The third blue-black stone door stood silently open.
Within was a darkness deep to the utmost extreme, like the gaping maw of an abyss capable of devouring everything.
Yet Lin Mu, rather than relaxing, grew utterly alert instead.
Looking back over the Black Bone King's inheritance, the pattern was in fact exceedingly strict.
The first trial required refining a Rank 2 Blood Attraction Gu and feeding the stone door with a massive amount of Primeval Essence.
The second trial required capturing a Thousand Beast King alive and sealing it inside a Dragon Trap Gu as an offering.
Each time there were exceedingly explicit prerequisites, and only then was a generous reward given.
By this logic, having just taken the reward of the second layer, there should have been some sort of note or hint left on the offering table or inside the Bookworm, telling him what the third trial's task was.
But now there was no hint at all.
And yet the door had opened on its own.
Lin Mu did not let the elation of having just obtained his reward rush to his head and send him charging in.
On the contrary, his steps were nailed firmly in place.
"Something's off."
Lin Mu narrowed his eyes slightly, his muscles taut to the extreme in this moment.
When things turn abnormal, there is always a demon behind it.
He retreated half a step with exceeding caution, first circling the edge of the second-layer chamber to inspect it once more, then sent his mind probing into the Bookworm, searching through it over and over, a full three times.
There was no hidden information smuggled within, not a single word or phrase concerning the third door.
Lin Mu stood where he was, caught in fierce hesitation.
In his current condition, the most rational choice was of course to quit while ahead and withdraw immediately.
After all, Black Blood Stockade outside was being besieged relentlessly by the White Bone Alliance's army. When the nest is overturned, no egg remains whole.
What he needed most now was to find a safe place and thoroughly refine the Rank 3 Gu worms he had just obtained, converting them into substantive combat strength.
But on the other hand— when would he ever be able to return to this place again?
Once Black Blood Stockade's walls were breached, the secret of these rear mountains absolutely could not be kept.
And even if Black Blood Stockade held, once Lin Cang, that Rank 4 Patriarch, caught his breath, this underground inheritance chamber might be exposed at any time.
Miss today, and this third door that had already opened— the secret of the Black Bone King's "heart" inheritance— might slip through his fingers forever.
Lin Mu stared fixedly into that darkness, rapidly weighing the pros and cons in his heart.
In the end, that fanatical nature in his bones still won out over caution.
"At the very least… go in and take one look."
Lin Mu gritted his teeth and made his decision.
So long as he maintained absolute vigilance, the instant he detected any sign of something being wrong, he would channel his Gu worms and withdraw.
Having made up his mind, Lin Mu drew a deep breath and finally took that step.
He slowly crossed the threshold of the stone door.
However, the moment he stepped into the third layer, Lin Mu's heart sank sharply.
This layer was completely different from the two before it.
Here, there was only a near-total, impenetrable, pure darkness.
Maintaining the utmost vigilance, Lin Mu took two more exceedingly careful, probing steps forward.
But in the very instant his heel came down—
"Rumble…"
An exceedingly muffled and irresistible roar suddenly came from behind him!
Lin Mu whipped his head around, his pupils contracting to pinpoints in an instant.
That stone door, which had stood open, had actually slammed shut with exceeding speed without him noticing in the slightest!
The last sliver of faint light filtering in from the second-layer chamber was completely snuffed out.
The surroundings instantly fell into absolute dead silence and darkness.
"I've walked into a trap!"
Every hair on Lin Mu's body stood on end. His first reaction was to channel Primeval Essence and forcibly blast the stone door open.
But before he could act—
In this dead-silent darkness where even time seemed to have stopped, from some unknown direction, with exceeding abruptness, a voice came.
That voice was exceedingly aged, weary, very faint, yet as though it had crossed centuries of long years, carrying a desolation and unwillingness that sank into the marrow, it sounded faintly beside Lin Mu's ear.
"Gu Immortal…"
"Gu Immortal, ah…"
The instant he heard those words, the Primeval Essence Lin Mu had been about to unleash was forcibly pulled back into his apertures.
Because he had heard those words before!
Back when he had first made contact with that Pitch-Black Bone Plate, in that extremely oppressive quagmire space, that remnant will of the Black Bone King that might dissipate at any moment— what it had left behind before vanishing completely was exactly such a long sigh filled with endless regret!
And now, in this boundless darkness, a single exceedingly faint point of luminescence slowly surfaced, like a guttering candle in the wind.
That mote of light gradually interwove and sketched itself out in midair.
An aged figure that had vanished centuries ago actually began to slowly condense into form once more before Lin Mu.
Still that hunch-backed Black Bone King, his frame like withered wood.
The aged phantom did not speak. He merely slowly lifted those turbid, hollow eyes — eyes that nonetheless seemed to see through every falsehood in the world — and gazed quietly at Lin Mu.
Immediately after, without giving Lin Mu any time to react at all, around him and that elder's phantom, in this pure darkness, ripples suddenly spread out like water, and scene after scene of projected images appeared from nothing, like a revolving lantern.
The images began.
With a spirited, arrogant young man with a full head of black hair.
His blood qi soared to the heavens, his earth qi was thick and heavy. Treading on the corpses of countless enemies, he laughed wildly at the sky in the hundred thousand mountains of the Southern Border, insufferably proud.
Then the images flowed by at speed.
The youth became middle-aged, and the pressure he exuded grew ever more terrifying.
Rank 2, Rank 3, Rank 4… he advanced triumphantly all the way, slaughtering countless powerful foes, overthrowing one clan and sect after another that stood in his path.
In the end, he stepped onto the peak of Rank 5, standing at the highest point within these thousands of li, becoming a Demonic Path titan whose name made countless people tremble.
Further on, the images grew heavy and oppressive.
That Demonic Path tyrant who had once swallowed mountains and rivers in his ambition began, bit by bit, to go grey at the temples, his once-straight spine beginning to hunch.
Time in the images flew past mercilessly.
The beauties who had been his confidantes aged and withered, turning into mounds of yellow earth.
Those mortal enemies of his — some died in battle, some died of old age.
The people, affairs, and things around him cycled and replaced one another in a frenzy.
Only him.
Only this Black Bone King standing at the summit of the Southern Border.
He exhausted untold painstaking effort, spent every last scheme, explored countless death grounds, yet his aura always, stubbornly, remained at peak Rank 5.
No matter how he struggled, no matter how he roared, he never, in the end, crossed that one step.
The gulf between immortal and mortal was like a chasm of heaven.
Until the images reached their end. All the glory, slaughter, and struggle shattered and vanished like dreams and bubbles.
In the darkness, only that phantom, aged to the utmost extreme, remained, gazing up alone into this empty blackness.
"In the end…"
"I still never saw it…"
Accompanying that sigh, faint as gossamer, the aged phantom, along with that last mote of light, vanished completely, like a guttering candle blown out in a single breath.
Endless darkness surged in again like a tide, swallowing Lin Mu whole.
But this time, it was not merely the deprivation of sight.
Lin Mu discovered with shock that when he stretched out his hand, he could not even see his five fingers.
What was more terrifying was that when he shifted his feet slightly beneath them, there was no longer that solid sensation of standing on firm ground!
Suspended in the air?
Or floating?
He could not feel gravity, could not determine up from down, could not distinguish left from right.
His five senses were utterly twisted and stripped away in this place.
"An illusion realm? Or some kind of special maze formation?"
Lin Mu forced himself to calm down and began dealing with the predicament before him.
He tried walking forward.
One step, two steps, ten steps. There was no change in his surroundings, not even the slightest resistance of airflow.
"If walking won't work, then run!"
Lin Mu began exerting force.
He ran faster and faster, sprinting madly through the darkness, even trying to constantly change direction — left, right, leaping upward, diving downward.
But no matter how he ran, how fast he ran, or how long he ran, his surroundings were always that despair-inducing, dead-silent darkness without a single point of reference.
No change, no end, and no edge.
Gradually, Lin Mu's speed slowed. After countless rounds of trial and error, he finally stopped this pointless struggle.
He had discovered an exceedingly cruel fact.
"Running itself is meaningless."
He had at first suspected this was some kind of maze formation, so he had tried silently counting his steps, tried leaving markers in the void.
He had even attempted to forcibly judge this space's sense of direction through his own exceedingly faint breathing.
But all of it failed.
This darkness had completely severed the causal law between matter and perception.
In the end, Lin Mu stopped his steps.
Just like that, he hung alone and silent in this absolute void and darkness, without the slightest movement.
However.
In the very instant he completely ceased moving and came to a full stop, in this darkness that had been dead silent for who knew how long, for the first time, a sound appeared that did not belong to him.
An exceedingly indistinct voice, one whose source could not even be placed, sounded faintly.
"Why have you stopped?"
Lin Mu raised his head.
His gaze swept across this empty darkness in which no source of the voice could be found at all. There was not a ripple of expression on his face as he answered coldly:
"Because continuing to run is meaningless."
The darkness fell into an exceedingly brief pause.
As though chewing over the answer Lin Mu had given.
Then.
That indistinct voice came again from the darkness in all directions.
"Meaningless…"
The voice was drawn out long, carrying a tone of interrogation, as it slowly asked, one word at a time:
"Then why walk at all?"