You, a living person, are telling me I've served in the underworld for ten years?

"I'll put it away now and find a biological research institute when I get back to have someone study it!"

As Chen Yang spoke, he flicked his wrist, and the strange corpse with two horns and an imposing aura was stored in his storage bag. The space rippled slightly, the corpse disappeared, and only the faint, lingering pressure remained, slowly dissipating from its original location.

After doing all that, Chen Yang turned to Gu Jinghui and asked.

"Have you contacted Uncle Li? How's the situation on his end? Have you found anything?"

Gu Jinghui took out his phone, looked at it, and waved it as he spoke.

"I just contacted them, and the signal is actually pretty good here."

He said he'd discovered an island to the northeast that looked like a small immortal abode ruin. The outer array was mostly broken, and he was preparing to go in and try his luck finding some treasures. He sounded quite excited, so he probably thought there was a chance.

"Ruins of a Celestial Abode?"

Chen Yang raised an eyebrow slightly.

"This is a proper target, better than us just stumbling around randomly. Hopefully, Uncle Li will find something useful."

He looked around at the countless floating islands and then continued.

"Alright, continue to keep an eye on this area, but don't stray too far from the training ground, just in case. I'll also re-explore in the direction I was originally heading, as planned. Stay in touch, and call immediately if anything seems amiss or if you make any significant discoveries."

"I understand. Be careful yourself. This place looks nice, but who knows what kind of strange things it hides."

Gu Jinghui nodded, his gaze sweeping over the dark marks on the ground of the martial arts arena, which looked like solidified old bloodstains.

After a brief farewell, Chen Yang leaped into the air once more, transforming into a streak of light as he flew towards the island group he had initially chosen. Behind him, the dark martial arts arena and the thoughtful Gu Jinghui on it rapidly shrank, disappearing into the background of numerous floating mountains.

Returning to his original path of exploration, Chen Yang lowered his flight altitude and activated his Sharp Eyes at full capacity, like two high-precision scanners, carefully examining every island that flew past below.

Most of the islands are either purely barren mountains and wild fields with towering ancient trees but no trace of human intervention, or they are lush with exotic flowers and rare herbs, with a misty aura of spiritual energy. Although the scenery is beautiful, it is not of much significance to Chen Yang, who is eager to find valuable "heritage".

After flying over several such islands, a rather small but well-organized island appeared ahead. The island was crisscrossed with paths, dividing it into neat fields, with dozens of quaint houses clustered in the middle, resembling a small village.

"village?"

Chen Yang's heart stirred. Where there are people, there are likely to be more traces of life left behind, and perhaps one can glimpse some of the past circumstances of this place.

He activated his escape technique and silently landed on a dirt road at the edge of the village.

The village was unusually quiet.

There were no crowing of roosters or barking of dogs, no children playing, not even the rustling of leaves in the wind—in fact, the leaves of those trees were completely still. Chen Yang looked around and saw a farmer dressed in coarse cloth and wearing a straw hat, standing on the ridge of the field at the entrance of the village, still bent over, wielding a hoe.

The hoe hung in mid-air, as if time had suddenly frozen around him. Not far away, by the well, a village woman with her sleeves rolled up and her hand on the well rope held a wooden bucket half-suspended at the well opening. Her face even carried a trace of the weariness often seen when working, yet she remained as still as a wax figure.

Chen Yang held his breath and slowly approached. Under his discerning eyes, these "people" showed no signs of soul fluctuations or life force, but their bodies were as if they were alive. Their skin elasticity and hair luster were no different from those of living people, except that they had completely lost all movement, including the most basic vital signs.

They are like specimens made by the most skilled craftsmen, or as if "time" has been instantly taken away by some incomprehensible force.

He tried to touch the farmer's hoe with a wisp of extremely subtle spiritual energy. The hoe did not react at all. The spiritual energy passed through it as if passing through an illusion, but to the naked eye, the hoe was real and tangible.

This eerie scene sent a chill down Chen Yang's spine.

He walked up to the village woman and examined her closely, even noticing the fine beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

"This is not an illusion... but it's not a real living person either."

Chen Yang muttered to himself, his brows furrowed.

This method of freezing the entire village, all people and animals, in a single moment of life was unheard of and beyond his understanding of cultivation methods.

Just as he was deep in thought, a whooshing sound came from afar. Chen Yang turned around alertly, only to find that it was Uncle Li rushing over.

"Commander Chen!"

Uncle Li landed, his face showing a mixture of urgency and confusion. He immediately noticed the eerie stillness in the village and couldn't help but gasp.

"This...you encountered this too?"

Chen Yang nodded, his expression grave.

"Yeah, I just found it. Uncle Li, what's the situation on your end? Didn't you discover the Immortal Abode ruins?"

Uncle Li sighed and shook his head.

"Don't even mention it, what a disappointment. It's true that the outer array of the ruins was damaged, but the inside had been completely emptied out. Not even a single tile was left for me, and the dust was at least half a foot thick."

I looked around, and all I saw were cobwebs and rats—no, even the rats were dead, just like the people here, completely still.

He pointed to the village.

“On my way here, I passed through two similar small villages. The situation was exactly the same. All people, livestock, and even birds and insects were frozen in place. It was quite eerie.”

"It seems this is not an isolated phenomenon."

Chen Yang looked around the desolate village.

"This is probably true in many places throughout this space. It's like... at a certain moment, it was all 'frozen' by an irresistible force."

Upon hearing this, Uncle Li's face paled slightly, and he subconsciously looked around at the floating islands, as if that invisible force was still lurking somewhere.

"Shuai Chen, do you mean... this place is controlled by some unimaginable master? Or rather, this entire space is his 'domain,' and everything here has stopped according to his will?"

"This is the most reasonable speculation."

Chen Yang said in a deep voice.

“Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain such a large-scale, indiscriminate ‘freezing’. Moreover, the ability to freeze so many living beings, including cultivators, in an instant without harming their physical bodies is simply terrifying.”

Uncle Li swallowed, his voice a little hoarse.

"Could that...master still be alive? Somewhere here...watching us?"

As he spoke, he couldn't help but glance at the still villagers again, feeling that their empty eyes would turn and stare at him at any moment.

This time, Chen Yang shook his head decisively, his tone firm.

"It's highly likely that it's no longer there. If such a being were still alive and conscious, do you think it would tolerate us breaking through the stone gate and brazenly searching for treasures in its 'territory'? It would probably be obliterated the moment we entered the stone gate and triggered the restriction."

Uncle Li thought about it carefully and realized it was true. Judging from this method of freezing time and space, if that unknown being had consciousness, dealing with them would probably be easier than crushing ants.

He felt a little relieved, but looking at the strange scene before him, he still felt a chill run down his spine.

"Chen Shuai is right. It might be a contingency plan laid out by that powerful figure before his fall, or... this place has encountered some kind of calamity that we cannot understand."

"Yes, both are possible. However, this is not something we can figure out for the time being."

Chen Yang shifted his gaze from the village. "The most urgent thing is to find something useful to us. Uncle Li, did you really not find anything in those ruins? Even just some fragments of ancient texts or jade slips would be helpful."

Uncle Li gave a wry smile.

"No, there's nothing there. We've searched every nook and cranny; it's cleaner than a dog licked a lick. It seems like it was emptied out long ago by someone who came in earlier, or someone who lived here before the incident."

I did manage to find two relatively intact spirit jade bricks, but the spiritual energy they contained had long since dissipated; they were just ornaments, not even sturdy enough to build a flower bed.

Chen Yang was also helpless. It seemed that treasure hunting was indeed not so easy, as there were traces of previous people everywhere.

"It seems we need to broaden our search and try our luck in more remote, less conspicuous, or more heavily fortified locations."

"That's all."

Uncle Li nodded, then asked.

"By the way, Chen Shuai, how's it going on your end? Besides this village, have you found anything of value?"

Chen Yang shrugged.

"Similar to you. Before, on an island with a black tower, there were some well-preserved corpses inside. I took a few people's storage bags, but haven't looked at them closely yet. There were also two iron chains in the tower, made of some unknown material. They looked extraordinary, so I took them too. Other than that, I found nothing."

He paused, then briefly recounted his encounter with Gu Jinghui and the two-horned corpse.

Uncle Li listened with awe.

"There are such strange corpses? This place is getting weirder and weirder. But at least we've gained something substantial, better than what I have."

After a brief exchange, the two decided to continue their exploration together, so they could look after each other.

They left the still village and flew towards a deeper region with more islands.

After searching two or three more deserted islands and a small, obviously damaged Taoist temple ruin, they arrived at an island with relatively sparse vegetation and exposed large amounts of gray-brown rocks.

The island is not large, with a depression in the center filled with jagged rocks.

Before even landing, Chen Yang's keen eyes spotted several unusual "colors" in the depression—the faint residual spiritual energy fluctuations and objects whose colors differed slightly from the surrounding rocks.

"There seems to be something going on down below."

Chen Yang whispered, exchanged a glance with Uncle Li, and the two cautiously landed.

The scene in the depression was somewhat chaotic. Several incomplete skeletons were scattered among the rubble. Judging from the fragments of clothing left on the skeletons and the broken and decaying magical artifacts around them, they were clearly cultivators.

The site is extremely ancient; the bones are weathered and brittle, and could crumble to dust at the slightest touch. The surrounding ground and rocks bear grooves of varying depths and charred marks, faintly indicating that a fierce battle once took place here.

"It seems we're not the first to fight here."

Uncle Li crouched down, carefully avoiding a skeleton, and used a twig to poke at the hilt of a sword that was half-buried in the soil. The decorations on the hilt had long since faded.

"Judging from these marks, they're quite old. They're probably from before or after the changes that occurred in this space."

"Look around and see if any storage bags or anything like that were left behind. The battle was so intense, there might have been some left behind."

As Chen Yang spoke, he began to carefully search among the rubble and bones.

He avoided the fragments of magical artifacts that might still contain remnants of restrictions or poisons, focusing instead on small bags resembling leather or brocade.

However, reality is often not as we wish.

The two spent nearly half an hour searching almost the entire small depression, finding only a few broken jade pendants that had completely lost their spiritual power and a few rusted pill remnants with patterns that were no longer discernible.

Aside from numerous worthless fragments of magical artifacts, nothing was found. The crucial item, the storage bag, had clearly already been taken by the victors or subsequent explorers.

Uncle Li straightened up, pounded his back, and looked somewhat deflated.

"Well, it's another wasted effort. It seems they cleaned up the battlefield quite well after the battle back then."

Chen Yang was somewhat disappointed, but remained relatively calm. Exploration is like that; if you find something even once out of ten attempts, you're considered lucky.

He carefully collected the few fragments of magical artifacts he had found that might still have some research value. Although they had lost all their spiritual energy, their materials might be special.

"Let's go, to the next one..."

Before he could finish speaking, his phone vibrated.

Chen Yang took out his phone and saw that it was Gu Jinghui calling.

A thought flashed through his mind: Could it be that they've discovered something over there?

"Hey, Jinghui, what's going on?"

Chen Yang answered the phone.

On the other end of the phone, Gu Jinghui's voice was filled with obvious excitement and urgency, even a little breathless, as if he had just been on a rapid journey.

"Chen Yang! Are you with Uncle Li? Come over here right now! I've made a big discovery!"

"We're together. Slow down, what did you discover?"

Chen Yang gestured for Uncle Li to come closer.

"A huge island! A super huge one! Several times bigger than any island we've seen before!"

Gu Jinghui speaks very quickly.

"The key point is that there are two mountain gates on this island! Two! Facing each other across a deep valley! The buildings are relatively well-preserved and quite large, making them look like two different sects!"

The spiritual energy fluctuations here are more active and chaotic than in other places. I have a feeling... there must be something good here, maybe it hasn't been completely looted yet!

Two complete mountain gates? Chen Yang and Uncle Li exchanged a glance, both seeing the gleam in each other's eyes.

In this space filled with ruins and empty shells, the value of the relatively well-preserved and intact mountain gate ruins is self-evident! The possibility of finding useful items there is far greater than that of these scattered villages and lonely towers!
"Send me your location, we're coming right away!"

Chen Yang said without hesitation.

"Great! I've shared the coordinates to our previous location group! Come and see, this place... wow, it's definitely worth exploring!"

After Gu Jinghui finished speaking, he added another sentence.

"By the way, I didn't dare to go in by myself. I just observed from the outside and waited for you to join me."

"You did the right thing. Stay put and be careful."

Chen Yang hung up the phone and immediately opened his chat app, where he indeed saw the location information sent by Gu Jinghui. (End of Chapter)