Chapter 480: Remnant Soul at the End
"Who are you? Where exactly are you?"
Yun Che stopped in his tracks, turned around, and shouted into his surroundings. The voice just now had been so close, as if it had sounded right next to his ear.
Half an hour before the Primordial Mystic Ark's aura appeared, the space would undergo increasingly intense tremors. Right now, the space within the Primordial Mystic Ark was completely still, so Yun Che naturally didn't need to leave in a hurry. Over these past six months, he had been constantly trying to figure out where that voice, which kept ringing out and was clearly directed only at him, was coming from.
As before, after he shouted, he received no response for a long time.
Yun Che began to scan his surroundings... Just now, he had heard it very clearly; the source of the voice was very close to him. A real voice attenuates with distance, and soul transmission was the same. He was almost certain that the source of the voice was no more than ten steps away from him.
Yun Che walked slowly to the center of the platform, carefully surveying every corner. At that moment, a faint red light flashed across his vision. His gaze immediately fixed on a spot at the end of the platform against the wall. Yun Che had noticed this red light on his very first day entering the Primordial Mystic Ark and had even found its source. However, since he had no ability at the time to blast open the floor tiles, although he was curious and surprised by the red light and vaguely sensed that there seemed to be a hidden space below, he had no way to investigate further.
Yun Che walked over and stood at the spot he had found earlier. Bending down, through a tiny crack at his feet, he saw a faint red light flickering and shooting out from underground, appearing and disappearing intermittently.
Yun Che pondered for a moment, then condensed profound energy in his hand and punched the stone slab beneath his feet.
Boom!!
Yun Che's fist bounced back. The feeling and the sound both proved that the stone slab was not very thick... at least much thinner than the stone door he had taken half a year to blast open. Without hesitation, he sat down, focused his mind, and channeled Ice God Divine Art in his left hand and Phoenix Flame in his right... Over the entire six months, he had spent more than eighty percent of his time repeating the process of fusing them, so he had become adept at guiding and controlling the power throughout the process.
Before long, Ice God Divine Art and Phoenix Flame fused in Yun Che's hands into a slightly flickering ice-blue flame. As his palm turned over, the ice flame gently fell onto the stone slab below.
To Yun Che's surprise, the stone slab beneath his feet was far thinner than he had expected—almost as thin as a piece of paper. After the ice flame landed, the slab melted like a quickly dissolving layer of ice, disappearing rapidly under the ice flame. It spread outward, destroying a perfectly circular gap about a foot wide in the stone before completely extinguishing.
Through the gap created by the ice flame's destruction, Yun Che saw a hidden space below, with red light flickering and dancing within.
What exactly was down there?
Could that voice be coming from this space below?
A gap a foot wide was barely enough for Yun Che to jump down directly.
After hesitating for a long while, he finally stepped forward and leaped down through the gap.
This hidden space beneath the platform was not high. Yun Che dropped less than two zhang before his feet landed on a cold, hard, and flat floor. There was no dangerous aura emanating from the surroundings, but Yun Che's nerves remained tense. He lifted his gaze and looked ahead.
The space was not large, only about ten zhang in both length and width. It was empty and spotless, except for a red light mass standing at the very center of the floor.
This light mass was about as tall as Yun Che's body, perfectly spherical, emitting a red light that fluctuated in intensity but was generally soft and carried no aggressive aura.
This was...
Yun Che walked over and stood in front of the light mass. Although the red light was not intense, it was very dense, preventing Yun Che's vision from penetrating even a fraction into the light mass. But his intuition told him that something seemed to be wrapped inside this red light mass.
What exactly was this?
The Primordial Mystic Ark had existed for an extremely long time. As Mo Li had said, it was "so ancient that you cannot even imagine it." Having endured such an age, this light mass was still emitting red light, showing how extraordinary it was.
Yun Che extended his arm and tentatively reached toward the light mass.
"Don't touch it!"
Mo Li's voice rang out in his mind, causing Yun Che's movement to halt abruptly. His arm retracted sharply, and his body jerked back like he had been electrocuted.
"Hmph, you dare reach out and touch something without even knowing what it is? Do you want to die?" Mo Li said coldly.
"What exactly is this light mass?" Yun Che asked. A light mass that had not been extinguished for countless years must contain power so great that he couldn't comprehend it. Reaching out to touch it recklessly was indeed somewhat rash.
"This isn't some light mass; it's an extremely powerful protective barrier," Mo Li said gravely. "It appears harmless, but if you dare touch it recklessly, it will retaliate immediately... The weakest level of its retaliation would be enough to kill you tens of thousands of times!"
For Mo Li to describe it with the words "extremely powerful," one could imagine how terrifying this red light mass was. And Mo Li's statement that "the weakest level of its retaliation would be enough to kill you tens of thousands of times" was not an exaggeration. Yun Che's heart skipped a beat, and he took another step back.
"You... have finally... come..."
An ethereal, smoke-like voice slowly echoed in this underground space. But this time, it was no longer a soul transmission but a clear, real woman's voice. Not only did Yun Che hear it, but Mo Li also heard it distinctly.
This voice was even closer than before, as if it came from right in front of him. Yun Che quickly turned his head to look around and said cautiously, "Who exactly are you?"
As soon as Yun Che's voice faded, a faint, pale white shadow slowly emerged beside the red light... It was the silhouette of a woman, dressed in white, with a slightly short stature, half-white hair, and a somewhat hunched body, indicating that she should be an elderly woman who had long entered her twilight years.
"You... you are?" Yun Che was startled and instinctively asked. The old woman's figure in front of him was very blurry, as blurry as a wisp of drifting white smoke, as if a gentle breeze could blow it away.
On the first day he entered the Primordial Mystic Ark, Mo Li had told him that the one summoning him was most likely a soul entity... a soul entity like herself. But Mo Li's soul entity, when seen with the eyes alone, was no different from a real young girl. Moreover, because she was attached to his life, he could even touch her presence, just like touching a normal body. But the soul entity before him was faint and ethereal, like a dying candle in the wind.
"I am a guardian... guarding my young mistress..." The old woman let out a faint, aged voice. With soul transmission, it took her a long time to send one, but face-to-face communication seemed unimpeded: "I have been searching for you... searching for you for a very... very long time..."
"You... searching for... me?" Yun Che pointed to himself, then glanced at his left hand and said, "Are you searching for... the Heavenly Poison Pearl?"
"Correct... I drove the Mystic Ark... crossing one space after another... only to find the Heavenly Poison Pearl..."
"Wait!" A look of shock appeared on Yun Che's face: "The Mystic Ark you speak of, is it the giant Mystic Ark I'm in right now? It was under your control?"
"At the beginning... it was indeed under my control... but at that time, I too was poisoned by demon poison... every moment it was destroying my life and soul... In order to preserve the consciousness to guard my young mistress... I abandoned my body and eighty percent of my soul... leaving only a wisp of remnant soul... and could no longer control the Mystic Ark... So the Mystic Ark, following the memory imprint I left at the very beginning... continuously shuttled through fixed spaces... repeating in cycles... three hundred years per cycle... The power of the Mystic Ark... has also been continuously depleting... Until now... its power... is also nearing exhaustion..."
"Fortunately, heaven has taken pity on me... At the end of my remnant soul... at the end of the Mystic Ark's demise... I finally waited for you..."
Yun Che's mouth slightly opened as he quickly digested the old woman's words, each one slow but shocking. This enormous Mystic Ark was actually controlled by someone... And this old woman before him had once been capable of controlling such an astonishing Mystic Ark! The fixed three-hundred-year appearance of the Mystic Ark in Tian Xuan Continent and its fixed three-hundred-year shuttling through fixed spaces... was also because of this old woman?
"'At the end of your remnant soul' is indeed correct." Mo Li's voice carried a hint of faint pity. "This remnant soul will dissipate soon... in no more than a hundred breaths! To find the person she has been searching for in the last hundred breaths before her remnant soul fades away... it seems she doesn't need pity."
Within a hundred breaths? Yun Che's heart stirred. He looked at the old woman's mist-like figure and asked, "Who exactly are you? Why are you searching for the Heavenly Poison Pearl... What can I do for you?"
The old woman sensed no malice from Yun Che's body, which was the most gratifying thing to her. She said slowly, "I am just a guardian... My young mistress... my race... have long been forgotten by the world... There is no need to mention it again... My young mistress... she was struck by a terrible demon poison... In all the chaos, only the Heavenly Poison Pearl can cure it... To prevent the demon poison from spreading, my young mistress was sealed into the 'Eternal Pivot'..."
"Eternal Pivot?"
The old woman's voice grew more and more ethereal: "The chaos was in turmoil... gods and demons fought fiercely... the heavens and earth overturned... the gods wept and the heavens cried... I took my young mistress and fled in the Mystic Ark... The 'Eternal Pivot' sealed my young mistress's body and soul... and also made her aura vanish from the chaos... thus allowing her to escape that world-covering catastrophe... As long as the Heavenly Poison Pearl purifies the demon poison on her body... she can awaken again... My bitter life can finally bear good fruit..."
Demon poison... Demon poison?! These two words from the old woman caused Mo Li's aura within the Heavenly Poison Pearl to become slightly disturbed... because she too had been afflicted with a demon poison. Moreover, it was the most terrifying of all demon poisons—Godslayer Desolation Poison! And only the Heavenly Poison Pearl could purify and eliminate it.
The old woman's voice grew fainter, and her words began to seem somewhat confused. She didn't want to reveal her and her "young mistress's" identities and origins, yet she seemed involuntarily to recount images and fragments of the past. And her already thin, mist-like figure became even more ethereal at this moment.
She was a guardian, and for the sake of longer guardianship, she had not hesitated to abandon her body and eighty percent of her soul... guarding until the very moment when her remnant soul was about to completely disperse. Yun Che couldn't help but be moved. He glanced at the red light mass and said, "Is your 'young mistress' sealed within this light mass? The Heavenly Poison Pearl is indeed on me. If it can truly save your 'young mistress' and won't cause any harm to me personally, I will try my utmost."
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