.

The corridor seemed endless, with eerie blue ice crystal walls extending forward, devouring light and sound.

Dead silence was the only main theme here, with only Lin Jingyu’s extremely light footsteps and suppressed breathing reminding one that there was still a trace of life in this absolute frozen Domain.

The pressure permeating the air was becoming heavier, like tangible mercury, pressing down on his Divine Soul and Physical Body, and every step forward required a great deal of mental effort.

The Evergreen Art and the Spirit Refining Art had been pushed to their limits.

The gentle and thick Evergreen spiritual power flowed like a trickling stream, nourishing the Meridians constantly eroded by the extreme cold, while the six spiritual lakes surged with waves, building a solid barrier to resist that pervasive, terrifying will trying to freeze his thoughts.

The startling thunder sword was held tightly in his hand, the sword body trembling slightly, emitting an almost inaudible hum, seemingly both excited by this challenging environment and instinctively wary of the unknown danger in the depths.

Beside some ice sculptures, he found traces of intense fighting.

The deep claw marks on the ice walls, the burst ice pits on the ground, and some broken fragments of Magical Artifacts all indicated that someone had put up a desperate resistance here.

However, all resistance was futile in the face of absolute power, and in the end, they all turned into eternal decorations of this silent temple.