C416 Ancient Demon Rune!!
Fish bones, one after another, spanned the dome of the sky, holding up the world.
These bones gleamed like ivory and white jade, their crystalline sheen growing more radiant by the moment.
Yu Yuan peered intently at them and was struck by a sense of time's sediment, as if they bore the weight of history and had existed for eons.
"Boom!"
Another tremor emanated from the soulstone-paved plaza beneath his feet.
Instantly, he watched as countless ancient characters began to surface on the towering stone pillars.
Some pillars bore characters as mighty as dragons, others as graceful as phoenixes, some as vigorous as Kylin vying for the sun and moon's brilliance, and still others depicted myriad birds frolicking joyously amidst flames.
As he gazed upon these pillars, the ancient script seemed to spring to life.
His soul felt as though it was being drawn into the pillars, whisked away to that vast, bygone epoch to witness the zenith of evilkind.
"Evil script! The earliest writing of the evilkind!"
A realization struck Yu Yuan, and he grasped the truth.
The first sovereigns of the Everlands were the evilkind.
The Nagas, once the leaders of the evilkind, were the mightiest among them.
The Sky Fiend, Otherkin, and various enigmatic entities had long sought to invade the Everlands, sowing chaos.
In that age, it was the evilkind who repelled the extraterrestrial beings, safeguarding the Everlands.
Yet, as rulers, the evilkind struggled with slow reproduction and growth, leaving them in a constant state of beleaguered defense.
Back in those ancient times, formidable creatures from beyond the Star River, the Sky Fiends, would breach the wall and wreak havoc in the Everlands.
The evilkind, weary from relentless conflict, often paid a steep price to either vanquish these foes or merely drive them away.
At that time, humanity was insignificant, not yet having discovered the ways of cultivation, and were at the mercy of others.
But when humans ascended to dominion over this realm, the tide turned.
Transformed into powerful cultivators, humans allied with the evilkind, venturing beyond the Everlands to confront the Star River Otherkin and the Star-Spawned Terrors, shifting from the plundered to the plunderers.
"If this is indeed the ancient script of the evilkind, then this mysterious place must possess an extraordinarily ancient history!"
With this thought, Yu Yuan's excitement surged, his curiosity thoroughly piqued. He was determined to uncover the true nature of the 'Fishbelly' and its connection to the Embers Sea.
"Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!"
Suddenly, towering stone columns standing in the square burst forth with radiant divine light.
Beams of light shot up into the heavens.
As the beams reached skyward, the soulstones spread across the square crumbled to dust.
The vast square was covered in countless soulstones, now reduced to a layer of dust and debris.
Yu Yuan's face drained of color as he abruptly stood and looked down at his feet.
Once the top layer of soulstones turned to powder, a new layer of soulstones was revealed beneath.
He instantly realized that the soulstones beneath his feet were stacked in layers upon layers.
He didn't know how many layers there were, how many soulstones existed, or what lay beneath the layers of soulstones.
What he did know was that the stone columns that burst into light must have instantly drawn out the spiritual energy from the soulstones. Only after being amplified by the ancient runes within the columns could such an explosion of light occur.
He looked up at the sky once more.
There, within the soaring beams of light, were visions of the Azure Dragon roaring, the Phoenix soaring, the Kylin devouring the sun and moon, and the Vermillion Bird refining fire!
Each beam of light was enshrouded in ancient runes, casting forth divine radiance and a kaleidoscope of colors.
In a flash, the beams of light struck the dome of the sky.
They hit the massive fish bones stretched across the heavens.
The ivory-like fish bones scattered thousands of sparkling fragments, raining down upon the land.
The trembling of the earth and the anomalies of this realm gradually subsided.
Behind the lead-gray dome, the colossal fish bones were once again obscured by the grayness, their true forms hidden.
The towering stone columns that had caused such an uproar ceased their shaking, and the ancient runes that had just been revealed now vanished without a trace.
The entire world returned to a state of tranquility and harmony.
The sun and moon continued to hang high, while the earth remained silent.
Yet Yu Yuan's heart was in turmoil, endlessly unsettled.
"Thirty-six stone columns released thirty-six beams of light that pierced the sky, striking the fish bones beyond the heavens. The initial tremors immediately subsided, leaving no further disturbances..."
Gazing into the sky, he mulled over his thoughts, slowly forming a daring hypothesis.
This Otherworld wasn't forged by cultivators wielding spiritual energy and theurgy. It was akin to the belly of a gargantuan fish!
Within this fish's belly, a new realm was crafted, anchored by thirty-six towering stone columns to prevent any reckless movement. At the slightest sign of activity, the columns would instantly draw upon the power of soulstones to maintain their suppression.
"The Embers Sea is where starshards from beyond have settled. Carved into the thirty-six stone columns are ancient evilkind runes. What could this massive fish that the evilkind are so desperate to contain be?"
"Could it be some fearsome entity from beyond the Star River?"
"It still moves occasionally. Could it mean that it hasn't perished? Is it still alive?"
Contemplating this, Yu Yuan found his composure slipping away.
This was unlike the Shura's eye in the Dark Realm of the Forgotten Ruins.
If an extraterrestrial creature, akin to a colossal fish from the Star River, was subdued by the Devil Palace and Shadow's Keep and then confined within the Embers Sea, wouldn't that be akin to harboring a ticking time bomb?
Such a creature must be immensely powerful, and its escape would surely cause untold chaos.
Was there a specific reason or unique purpose for keeping this creature alive within the Embers Sea?
Yu Yuan surmised that if this fish belly originated from beyond, it must have arrived before the rise of humanity, during the era when the evilkind dominated the earth.
"My place of cultivation is actually within a living fish's belly."
Standing amidst the dust, Yu Yuan offered a wry smile, alternately gazing at the sky and the earth. After a moment's hesitation, he decided to halt his cultivation.
He wandered beneath the thirty-six towering stone columns, touching one, examining another, comparing their heights, sizes, and thicknesses.
The columns were as polished as jade, devoid of any markings to the naked eye.
The ancient evilkind script he had previously seen now seemed like nothing more than a figment of his imagination.
Despite the vastness of the square, his exploration revealed nothing beyond the stone columns.
Beyond the square, a thick spiritual mist obscured all sight and sense, leaving everything beyond it shrouded in mystery.
Yu Yuan exercised extreme caution and refrained from investigating areas that were beyond his sight and perception.
After much contemplation, he retraced his steps and found himself once again at the ship's stern rudder.
The one thing he was certain of was that by summoning the sword sheath and unleashing the sword light, he stood a great chance of returning to the sunken ship at the bottom of the sea.
If so, then everything occurring within the belly of the great fish would be of no concern to him; he could simply feign ignorance.
Yet, this meant the end of his swift progress in cultivation...
"Fortune favors the bold! Perhaps the tremors inside the fish are natural. It's quite possible that such shaking happens periodically! Aren't the thirty-six towering stone columns and the soulstones laid out on the ground there to stabilize and counterbalance it? I observed earlier that when the stone columns unleashed their power, the creature calmed down."
Whether it was self-reassurance or a calculated risk, Yu Yuan chose to turn a blind eye to the anomalies of this realm.
After a brief wait, seeing no further abnormalities, he resumed his personal cultivation.
He persisted in utilizing the Nine Glories Wheel to refine traces of sunfire, advancing to the seventh level of refinement in his own little world within the Golden Sanctum.
In the time that followed, the world's tremors became more frequent!
Contrary to his initial assumptions, the suppressed leviathan seemed to have been provoked, as the intervals between tremors grew shorter and the soulstones' depletion increased.
At this point, Yu Yuan realized that something was amiss.
