Seven hundred winters and summers flowed past, enough to see mortal dynasties rise and fall several times, mountains reshape, and rivers alter their courses. Yet deep within the forbidden Ancient Battlefield known as the "Cemetery of Eternal Silence," time seemed to have fallen into a stagnant, viscous mire. This place was where ancient gods had bled and countless cultivators had been buried; the tragic bloodshed had long since settled into every inch of earth and every strand of lingering wind. The air was as heavy as materialized lead and mercury, permeated with a rust-like stench of blood, mixed further with unspating grievances and mad whispers that felt like a poisonous miasma soaking into the soul. The gray-brown sky pressed down heavily upon the shattered, charred wilderness, devoid of sun, moon, and stars throughout the year, save for the occasional pale lightning tearing across the firmament, briefly illuminating this eternally silent dead zone.
Lin Moyu had made his home here, within a fissure in the mountain belly formed by collapsed giant boulders. How long he had sat in rigid meditation was unknown; his figure was like a weathered stone monument, his graying hair draped over dust-covered shoulders, almost melting into the shadows of the stone wall. His Dao robes were tattered and stained with ancient grime, save for the faint, struggling gleams of blurry golden talisman patterns along the hem, which flickered weakly in the absolute darkness before rapidly fading…
Chapter 196