121: Take advantage of the chaos to sneak into the secret realm.
About fifteen minutes later, the last batch of remaining evil cultivators and monsters began to step into the light gate one after another. Among the three Elders, "Black Wind" and "Bone Phosphorus" entered first. Finally, only "Elder Purple Fiend" remained, along with two confidants whose auras were exceptionally refined and who seemed to be his close aides, as well as three monster representatives.
Just as "Elder Purple Fiend" seemed about to step into the light gate, he suddenly stopped and turned his head sharply. Those deep eyes hidden behind the bronze mask were like two ghost fires, suddenly shooting toward the ice crevice where Li Muchen was hiding!
Was he discovered?! Li Muchen's heart jolted, but his body remained motionless, and even his heartbeat almost stopped. He pushed the "Turtle Crane Respiration" to its limit, merging himself with the surrounding environment.
"Elder, what's wrong?" one of the confidants asked.
Elder Purple Fiend stared in 그 direction for a moment, purple light flickering in his eyes as if he were using some kind of pupil technique or secret method to scan. After a while, he slowly withdrew his gaze and said coldly, "It's nothing; perhaps I am being oversensitive. The spiritual energy here is turbulent, and there are remnants of an ancient formation; occasional abnormal fluctuations are normal. However... we should add another layer of insurance."
As he spoke, he raised his right hand, and three skull heads, each the size of a fist, pitch-black and covered with blood-colored runes, slid out of his sleeve! Pale green soul fire burned in the hollow eye sockets of the skulls, emitting a thick aura of misfortune and death.
"Go!" Elder Purple Fiend barked softly, tossing the three skulls into the air.
The skulls expanded with the wind, instantly becoming the size of millstones. They flew toward the left, right, and rear of the Rocky Beach entrance, hovering in mid-air. Their hollow eye sockets were aimed downward, and the pale green soul fire burned eerily, forming an invisible force field that enveloped an area of dozens of yards around the entrance!
"These are the 'Three Yin Soul-Slaying Skulls,' refined from century-old resentful souls and subterranean Yin Fiend energy. They are most adept at sensing the aura of living beings and soul fluctuations. If anyone unauthorized approaches, they will immediately sense it and launch Soul-Slaying Yin Thunder!" Elder Purple Fiend said sinisterly. "They will remain here as the final alert. Once the Grand Sacrifice is complete, I will naturally return to retrieve them."
After saying this, he no longer hesitated and, leading his last two confidants and the three monster representatives, stepped into the pale blue light gate.
Light and shadow flickered, but the light gate did not close immediately. Instead, it remained in a semi-open, energy-stable state, clearly to facilitate internal personnel entering and exiting or passing messages. Those three giant black skulls, like three eerie guardian gods, hovered in the air, slowly rotating as their pale green soul fire scanned every inch of the ground below.
Li Muchen thought to himself. These Three Yin Soul-Slaying Skulls were indeed a problem. They targeted the "aura of living beings" and "soul fluctuations." Although his "Turtle Crane Respiration" could restrain his presence to a great extent, he had no absolute certainty whether he could completely hide from these three evil objects, which were clearly at the Magic Treasure level, at such close range.
Furthermore, with the light gate kept open, there would surely be people stationed inside or conducting regular patrols. Rushing in blindly would be extremely risky.
But he could not give up. The night of the full moon was tomorrow night. If he could not sneak in ahead of time to grasp the internal situation and make some arrangements, by the time the sacrifice officially began and the opponent's forces gathered, the Five Immortals Ancestors might very well arrive in person. At that time, the difficulty of trying to sabotage it would increase exponentially.
He needed to wait for an opportunity, or... create one.
Time passed bit by bit. The sky grew darker, and night was about to fall.
Like the most patient hunter, Li Muchen lay quietly in the shadows of the ice crevice. His Divine Sense, however, quietly extended outward—not to investigate, but to carefully brush against the edges of the force field emitted by the three skulls like a feather, feeling their operational patterns and sensing thresholds.
At the same time, part of his attention was also on the pale blue light gate that remained open. Every half hour or so, an evil cultivator in a gray robe would walk out of the light gate, patrol the vicinity of the entrance, and strike a hand seal into the hovering skulls, seemingly checking their status, before returning inside. The patrol was very regular, with only one person each time, and their cultivation was between the Late Stage of Qi Refining and the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment.
This was a flaw that could be exploited.
When the fourth patrolling evil cultivator finished checking the skulls as a matter of routine and turned to return to the light gate, a sudden change occurred!
It wasn't Li Muchen who acted, but something from the surface of the Heavenly Pool!
On the icy surface of the lake center, about half a mile away from the Rocky Beach, a huge hole exploded without warning with a "Boom!" Amidst flying ice chips, a thick black shadow, carrying a sky-full of water splashes and intense Demonic Qi, soared into the sky!
It was actually a giant crocodile whose body was even a size larger than the previous "Black Water Yuan Lord," with a single horn on its head and heavy blue-black scales covering its entire body! The giant crocodile's eyes were as red as blood, its fangs were interlocking in its mouth, and it emitted a violent, chaotic, and destructive aura of murderous ferocity!
It was not a monster of the Five Immortals Alliance. Judging by its aura, it was more like some ancient Vicious Beast that had been dormant for many years in the depths of the Heavenly Pool waters and had suddenly awakened due to the recent drastic changes in spiritual energy or being disturbed!
The giant crocodile seemed to be attracted by the aura of the many "living beings" on the shore and the sinister soul fire of the three skulls. As soon as it appeared, it let out a deafening roar. Its four limbs paddled, and with a speed disproportionate to its massive body, it crushed the ice and charged toward the Rocky Beach entrance! Everywhere it passed, the ice layer shattered and the lake water surged, creating a terrifying momentum!
This sudden turn of events caused the patrolling evil cultivator, who was about to return to the light gate, to turn pale with fright!
And those three hovering "Three Yin Soul-Slaying Skulls," upon sensing the giant crocodile's massive, violent, and hostile aura of a living being, were also instantly triggered! The pale green soul fire in the skulls' eye sockets suddenly flared up, and three bolts of dark green Yin thunder, as thick as a bowl's mouth and containing bone-chilling cold and venomous Soul Power, tore through the air like poisonous snakes emerging from their holes, striking fiercely toward the charging giant crocodile!
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The Yin thunder accurately hit the giant crocodile's back armor, exploding into clusters of dark green electric light and Yin Qi! The giant crocodile cried out in pain and let out an even more enraged roar. Its charging speed did not decrease but increased instead; it was clearly thoroughly provoked!
The patrolling evil cultivator on the shore was scared out of his wits. He hurriedly sent a distress signal into the light gate while trying to dodge to the side.
Just at the moment when the giant crocodile charged the shore, the Yin thunder raged, the patrolling evil cultivator was in a panic, and everyone's attention was drawn to this sudden event—
A figure as faint as blue smoke and as fast as a ghost drifted silently out of the ice crevice. He did not charge directly toward the light gate but stayed close to the ground, following a mysterious trajectory like a willow catkin drifting in the wind. Lightly and swiftly, he bypassed the front of the Three Yin Soul-Slaying Skulls' force field, where the sensing was most acute, and flashed through a "blind spot" area on the side where the ice was broken and the spiritual energy was even more turbulent due to the giant crocodile's impact!
Pushing "Turtle Crane Respiration" to the limit, his figure perfectly merged with the surrounding violent ice chips, water vapor, and the aftershocks of the Yin thunder!
In the next moment, that smoke-like figure, like a drop of ink merging into water, entered the pale blue, open light gate without any obstruction and disappeared.
The entire process happened in the blink of an eye. By the time the giant crocodile rushed onto the shore and collided with several evil cultivators who had hurriedly poured out of the light gate, triggering an even more chaotic battle and roars, no one had noticed that fleeting blue shadow.
The Three Yin Soul-Slaying Skulls continued to bombard the giant crocodile, their pale green soul fire illuminating the chaotic shore.
And Li Muchen had already successfully sneaked into the Secret Realm.
His feet stepped onto that land that had been managed by the Five Immortals Alliance for a long time and where the evil Grand Sacrifice was about to be held.
Before his eyes was a dark, damp natural tunnel filled with stalactites and strange glowing moss, leading to unknown depths.
The air was filled with a thick smell of blood, incense, Demonic Qi, and the heavy pressure unique to an ancient contract.
The prelude to the night of the full moon had already sounded behind him. And the true storm was waiting ahead.