Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 2931: Splitting Up

They stood upon the jagged ledge for a long while, staring into the pulsing fog below.

The altar loomed like the heart of a corpse god, its eye ever open—watching, breathing, beckoning.

Lin Mu broke the silence.

"We go no further together."

Daoist Chu turned, startled. "What?"

"You and Meng Bai should stay back," Lin Mu said calmly. "This depth... it doesn’t welcome us."

Meng Bai clenched his fists. "But Master—"

"You’ve seen it," Lin Mu said. "These phantoms—these specters—they’re not simple ghosts. They’re not like anything we’ve faced before."

Daoist Chu exhaled slowly. His robes were scorched, and more than a few talismans had turned to ash at his waist. The fatigue in his bones was not merely physical.

"You’re right," he admitted. "I’ve hunted ghosts and restless dead since I was a Junior disciple in the Zenith Dao Sect. But this—this is something else entirely. They don’t move like ghosts. They don’t feel like them."

"They’re... heavier," Meng Bai said, rubbing his chest. "Even when they vanish, it’s like something stays behind."

Daoist Chu nodded. "It’s more than residual resentment. Their qi... it’s not yin-based. Not fully. Some of it feels like—like corrupted intent. As if their cultivation twisted them after death."

Lin Mu looked out toward the valley floor, his gaze tracing the drifting forms that danced like shattered reflections in a pond of nightmares.

"I’ve felt it too. Their strength doesn’t register properly. It’s as if we’re looking at a storm through cracked glass."

Daoist Chu furrowed his brow. "Could it be a matter of different cultivation paths?"

Lin Mu’s eyes narrowed.

"That would explain much."

A long silence fell between them, broken only by the faint hum of the altar’s pulse below.

"Not all paths follow the same roots," Lin Mu murmured. "We walk the lines of qi, spirit, and body... but these things? They tread forgotten veins—paths of memory, madness, and grief. How do you measure a ghost who’s powered by a broken oath? By a death they refused to accept?"

Daoist Chu looked grim. "You don’t. You feel them. And feeling them... hurts."

Meng Bai shifted uneasily. "Then we should leave. All of us. There’s no use—"

"No," Lin Mu said softly. "I must go on."

Meng Bai opened his mouth to protest again, but Daoist Chu raised a hand.

"No," he said quietly. "He’s right. We’ve reached the edge of what our skills allow."

His fingers twitched at the frayed edges of a failed ward talisman.

"My seals can bind restless dead. But these aren’t just restless—they’re bound elsewhere. Their chains are deeper than any ritual I know."

He turned to Lin Mu. "You carry the Buddhist aura. It... resonates with them. Like they remember something they forgot when they died. That’s not just power—it’s authority."

Lin Mu nodded solemnly. "Then I’ll invoke it again."

"You’ll go alone?"

"I must."

A stillness settled over them. The fog had grown denser, as if the valley itself held its breath.

Daoist Chu finally placed a talisman at the cliff’s edge. "Then we’ll wait here. If anything follows you out of that pit, we’ll be the first line."

Meng Bai nodded reluctantly. "Be careful, Master."

Lin Mu didn’t answer immediately.

He looked toward the altar, toward the shape carved in thorns and stone.

Toward the eye.

"I don’t think caution will matter now," he said quietly. "But I will return. Or you’ll know I didn’t."

Without another word, he stepped off the ledge and began to descend.

The mist swallowed him like a curtain drawn shut.

The path down was not made for feet.

It spiraled, jagged and shifting, like a memory retold too many times. Stone twisted into root, then into bone, then into shadow, then back again. It was as if time lost meaning.

As he moved, the phantoms grew still.

They did not attack. They did not flee.

They simply watched.

Dozens of them lined the cliffs and hollows—warriors in broken armor, nobles with decayed crowns, monks with hollow eyes and no mouths. A procession of the damned, silent witnesses to his descent.

Lin Mu’s footsteps rang like gongs in the stillness.

The altar drew closer, its eye ever open.

And somewhere within its gaze... something stirred.

Lin Mu reached the final descent—a basin sunken into the roots of the world, where the mist thickened into a wall and time no longer obeyed the heavens.

There was no wind here. No sound. Not even the distant whispers of the phantoms remained.

Only silence.

Before him stood the altar—not the cracked stone visage he had seen from above, but its true form: a monolith of bleeding roots and bone, fused with obsidian slabs etched with glyphs that squirmed when gazed upon.

And in its center... the Eye.

Dormant. Thorn-wreathed. Closed.

Until Lin Mu stepped onto the final platform.

Then—it opened.

A thousand screaming voices erupted in his mind.

Not sounds. Memories.

"She was my child—why didn’t I take her place?"

"The war ended. But they kept me alive. To remember it."

"I saw the stars once. Then they burned."

Lin Mu staggered back, gripping his head.

The altar breathed.

Its pulse echoed with seven heartbeats—and then broke into chaos.

From behind the altar, the ground split.

Blackened roots unfurled like tendrils from a dying god, dragging forth a figure clad in tattered robes made of ash and whispers. Its face was a mirror of Lin Mu’s own, cracked and inverted. A mockery of life. A reflection long lost.

Its eyes... bleeding thorns.

Its name thundered in his mind before it even spoke:

"EPHEMERARCH."

’The Crown of the Crimson Roots.’

’Warden of the Thorned Eye.’

"You should not have come."

Its voice was not one, but many—each syllable echoing with the agony of an entire lifetime.

Lin Mu stood tall.

And drew in a breath.

He pressed his palms together and chanted.

"May the heart be still..."

The Calming Heart Sutra ignited.

Golden light bloomed from within him, pushing back the shadows, peeling away the rot of the altar’s will. The fog retreated like cowering spirits. The Eye narrowed.

The Ephemerarch raised its hand.

The arena shattered.