Chapter 237: All Dead
Madam Rouge shut her eyes as she distilled the cursed spiritual power she had just absorbed. Pink light emanated from her, and it almost seemed as though sakura blossoms were drifting to the ground.
Xiao Nanfeng waited for almost a day as Madam Rouge absorbed her pink glow entirely into her body. She slowly opened her eyes.
"How does it feel to absorb a cursed king's spiritual avatar?" Xiao Nanfeng asked curiously.
"It's just like when you excavate and absorb a draconic vein," Madam Rouge replied, pleased.
"No wonder you enjoy devouring cursed effigies, then! The red rope cursed king mentioned that this was a 'subordinate avatar'. What's that?"
"It's like the relationship between your avatar and your main body. It possesses a main spiritual avatar that's stronger and more dangerous," Madam Rouge explained.
"In other words, the red rope cursed king has now set his sights on us?" Xiao Nanfeng frowned.
"That's right." Madam Rouge nodded.
"What will we do, then? Considering how angry he was, he'll surely hound us until we're dead."
"What else? Just as he wants to kill me, I want to kill him. We just have to deal with its main spiritual avatar," Madam Rouge replied breezily.
Xiao Nanfeng's eyes lit up. "Can you handle it now?"
"I don't know. I'm far from my peak strength, after all, but the red rope fell prey to the dragon king, and he must be weakened as well. I don't know who among us is stronger, but I intend on devouring its main spiritual avatar." Killing intent blazed in Madam Rouge's eyes.
Xiao Nanfeng: ...
"For now, I need to reforge this mirror and distill all the cursed spiritual power I just devoured again. I'll be in secluded cultivation for some time. Leave now and bring my mirror away from the Crystal Hall," Madam Rouge instructed.
"Why?" Xiao Nanfeng asked.
"I can sense that something is amiss outside. For some reason, the Crystal Hall's about to be destroyed. Furthermore, the red rope cursed king mentioned that its main spiritual avatar has been freed. It'll surely try to take revenge on us, so you have to hide from it until I'm ready to take it down."
"Very well." Xiao Nanfeng hurriedly stored the divine purple rock.
Madam Rouge waved a hand, summoning a mirror-like entryway with someone looking like Xiao Nanfeng standing on the opposite end.
Madam Rouge dragged that person into the mirror.
"You? Where's the king?!" the person exclaimed.
That person had been a red rope cursed effigy that the red rope cursed king had sent out of the mirror in order to return inside himself. Madam Rouge grabbed at the cursed effigy's spiritual avatar and pulled it out of Xiao Nanfeng's physical body, then devoured it. She gave Xiao Nanfeng the skin of his physical body back.
Then, with a wave of her hand, she expelled Xiao Nanfeng from the mirror world. He returned to the Crystal Hall.
"Quick. We have to leave!" Madam Rouge called out.
The mirror with Madam Rouge inside quickly shrunk until it was palm-sized. It landed in Xiao Nanfeng's hand.
Xiao Nanfeng gave it a strange look, but kept the mirror.
He looked all around the hall to discover that it was cracked all over. The crystals were close to shattering, and the barrier around the Crystal Hall was thin and barely still functional.
"What? What could have happened over the last few months? Even the Crystal Hall is about to collapse..."
He walked up to the barrier and pushed it hard. The barrier shattered—and an ominous creak came from the hall. The sudden force had accelerated the collapse of the Crystal Hall, and countless shards of crystal began to fall from the building.
Xiao Nanfeng's eyes widened as he leapt out of the Crystal Hall just in time. The large hall collapsed into a pile of ruins.
Xiao Nanfeng's mouth was agape. The Crystal Hall had resisted even the destruction of fifty Immortal relics! How could it have grown so weak in the intervening period?
Quickly, Xiao Nanfeng noticed that something was amiss. He pricked his ears up and listened for any sound, but none was forthcoming from the thick fog, which had grown silent. He could not hear the sound of any cultivators fighting, and even the skeletal dragons protecting the Crystal Hall seemed to have vanished.
"Why is it so silent? Why aren't there any cultivators attempting to break down this barrier if the skeletal dragons have vanished?"
He warily stepped into the thick fog, still not seeing any traces of the skeletal dragons along the way. He walked into a region of scant fog and looked up at the sky. He was no longer able to see the seawater beyond the barrier outside the palace. Rather, the outside of the barrier had been covered by a layer of red fog, which gave him a sense of tremendous unease.
He suddenly stopped short. He had found some people—but they didn't seem to be alive.
Afar, there were almost a hundred cultivators hung up in the air, red ropes looped around their necks. The red ropes trailed up to the red fog hanging by the protective dome around the draconic palace.
It was as though a hundred cultivators had committed mass suicide.
Xiao Nanfeng walked closer and realized that all hundred cultivators were dead, their faces filled with fear, shock, and pain.
Not only that, all their treasures had corroded away, and much of their bodies as well. Some had decayed to such an extent that their bones were visible.
"This is... a Taiqing disciple!" Xiao Nanfeng exclaimed, recognizing an accessory specific to the sect on one corpse.
He didn't touch the corpses; rather, he continued walking toward the edges of the barrier.
The world was silent. No voices could be heard from afar, but the farther he walked, the more astounded he was. There were hung cultivators everywhere.
A hundred, two hundred, a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand—more, and more, and more. All he could see were hung corpses.
"Disciples from all the Immortal sects, all dead?" Xiao Nanfeng murmured.
The unease he was feeling rapidly magnified. He wanted very much to leave the draconic palace, but the film of red fog surrounding the barrier dissuaded him from approaching.
He charted a path straight toward the Ancestral Dragon's Hall, finding only death along the way. No one else seemed to be alive.
Days later, he arrived at the Ancestral Dragon's Hall, where the same sight could be seen. Cultivators and spirits were hung in the air, none spared, and the skeletal dragons had all vanished. Even the Ancestral Dragon's Hall itself had collapsed into ruins.
Death permeated the palace.
"Is there no one alive? A few tens of thousands of cultivators and spirits, all dead..."
He looped around the Ancestral Dragon's Hall without stopping. According to the information he had picked up on months ago, he flew toward the final hall of the draconic palace, hoping that there would be others alive there to inform him what had happened in the meantime.
The Eastern Sea Draconic Palace was divided into three halls: the Ancestral Dragon's Hall, the Crystal Hall, and the Seaquell Hall.
He spent days traveling to the Seaquell Hall, but unfortunately, the same scene was repeated there. The sight of the bodies was particularly sinister.
"Could I be the only one alive in the entirety of the draconic palace...?"
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