Longevity: Starting as a menial servant in the Green Wood Sect

Chapter 56 A Sigh from the Depths of the Demon Suppression Division

Gu An leaned against the cold, damp, broken wall, his chest heaving violently, each breath feeling like a blunt knife churning inside his lungs.

He dared not breathe heavily, and could only suppress his breathing to an almost inaudible level by adjusting his throat muscles.

In the distance, the commotion caused by the Foundation Establishment stage black-scaled python had completely disappeared into the darkness. The suffocating spiritual pressure had also receded, leaving only the heavy, pungent stench in the air, a testament to the heart-stopping moment of life and death that had just passed.

"cough……"

Gu An covered his mouth, a striking dark red stain appearing in his palm.

He glanced down; the precious bottle of Tai Sui Mist had shattered into nothingness. Although it was one of his greatest trump cards, he felt no regret whatsoever at this moment.

Material possessions can be regained if lost; but if life is lost, then nothing remains.

Gu An took out two Rejuvenation Pills from his storage bag, hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly put one back, swallowing only one. In this underground ruin where spiritual energy was so thin it was almost depleted, every resource had to be carefully considered.

As the medicine took effect, a tingling, itchy sensation spread through the broken ribs in his chest. It was his body's weak self-healing ability working in conjunction with the medicine to repair the injury.

"That beast went east, which is also the direction of the 'core area' marked on the map..."

Gu An squinted, using the faint light from the surrounding blue moss to look at the opposite west side.

There was an even deeper shadow there, no wind, no flow of spiritual energy, as silent as a closed tomb.

"No matter what's over there, it's better than following a Foundation Establishment stage demon beast to its death."

Gu An gritted his teeth, leaned on his broken sword "Piercing Clouds," and hunched his body at an extremely low angle to minimize the area of ​​impact. He followed the shadow at the base of the wall and groped his way into the deathly darkness.

……

This journey took about the time it takes for two incense sticks to burn.

Gu An grew increasingly alarmed as he walked.

The underground space was far larger than he had imagined. The path beneath his feet gradually transformed from rubble and rocks into neatly paved bluestone slabs. Although most of it was broken and collapsed, with grotesque black fungi growing in the cracks, one could still vaguely discern the grand scale of its original construction.

Moreover, the architectural style here is completely different from the ethereal and otherworldly style of the Qingmu Sect.

Heavy, somber, and oppressive.

All the stone pillars were enormous, and instead of auspicious clouds and mythical beasts, they were carved with shackles, fangs, and tortured demons.

"Splash..."

Gu An kicked away a pile of iron chains that had long since rusted into dust.

Large numbers of skeletons began to appear on the ground here.

These skeletons included those of humans and those of demonic beasts. Some were only the size of a normal person, while others were as large as calves. Without exception, their bones bore the marks of being cut by sharp instruments or crushed by heavy objects.

Some of the skeletons even had shackles embedded deep into the bone marrow at the wrists and ankles.

"This...is a torture chamber."

Gu An stopped and looked at the collapsed stone wall beside him.

The stone wall was covered with rows of strangely shaped metal implements. Although most of them were decayed beyond recognition, Gu An still recognized a few: bone-piercing nails, skinning knives, soul-refining lamps...

These are all torture instruments that have long been listed as forbidden techniques in the cultivation world.

Even after countless years, standing here, Gu An could still feel a deep-seated resentment and chill.

He tightened his grip on the broken sword and continued exploring deeper into the area.

After passing a huge basalt screen, rows of stone prisons half-submerged in the ground came into view.

Most of these stone prisons have collapsed, revealing empty cells inside.

Gu An walked to a relatively intact stone cell and found a broken stone tablet above the cell door with several powerful characters engraved on it in ancient seal script.

He reached out and brushed away the dust.

"乙...木...囚...牢..."

Gu An muttered to himself, his brows furrowed.

Yi Wood belongs to the Wood element in the Five Elements theory.

This underground ruin is located beneath the Qingmu Sect, which is founded on wood-based cultivation techniques.

"A cage specifically for imprisoning wood-type demons or cultivators?"

A thought flashed through Gu An's mind.

He peered closer at the stone cell's bars. The bars were not made of ordinary iron, but rather of some kind of alloy mixed with spirit-sealing stones. Although they had lost their spiritual power, their hardness remained astonishing.

Inside the cell, besides a skeleton, the walls were covered with a dense network of scratches. These scratches were an inch deep, clearly left by the prisoner in extreme pain or despair.

Gu An did not go in to search.

His intuition told him that in such a malevolent place, even if there were any treasures, they would have long been eroded into worthless items by the passage of time and malevolent energy.

He continued forward.

As he ventured deeper, the number of stone cells decreased, but their size increased. The air temperature also dropped, and the chilling, malevolent aura began to sting his skin.

Finally, after passing through a long passageway, Gu An abruptly stopped.

Ahead, the view suddenly opened up to a huge circular hall.

Above the dome of the hall, hundreds of dimly lit pearls were inlaid, arranged in the shape of stars.

However, there was no stone cell in the very center of the hall.

There was only one solitary, enormous birdcage-shaped cage made of bronze, suspended in mid-air.

Four thick black chains, each as thick as a child's arm, extended from the stone walls around the hall, tightly gripping the four corners of the bronze cage, suspending it above a bottomless black hole.

Within that black hole, a faint, eerie wind howled, as if leading straight to the deepest hell.

"This is……"

Gu An's pupils contracted slightly.

With such a level of imprisonment, what kind of monster must be locked inside?

He subconsciously held his breath and activated the Turtle Breathing Technique to minimize his presence. At the same time, his innate affinity with spiritual plants cautiously extended like tentacles.

However, the information that came back from his senses surprised Gu An.

There was no fluctuation of any vital signs or the ferocious aura of any demonic beast inside that bronze cage.

"Dead?"

Gu An hesitated for a moment, then picked up a piece of gravel from the ground, gathered his strength, and flicked it towards the bronze cage.

"when!"

The crisp sound of the impact echoed through the hall, lingering for a long time.

Nothing happens.

Gu An did not let his guard down. He stayed close to the wall and circled around, trying to get a clear view of the inside of the cage.

When the angle was right, and with the help of the faint glow of the fluorescent lights in the hall, he was finally able to see clearly.

Inside that bronze cage, there was a person locked up.

Or rather, it was a long-decayed human skeleton.

The skeleton sat cross-legged, its clothes long since turned to ash. Strangely, the skeleton was not a pure white, but rather a jade-like bluish-green, as if it had been forged and tempered by some extremely powerful wood-elemental spiritual energy in its lifetime.

Five long, bone-piercing nails, stained with dark red blood and rust, were driven into the skeleton's limbs and skull, pinning it firmly to the bottom of the cage.

"Human cultivators..."

Looking at the skeleton, Gu An felt a strange sense of sorrow rise in his heart.

This person must have been a great figure in life, yet after death he is so humiliated and suppressed here, unable even to be laid to rest.

Since it's a dead person, there's nothing to be afraid of.

Gu An was about to turn around and leave to find another way out. But the moment his gaze swept over the skeleton, his feet seemed to be nailed to the spot, unable to move an inch.

All that could be seen was the area between the eyebrows of the jade skeleton, just below where the long, bone-piercing nail had been driven in.

A tiny, pale blue ball of light, no bigger than a grain of rice and so faint it seemed as if it could be blown away by a cold wind at any moment, floated there quietly.

The ball of light flickered, like a candle dying in the wind.

However, in Gu An's spiritual plant affinity perception, this insignificant light emitted a kind of fluctuation that made his soul tremble.

It was an extremely pure and high-level aura of wood-based origin.

It was a thousand times, ten thousand times purer than any spiritual plant he had ever seen in Youying Valley, or even the regeneration core of that Tai Sui!

"That is..."

Gu An's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty as an emotion called "greed" surged wildly within him.

His intuition told him that it was a great opportunity.

An incredible opportunity! But reason was like a bucket of ice water poured over his head.

The fact that such a treasure could appear in such a ghostly place, on such bizarre skeletons, signifies extreme danger.

Take it? Or leave?

Gu An's palms were covered in cold sweat as he gripped the broken sword.

He was a man who valued his life, but he also knew that in the world of cultivation, there were certain risks that had to be taken if one wanted to climb higher.

He took a deep breath, took out the Flying Tiger Claw from his storage bag, and planned to test it out first.

Just as Gu Angang raised his hand...

"Buzz—"

Inside the bronze cage, the once lifeless blue light suddenly throbbed violently.

Immediately afterwards, an aged, hoarse voice, as if emanating from ancient times, exploded directly in the depths of Gu An's mind without warning:

"Little one, now that you're here, why the rush to leave?"

"!!!"

Gu An's scalp tingled instantly, and the hairs on his body stood on end.

Almost instinctively, he was about to crush the last remaining talisman in his hand and turn to flee.

"Certainly."

The aged voice uttered a single word in a light, airy voice.

Just one word, yet it was as if the words themselves became law.

Gu An felt as if the space around him had frozen instantly. The spiritual energy that had been flowing smoothly within his body suddenly stopped, like frozen water.

He remained frozen in place, frozen in a posture as if he were about to turn and run away. Apart from his eyes, which could still move, he couldn't move even a little finger.

"It's over..."

Gu An felt a chill in his heart.

This is no remnant soul; it's clearly an old monster who isn't quite dead yet! A single divine thought is enough to immobilize him—even Han Qingsong, a Foundation Establishment cultivator, couldn't do that.

Golden Core? Or even... Nascent Soul?!

The ball of blue light slowly floated up, detached from the skeleton's brow, passed through the bronze fence, and hovered in mid-air.

It didn't transform into any hideous ghost face; it just floated there quietly, yet it brought Gu An a sense of oppression like a mountain.

"Tsk tsk tsk..."

The voice rang out again, tinged with amusement and disdain, as if it were appraising a defective product.

"Four spiritual roots, or mixed spiritual roots lacking earth element."

"At nineteen years old, he has only just reached the fourth level of Qi Refining."

"Although the meridians are wide, they have accumulated a lot of toxic substances, which is obviously due to the use of inferior pills."

"His physical body is quite interesting. It looks like he practiced some kind of low-level body-refining technique and even fused with some of the blood energy of the Tai Sui... It's a hodgepodge."

Listening to the old monster's comments, Gu An felt both horrified and desperate.

What she was so proud of was, in the eyes of this old monster, as if she were naked, completely exposed.

"With such aptitude, hundreds of years ago, he would have been too clumsy to even empty my chamber pot."

The cyan light circled around Gu An once, finally stopping three feet in front of him.

"but……"

The tone shifted abruptly, and a strange meaning crept into the aged voice.

"Despite his poor physical attributes, his ruthlessness and will to survive are rare."

"To survive, they dared to pretend to be corpses inside the belly of the Tai Sui; to escape, they dared to jump into the Demon Suppression Division, where death is a near certainty."

"Especially that earthy smell on you... that's the smell you get from dealing with spiritual plants all year round."

The ball of light flickered slightly, as if it were smiling.

"Little one, you're a disciple of the Green Wood Sect, aren't you?"

Although Gu An couldn't speak, his wary and terrified eyes had already given the answer.

"Heh, Aoki Sect..."

The voice suddenly became somewhat low, carrying a complex emotion that was hard to describe, as if it were a mixture of nostalgia and resentment.

"I never expected that the first living person I would see after being imprisoned here for three hundred years would be a lowly servant who isn't even at the Foundation Establishment stage."

The ball of light suddenly shrank, then transformed into a streak of azure light, ignoring Gu An's terrified gaze, and directly pierced into his brow!

"Don't resist."

"If you don't want to become an idiot, open your mind to me!"

Gu An felt as if his head had been hit hard with a sledgehammer; a sharp pain shot through him, and his consciousness instantly went blank.

In his last moments before losing consciousness, he only heard the old monster sigh:

"Three hundred years... I've finally found a piece of usable rotten wood."