Chapter 249: Seeing Through Moyin! A true madman does not need reason.

Ye Hongzhuang did not stop her steps just because Gu Lan had killed a few Human-Faced Fiend Wolves.

She turned around, her wide snow-fox cloak sweeping a sharp black arc through the cold air as she walked straight into the deeper parts of the glacial canyon.

Gu Lan shook off the black foul blood on the soul-devouring sword, forcibly suppressed his churning Qi and blood back into his Dantian, and quickly followed.

As the two of them penetrated deeper, the surrounding terrain began to undergo bizarre changes.

The mountains of white bones gradually disappeared, replaced by strange rocks resembling black mirrors. These rocks rose from the ground, forming narrow and steep natural barriers that squeezed the road ahead into a fissure less than a zhang wide.

The light was completely swallowed here, and the surroundings were so dark that it felt as if even Divine Sense could not penetrate them.

"Wuwu—wuwu—"

Before they even approached that narrow fissure, wave after wave of extremely bizarre wind sounds drifted over.

The sound did not sound like wind; instead, it sounded like countless women weeping miserably deep underground, or tens of thousands of babies wailing shrilly at the same time, mixed with the piercing shrieks of swords and sabers frantically scraping against each other, drilling straight into one's mind.

"Ahead is the 'Moyin Valley'."

Ye Hongzhuang stopped before the fissure, her voice sounding somewhat ethereal amidst the eerie wind.

"The wind blowing here is not cold air, but the Divine Soul curses left behind before death by the Cultivators who died in battle here during the ancient times."

She did not look back, merely tilting her face slightly and sweeping a glance at Gu Lan out of the corner of her eye.

"No matter how formidable your Physical Body is, it is completely useless here. Moyin will ignore all physical defenses and directly tear apart your Sea of Consciousness. If you cannot hold on, your sanity will be assimilated by these curses, turning you into a walking corpse that only knows how to slaughter."

Having said that, she did not even make any protective measures, simply strolling leisurely into that pitch-black canyon fissure.

Gu Lan gritted his teeth and took a deep breath.

He drove the "netherworld armor" he wore close to his body to the extreme, a layer of black light tightly protecting his entire body, while simultaneously retracting his Divine Sense tightly around his spiritual platform before stepping into the fissure.

"Boom!!!"

The moment he stepped into Moyin Valley, Gu Lan felt as if someone had swung a large iron hammer and smashed it fiercely and without warning against his head!

The netherworld armor indeed blocked the extreme cold of the far north, but it had no blocking effect on sound at all.

The moment that miserable Moyin entered the canyon, it directly transformed into a substantive mental storm, brutally crashing open Gu Lan's Divine Sense defense and exploding frantically deep within his mind!

"Gu Lan… You beast who betrays his master and destroys his ancestors…"

"Junior Brother, why did you betray us? It hurts so much…"

"Kill you! Kill you, this running dog of the demonic cult!"

In an instant.

The scenery before Gu Lan's eyes changed drastically.

He felt as if he had returned to the sword-testing plaza of the Qingyun Sect, seeing Jiang Wanqing covered in blood as she fell in a pool of blood, staring at him fixedly with a deadpan gaze full of despair and betrayal; seeing Hongxiu tortured out of human shape by the torture instruments of the Righteous Path's Law Enforcement Hall, pointing at his nose and bitterly cursing his cold-blooded ruthlessness.

Immediately afterward, the scene twisted crazily once again.

Countless incomplete grievances and Souls, opening their blood-red mouths, lunged out from the black rock walls in all directions. The ferocious faces of the Yinsha Sect Master, Bone Sword Immortal, and even those Human-Faced Fiend Wolves he had killed with his own hands all overlapped, roaring crazily in his mind and tearing at his Soul.

"Get out!"

Gu Lan's eyes instantly turned crimson, and a painful beast-like low roar issued from his throat.

He abruptly closed his eyes, forcibly mobilizing his powerful Divine Sense comparable to the Early Stage of the Nascent Soul, attempting to suppress these illusions.

"Suppress for me!"

The massive Divine Sense transformed into an invisible golden giant bell, tightly enveloping his Sea of Consciousness.

However, the Moyin rushing in seemed endless; they crashed against the golden bell, producing a deafening roar.

"Hum—"

With every impact, Gu Lan's body would tremble violently out of control.

He had only taken three steps!

Two streams of bright red blood slowly flowed down his ear canals, dripping onto the shoulders of his black-gold robe. Immediately afterward, his nasal cavity and the corners of his eyes also began to ooze shocking blood threads.

Bleeding from all seven orifices!

"What are you stopping for?"

Ten paces ahead.

Ye Hongzhuang stopped her steps, turned around, and leisurely looked at the agonizing Gu Lan.

She seemed completely unaffected by the Moyin; on her peerless face, there was even a hint of enjoyable comfort, as if what she was listening to at this moment was not fatal Moyin, but the gentlest pipa tune of Jiangnan's water towns.

"Moyin Valley is three thousand zhang long in total, and you are already bleeding from all seven orifices after taking only three steps."

The corners of Ye Hongzhuang's mouth curved into a cruel arc, her voice piercing through the interference of Moyin and falling clearly beside Gu Lan's ears.

"What? Weren't you quite arrogant earlier? Do you now know how profound the foundation of this Heavenly Demon Palace is?"

"If you cannot hold on, kneel on the ground and crawl slowly. As long as you crawl ugly enough, if this seat is in a good mood, perhaps I will consider using Devilish Qi to protect you for a segment."

"Kneel to your… grandfather!"

Gu Lan gritted his teeth tightly, forcibly squeezing these words out from between his teeth.

He abruptly opened those bloodshot eyes, staring fixedly at Ye Hongzhuang ahead.

He knew that this woman was deliberately watching his joke, wanting to completely crush his self-esteem in this absolutely oppressive environment.

"This little commotion… consider it refreshing for this seat!"

Gu Lan forcibly suppressed the churning dizziness in his mind, abruptly lifted his right foot, and heavily stepped out the fourth step!

The fifth step!

The sixth step!

With every step he walked, the surrounding Moyin grew a fraction more miserable, and the strength of the mental impact piled up in geometric multiples.

When walking to the twentieth step, Gu Lan's knees seemed to be weighed down by ten thousand jun of heavy burdens, emitting an unbearable "ka-ka" sound.

The most fatal thing was that as his Divine Soul was continuously torn apart, that Pure Yang Qi and blood tightly suppressed within his body, upon sensing the threat of the external extreme Yin demonic fiends, began to violently and instinctively resist!

Under the dual stimulation of the extreme cold and extreme Yin Moyin, the Pure Yang Qi was like a wild dragon driven into a desperate situation, frantically crashing against Gu Lan's Meridians, attempting to rush out of his body to counter this evil power.

"Oh no… It's going out of control!"

Gu Lan was greatly alarmed in his heart.

Once the Pure Yang Qi erupted fully here, although it could briefly force back the Moyin, his disguised identity as a demonic Cultivator would immediately be seen through by Ye Hongzhuang!

An undercover agent hiding a massive amount of haoran Yang Qi within his body—Ye Hongzhuang would definitely shatter his heavenly spirit cover with a single palm on the spot.

"Even if I die, I cannot expose my background!"

Gu Lan fiercely bit the tip of his tongue, forcibly pulling back a trace of sanity with the sharp pain.

Just at the critical juncture when the true essence within his body was about to run amok, those four characters taught to him by Li Taixuan at the bottom of the back mountain's cold pond suddenly flashed through his mind.

"Hide the sword in the heart, Fire in the Stone!"

"Right! Cannot go against it! The more one resists, the stronger the backlash!"

A flash of crazy determination flickered in Gu Lan's eyes.

In this Moyin Valley sufficient to cause any Cultivator's mind to collapse, he actually took the initiative to withdraw the "golden Divine Sense giant bell" used to protect his Sea of Consciousness!

Not only that, he even stopped suppressing the Pure Yang Qi within his body, letting them run amok in his Meridians, and instead sank all his thoughts entirely to the deepest depths of his Dantian.

There, that Purple Extreme Golden Core had transformed into a black stubborn stone without any fluctuations.

"Boom—!!!"

The moment he lost his defense, a massive amount of Moyin curses like breached floodwaters instantly submerged Gu Lan's entire body and Sea of Consciousness.

The illusions reached their extreme at this moment.

Gu Lan seemed to see himself turned into a monster with three heads and six arms, sitting atop a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, chewing bit by bit on the flesh and blood of Jiang Wanqing and Hongxiu. That extreme disgust, sense of guilt, and pleasure of slaughter intertwined together, enough to instantly drive a normal person mad.

However.

Gu Lan, standing at the center of the abyss, suddenly smiled.

"Wanting to use this kind of illusion to drive me mad?"

Gu Lan's consciousness hid within that "black stubborn stone", coldly watching the Moyin rampaging in his Sea of Consciousness.

"Added up across my two lifetimes, what kind of perverts have I not seen?"

"You so-called ancient resentments are merely a bunch of cowards who dare not even accept death!"

"Since you like burrowing into my head so much…"

"Then all of you stay and serve as nourishment for me!"

"Hum—"

The "stubborn stone" deep within Gu Lan's Dantian suddenly stopped its stillness, beginning to rotate at an extremely slow yet unstoppable frequency.

At the center, that trace of purplish-red flame fusing two-colored strange fires did not erupt outward, but instead produced an extremely introverted swallowing power.

The Moyin and resentments that rushed into his body, the instant they contacted this swallowing power, were like moths flying into a flame, being forcibly dragged into the Golden Core.

The "Fire in the Stone" transformed into a bottomless millstone.

Grinding these chaotic grievances—sufficient to tear apart a Divine Soul—bit by bit, purifying them, and finally transforming them into the purest mental nourishment to feed back into Gu Lan's Sea of Consciousness!

"Th-this… What is going on?"

Ye Hongzhuang, who had been walking in front all along waiting to see Gu Lan make a fool of himself, suddenly stopped her steps.

She turned back in astonishment.

She saw that the youth who was originally bleeding from all seven orifices and tottering was now standing steadily in place.

The bloodstains on his face had not yet dried, but in those eyes, the pain and struggle from just now were already gone.

Replaced by an extreme calmness.

A calmness that made people feel shuddering!

What made Ye Hongzhuang feel even more incredible was that the howling Moyin wind blades around, the moment they approached Gu Lan's body, not only did not cause any damage, but instead, like flowing sand between fingertips, were forcibly "sucked" in by him!

"He is swallowing the grievances of Moyin Valley?!"

On Ye Hongzhuang's peerless face, true shock appeared for the first time.

This kind of approach was even madder than a madman!

Even for her, when passing through Moyin Valley, she relied on her terrifying Soul Transformation Stage cultivation to forcibly repel the Moyin outside. Who would dare to suck this kind of trash containing ancient curses into their body? Wasn't that equivalent to eating poison?!

However, the Gu Lan before her eyes not only ate it, but also seemed to have "digested" it extremely well.

Gu Lan took strides forward.

The seventh step, the eighth step, the tenth step…

His pace was no longer heavy, becoming lighter and lighter instead. Every time his foot landed, it bizarrely matched the frequency of the surrounding Moyin.

He was no longer a reef fighting against the storm, but had turned into the storm itself!

"Apologies for keeping the Exalted One waiting for long."

Gu Lan walked to Ye Hongzhuang's side and stopped.

He raised his hand, casually wiping away the blood at the corner of his eye with his thumb, and grinned at Ye Hongzhuang.

That smile was awe-inspiringly evil, as if a peerless fierce demon had truly awakened within his body.

"Although this tune is a bit unpleasant to listen to, it barely passes for polishing the Divine Sense."

Ye Hongzhuang stared fixedly at his pitch-black, abyss-like eyes for a full three breaths of time.

Suddenly, she chuckled softly.

In that laughter, there was a bit less condescending disdain, and a trace of fanaticism that even she herself had not noticed.

"Very good. As expected of the Sword-Wielding Envoy this seat has taken a fancy to."

Ye Hongzhuang withdrew her gaze and turned to continue walking forward.

"Since you have already adapted to the rhythm here, for the road ahead, do not expect this seat to wait for you."

The figures of the two shuttled rapidly through the dark canyon.

With the swallowing and tempering of the "Fire in the Stone", Gu Lan not only withstood the invasion of Moyin, but he even felt that his Divine Sense, which had just stepped into the Early Stage of the Nascent Soul, was becoming more solid and resilient at a speed visible to the naked eye.

It was unknown how much time had passed.

The road ahead suddenly broadened.

That piercing Moyin also instantly vanished without a trace, replaced by a dead silence that made people feel incomparably oppressive.

Gu Lan followed Ye Hongzhuang out of the canyon fissure.

The scene before them caused Gu Lan, who had just completed his Divine Soul transformation, to involuntarily draw in a cold breath.

There were no cramped and narrow caves as imagined, nor mountains of accumulated white bones.

Presented before the two of them was an underground space so vast that its boundaries could not be seen at all. The dome was extremely high, and countless giant stalactites exuding a faint purple light hung upside down from it.

Below was a pitch-black lake of dead silence without a single trace of ripples.

This lake water was not ordinary black, but an extremely viscous, profound pitch-black as heavy as mercury. Merely standing on the shore, Gu Lan could sense the terrifying energy contained within that lake water, sufficient to destroy the heavens and extinguish the earth.

"This is the core of Wanmo Cave."

Ye Hongzhuang walked to the edge of the black lake, her boots only an inch away from the viscous lake water.

She turned her head, looking at Gu Lan standing to the side, who was too shocked to speak, the corners of her mouth curling into a cruel and expectant smile.

"This place is named the 'Demon Essence Pool'."

"Do you not want to truly condense the Purple Extreme Golden Core?"

Ye Hongzhuang pointed at that bottomless black lake.

"Jump down."