Secret: The undead do not die in the fire

The deeper you go, the more "stone statues" you can see along the way.

This makes it easy to reconstruct what happened here:
When the River of Everlasting Darkness returned, Calderon, which had been silent for thousands of years, experienced an expansion. This sudden expansion came without warning, and the spirit creatures living nearby were infiltrated by the gray before they could react. Eventually, deathly silence became the mainstream, covering every corner of the area.

Although everything seems normal, it is consistent with the authority associated with the 'River of Everlasting Darkness' and death.

But before this, although Calderon was the city of the dead, the rules here were simply to transform the living into the dead.

In other words, once any living being enters Calderon, it will naturally transform into the dead. This is similar to the underworld, but it is fundamentally different. Here, living creatures will not die suddenly and then slowly become undead creatures without any thinking ability, but will directly become undead.

For some high-level beings, transforming into the dead does not have a negative impact on them, and it does not affect their strength. And if they are extraordinary beings of the "bound" path, they can switch between the entity and the wraith, so this rule will not have any adverse effect.

Similarly, for some spiritual creatures, such rules are actually not disadvantageous.

Because many spiritual creatures are not native to the spiritual world, but are transformed from the dead - such as Klein's messenger Renette Tinicole, who is both a spiritual creature and a dead person herself.

Of course, being the dead does not mean they can come and go freely in Calderón.

Quite the contrary, they are the beings in the spirit world as the dead. Once they enter Calderon, they will be "imprisoned" and become the natives of Calderon, unable to leave forever.

So even though the dead can move around in Calderon unaffected, it doesn't mean they would be willing to come in here.

But it's different now. The current rules are not just about transforming the living into the 'dead', but the real 'dead' - different from the dead such as vengeful spirits, zombies, and water ghosts, but corpses that cannot move, have no consciousness, and have no 'life'.

The current Calderon has become a dead place where even the dead will be drained of their vitality if they set foot in it.

Embers did not try to break the rules here, but walked alone in the gray.

Under the erosion of invisible deathly silence, the whole world here is gray and white.

The sky was gray, the ground was gray, and all around were stone statues stained gray, without a trace of color.

Only the ember still has "color".

Such color deeply stimulated the "gray and white", making them gather around the embers like a school of fish stirred by bait in the deep sea, greedily trying to assimilate the embers into a gray and white stone statue and take away his "color". This also caused the surrounding "gray and white" to become more and more intense, so intense that it could take the life of an angel in an instant!

However, whenever these 'grays and whites' tried to approach him, they would be evaporated in an instant, without exception.

The escort of these "gray and white" also made the journey extremely smooth. All the spiritual creatures that could be encountered around had turned into "stone statues", and there was no living creature. As the embers went deeper, the types of stone statues also changed.

The outermost part was filled with strange creatures, some with bull heads and octopus bodies, some with slender snakes, but without exception, there was no uniform image. But now the large number of stone statues distributed here clearly belonged to the same race, they were sets of translucent white robes floating in the air, without heads, hands or feet, and seemed to be supported by an invisible person.

From a distance, it looks like a neat family portrait.

In fact, these stone statues all belonged to the Spirit World Predators, and each of them possessed a strength close to Sequence 4. And now, there were hundreds of densely packed stone statues belonging to the Spirit World Predators!

The number of spirit world plunderers is already rare, and they are also the extraordinary materials that must be used by fortune tellers to advance to Sequence 4. Whether it is the real soul of the spirit world plunderer or the dust of the spirit world plunderer, the value is extremely high.

Perhaps it was precisely to avoid being hunted that the spirit world predators gathered in large numbers in the depths of Calderon to avoid the risk of being hunted. But now, all these creatures have turned into stone statues due to the changes in the depths of Calderon.

After encountering such a devastating disaster, the spirit world plunderers were almost wiped out!
The remaining scattered spirit world plunderers are also scattered throughout the spirit world. They are rare in number and extremely difficult to catch.

This was a disaster for the extraordinary people in the middle and low sequences of the Diviner Path. This was because it meant that the path to the Diviner Path to Sequence 4 was blocked, and it would be difficult for new "Weird Mage" to be born in the future!
of course.

For demigods or angels who have already been promoted to Sequence 4, the family portrait of the spirit world plunderers does not have much impact.

For Beyonders who are not Diviners, the impact is even smaller. So in a sense, this can also be regarded as the result of mutual selection.
Finally, as time passed, the outline of a city gradually emerged from the ashes.

The first thing that caught his eye was a huge deep pit with no visible bottom. All kinds of strange-shaped buildings surrounded the deep pit, extending downward in circles, forming a magnificent city beyond the ordinary people's cognition.

This city is different from normal cities. It does not develop upwards, but extends to the end of the deep pit underground in circles, giving people the feeling of an inverted mausoleum. The buildings inside it have various styles, but they are all equally strange. Some of them are towering pale stone pillars with huge single houses polished on the top; some are long and square, with doors on the roof and no windows, like a giant coffin; some are built underground, with a tombstone at the entrance, and some are built with bones, messy and fragmented.

From the moment I entered the city, everything around me was shrouded in a deep darkness as thick as ink, as if no light had shone in for thousands or tens of thousands of years. The gray and white that gathered were blocked outside the city, and they were once the masters of this city.

But now they are excluded and can only watch reluctantly as the "colors" walk into the city and into the darkness.

Here, even angels have difficulty seeing what is in the darkness five meters away. It seems that something is blocking their detection.

That is a secret authority.

The closer to the bottom of the pit, the more intact the buildings are; the closer to the top, the more they have collapsed, filled with decay and ruin caused by the erosion of time.

The deeper you go underground, the quieter the surroundings become. Those strange buildings are apparently well preserved, but they seem to have been dead for many years. Even the atmosphere has become cold, dark and decayed.

The whole world was pitch black, with only the embers retaining some "color".

In the deep darkness, this color was so dazzling that countless "darkness" swarmed in. Just like the "grey" before, they gathered here greedily, trying to swallow up this color and assimilate it into part of the darkness.

The black and white world of the dead does not allow for any color!
however.

The gathering of darkness did not have any real-time effect.

The more they gather, the more they are 'evaporated'.

When the embers entered the depths of the city, the darkness had been mostly evaporated, and even the buildings that were originally shrouded in darkness revealed their original shapes, because the darkness that had been mostly evaporated and became extremely thin was no longer able to cover the entire city.

But even after paying a huge price, it was still in vain and they couldn't even make contact.

Going deeper step by step, Yujin moved forward for a long time and finally saw the bottom of the deep pit - huge, dark palaces blocked the way down.

The palace was supported by huge pillars and was inlaid with various bones and different parts of corpses. Some places were even covered with bloody skins of different races. Yu Jin stopped in front of the palace. So far, what he had encountered was completely different from what Klein had described - the last time Klein came here, he was hunting spirit world predators.

Perhaps because of the death of the Spirit World Plunderer, or because of the aura of the 'Source Castle', or perhaps because of the appearance of the 'Angel of Destiny' Ouroboros, the River of Everlasting Darkness deep in Calderon suddenly changed, and a large amount of 'gray flood' gushed out like a rising tide.

That incident prevented Klein from exploring further, so he had to return to the gray fog and make other plans.

But this time.

The ember had reached the bottom of Calderon, but he never encountered any obstacles. The River of Eternal Darkness was like a completely dead object, and did not react to his arrival.

Yu Jin didn't think about it too much. No matter what happened, it would not affect the purpose of his trip.

He walked slowly to the palace gate and placed his hands on the two bronze door panels that had been closed at some point.

Crunch!

In the silent darkness, the dull and crushing sound, which was not loud at all, now seemed extremely harsh, and the sound almost echoed throughout the entire city.

But even with such a noise, Calderon still did not react, and just let the embers push the door open a small gap.

The gap was not big, but rather very narrow, so narrow that two people could not enter side by side.

But for Embers, this gap was enough.

He walked calmly into the darkness and entered the palace.

In the darkness, the first thing that comes into view is a spacious hall.

On both sides of the hall, there are coffins of different shapes and colors. They are placed there quietly, as if even existence itself has been weathered by death.

Ignoring these things, Yu Cinder went straight to the depths of the hall, where there was a downward gray-white stone staircase and a huge stone tablet stood at the entrance.

On the top of the stone tablet stood a slender statue of a giant bird that seemed to be made of bronze. There were various pale symbols on its wings.

Under the bird-shaped bronze statue, on the surface of the stone tablet, the words from the "language of the dead" are like very simplified birds of different shapes or snakes coiled in different shapes, forming two ambiguous sentences:
“Even the gods cannot escape;
"Even if you die, you will be detained."

It's like the inscription of Tutankhamun's curse:
"Whoever disturbs Pharaoh's sleep, Death will descend upon his head with outstretched wings."

"Anyone who enters this grave with an impure heart, I will strangle him like a bird."

If such a curse appeared in an ordinary mausoleum, it would only make people laugh.

But underneath this city lies the River of Eternal Darkness. This statement is more of a warning than a curse—a real warning.

Even gods, once they enter the underground, will perish and drown in the river!

Ember looked away and ignored the warning.

Walk around the stone tablet with a bronze statue on top and go down step by step along the gray and white stairs.

It was dark, silent and cold underground, but occasionally a slight, illusory rustling sound could be heard by the ears.

Somewhere beneath the earth, the River of Everlasting Darkness flows quietly.

Yu Jin walked step by step towards the direction where the sound of water came from. Under his feet was a dark, insubstantial tide. Just like a normal tide, there was a high tide and a low tide. When Yu Jin went deeper and deeper, the tide almost submerged Yu Jin completely, but he still walked in it, unaffected by it.

And when the tide receded, the gray stairs appeared once again, leading straight down.

at last.

He reached the end of the stairs.

Beyond the end is nothingness, and in the nothingness flows a straight, wide, colorless and dark river.

That is the River of Eternal Darkness, the final destination of all the dead!
Ember stopped and did not move forward.

Because on both sides of the river, there were huge and pale stone pillars standing one after another, as if they were supporting something to prevent it from collapsing. At this time, between these stone pillars and on the edge of the river, countless slightly blurry and translucent figures were walking back and forth, wandering, slowly but without stopping.

And among those confused figures, there was a tall figure standing at the edge of the river, quietly staring at the embers standing at the end of the stairs.

It was so huge, almost the same size as the surrounding stone pillars. It was clad in a dark black robe and its sides looked old.

His face had obvious features of the southern continent, but it had decayed to pieces, and had grown white feathers stained with pale yellow oil.

Ember had seen Him before, in the murals, in the halls of conspiracy, when He was still called the God of the Dead.

In the Fourth and Fifth Epochs, his best-known name was the God of Death, the 'Emperor of the Underworld' Salinger.

A moment of confusion flashed across His face, but He soon became firm, and said in a low voice:
"He told me that if I killed you, he would set me free."

His voice was hoarse and stiff, as if he had not had a normal conversation with anyone for a long time.

"guessed."

Yu Jin smiled and nodded. He now finally understood why he had not encountered any obstacles along the way.