Chapter 246: The Weeping Ruins and the Poison Farm

As the thick, incredibly sweet-smelling black mist completely swallowed the four figures whole, the physical world around Gu Fan and the others twisted into a chaotic, stomach-churning vortex of spatial turbulence.

The ancient black stone gate wasn’t merely a simple doorway. It felt like a teleportation array designed to scatter anyone who dared to enter.

For several disorienting seconds everything was pitch black, and felt like there was no sound, no gravity.

Violent spatial tears ripped at Gu Fan’s black robes. He channelled his 2nd Stage Origin Realm Qi and simply rode it out like a man waiting for a slightly bumpy carriage ride to end.

When the suffocating mist finally spat them out, Gu Fan landed flawlessly on his feet with grace upon a hard, cracked stone floor. Completely unbothered.

The absolute second his boots hit the ground, the dark mist instantly dissipated into thin air, leaving behind an incredibly heavy, dead silence.

Gu Fan ignored the eerie atmosphere and immediately looked around him.

And as he looked around, his eyes quickly narrowed into a fown.

The only person remaining by his side was Song Yan.

He realized that the spatial turbulence had actually separated his group, completely isolating Bai Bing and Song Tianyu somewhere else in the dark abyss.

And at this point, Song Yan was trembling, while clutching his sleeves with her pale hands as her chest heaved heavily under her white robes, suffocated by the teleportation that had scrambled her senses.

"Tianyu? Bai Bing?" Song Yan gasped frantically, her eyes filled with a hint of panic as she looked around the empty space arounf them, "They... They are not here!"

She looked over her shoulder, but the towering black stone entrance they had just walked through was completely gone, replaced by a solid, unbreakable wall that stretched hundreds of feet up into the absolute darkness.

"The gate is gone!" Song Yan said as she stepped backward until her spine hit the cold, solid rock, "Where are they? That array separated us from the others!"

Gu Fan nodded as he gently smiled behind his white mask. even he was a bit worried about Bai Bing and Song Tianyu. But if the two of them are together, with their strength, not many people in the ruins can threaten them.

He took a slow step forward and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her against his chest in hopes of her calming her down.

"There is absolutely no need to shake like a frightened rabbit, my beautiful Miss Yan," Gu Fan murmured softly, his voice dripping with warm, caring affection as his large hand gently stroked her silky hair, softly rubbing her back to ease her panic, "Do you feel scared being alone for me? Hahaha..."

But Song Yan did not respond to him, keepig her face buried in his chest.

"Worrying about a missing door before we even understand exactly how this Ancient Ruin operates is a waste of energy," Gu Fan softly whispered in her ears.

"And don’t you worry..."

"If I were you, I honestly don’t care if the Ice Fairy and your nephew got scattered because they are both fully capable of surviving on their own," Gu Fan stated gently, leaning his face close to affectionately kiss her forehead.

"Right now, you are under my protection, so just stay close to my chest and let me keep you warm while we figure out how to get out of this place with all the treasure."

Song Yan violently bit her lower lip, completely unable to stop the deep, highly comforting warmth from flooding her chest because her cursed body was already actively aching for his soothing touch in this freezing, highly toxic environment, silently nodding her head as she buried her face gratefully into his robes.

Satisfied with her sweet submission, Gu Fan kept one arm securely wrapped around her waist and aggressively swept his Origin Realm spiritual sense across their immediate surroundings, actively taking in the sheer, terrifying scale of the dungeon.

They were currently standing on the crumbling outskirts of an absolutely enormous, sprawling subterranean city that had been violently buried deep beneath the earth for centuries.

The massive underground cavern was completely filled with collapsed, rotting wooden buildings, ancient, cracked stone streets, and highly ruined cultivation towers that were entirely lit by an eerie, pulsating, glowing green moss actively growing over every single surface.

The air was incredibly heavy, dense, and aggressively thick with the overwhelmingly sweet, highly intoxicating fragrance they had smelled outside the gate, but down here, it was practically suffocating, actively trying to seep directly into their pores.

However, instead of feeling poisoned, Gu Fan’s Heaven-Devouring Poison Body reacted with pure, unadulterated greed, violently and automatically devouring the toxic sweet air and rapidly converting the ambient poison directly into pure, highly refined Spiritual Qi that aggressively fueled his dantian.

"This is incredible," Gu Fan smiled, his green eyes actively scanning the rotting architecture and the highly specific, deeply ancient layout of the ruined city as he perfectly combined the fat restaurant owner’s rumors with his own supreme, author-level meta-knowledge.

The dark, horrifying truth of the ruins violently clicked in his calculating mind.

"Do you know exactly what this place actually is, Madam Song?" Gu Fan asked softly, gently caressing her hip to keep her anchored as he pointed a finger directly toward the sprawling, glowing green ruins.

"It looks like an ancient, highly prosperous mortal village that was completely swallowed by an earthquake," Song Yan whispered nervously, actively shivering as the eerie green light reflected in her beautiful eyes.

"An earthquake? Don’t be so naive, sweetheart," Gu Fan chuckled softly, keeping his tone light to avoid scaring her further. "This is the exact ’Forbidden Weeping Grounds’ the waiter warned me about, the massive village that completely disappeared off the maps three hundred years ago."

He looked directly down at her terrified face, a highly appreciative, almost impressed smile curling on his lips since he genuinely admired the sheer, ruthless cruelty of the ancient plot.

"If I am not wrong..."

"The Murong Family didn’t seal this place to actively protect outsiders from an ancient demon, they intentionally trapped thousands of innocent villagers down here with a massive demonic array, completely burying them alive," Gu Fan explained calmly, perfectly reading the dark history of the environment.

"They turned the entire living population into a massive, slow-cooking farm, saturating them in highly toxic demonic mist to cultivate a resentful poison resource to actively feed their own Dao for centuries."

Song Yan’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror, her stomach violently churning as she looked at the glowing green ruins, completely realizing that they were actively walking directly on top of a massive, centuries-old mass grave designed for pure, bloody cultivation profit.

"That is so disgusting," Song Yan gasped, covering her mouth with her pale hand.

"It is definitely dark," Gu Fan nodded, gently pulling her closer to his side to shield her from the eerie glow, completely unfazed by the ancient atrocities as he guided her to walk directly down the cracked stone street. "Let’s go see exactly what kind of high-tier loot these poor souls left behind, but stay right behind me."

As they ventured deeper into the eerie, glowing green ruins, the heavy, dead silence of the cavern was abruptly and violently broken.

A faint, ambient, highly disturbing sound of distant "weeping" slowly began to bounce off the massive cavern walls, actively echoing through the dry canals and the completely broken, moss-covered stone streets.

It didn’t sound like natural, human crying, but rather a deeply synthetic, highly resonant wailing that aggressively grated against their eardrums.

As they walked, Gu Fan immediately noticed dozens of bodies scattered across the cobblestones, but his sharp eyes quickly registered a massive, suspicious detail.

The corpses weren’t just the dusty, completely decayed bones of the three-hundred-year-old villagers.

Many of the bodies were incredibly fresh, completely recognizable as the arrogant rogue cultivators and low-level sect disciples who had blindly rushed into the black mist just a few hours before Gu Fan’s group.

"Look," Song Yan whispered, pointing jer shaking finger directly at a mangled corpse resting near a collapsed wall.

It was a disciple from the Golden Mountain Sect, still wearing his flashy golden silk robes, but his chest cavity had been completely ripped open and his eyes were entirely hollowed out, leaving a horrific, bloody mess on the glowing green stones.

As the distant, highly resonant weeping actively grew significantly louder and much more aggressive, the scattered corpses lying all over the street suddenly began to twitch.

"The dungeon isn’t just mindlessly killing people," Gu Fan muttered, a highly excited, incredibly dangerous glint flashing in his green eyes as he watched the dead Golden Mountain disciple’s fingers violently snap and crack into twisted, unnatural angles.

"It is aggressively recycling them to build a standing army."

"How efficient!"

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