Chapter 155: Tombs That Breathe
Beneath the shattered stone plains where screams once seeded the soil, Rin Xie descended.
The passageway was not made, but remembered—etched into the bedrock by the desperate will of ancients who had feared death so deeply that they swallowed themselves into the earth. Here, no lantern held flame, and no spirit dared linger. There was no echo, only the damp hush of ancient breath being exhaled long after lungs had collapsed.
The Death Core inside Rin thrummed, sensing the density of latent death qi thickening with every step. Not violent, not fresh—but aged, soaked into the marrow of the world. It tasted like resignation. It tasted like surrender. He pressed a hand against the wall.
Bone.
He traced the edge. Countless ribcages had been mortared into the stone, fused by forgotten rituals. These walls were not carved—they had been formed by the cultivators who became them. Their wills, their fears, their incomplete insights bled through the stone like mold.
"This place... it doesn't guard death. It hides from it."
Rin moved deeper. The tunnels narrowed, grew pulseless and dark. His breathing slowed. Not from fatigue, but from instinct. The air grew denser with each breath, until even his lungs began to tremble.
And then the tunnel ended.
A gate of kneeling skeletons blocked the path. Their skulls faced inward, jaws broken from screams caught in eternity. Their robes had long rotted away, but seals were still etched into their spinal columns. Each seal bore a character: 拒死 — Resist Death.
"Cowards' scripture," Rin murmured, brushing the bone. "You feared the end so greatly that you made it your god."
He stepped through. The gate did not resist. The skeletons bowed deeper, as if recognizing a true inheritor—not of their faith, but of death itself.