Chapter 373. Another Nine-Colored Altar, Netherworld Fengdu
Lu Yuan's mind was full of questions. He couldn't make sense of it. Why would a place like Shennongjia contain something like this? Why was there an entirely different world complete with a sky and a blood-red moon beneath Shennongjia?
At this moment, Lu Yuan had one burning question in mind—What was this place?
After a brief moment of hesitation, he walked forward and stepped onto the seemingly boundless plains. The ruins all over it were far too deteriorated to determine what era they belonged to. At a glance, however, it was enough to extrapolate that they had to have come from an extremely ancient era.
Lu Yuan examined them closely and noticed something that made him pause. The architectural style of the ruins looked familiar.
"They're similar to the ones on Mount Tai," Lu Yuan muttered. Indeed, the ruins on Mount Tai were extremely identical to the ruins here, both in architectural style and the effects of the ruthless passage of time on them.
Those ruins on Mount Tai were suspected to be the ruins of the Celestial Court in ancient times. If that was the case, then this place had to be... Lu Yuan couldn't say for sure, but the air here was deeply oppressive. The sky above had purple lightning flashing across the clouds and a blood-red moon beyond it.
If the ruins on Mount Tai could be described as grand and imposing, then the ruins here were the polar opposite of those ruins. This place was suffocating and eerie, making anyone feel deeply disturbed.
The ruins on Mount Tai are suspected to be the ruins of the Celestial Court in ancient times, but since the ruins here give off the complete opposite vibe. Does that mean this place was once part of... the legendary Netherworld? Lu Yuan thought all of a sudden. He had encountered a similar place before inside the secret realm on Mount Kunlun, but that place had seemed like a mere imitation.
The ruins before him, however, radiated an eeriness that surpassed the City of the Wrongfully Dead by a huge margin. It truly did look like a part of the legendary Netherworld. Of course, all of this was just speculation on Lu Yuan's end.
He shook his head and stopped dwelling on it. He focused entirely on following the Nine Cauldrons' aura.
The cauldron was his original objective; too many things had simply gotten in the way. Lu Yuan knew he couldn't afford any more delays. He had already wasted too much time.
As Lu Yuan continued his search, he could feel himself getting closer and closer to the cauldron. At last, he found it. Ahead of him stood an altar standing on soil with nine distinct colors.
"Another nine-colored altar?" Lu Yuan's expression changed at the sight. This wasn't the first time he had seen such an altar, and at this point, he had noticed a pattern. Whenever he was in a place shrouded in mystery, a nine-colored altar would be waiting for him, and one of the Nine Cauldrons would be there, too.
In fact, he could clearly sense it. One of the Nine Cauldrons was resting beneath the altar. Extracting it wouldn't be simple, and he still had no idea why there were nine-colored altars in the first place.
The consequences of destroying one were unpredictable, but he knew that these altars were deeply connected to those so-called Extracosmic Heavenly Demons.
Lu Yuan took out the mysterious small bronze cauldron. Even now, the small bronze cauldron's origins eluded Lu Yuan. He had asked Jiang Ningxian about it before, but she hadn't given a straight answer, so he decided to stop asking.
It didn't matter. All he needed to know was that it was serving him well.
Lu Yuan cut his palm and began the ritual once more.
Hum!
Streams of light erupted from the small bronze cauldron, and the lights merged with the nine-colored altar. Moments later, both radiated a brilliant glow that criss-crossed in mid-air, becoming one.
As time passed, powerful waves of energy rose from the altar. Lu Yuan watched as a pillar of light appeared above it, and within that pillar, a cauldron with three legs and two handles slowly materialized.
"I knew it." He smiled when he saw the cauldron, but something wasn't right here. The cauldron was different from the others. Chunks of it were missing in several places, and its surface was scarred with the marks of blades, spears, swords, and halberds. It was also covered in streaks of blood that had long since turned black.
The damage was so extensive that he couldn't determine its identity.
It seemed he would have to figure out its identity once he was out of here.
For reasons he couldn't quite articulate, Lu Yuan felt that there was something wrong with this place. He felt like staying here any longer than necessary was unwise.
After putting away the cauldron, he turned back without hesitation. Jiang Ningxian and the others were still waiting above, and if he kept dragging things out, they would keep on worrying about him.
On his way back, he spotted a cluster of ruins that had been preserved in relatively decent condition. A black plaque lay on the ground among the debris. The plaque was cracked and incomplete, but enough of it remained to make out what had been written on it.
The characters were older than even the oracle bone script. An ordinary person would never be able to read them, but for reasons unknown even to Lu Yuan, he could read the word—Fengdu.[1]
Fengdu? Isn't that part of the Netherworld? Lu Yuan thought. Had his guess really been correct?
Rumble!
Just as Lu Yuan was lost in thought, powerful rumbling noises erupted from the sky above. The vast plains shuddered, and wisps of unknown energy swept across the plains.
Something was changing. Lu Yuan's expression tightened. Right now, his physical body was all he had. He couldn't draw upon the power inside him, so if something went wrong down here, the consequences could be dire.
"I've got to back up first." With no hesitation, Lu Yuan jumped. A single leap carried him over a hundred meters. His physical body had already surpassed ordinary Sages in strength. If he wanted to do so, his physique alone could carry him to outer space or into the Earth's core. In other words, he could do virtually anything with his body alone.
However, Shennongjia was a mysterious and bizarre place, where there was no telling what could happen. As someone cautious by nature, Lu Yuan wasn't about to take unnecessary risks. He moved fast. In just half an hour, he returned to the base of the abyss where he had crash-landed.
The abyss was thirty thousand meters deep, but it was nothing to him. Lu Yuan bent his knees slightly. Then he launched himself upward like a shell fired from a cannon.
Unbeknownst to him, shortly upon his departure, a crack had appeared on the nine-colored altar. Within that crack, tendrils of black otherworldly energy seeped out.
Meanwhile, Lu Yuan burst out of the abyssal rift.
"He's out, he's out!" exclaimed Jiang Haokong with his eyes bright. He had been staring at the abyssal rift all this while, so he instantly saw Lu Yuan the moment the latter emerged from the deep abyssal rift.
As for Jiang Ningxian, the tension on her face gave way to a smile. She had expected this outcome, but seeing him return safely still lifted a weight she hadn't even realized she was carrying.
She walked over to him and asked, "How did it go? Did you get it?"
"I got it. It's on me." Lu Yuan then told them what he had seen down below, including the nine-colored altar and the ruins of Fengdu.
"The Netherworld again?" The Spirit Monkey was astonished. It had seen the City of the Wrongfully Dead in Kunlun's secret realm, but it hadn't expected to see another part of the Netherworld here, so its surprise was genuine.
After all, in mythology, Fendgu was known as the final destination of all souls, where they would enter the cycle of the Six Paths of Reincarnation. In other words, Fengdu was shrouded in even more mystery than the Celestial Court.
1. Fengdu is the legendary ghost city of the Chinese underworld, often depicted as a gateway to the netherworld and the realm of the dead. ☜
