Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1319 - Darkness Heart
Chapter 1319 – Darkness Heart
A few hundred meters ahead, members of the nether clan and the ghost clan slipped through the dark at speed. They were too focused on their own goal to notice the four trailing behind them.
“Follow them,” Liu Wuxie whispered.
A’Lei and A’Li crept after the two clans in silence. They crouched low and forced themselves to slow down. They slipped into an ancient forest where the air grew heavy and the scenery ahead turned murky as if they were trudging through tar.
Vanya quietly called on the laws of light, and a pale glow opened a small circle of visibility around them.
“The Grand Dark Canyon,” Liu Wuxie whispered. He tapped A’Lei on the shoulder.
A’Lei halted on the spot in response.
A vast canyon yawned in front of them. Crowds from the nether clan and the ghost clan surrounded the rim, joined by figures from the undead clan and the faceless clan. Not a single human was present.
There wasn’t even a sign of the abyssal race, which made the gathering feel even stranger. Every face they saw carried the same mark—shadow-stained features, especially those from the nether clan and the ghost clan.
“You three stay put. Don’t wander,” Liu Wuxie said quietly. He pushed off of A’Lei’s shoulder and sprang up to a thick tree farther ahead, landing with the easy balance of a hunting cat.
From that perch, he surveyed the canyon.
The gorge churned with movement and pressure. Nearly a thousand members of the nether clan had assembled, along with hundreds from the ghost clan, a few dozen from the undead clan, and dozens from the faceless clan.
“What’s in that canyon? How come it attracted so many members from the nether clan to come here?” Liu Wuxie muttered.
The nether clan ruled the Netherworld and knew this canyon well. For them to swarm here in force meant something was seriously off. Dark-attributed energy surged from the depths of the Grand Dark Canyon.
Black mist boiled and stacked on itself, and within the haze, strands of darkness uncoiled one after another, each one curling into a warped pitch-black skull face.
“So it really did give rise to a Darkness Heart,” Liu Wuxie said, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. Now, he finally understood why they had shown up.
If he could refine the Darkness Heart, he could seize control of the Great Darkness Mythical Art and wield it in battle.
Only a land saturated in darkness could gestate something like this, and the Netherworld was the perfect cradle. After countless years, the Darkness Heart finally became ripe for the picking. The nether clan had rushed here for that reason; the undead clan and the faceless clan simply followed the aura it released.
Any human who happened to discover this place would turn around and leave.
The Great Darkness Mythical Art was infamous for its corruption. Almost nobody dared to cultivate it, as it warped one’s mind. Only someone cultivating the Great Light Mythical Art could make an equilibrium with it.
Liu Wuxie, however, stood outside that rule. He carried a desolate world within him, one vast enough to take in anything. He could swallow and refine any power in this realm to perfect his internal world.
From what he could sense, the Darkness Heart already held its own will. Retrieving it ought to be within reach. Over the canyon, the black cloud writhed and fed on every thread of dark energy in the air.
After several minutes, the skulls thinned and drew back into the black mass. Then, the cloud sank into the canyon as if it had never surfaced. The nether clan acted first, plunging into the canyon and vanishing almost instantly.
The ghost clan followed. The undead clan and the faceless clan rushed forward as well. They weren’t related by blood, but at this point, these four races moved like forces that understood one another.
Liu Wuxie landed on A’Lei’s back and said, “A Darkness Heart formed here, and I need it. The three of you stay here and don’t act on your own.”
He handed them a Communication Talisman so they could warn him as soon as something went wrong.
“Brother Liu, be careful,” A’Lei said with a firm nod.
Upon finishing his preparations, Liu Wuxie flashed into motion, moving like a streak of light. He plunged into the Grand Dark Canyon in an instant. Bringing the others would only drag him down. The giants were huge targets, and moving as a group would make him too easy to track.
With that many powerhouses in one place, getting spotted even once would turn problematic fast. Hence, he chose to slip in alone, claim the Darkness Heart first, and handle everything else afterward. If he could use it to make a breakthrough to the Primal Origin Realm, he wouldn’t need to fear their numbers.
The Grand Dark Canyon dropped without end. A’Lei and the other giants couldn’t safely climb down in their full size unless Vanya used her magic to shrink them or carry them.
Moreover, if a fight started, she would have to protect them instead of fighting freely. They would be the first to die if that were to happen.
Liu Wuxie descended the canyon shaft, keeping a distance of a few hundred meters between himself and the nether clan scouts ahead.
When one of the faceless clan abruptly glanced back, Liu Wuxie slipped into the dark and erased his presence. Their perception was terrifying; they had already felt that someone was shadowing them.
He waited motionless for a long breath. When the faceless clansman finally moved on, Liu Wuxie slid out from behind a slab of rock and went back to trailing them.
“The members of the faceless clan are too sharp,” he muttered. He opened the Heavenly Dao Book and activated the Ancient Breath-Concealing Art, smothering his aura completely.
After a long descent, Liu Wuxie reached the canyon’s depths. The Grand Dark Canyon sprawled in a deadly maze of knife-edged stone with almost nowhere stable to stand.
The walls ran on for dozens of miles. Black stone columns rose in clusters like a petrified forest. Winds howled from every direction. Dust and darkness stung his eyes, but his Ghost Eye cut cleanly through it.
The Ghost Pupil, also called the Eye of Darkness, represented the next stage. If he refined the Darkness Heart, he was confident his Ghost Eye would ascend again.
He didn’t know if it would truly become the Ghost Pupil, but he knew its power would increase.
The nether clan split up through the canyon alongside the ghost clan. The faceless clan and the undead clan floated through the air like wraiths. With all four races covering the area, Liu Wuxie refused to act rashly. He slid forward a step at a time, weaving through the stone pillars like a fish through reeds.
Ahead, several members of the nether clan flashed a hand sign and advanced. In that same direction, a black vortex twisted in midair. It dominated the space, noticeable even from a distance.
Liu Wuxie had already noticed the vortex, but he remained in place. Dozens of ghost clan elites surrounded it, each one radiating heavy pressure. Even if he managed to seize the Darkness Heart, he would have to run the instant it touched his hand. If they boxed him in, breaking out alive would be close to impossible.
The vortex itself was massive, like a millstone hundreds of meters across. No one could see anything at its core. A brutal pull roared from within it, stripping every thread of dark energy nearby.
“The Darkness Heart is right here,” one of the nether clan announced. He didn’t bother lowering his voice; nobody outside their kind would dare enter the Grand Dark Canyon, after all.
“But how do we pull it out?” a ghost clan cultivator asked.
The Darkness Heart also served as a cultivation resource for the ghost clan.
The undead clan lingered at the perimeter. A few of them tried to break into the vortex, but each attempt ended the same way: the tearing force inside the pull flung them back out.
“We wait until the Darkness Heart finishes feeding on the surrounding darkness,” a nether clansman said, “Once it slows, we take it while it’s resting.”
For now, the Darkness Heart was busy draining the area’s darkness and churning out this frenzy. A Darkness Heart would not appear overnight; it would take millennia for one to form.
The nether clan had known for ages that one was growing in the Grand Dark Canyon, but they hadn’t tried to take it before, as it had yet to ripen.
Once omens started appearing in the area, they knew it had matured. If they waited for too long, the Darkness Heart would escape the Netherworld and disappear.
At the canyon’s entrance, A’Lei and the others waited, growing increasingly uneasy as time went on.
Eventually, the black vortex started to slow down, signaling to everyone that the Darkness Heart had finished feeding. Liu Wuxie focused his Ghost Eye through the whirl and locked onto its center.
Floating there, he saw a massive skull the size of a storage vat. Its ridges stood out clearly, and endless darkness laws rolled inside it.
“What a monstrous Darkness Heart,” Liu Wuxie breathed.
The Darkness Heart had grown into a skull, but at its center, a black core beat like a living heart. Its will was already strong, and tearing it free wouldn’t be simple.
Every slow pulse drank in more darkness, like a newborn quietly taking its first breaths.
Liu Wuxie’s chest clenched without warning. A sharp pain ripped through him.
“My inner demon is starting to slip,” he muttered, his brows tightening.
The pill from the grandmaster hadn’t failed. The Darkness Heart had simply stirred his inner demon, dragging it toward awakening. That was dangerous.
If the inner demon awakened and he couldn’t force it down, it could drag him straight into the demonic path. Until he purged it, it would sit inside him like a buried threat, waiting to break loose.
He knew only one way to cleanse it—master the Great Inner Demon Mythical Art, a technique said to strip out all inner demons. However, it was a long-lost art, and no one in the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm even knew how to begin cultivating it.
Otherwise, no one would be living under the threat of inner demons by now.
Just then, the golden pill within him throbbed. Power rippled out, smothering the inner demon’s aura, and the pain died down.
The vortex lost strength, piece by piece. The black skull floated in midair, not yet aware of the trap. The nether clan spread out and formed seals, locking down the area until even space began to tighten.
When the skull finally sensed the danger, it tried to escape.
The nether clan moved first. Seals flashed into existence and linked together into a huge net that dropped over the Darkness Heart. They had come ready. They had waited nearly a thousand years for it to ripen. Now that the Darkness Heart had matured, there was no way they were going to let it run.
The faceless clan and the undead clan held back. The ghost clan supported the nether clan from the flank. The Darkness Heart writhed forcefully, but a strange substance formed over the skull and locked it down.
A dozen nether clan cultivators closed in, cutting the faceless clan off. In raw numbers, the nether clan dominated the field.
Just then, the Darkness Heart erupted, and a wave of dark energy exploded outward, tearing apart the substance holding it down. It lunged upward at once, trying to break free.
“This is my opening.” Liu Wuxie smiled and moved.
