The Sacred Ruins

“Damn you, Wormhole Express! How unreliable, what happened to the platinum VIP services? What a fraud, and you’re ignoring me now?!”

In the starry skies, there was a group of majestic ghosts. Amongst them was someone particularly offbeat and furtive. On one hand, he was pretending to hurry on with the other spirits, on the other, he was busy with his business, sneakily taking out his photon computer to communicate with the outside world.

“What’s the point even talking about improving your service and expanding your business into the broken universe among the primal chaos? I’m telling you, I want to put in a complaint! Your express company is so unreliable!”

Chu Feng lowered his voice as he expressed his dissatisfaction.

However, he then stared blankly as his photon computer lost signal. Was this caused by the Wormhole Express Company?

Oh no!

His head was swimming now. Could it be that this part of the starry skies wasn’t a part of the original universe? This alarmed him. Before, he had prepared for the worst, but now that it was real, it stunned him before chilling him from head to toe.

“Perhaps this area is too wildly overgrown, and so the interstellar network doesn’t cover here, just like Earth previously,” Chu Feng frowned and muttered to himself.

He knew that there was no signal on the interstellar network in neglected outskirts of the universe, such as on large uncivilized planets. The network was boycotted at all costs.

This kind of civilization was leaning toward divine demonic evolution. Science and technology were not approved.

The more he pondered on this, the more Chu Feng felt that this area, as before in the original universe, was too wild. Everyday, many souls would be exposed already if the interstellar network covered this area as they hurried on through here.

A troop consisting of several million people traversed through the starry skies, uninterrupted. There were too many to count.

The path following this was particularly dull. The starry skies were deathly still, and there was not a hint of vitality. Even the starlight looked like it was enshrouded with a layer of ashy fog. It brought a strong sense of demise.

Black stones were paved to form a path. It extended into the starry skies with an unknown end point. Countless souls, transformed from spiritual seeds, followed it untiringly.

How come they’re so obedient? Chu Feng was suspicious. What force was calling to them and making all these ghosts follow this path?

He had many questions about it and couldn’t understand it.

In the course of these events, Chu Feng had tried to fly away and escape from this path. However, he found that he was confined on this black stone pavement with no way to leave it.

There was one time where he had suddenly hit upon a wild idea. His spirit left his body, and he walked on the path as a soul like the other ghosts. Immediately, he shivered as he discovered a bunch of secrets.

He heard a sound, precisely the sound of music. It was a drawn out sob, like the crying of a ghost choking in grief. It came from the end of the path, and it was because of this that all the spirits were walking forward, approaching that area.

Chu Feng also felt rather strange after his spirit had left his body. He had an instinct to approach forward, as if there was a huge nest up ahead that he needed to return to.

Subsequently half of his spiritual form was still in his corporeal body, while the other half drifted about outside, using a different method to sense things.

He experienced various things with his eyes half-shut. It was as if he saw a blood-stained scene of the broken universe where all of the vital planets were tainted with blood. It was like the fall of all the gods.

A mysterious spiritual song rang out and numerous souls emerged through the starry seas. They advanced toward an indiscernible area as if to return to some sort of strange origin.

“How unusual!”

Chu Feng thought this was rather scary as well as disturbing. Was this real reincarnation, or some sort artificial of reincarnation setup where everything was being controlled?

At first, he had thought he wasn’t far from his destination and was almost there once he heard the mysterious spiritual song.

Yet he found that he had been overthinking. This carried on for several days, and it was incomparably dry and dull. He was repeating the same actions at every moment, and he walked on keeping to the prescribed order. Aside from this, nothing peculiar occurred.

Fortunately, the other spirit forms were already formatted. They didn’t have much willpower, so they didn’t experience the boredom.

However, Chu Feng was different, as he was a person with flesh and blood muddling along amongst the group of spirits, sneaking his way through. It was dreary to him and awfully dry.

Most importantly, he was worried about what was happening on Earth. To others, him disappearing in such a fashion must seem like he had already died, which would have drastic effects.

He was worried that Yellow Ox, the black yak, and the others would avenge him and, through that, lead to ambushes from those from the outer realms. He had already learnt how shameless those people were.

The magnificent saint had been manipulating from behind the scenes and had joined the field himself. In fact, it wasn’t just one saint who had intervened. It was next-level-immoral to get rid of him in such a surreptitious manner.

For the next seven or eight days, Chu Feng simply couldn’t sit still. Whenever his spirit left his body, he heard that spiritual song sounding monotonously as before with an unchanging rhythm.

Then, he couldn’t hear it any longer and sarted humming various tunes.

“I kiss you goodbye…”

“The jasmine flower blooms…”

“Who’s crying their eyes out…”

If by chance something terrifying did exist, it would surely be stunned and stupefied upon hearing his great singing voice and the rhythm of his spiritual songs.

Only the now-thick-nerved Chu Feng would do something as bold as singing love songs on the path of reincarnation. He was, after all, rather unpredictable.

Then, the ghosts around him looked like they had seen a ghost. They glanced at him, some turning backward, while others were facing forward.

“What’re you looking at? Have you never seen a ghost so elegant and romantic?!”

On the journey following, Chu Feng did various unpredicted matters, for example, scribing words on that nine-mouthed spirit’s body.

“If you really do get reincarnated, you’ll be born with natural scriptures. With the universe in your heart, you’re constitution will be extraordinary!” Chu Feng patted his shoulder.

Time passed quickly, and half a month had gone by in the blink of an eye. They finally left the senseless starry skies and entered a peculiar area.

Walking along the black stone path, they came across part of the Gobi desert. It was suspended within the starry skies and was incomparably desolate with no living creatures in sight.

It was indeed strange that there would be an unending desert in the middle of the starry seas.

In addition, there were lots of celestial bodies hanging not more than dozens of metres above their heads. Meteorites had crashed onto them before, so there were many ring-shaped pits suspended in mid-air. One could reach them with a big leap.

This completely violated the theory of physics!

Of course, he was already somewhat immune. He had seen so many things go against the rhythm of nature through his evolution experience of civilization.

Two days after they had left and entered the depths of the Gobi desert, Chu Feng discovered something strange had appeared on the path. Those were… soldiers!

“Yin soldiers have emerged! They’re life forms who guard the path of reincarnation!” Chu Feng’s eyes dilated. Was he going to finally discover the great secret at the end of one’s life?

Those creatures took on the form of a human, but also had features belonging to other races. For example, some of them had black ox horns on their heads, while others sported long snakes’ tails on their backs. Some had lion-dragon claws, while others had three heads and six arms. They were all completely different.

Yet they had one thing in common. They all carried the same kind of ancient blade on their backs. It was quite antique and looked like it had endured millions of years as even the scabbard was rotten.

Furthermore, these creatures were all bags of bones. At a glance, they looked dead without a hint of life in their withered bodies. Yet there were souls entrapped within those lifeless bodies.

Of course, their souls seemed rather lethargic like their spirit consciousness had been blinded. They were incomparably robotic and dull, forced to follow orders set years and years ago.

These withered creatures were responsible for guarding this path of reincarnation and discipline those who veered from the group. They would walk over stiffly and shoo those spirits back into the group with robot-like actions.

Chu Feng stared, looking on intently. At first, he had been worried that, given how special he was with blood and flesh, they would seize him and something unpredictable would happen.

Yet he found that he had been overthinking. These creatures were sickeningly boring and utterly dull, like machines with wound up chains. They only cared about the ghosts that tried to leave the group.

Some of the souls were rather weak. They were already tottering when they reached here, almost falling apart. In the end, they left the group, and even if they were forced back into the gang, they quickly fell behind again. They simply couldn’t do it.

At this moment, Chu Feng witnessed a horrifying scene as one of those withered creatures came forth. With a clang, it took out a long knife in a robot-like manner before wielding it with all its might. With the sound of a puff, it hacked the soul who left the group into two halves.

One could see that that soul immediately vanished into thin air, leaving absolutely nothing!

Chu Feng’s back shuddered. The entire knife was dark red, and there wasn’t any splendid radiance, but it was still incredibly terrifying. It had directly killed the soul, leading it to disappear into thin air.

The scabbard was partially rotten and almost shattered given the many years it had experienced. But the blade of the knife was simple yet sharp, and it could destroy spirits with just one blow.

Chu Feng was particularly attentive and secretively observing it.

Aside from weak spirits dropping out of the group, there were also extremely ferocious souls being rather dishonest. For example, the nine-mouthed spirit behind Chu Feng, who was considered quite derive, would bump into him every now and then.

In fact, some were even more terrifying. These were further ahead and, at times, clamors were transmitted back. More than once a taotie spirit had bitten other spirits.

Soon afterward when another commotion arose in the desert, one of the withered humanoid creatures came forth. It took out a long dark red knife and directly hacked across with it. Instantly, that formidable taotie spirit vanished and disappeared entirely!

Chu Feng was envious. Two people had taken out their knives back to back, and though they were different people, the type of knives they used were the same. The strength of both knives was the same, and they were made to destroy the creatures’ souls.

“Even replicated weapons on the path of reincarnation can do this. The knife produced is so terrifying and devilish. How extraordinary!”

An idea came to Chu Feng, and he wanted to try and get one for himself.

He found that these bodies, who were dead long ago, weren’t actually that hard to overpower as their spiritual consciousnesses was fragile. Their actions were innate, as if carrying out some sort of program. Their actual responses were rather lacking.

Then he took action. He saw a creature on its own and began to use his spiritual energy. Unexpected by it, he seized its ancient knife and tossed it to the nine-mouthed monster behind him. He made him carry it and ordered him not to do anything else.

With Chu Feng scribing on him and beating him throughout the journey, Chu Feng had made him rather obedient.

On the side of the path or reincarnation, the creature who had lost his knife turned his neck suspiciously. Because of this, his bones made robotic noises, as if he hadn’t moved in quite a few years. He was inflexible, and in the end, he stopped moving. It was like he had lost his consciousness and didn’t notice he had already lost his knife.

Once they had walked on for a bit, Chu Feng retrieved the knife from the nine-mouthed monster and unsheathed it from its rotten scabbard. In that instant, his hairs stood up on his body as he felt that he too would die were this knife to deal a blow on his body.

“One strike could destroy a person’s spirit. What a delightful, uncommon weapon this is!” Chu Feng immediately stashed it away.

Suddenly, he raised his head and glanced toward the distance. He saw planes of spirits disappear, and in an instant, the group of ghosts were nowhere to be seen. Ahead was the end.

“No wonder there were creatures carrying knives on guard on the side of the path. We’ve already reached the final destination!”

Chu Feng could tell that he had arrived at the end of the path of reincarnation!