65 Angry Ghosts

The entrance of the tomb was immense. A dark silhouette appeared right on the edge of the doorway, right where the last light beams touched the large slabs of white stone of the structure.

That silhouette was Darkscale. In front of him, there was the purest form of darkness.

The serpent had a severe look in his eyes, while he was scanning the space before him. The small section of the tomb that was lit up seemed to suggest that what lied ahead was a corridor of some sort. However, the snake didn't want to proceed without first trying to have a feel of what was really behind the darkness.

First, he used his normal senses, but even his incredibly enhanced perception wasn't able to tell what lied ahead. The darkness before him was strange. Unnatural. It wasn't like that of a moonless night, or even the one of the little lair when he used to live before being blessed by the Cursed Blood.

No, this darkness was absolute. It seemed like it was devouring all his attempts to see through it. Almost as it was protecting something inside of it from indiscrete gazes coming from outside.

He could sense that his Blue Cave had been where he stood, entering the darkness. However, the energy scent that he had managed to attribute to the iron ring disappeared when it touched the darkness.

No, not only that particular scent: every odor disappeared. He truly could not feel anything that was hidden in that darkness. No images, no odors, no sounds. Very spooky indeed.

The serpent gathered some energy probes and sent his will towards the darkness, probing them with his own cultivation base.

"What?"

On the other side, what he thought was some kind of corridor, was instead an immense space. He could feel corpses in decomposition and skeletons. Hundreds of them. There were mostly nonhuman creatures, some with human-like features.

His energy probe couldn't scan the place completely, as the maximum range that they reached before turning into nothing was around 500 meters. However, the snake now had a good idea of what was around the first 500 meters of the tomb.

Thanks to his probes he could also get a sense of the scents that there were inside the tomb and he easily tracked again the direction to his Blue Cave. He could also sense Star Leaf's scent and her energy radiation, going in the same direction where his perception pointed for the Blue Cave.

Without losing any other time, he darted inside. The moment his skin touched the darkness, he felt the same way of when he entered the Blue Cave: like if someone were stretching and compressing him in a single fraction of a moment.

'Spatial Array'

He now knew that the sensation he just felt was a signal of the presence of a spatial array of some sort. Maybe space in there was modified in a way to make it feel larger than it was, or maybe he just had been teleported somewhere else. Unfortunately for him, while he knew what was a spatial array, he had no idea of how to determine the true nature of such runes.

The transfer dured a single moment, and then Darkscale appeared in a large enclosed space. The ground was hard, littered with rocks of various dimension.

The serpent looked around, noticing that while the whole place was not very well lightened, it wasn't completely pitch dark like it seemed from the outside.

There were many giant mushrooms and other strange plants growing on rocks that glowed with a pallid and green light.

Between this living light sources, there were countless dead bodies in various states of decomposition. As he felt before, most of these bodies looked non-human.

There were many different species, some stranger than others. Large fish people, humans with dozens of squid-like appendices, a woman with the body of a tiger, a two-headed bird with human legs and many others.

The strange thing was each and every one of these corpses resonated with him. He felt the same thing that he felt before looking at the giant mountain bones and the red screen. No, this time it was even stronger, at least when he moved next to some of the corpses.

The snake started crawling newt to a large skeleton of something like a bull with long horns. This set of remains was the one that he felt more connected with. He could feel his own cultivation base going out of control when moving next to the set of white bones. His blood boiled inside his veins, his flesh shook like if electric currents were going through his body.

'What is this feeling?'

Darkscale had absolutely no idea about what was this connection, this strange but deep connection he continuously felt with numerous thing hidden inside this Yellow Lake.

"RAAARGGG"

A devious scream attracted immediately the attention of the snake, shaking away his idea of stopping there and examine the large skeleton remains.

His violet eyes moved towards the direction of the sound, and they widened in amazement when he saw what it was causing them: a towering dark figure, flying towards his direction. It was a centipede with countless faces emerging all over his chest. The body of the creature was jet black, but it gave a feeling that Darkscale was very familiar with.

'Ghost Energy?'

The entire creature seemed to be made of ghost energy, and like everything else, in that strange tomb, it resonated with him in some way.

Darkscale could also feel that the creature had some kind of intelligence. Not like his, more like that of a vicious beast. In fact, the insect looked at him in a very devious way, almost as he thought he was looking at some kind of prey. The black serpent didn't like that at all.

Darkscale stood there, silent. He looked at the creature approaching with a dubious glint in his eyes.

The way it acted seemed almost as if he thought of itself as in an absolute position of strength against the serpent. What if he was right? Maybe it was a good idea retreat and try to test its capacities with some range attacks.

Darkscale was almost starting to circulate anew his poison technique while readying to start fleeing when the insect got too much near when he noted that way behind the creature there were two fast figures trailing behind it. With a single look, he could immediately recognize them: Devassa and Winter Leaf!

'Oh, this changes things... it shouldn't be that strong if they are chasing it'

He chuckled, and his cultivation base started to expel silver strands of energy. The latter didn't simply disperse in the surrounding environment but started to form complicated symbols on the ground under him.

In a few moments, a large system of silver marks was shining under him while he was looking at the incoming screeching insect.

"Come" Smiled the serpent, while he started to operate the Pretorian's Breath.

Devassa seemed to notice Darkscale only when an enormous large vortex appeared before him. She was surprised: this was one of the sources of negative karma that she searched for. She had believed that inside the tumb she would find only corpses with the negative energy that she was interested in, but this place was way better than what she expected!

That insect, for example, was a complete ghost full of negative energy! It was way richer than the cadavers and the bones lying around. It still contained ridiculous amounts of negative energy and it was also incredibly weak. Probably because it had been a while since it died, meaning that most of his energy and mental faculties had been exhausted.

Negative Karma remained the same though. This is why her cultivation method was perfect to explore old tombs and sepulchers. Karma didn't disappear so easily.

"Go away, this is my prize!" she ordered. Darkscale didn't even give her a look, continuing to use his Heavenly Battleground Technique at the maximum of its capacity.

The violet snake gave a cold cough, and then launched an attack on the large creature, trying to change the curse of his movements. She had done so a couple of times before when the insect was running towards a direction that she didn't want it to take.

However, there was something different this time: the large black beast didn't even try to avoid the strike. He didn't change direction, on the contrary, he roared with fury and moved with even more impetus towards the black snake.

It seemed to have only one thought in his mind: devouring Darkscale. He didn't even avoid the vortex, attempting to bash through it and already opening its mouth to devour the serpent.

Sadly for him, his whole body was all made by Ghost Energy. The moment it touched the vortex, it was broken down in countless dark colored strands of energy that then started to flow toward Darkscale.

"Are you looking to die?!" Screamed the violet snake in shock, looking at the giant insect disappearing in the vortex and then being absorbed by Darkscale.

She stopped a couple of dozen meters from the black serpent, looking at him like he was a moron. "That is not a normal soul you idiot! He was a bloodline bearer! I just wanted the negative karma, not his actual energy... absorbing that will kill you!"

There was pain in her eyes as she looked at the energy flow from the vortex to the snake's mouth. "So stupid, there was so much negative karma in that ghost...". Her grey energy stared to wildly move around her "if you want to kill yourself, you had to just ask me!"