The stone gate slowly rose inch by inch, the rusted stone grooves producing a harsh, metallic screech akin to countless fingernails scraping across a sheet of ice. The first sliver of dawn light pierced the eternal gloom like a quenched sword, yet the moment it illuminated the passage, it revealed an even more ghastly scene three zhang ahead: hundreds of white bone chains hung suspended from the vaulted ceiling, every link glowing with a ghostly, phosphorus-like light. At the ends of the chains, the skeletons of cultivators maintained their final struggles before death, and the eerie blue ghost fires burning deep within their eye sockets flickered uncertainly with the ambient yin qi, resembling candles in a netherworld.
"This is the Myriad Soul Heaven-Locking Formation of the Nether Cult." Yunzhongzi's fingertip grazed the rock wall, the crimson runes contracting like living creatures at his touch. "The *Records of the Nine Netherworlds* states: 'Bone chains suspend the heavens, soul fires never extinguish; those who enter the formation perish in soul and spirit within three breaths.'"
Before his voice had even faded, the passage floor suddenly fractured with spiderweb-like cracks. Yin qi, thick as ink, surged upward, condensing in midair into countless distorted grimaces. Every grimace split open its blood-soaked maw to reveal razor-sharp, pearly-white fangs.
Chapter 372