Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1444 - Bone Sea

Chapter 1444 – Bone Sea

Only Liu Wuxie kept his composure when the structure ahead came into view, while Qiao Bian and Han Feizi both turned ashen with fear. In all their lives, they had never seen anything so horrifying.

“A bone sea,” Liu Wuxie said, taking a deep breath.

Ahead of them loomed a building woven entirely from piled bones, countless skulls stacked together into a white ocean suspended in mid-air. The bone sea shifted and writhed like an enormous face, battering their senses with an overwhelming visual shock.

“Brother Liu, what’s a bone sea?” Han Feizi asked.

Both he and Qiao Bian knew that Liu Wuxie was a well-read individual. The colossal structure before them was made entirely of skulls shaped like human faces, and its scale was staggering, with every eye socket, nostril, and gaping mouth resembling a gateway to the unknown.

“I don’t know the exact details, and it should be some sort of symbolic construct that I’ve read about in books,” Liu Wuxie replied, shaking his head. Even he had very little concrete information about the bone sea.

He only knew it connected to some ritual, or perhaps a funerary ceremony. He still didn’t know whether it truly served as a ritual site, who lay buried within, or why someone had sacrificed so many lives.

If this were only a symbolic structure, then what lay hidden in the depths of the bone sea?

“The flower faces have appeared again.” A low humming rose around them as Mandala Flowers surged together, condensing into leering faces that lunged to devour the three of them.

More flower faces took shape, layer after layer, and no matter how violently Liu Wuxie struck them, they refused to stay destroyed. The number of Mandala Flowers in Nightmare City was terrifying to begin with, but they continued to multiply at a shocking pace.

“Mandala Flowers represent the unspeakable darkness, the path of no return to life. There’s a rumor that each flower contains a soul that can help others realize their wish, but only at a price. You have to offer your own blood to them, and when they bloom, they can fulfill wishes.

“The deeper their color, the darker they are,” Liu Wuxie explained with a frown. In his eyes, every Mandala Flower in this city marked a life lost.

By conservative estimation alone, Nightmare City held at least tens of billions of Mandala Flowers, and anyone could imagine how many people had died to form the bone sea towering before them.

“Can they really fulfill wishes?” Qiao Bian asked curiously. He had never heard of anything so bizarre and even felt a fleeting urge to try it himself.

“Go ahead if you wish to die. They’re also known as ghost flowers. The moment you speak your wish, your life will be in the ghost’s hands,” Liu Wuxie said, rolling his eyes.

The Mandala Flower could fulfill wishes, but it was like the moon reflected on a lake—beautiful, illusory, and untouchable.

Illusions saturated Nightmare City, and anything one saw there could be false. What appeared real probably did not exist at all.

The flower faces continued to close in as layers of illusion unfolded. Qiao Bian’s deepest desire was to become a peerless powerhouse one day, and sure enough, a mirage appeared before him, showing him standing atop the heavens, overlooking the entire astral domain as countless beings bowed in reverence.

Han Feizi’s greatest wish was to become the strongest spirit guardian, and an illusion spun itself around him as well, pulling him into that dream.

Once someone sank into such illusions, it became impossible for them to escape with their lives; the ghosts would quietly steal their existence without them ever realizing it.

The Heavenly Dao Book unfurled, radiating dazzling light that swept out and shattered all the illusions in an instant.

When Qiao Bian and Han Feizi snapped back to their senses, they realized cold sweat had drenched their backs without even realizing it had appeared.

“What just happened?” Qiao Bian asked, still trembling. For a moment, he had genuinely felt his soul drifting away from his body. Han Feizi had experienced the same, and neither of them could have resisted those illusions without the Heavenly Dao Book.

“Illusions and ghosts trying to possess your bodies,” Liu Wuxie said. Through Ghost Eye, he saw countless ghosts swirling in the air. Everyone who died in the city would become a Mandala Flower, their soul imprisoned within it.

“That was really close,” Han Feizi murmured. If his soul had left his body, he knew he would never have made it back.

After failing to devour their souls, the flower faces twisted even more grotesquely, and countless vines surged toward them like a tidal wave. Each vine looked like a human tendon, disturbingly tough to sever. Worse, more flower faces and vines poured in from every direction.

When the Heretic Blade descended from the sky, the vines exploded on contact and dissolved into roiling clouds of red and black mist that lingered in the air, reshaping into twisted images.

The ghosts shifted their forms at will, even mimicking human figures, facial expressions, and movements. The slightest lapse in vigilance would see one ensnared by their whispers.

Qiao Bian fought with everything he had, and Han Feizi didn’t fall behind, unleashing his full strength. Even so, despite both of them being at the Primal Origin Realm, their combat power still fell short of Liu Wuxie’s.

A massive flower face dropped from above like a millstone, its bloody maw yawning wide as it tried to swallow the three of them in one gulp.

“Cut!” The Heretic Blade soared through the air and turned into a blade ray that fell from the sky, shearing off a corner of the enormous flower face.

Liu Wuxie’s current combat strength already rivaled cultivators at the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm, yet even he couldn’t wholly cleave this flower face apart.

The pressure on the trio spiked as vines wrapped around their ankles and dragged them down.

The three of them clashed in a brutal battle, and none of them spared a glance at the vines coiling up their legs. Just dealing with the flower faces already pushed them to their limits.

Liu Wuxie cycled through multiple mythical arts, including the Great Darkness Mythical Art and the Great Death Mythical Art, but none of them affected the flower faces.

Even soul-targeting techniques such as the Great Curse Mythical Art and the Great Conversion Mythical Art proved useless. Only moves like the Heaven-Severing Strike and the Great Five Elemental Mythical Art could inflict real damage.

The Dragon-Grasping Hand manifested and tore apart the vines binding Qiao Bian and Han Feizi’s ankles. The vines snapped apart like countless tendons breaking at once, and the sound sent a chill down their spines.

Liu Wuxie then plunged straight into the swarm and unleashed the Heavenly Sacred Dragon Scripture’s Dragon Ascent.

With a thunderous blast, the giant flower face recoiled, and the surrounding Mandala Flowers streamed toward it, merging into the massive visage.

The damaged section regenerated at an alarming rate and even became tougher than before.

The Great Five Elemental Mythical Art crashed down from the sky and smashed into the flower face, producing a grinding rumble. Yet, the flower faces actually began to devour the power of the five elements as well.

“Retreat toward the bone sea!” Liu Wuxie yelled as he dragged the other two with him after spotting more Mandala Flowers flooding in. He had noticed that the flower faces seemed reluctant to approach the bone sea.

The bone sea consisted of the remains of countless dead cultivators, and the ghosts animating the flower faces were born from their souls.

Souls wouldn’t profane their own remains, which was why the area around the bone sea stood as a relatively safe zone.

As the trio broke free from the vines, they flashed away and bolted toward the bone sea. Just as Liu Wuxie had predicted, the flower faces halted and did not give chase.

Staring at the mountainous mass of bones, the three of them couldn’t put their feelings into words. There were too many bones to count, and even a rough estimate put their number at over a billion.

No one knew how many cultivators had come to Nightmare City over the ages.

They barely had a moment to catch their breath before the bone sea began to quake violently, reshaping itself into a colossal ghost face that lunged to bite them.

“This is bad!” Han Feizi exclaimed. The bone sea spun like a whirlpool as the ghost face rose higher, trying to devour the trio. It looked monstrous, forged from billions of bones locked together into a single head.

Compared to that ghost face, the three of them were like ants hovering above a maw that spanned tens of thousands of meters in radius. This was also the first time Liu Wuxie had seen a ghost face on such a scale. Dense deathly energy poured out from it, sinking icy claws into their backs.

“What should we do?” Qiao Bian asked, his brows knotted. He hacked down again and again with his sword, but the ghost face only drew closer. The suction grew stronger with each passing moment, and if it swallowed them, it would strip them to the bone.

“Brother Liu, Brother Qiao, hold it off for me,” Han Feizi said, taking out a compass. He sat cross-legged in mid-air and entrusted the other two with buying him time.

“Okay!” Liu Wuxie said. He had already prepared himself to summon the Universal Gourd. If they truly had no other choice, he could only attempt to forcefully pull the entire bone sea into the gourd.

However, doing so would destroy the gourd, and that was the last thing he wanted. He had far greater plans for the Universal Gourd, and if it shattered here, he would lose the foundation for refining Soul Pills on a massive scale.

If everything else failed, he would have no choice but to bring out the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron and hope that someone would carry it away from here.

Liu Wuxie formed seals in rapid succession, sending streams of runes shooting into the bone sea. As the runes fused inside, the bone sea’s movements gradually slowed, noticeably weaker than before.

Han Feizi focused all his will on deducing a path of survival. This was the strength of a Spirit-Sealing Guardian, able to divine countless possibilities that others could not see.

Time slipped away, and sweat soaked Han Feizi from head to toe. The compass whirled madly above his head, as if trying to pinpoint a single thread of life for them.

Qiao Bian kept swinging his sword, sending wave after wave of sword rays into the bone sea and blasting chunks of skeletons out of the swirling mass.

“We’ll follow the compass. It’ll lead us to a way out,” Han Feizi said. He bit his fingertip, and a drop of blood flew out and merged into the compass.

The compass spun even faster than before, and then it slowly drifted to the left.

Without hesitation, Liu Wuxie and Qiao Bian darted after it. Qiao Bian stayed right behind Han Feizi, while Liu Wuxie guarded their rear, smashing aside the waves of bones that surged toward them with sheer brute force.

The compass moved at a measured pace, still calculating every possible route. Han Feizi’s face grew paler by the moment as the divination drained his strength.

He quickly took out a pill and swallowed it. A little color returned to his cheeks.

By now, the trio had already traveled over a hundred meters, moving from the ghost face’s mouth up to the area around its nose. The compass continued forward, gliding straight toward the ghost face’s eyes.

The ghost face’s attacks intensified with every breath as the Mandala Flowers shrieked with piercing laughter; those sharp cries echoed across the sky. Anyone with a weaker heart would have collapsed in terror on the spot.

When the compass reached the ghost face’s eyes, it suddenly dropped straight down, and Liu Wuxie’s group of three felt their expressions tighten. They couldn’t help but wonder whether the eyes truly hid their path to survival.