Chapter 45

The mottled ancient city walls glowed with a green light, and the towering Buddha Tower stood tall in the night.

A faint gray fog lingered in the ruins of the city, and from time to time, ghostly shadows flitted past.

Gu Chen shuttled through the ruins with a sword in one hand and a vigilant look on his face. The white ape followed beside him.

"I didn't expect the Ghostly Ruins to be behind the bronze door," he murmured.

He murmured. Six hours ago, he passed through the bronze door and found himself in a deserted ancient city.

Based on the surrounding environment, it was easy for him to determine that this was the notorious Ghostly Ruins.

He had originally planned to leave Feng Lin Mansion through this place, but he didn't expect that after such a long detour, his wish would finally come true.

This city was full of evil. Six hours after arriving here, Gu Chen had already seen no less than five waves of ghosts.

Some were green-armored skeletons that could walk freely, some were rotting corpses with wings, and some were simply ghostly shadows that passed by him, bringing with them gusts of eerie wind.

The most frightening one was an hour ago, when Gu Chen encountered a red-clothed little girl holding a candied hawthorn. She was innocent and her laughter was melodious like silver bells, completely out of place in this place.

"Brother, do you want to buy candied hawthorn?"

When she came close and raised her head, her face suddenly rotted, and maggots crawled in and out of her eye sockets.

Gu Chen's expression changed drastically, and he immediately swung his sword.

But the little girl disappeared in front of him like a gust of green smoke, and after walking for a while, he felt an inexplicable soreness in his shoulder.

"Squeak squeak —"

Finally, after a few sharp cries from the white ape, Gu Chen realized that the girl had not disappeared. She had been sitting on his shoulder all the way, and he didn't notice it at all.

This scared him out of his wits, and the majestic Blood Qi in his body erupted. His Yang Qi was extremely strong, and only then did he finally drive away the wandering ghost.

Since then, Gu Chen was treading on thin ice. Even if he saw any strange scenes in the city, he would pretend that he didn't see them.

There was a saying about the Ghostly Ruins. It was once an extremely prosperous and powerful city, and even compared to the big cities of the Central Empire, it was not much inferior.

No one went to investigate why such an ancient city would appear in the boundless sea of trees. However, from the broken walls, one could vaguely see a bit of its former glory.

Ghost soldiers were patrolling the streets with bronze spears in their hands. Blood-red skeletons were digging up the thick layers of bone ashes and digging out some unknown white crystals, which they then put into their mouths and crunched into pieces.

Gu Chen turned a blind eye to all of this. He realized that these inanimate objects seemed to be moving unconsciously. As long as he didn't provoke them, there wouldn't be too much trouble.

He arrived in front of a Buddha Tower.

He could see it from afar. This tower was one of the tallest buildings in the Ghastly Ruins and had an excellent view.

Pushing open the half-collapsed door of the tower and using the Cold Star Sword to push away the dense cobwebs, Gu Chen walked along the moss-covered steps to the top of the tower.

There weren't any dead things running amok in the tower, but white bones could be seen on the steps from time to time.

Some of these white bones were human bones, some were beast bones, and some were simply grotesque. They belonged to races that Gu Chen couldn't understand at all.

It was hard to imagine what had happened here. The reliefs on the walls were soaked in filthy black blood. It was impossible to see the original artistic appearance.

Soon, he reached the top of the tower. Through the window, he could overlook the entire Ghastly Ruins.

This was indeed an ancient city, a city of death. Being here, even the moon above his head was stained with a few traces of green.

Gu Chen saw the Forbidden Forest Sea in the distance and identified the direction of Feng Lin Mansion.

"I'm afraid that the Underworld God Palace is searching for me everywhere. If they can't find me in Feng Lin Mansion, they will soon search other places. Under such circumstances, the Ghastly Ruins that people avoid is the safest place. "

Gu Chen murmured. Although the Ghastly Ruins was eerie, it could completely avoid the eyes of the Underworld God Palace.

He decided to stay here for a while and wait for the limelight to pass.

There was nothing to eat here. Fortunately, the storage ring his mother gave him was filled with a large amount of food. There were even pills like Fasting Pills.

Therefore, he could stay here for a long time until he broke through to the Transcendent Realm.

Facing the assassin of the Underworld God Palace head-on, Gu Chen felt as if he had taken a trip to the gates of hell.

If not for the strangeness of the blood pool and the fact that the assassin didn't notice, he definitely wouldn't have been able to escape.

This made him thirst for strength even more. He had to step into the Transcendent Realm as soon as possible and become a true cultivator.

Only by becoming a cultivator could he master the great Transcendent Arts that could summon the wind and summon the rain. Only then could he have a chance at revenge.

"There are many good things in the assassin's storage ring. They can help me break through as soon as possible."

Gu Chen cleaned up the top of the tower and used this place as his temporary foothold. He then took inventory of the wealth he currently possessed.

The assassin's storage ring contained two sets of standard robes for members of the Underworld God Palace, a few scriptures on spells, and many crystals, pills, and talisman weapons.

Apart from being the hard currency of the world of cultivators, crystals also contained surging Qi of Heaven and Earth. Refining them could save many days of bitter cultivation.

The assassin was quite wealthy, and the crystals in his storage ring were more than enough for Gu Chen to break through to the Transcendent Realm.

He was already at the ninth level of the Physique Realm and was only one step away from the Transcendent Realm — Divine Transformation.

In layman's terms, the so-called Divine Transformation was the transformation of one's psyche into consciousness.

In the process of advancing from the Physique Realm to the Transcendent Realm, everything from the periosteum, tendons, and skin to the five viscera and six bowels had to be reborn. The last step would extend to the brain.

The brain was the most important part of the human body. Only after going through nine levels of training would the Transcendent Realm be born. However, without consciousness, it would be extremely difficult to master the power of the Transcendent Realm.

Transcendent Realm, Transcendent Realm, meant that one could wield the power of heaven and earth.

Taking out a crystal the size of a cobblestone, Gu Chen activated the Nature of Celestial Stars and began to cultivate in silence.

He wanted to break through to the Transcendent Realm in one go. He adjusted his mentality, and his breathing soon became steady without joy or sorrow.

The white ape was bored to death when it saw him meditating. Its eyes darted around as it ran down the Buddha Pagoda.

Three days later.

The three hundred and sixty-five star acupoints in Gu Chen's body suddenly shone brilliantly, drawing in the power of heaven and earth from the outside.

This process lasted for about the time it took for an incense stick to burn. When everything was over, the energy in Gu Chen's body gurgled and flowed, its total volume increasing by dozens of times, freely flowing through the meridians of his body.

He had broken through. After using up all the crystals in the assassin's possession, success came naturally. There were no shackles.

He did not rush to open his eyes. Instead, he attentively mobilized the nascent consciousness in his mind, sensing everything around him.

Consciousness was formed from psyche. It was similar to the extension of the five senses, but it possessed abilities that the five senses did not possess.

At this moment, Gu Chen did not need to open his eyes. Within a radius of ten feet, even a speck of dust existed clearly in his senses.

Not only that, but with a single thought, a stone fifteen feet away suddenly swayed gently.