Chapter 3320: The Cursed Depths Of The Island

The burners were already packed with centuries of ash, but there was still enough space for the new incense to stand upright, angled slightly as dictated by the ritual.

One stick for every single ancestor.

SPARK

The incense sticks lit up on their own, as if guided by an unseen hand.

It was a staggering display, and the air grew heavy with reverence as the first few wisps of smoke rose.

Once everything was arranged, the youngsters stood side by side at the shrine’s entrance. They bowed deeply toward the ancestral tablets. Then they bowed toward the heavens. Lastly, they bowed toward the sea, acknowledging their origins and their duty.

When the final bow ended, Shanhu Guimen began chanting.

Her voice was soft at first, filled with the trembling notes of ancient language. The others joined in, and soon the shrine trembled with the resonance of their combined voices. The sound seemed to stretch the fabric of air itself.

SHUA SHUA SHUA

Old runes carved into the pillars flickered to life with blue light, faded memories awakening with the ritual.

Lin Mu and the others watched from beyond the barrier. They had been told the ritual would take an entire day. Now that it had begun, there was nothing to do but wait.

For most.

Lin Mu felt no such inclination.

There was something beneath the island. Something dense and ancient. Something that vibrated in the stone like a buried heartbeat. His instincts told him this place was not simply a resting ground for ancestors. The cursed energy that filled the Ninth Sea came from here.

Not from the shrine, but from deep below.

He stepped back from the barrier. "I am going to investigate underground."

Cattaleya tilted her head. "Be careful. If we feel anything strange, we will call you."

Elyon nodded. "You find trouble with ease. But I suppose you also solve it with ease."

Daoist Chu simply clapped him on the shoulder. "Return safely. The curse feels dormant, but there may be more than one layer of danger down there."

Lin Mu gave a small nod. "I will be fine."

SHUA

He took one step and vanished, his body phasing directly into the ground. Spatial qi rippled gently as he sank deeper and deeper, his form passing through stone like a drop of water slipping into a river.

The descent felt strange even to him.

The top of the island had looked like a pile of boulders, and that observation proved correct. The upper layers were nothing more than titanic chunks of rock tightly compressed together. As he continued downward, the composition changed.

Rocks gave way to dense compacted soil, compressed to the point of becoming almost metallic. Beneath that were layers of crushed skeletons. Some of the bones were small enough to belong to fish, while others were so massive that they likely came from beasts spanning hundreds of meters.

It was as if the ancestors of the island had taken the dead from countless battles and merged them into the foundation of the land.

The deeper he descended, the stronger the cursed energy became. It crawled against his skin like cold fingers and tried to leech vitality from his body. He had to control his Sword Intent to form a thin, clear barrier around himself.

The familiar warmth and certainty of the intent dispelled the draining force with ease, but only because his heart was stable enough to support such refined intent.

A normal cultivator would have already been a corpse.

Lin Mu sensed that the bottom of the island was close. The cursed energy was reaching levels he would describe as instantly lethal to anyone below the sixth tribulation stage. He pressed onward until the stone around him suddenly gave way.

He stepped out into a cavern.

It was enormous, stretching at least two kilometers end to end. The roof was arched and made of black stone that shimmered faintly with cursed runes, although none of them were actively glowing. The entire cavern was lit by a soft blue glow rising from a lagoon at its center.

This lagoon was unlike the cursed waters of the Ninth Sea. The water here was perfectly clear. So clear that he could see the bottom despite it being dozens of meters deep. It glowed faintly with a natural luminescence, like liquid moonlight.

More importantly, there was not a trace of cursed energy here.

The contrast was so abrupt it made him stop and stare.

"It is as if the lagoon is purifying the area around it," Lin Mu muttered.

But the absence of curse here only highlighted the real danger.

On the far end of the cavern floated five bodies.

Lin Mu froze.

Five corpses hung motionless in the air, suspended by chains made entirely of cursed energy. These chains sprouted from the cavern roof, twisted together, and wrapped around each corpse like the roots of a parasitic plant.

The corpses were upright, their limbs hanging loosely. Their faces were pale but not rotted. Their bodies had not decayed. They seemed preserved by some unnatural force, as though time itself refused to touch them.

Three were human.

One had the fishtail and fins of a Merkin.

The last one was unmistakably Fishkin, with sharp fins and webbed arms.

Each corpse pulsed with waves of cursed energy. That energy spread outward through the chains, into the cavern walls, and then into the very bedrock of the island. From there it seeped upward through the land and outward into the sea.

Lin Mu stared at the five corpses, his expression darkening.

This was the source of the curse.

But what horrified him more was the fact that the corpses had faint traces of runes etched on their bodies. Runes that belonged to sealing arrays. Runes that resembled ancient sacrificial magic. Runes that did not belong to any one culture.

It was a binding formation of three races.

And whoever performed it had used living beings as anchors.

He clenched his fist. "What happened here..."

Far above him, in the temple, the youngsters continued chanting.

And the curse began to stir.

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