The moment the blood-colored spirit ring lit up, the harmless shadows of people, who had been hovering in mid-air or standing on their points of leverage and had never been noticed from start to finish, suddenly began to writhe.
Like spilled ink, the dense, cohesive shadows instantly expanded to an incredible width.
It was like a deep abyss that silently opened its maw, within its dark throat, shadows of varying densities writhed.
They were neither beast nor object, neither human nor not, as if countless bizarre limbs were pieced together, roaming and writhing in the profound sea of shadows. As they suddenly magnified before Xie Yue and the others' terrified gazes, they revealed ferocious fangs and launched their attacks.
As for the shadows that originally belonged to Xie Yue and the others?
They had long been caught by these monsters lurking in the sea of shadows, dragged into deeper regions.
"Hum——"
Time seemed to be infinitely stretched.
Everyone's perception was incredibly clear, yet they could only watch helplessly as the inconspicuous shadows beneath their feet suddenly erupted, transforming into monstrous shadow beasts that swallowed them whole, absorbing all light and plunging them into endless darkness.
Faint whispers, whimpers of sorrow, roars of anger, hoarse, unintelligible murmurs…
As soon as they fell into the shadow, countless noisy, overlapping sounds rushed into everyone's ears.
They disregarded the protection of spirit power, invading their minds like demonic chants, echoing endlessly, causing everyone's heads to swell and limbs to weaken. The sliver of anxiety or the darker side of their hearts was amplified in silence.
Negative emotions that desired to destroy everything continuously surged from their hearts. Soldiers with weaker willpower, within seconds, had their retinas covered by an ominous red glow. Red blood vessels, like parasitic vines, spread across the whites of their eyes, even invading their pupils, giving them a look of being possessed.
"Why were you the one chosen for this expedition?"
"Abandoning your wife to rush to your death, your honor is preserved, but your wife, your children, without the pillar of the family, can they survive in this chaotic world?"
"Hee hee hee, the soldiers on the front lines are all sent to their deaths. You die, will your friends and family truly be taken care of well?"
"The innocent child, yet you didn't spare even an ignorant ordinary child. He looked so pitiful when he died, still looking at you in confusion, calling you 'uncle'."
"Do you remember the mother who desperately begged you to spare her child's life? Her fate, perhaps, will be the final fate of your wife and children."
"Clearly, you didn't have to slaughter the village; you could have incorporated it. Why did you have to kill all those pitiful villagers?"
The pitch-black darkness that obscured all five senses seemed to have a group of people surrounding them, opening their mouths and excavating the deepest guilt and memories they refused to face, each word transforming into a sharp blade, piercing their souls and shaking their resolve to fight for the empire.
Those voices were noisy and obscure; different people heard different words, different questions.
The most unwilling memories were consecutively evoked. Soldiers with weak willpower, one after another, broke down, their eyes turning scarlet and unfocused.
They abandoned their weapons, giving up all resistance as they fell. They clutched their heads in agony, letting out inhuman wails and roars from their throats, plummeting straight down, even deforming the hard, dark armor. They were crushed within, their rich blood seeping through the armor and then being eerily absorbed by the dark corridor floor.
And they had long since lost their breath, their eyes wide open in death.
"Form ranks! Form ranks! Quickly use spirit power to erect a barrier!"
"Holy Dragon Legion disciples, quickly form defensive formations! Find a way to block these sounds that interfere with people's spirits!"
Tuoba Xi, who landed with a bang, roared, first releasing his White Armor Earth Dragon martial soul, erecting a platinum spirit power barrier to protect Xie Yue and Yan, whose complexions had turned incredibly bad after falling, even though they hadn't gone mad.
Other Holy Dragon Sect disciples who landed together gritted their teeth and circulated their spirit power.
Soon, platinum lights began to flicker in this dark space one after another.
But they quickly discovered a major problem.
First, the platform they were standing on suddenly came alive, spewing out endless black tentacles, their tips transforming into various sharp weapons and stabbing at them.
While dodging in distress, they inadvertently discovered that their defensive capabilities were no better than they were on the ground.
Many imperial soldiers who dodged the first wave of attacks but couldn't withstand the next, losing their lives to the menacing black tentacles that pierced them.
And the spirit energy shields erected on the foundation of spirit skills could not completely isolate the sounds that poured into their brains; they only had a moderating effect.
Xie Yue, with his extraordinary willpower, stabilized his mind. After all, they, the Golden Generation, had all experienced countless life-and-death trials.
At this moment, his face was pale. He looked at the boundless darkness surrounding them. Upon closer inspection, he felt his scalp tingle.
Because while he was trying to hypnotize himself and strengthen his belief, he also felt an extremely strong sense of being watched.
It was a simple sense of being watched, like gazing into the distance while spacing out, devoid of any emotion, yet sticky as if being stared at by some terrifying existence, their gaze clinging to them tightly, like maggots to bone, impossible to block.
The amplified negative emotions, coupled with the oppressive feeling of countless people speaking around their ears, made their hair stand on end and their scalps tingle. Yan even began to nervously look around the pitch-blackness, wanting to know who was constantly watching them.
"Tang Sui! Are you the one watching us!?"
"Come out!"
"If you have the guts, don't hide in the darkness of your domain! Come out!"
Yan was like a startled bird; he would speak and then turn around. This jumpiness made even those within Tuoba Xi's spirit power barrier feel extremely uneasy.
Some soldiers who couldn't stand their ground, driven by the sense of urgency created by the suffocating darkness, began to randomly unleash spirit skill attacks around them.
But the light of their spirit skills was swallowed by the boundless darkness, and for a long, long time, there was no sound of impact, as if, apart from the floating island beneath their feet, there were no other touchable barriers.
"No, I can't feel any external presence at all. This place is like a closed but bottomless space. I can feel my defensive attributes have been weakened, and my mental strength is continuously dropping." Tuoba Xi, who had observed the soldiers' probing attacks, frowned, scanning the pitch-black surroundings, unable to find any opportunity for a breakthrough.
"We have likely been pulled into Tang Sui's domain. Only by finding Tang Sui can we break free." Su Dan Novel Network
Having reached this conclusion, Tuoba Xi's expression was grim.
Xie Yue looked at the soldiers whose spirits were starting to become unstable, his gaze deepened, and his voice held a fierce intent, "Then we'll force Tang Sui out!"
As the words fell, a dark spirit ring floated up from beneath his feet. The blood-red moon blade held in Xie Yue's hand glowed brightly, and its body began to expand.
"Seventh Spirit Skill, Weapon Spirit True Body!"