Ignoring You Huoran, Lu Yun and Ying Luo each clutched a fist-sized hunk of ice crystal and allowed its chilly air to waft over their bodies. Then, they jumped onto the skull island.

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

The crowd of blood-red mosquitoes descended as expected, but was instantly repelled when they sensed the glacial air coming from Ying Luo and Ying Luo. Some too slow to react were frozen to death by arctic breezes.

“It worked!” Ying Luo cheered. “But what do we do next? I deduced that the entrance to the tomb is here, but where is it?”

The girl looked around blankly. The island was only a few meters across and its surface seemed to be the top of a skull. Barren of everything, there was nothing on its surface.

“Don’t move.” Lu Yun shook his head at Ying Luo and took out another piece of ice crystal.

The cold air over its surface streamed toward the center of the island at a pace visible to the naked eye. Not only did its energy flow away from them, so did the wintry air over Lu Yun and Ying Luo’s bodies churn toward that central point.

The mosquitoes that’d retreated quietly reappeared again.

Lu Yun snorted and took out another crystal, replenishing his stock as soon as the two in his hands disappeared. Ying Luo also took out ten more pieces and dumped them on the ground.

A polar vortex formed in the center of the island, devouring all of the cold air wafting off of the crystals. It didn’t subside until Lu Yun’s last crystal and Ying Luo’s three hundredth piece were consumed.

A large door made of ice appeared in front of them. It was ghastly white, roughly six meters wide and nine meters tall. Towering in the center of the island, it radiated dreadfully frosty air. The mosquitoes that’d been eying the two living beings scattered out of sight.

“We did it!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up and he quietly operated the Dragonquake Scripture. He made some careful calculations to confirm that they would find the interior of the tomb behind this great door made of ice.

All tests had come to an end now that they’d reached this point. Everything was unpredictable after this. Pursuit of any opportunities would be up to one’s own abilities alone.

“Let’s go inside!” Lu Yun took in a deep breath and walked through the door of ice with Ying Luo.

“Eh?” Recovering by the banks of the Blood Sea, You Huoran brightened at the sight. “So they didn’t just arrive, but had already discovered the solution to the puzzle! Well now, I’ll just benefit from your hard labor then! Ying Luo, you bitch, how dare you attack me!”

He chuckled darkly and flew toward the tiny island.

Craaaaack.

Ugly cracks snaked over the door the moment he set foot on land.

“No!” Frantic, You Huoran streaked into a ray of light and barreled toward the door.

Bam!

The unexpected occurred. He didn’t pass through it like Lu Yun and Ying Luo had, but smashed his head against the doorframe.

Crack crack craaaack.

The door crumbled to pieces after You Huoran’s headbutt.

“Why… how?” He naturally couldn’t have missed his mark. The only explanation was that the door had denied him entrance.

Upon the door’s destruction, the accumulated cold air dissipated as well. The mosquitoes that’d been in hiding showed themselves again.

“Eeek!” he shrieked and ran off.

As a disciple of a sacred palace, You Huoran was much stronger than Mo Ke of the water origin land. Mo Ke may have died here, but You Huoran would never go down that path.

After escaping the island, he stood by the Blood Sea while his face shifted darkly through various emotions. In the end, he abruptly leapt into the air and headed for the corpse of a realm monster.

……

It was pitch black on the other side of the door. They couldn’t even make out the fingers on their outstretched hands. However, Lu Yun was reassured nonetheless—he was standing on solid ground.

“What was that?” Ying Luo suddenly asked in a quavering voice behind Lu Yun.

An exceedingly strange sound traveled in from the distance, quite out of place in the emptiness of the dark.

“It’s the sound of water,” Lu Yun said after listening carefully. “There’s probably a river in the far distance. But space here is uncanny, so it’s distorted the sound of water flowing.”

“Oh.” Ying Luo nodded. “Um… I’m scared.”

She suddenly drew close to Lu Yun, who could clearly feel that the girl was shaking.

“Scared?” He raised an eyebrow. “If we run into any danger, you’d be the one who’s more likely to make it out alive.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her reaction.

“It’s not that… I’m just afraid.” A note of suffering crept into her voice. “I can’t see anything and don’t know if the you next to me is the real you… I’m scared. This is my first time leaving the sacred palace by myself.”

Whoosh!

Lu Yun opened his palm and ignited a bright red flame to illuminate their surroundings. Ying Luo was standing next to him, her hands clutching his left arm. Her face was a bit pale and she stared fixedly in one direction, unable to speak.

“Don’t be afraid, they’re all dead. Dead means they won’t be a threat to us. In a tomb like this, anything alive is far more dangerous!” Lu Yun comforted her when he, too, saw what was around them.

To be honest, he wasn’t feeling at ease in their current surroundings either. This place was like an ancient battlefield, filled with all sorts of corpses. Some were human, some were other races. They weren’t skeletons—they resembled as they had appeared in life. Though there wasn’t any blood or gore here, it was still a very disquieting sight.

“They aren’t part of the tomb. They’re the people who came in earlier,” Ying Luo suddenly said. “The sacred lands and places used them. There’s no blood or gore here because the Blood Sea outside drained them of their blood to form the bloody path…”

“What?” Lu Yun jerked with shock. So the tens of millions of sacrifices had ended up here!

“The water you hear isn’t the distorted sound of a river either, it’s how blood sounds when it flows. It’s the sound of their collected blood,” Ying Luo murmured to herself. “Why do this? Wasn’t there any other way to enter the tomb? Why sacrifice tens, hundreds of millions and use their blood to carve out a safe path?”

Horror prickled at Lu Yun’s scalp as he looked at Ying Luo. Her hair was now the color of blood.

“What did they do wrong? Why do this?” Ying Luo turned around, her eyes the color of blood as well.