After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

"They are bowing."

Lin Qingxue's voice trembled, "They're staring at us... no, at the key in your hand."

Zhou Ran remained calm as he glanced at the skeletal water ghosts.

"It's not a gesture of respect, it's one of fear."

"This key carries the aura of the powerful being who suppressed this place back then."

For these wandering spirits, this is a suppression originating from the level of their souls.

The three continued their descent.

The descent continued until it reached a depth of 2,000 meters on the seabed.

The silt underfoot rolled to both sides, revealing a black basalt plaza.

In the center of the square, a magnificent and awe-inspiring ancient building stands in the darkness.

It was not a tomb as commonly understood, but a temple.

A magnificent ancient black temple, entirely constructed of massive black stones, with intricate brackets and flying eaves!

Even more bizarrely, the structure of this ancient temple is completely abnormal. Its foundation is not below, but above.

It resembles an inverted, enormous pagoda, its spire piercing deep into the ground.

Only the broad base and the main hall at the top are exposed.

"Soul-Suppressing Temple".

Zhou Ran looked up at the half-rotten plaque above the main hall.

The plaque did not bear the name of the temple, but rather four large, blood-red characters that exuded a strong aura of violence.

The sea of ​​suffering is boundless.

The calligraphy is powerful and elegant, and even after a century, one can still feel the writer's murderous intent at the time.

"How can this be considered a pure and tranquil Buddhist sanctuary?"

Miao Yingying put away her playful mood, took out a handful of glutinous rice from the wooden box, and held it tightly in her palm.

"The murderous aura emanating from this plaque is even stronger than the most ferocious ghost I've ever seen!"

Within Zhou Ran's sea of ​​consciousness, Ye Futian, who had been silent for a long time, let out a sigh.

"Stop killing with killing, the Asura's Buddhist path."

"It seems that the owner of this place was a ruthless character in his lifetime."

He didn't intend to save the creatures underground; rather, he wanted to... kill them so they could never be reborn.

The moment Zhou Ran stepped onto the basalt plaza, a cold gaze fixed on his back, like a thorn in his side.

It was the feeling of being spied on, coming from both above and from the shadows.

Zhou Ran's expression remained unchanged, but the corner of his lips twitched slightly.

He knew who it was.

Lingxu Daoren.

The mouse that was hiding in the shadows eventually followed.

But he didn't point it out.

Since the other party wants to play the "wait and see" game, let them watch.

"Open the door."

Zhou Ran walked up to the two massive bronze gates, each ten meters high.

The carvings on the gate were not of Buddha statues, but of countless distorted demons howling in boiling oil.

He didn't push hard; he simply pressed the floating key in his hand into a groove on the door.

ka ka ka-

The sound of the mechanisms turning was so clear in the otherwise silent seabed that it was almost unsettling.

The heavy bronze door opened inwards.

What emerged from behind the door was not the smoke of hidden weapons or poison, but a deep, solemn atmosphere.

Interspersed with the cries and shouts of countless people, the chanting of Buddhist hymns surged forth like a tidal wave.

Woo-hum-

The natal Gu in Miao Yingying's arms was the Golden Silkworm Gu, which was usually extremely fierce.

It buried its head in its body, trembling uncontrollably, completely playing dead.

"What...what is that sound?"

Lin Qingxue covered her ears, her face showing pain.

The sound doesn't travel through the eardrums; it resonates directly in the mind.

Zhou Ran stepped in.

As the demonic energy circulated, the discomfort instantly vanished.

He glanced back at the two women, then casually conjured a barrier of demonic energy, shutting out the disturbing demonic sounds.

The world behind the door suddenly opened up.

This is a main hall the size of a football field.

There were no lights inside the hall; the hundreds of luminous pearls embedded in the surrounding walls cast a stark white light upon the room.

There was no Buddha statue in the very center of the main hall, but hundreds of people were kneeling there.

To be precise, they were hundreds of mummified corpses draped in tattered, dark red robes.

Unlike the water ghosts outside, they did not turn into bones; their flesh shriveled and clung to the bones, giving them a purplish-black metallic appearance.

The more than one hundred monks knelt in concentric circles around a giant black hole in the center of the main hall.

Even a hundred years after their death, their spines remain straight, their hands clasped together, and their foreheads pressed against the ground.

"Don't go over there!"

Lin Qingxue let out a scream and shrank back.

Two lines of bloody tears flowed from her yin-yang eyes as she pointed at a dried corpse kneeling on the outermost edge.

"He...he's looking at me!"

He said... "Get out of here!!"

Lin Qingxue's scream had not yet dissipated within the main hall.

creak-

A crisp sound broke the silence in the hall.

The dried corpse that Lin Qingxue was pointing at raised its head, which had been hanging low to the ground, in an extremely stiff posture.

It wasn't just him.

Creak, creak, creak...

The sound of bones grinding together was continuous, like popping beans exploding in the empty hall.

The hundreds of corpse monks, who had been sleeping for a hundred years, all twisted their already stiff necks.

More than a hundred withered, purplish-black faces turned to the three people at the door at the same time.

His eye sockets were sunken, and his eyeballs had long since rotted away, leaving only two deep, dark holes.

But deep within those empty eye sockets, eerie green flames ignited.

"ah!!"

Miao Yingying jumped three feet high in fright, shaking the corpse-driving bell in her hand like a rattle.

"This...this...it's a corpse rising up!"

And they were all corpses over a hundred years old!

"How is that possible?"

Without a place to raise corpses or anyone performing rituals, how could they all rise from the dead?

This isn't scientific... no, this isn't metaphysics!

Miao Yingying's perception was shaken.

In her knowledge of the Xiangxi corpse-driving lineage, the conditions for the formation of zombies are extremely demanding.

"It wasn't a resurrection."

Zhou Ran stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze sweeping over the group of corpse monks who were getting up from the ground.

Instead of fear, his eyes revealed admiration.

"This is an unyielding obsession."

"During their lives, they transformed themselves into 'human stakes'."

Using the physical body as the core of the formation, the soul is trapped inside the body after death, unable to be reborn.

This is the price paid by the Temple of Suppressing Souls.

Lin Qingxue was in so much pain that she knelt down on the ground.

More and more bloody tears flowed from her eyes; they were not her own blood, but rather the mental burden caused by the hallucinations before her.

In her view, the main hall was not what it is now.

She saw scenes from a hundred years ago.

Countless cultivators clad in golden armor and high monks draped in red robes were besieging a black mist whose face could not be discerned within the main hall.

Blood stained the floor, and severed limbs were scattered everywhere.

One by one, the eminent monks collapsed from exhaustion.

But before they died, they all bit their tongues and spat their last drop of blood onto the black mist.

Then they imprisoned themselves, becoming the foundation for suppression.

"It hurts...it hurts so much..."

Lin Qingxue covered her head, the monk's despair and pain before his death washing over her like a tide.

"roar--!!"

The leading corpse monk opened his withered mouth and let out a roar.

The roar caused the luminous pearls surrounding the main hall to fall in a flurry.

He stomped his feet on the ground, and the hard floor cracked.

That withered body, like a cannonball, rushed straight at Zhou Ran's face with a sharp, pungent gust of wind!

It moved so fast that it even left a trail of afterimages.

"Big Black! Go! Block him!"

Miao Yingying felt fear, but in this life-or-death situation, her instincts kicked in very quickly.

She shook the bell in her hand rapidly, and the wooden box that she had been carrying on her back popped open automatically.

The iron corpse, Dahei, which had been swatted away by Zhou Ran in the gym, roared out once more.

Despite his previous injuries, Big Black was unusually excited when facing its own kind.

He swept his arms out like iron rods, trying to stop the corpse monk.

Bang!

The two zombies collided violently in mid-air.

But the result was a one-sided crushing defeat.

Miao Yingying's prized Iron Corpse, Dahei, was as fragile as paper, and the corpse monk grabbed its neck with one hand.