Inside the narrow tunnel, the air was damp and frigid. The echoes of the bell's tolling vibrated against the stone walls, shaking loose showers of dust and grit.
Gu Hanzhou sprinted through the gloom, dragging Lin Xiu's limp body with one hand. Suddenly, Lin Xiu—his jaw dislocated and hovering on the brink of death—began to convulse violently. His ruptured violet prosthetic eye didn't die out; instead, triggered by a specific "Order-Frequency" emanating from the depths, it flickered like a broken projector. A series of fractured, glowing images began to play against the damp rock walls.
"What is that...?" Su Qingyue gasped, fighting through her own exhaustion to stare at the wall.
The flickering light coalesced into a moving scene.
It was a vast sea locked in eternal glaciers—the Polar Abyss Sea. In the vision, what fell from the sky was not snow, but grey, drifting embers.
Gu Hanzhou saw a version of Gu Qingshan ten years younger. He was charging through the ruins of a floating ice palace, the young Hanzhou strapped to his back. His dark-gold aura was thin, nearly transparent, and three silver spears were driven through his spine. Blood spilled onto the ice, igniting into ghostly blue flames upon contact.
Surrounding him were twelve high-ranking Inquisitors, all clad in the gold-patterned white robes of the High Adjudication Council.
The image shook violently, reflecting the terror of the original recorder. To protect the child in his arms, Gu Qingshan took a direct, mountain-shattering thunder strike. He collapsed onto the ice, the sound of his spine snapping echoing with heart-wrenching clarity.
"Lin Xiu... no, the person who originally recorded this data... was there." Gu Hanzhou's voice was devoid of warmth. His right hand tightened around Lin Xiu's shoulder so hard his knuckles sank deep into the man's mangled flesh.
As the recording reached its climax, the gold-patterned Inquisitors stepped back.
A withered figure in a robe of pure white silk emerged from the mist. He carried no weapon. He simply stood before the dying Gu Qingshan and slowly lowered his hood.
It was the face of a scholar—pale, elegant, and refined. He even wore a gentle, warm smile that seemed like a spring breeze. He leaned down toward the "lens" of Lin Xiu's eye, and toward the Gu Qingshan of the past, whispering a single sentence:
"Qingshan... welcome to... the true Hell."
In that final frame, the man in white smiled at the camera. His eyes didn't just hold cruelty; they held a terrifying "mercy"—the kind a god might show to a struggling insect.
POP!
The projection shattered as the last of the prosthetic eye's energy was spent. The tunnel returned to a deathly silence.
"That smile..." Su Qingyue was shaking. "That was one of the three High Inquisitors... 'The Speaker of Holy Words,' Soros. Hasn't he been missing for years?"
Gu Hanzhou did not answer.
Deep in his sea of consciousness, the "Shackle" groaned and trembled. Within the thin crack he had forced open, his Imperial Gold blood began to turn a dark, bruised shade of black—a physical manifestation of a decade's worth of suppressed, blood-soaked hatred.
"Soros."
Gu Hanzhou spat the name out. Every syllable sounded like a drop of blood ground between his teeth.
"Heh. Scared, boy?"
The Blind Gatekeeper's silhouette flickered at a fork in the path ahead. His hollow sockets seemed to pierce through Gu Hanzhou's murderous intent. "That is but a fragment of the truth. Your old man's spine was personally dismantled by that man. Revenge? At your current level, you couldn't even touch a hair on his head."
The old man pointed toward the end of the tunnel, where the bell's tolling was growing louder and more resonant.
"Move. Let's go meet the 'Watchmen.' If they don't recognize the [Reverse Scale] inside you, then you won't have to worry about Soros—because you'll become just another mummified corpse under the sound of that bell."
Gu Hanzhou took a deep breath, forcing down the volatile, violent energy in his chest. He shifted his grip, pulling his unconscious father tighter against him.
"Old man. Lead the way."
He stepped through the layers of mist, walking toward the source of the bell, toward the final destination where all secrets and curses lay buried.