There are no ancestors at all; I made them all up.

Chapter 181 The Door on the Wall, Shi Zhongnan

The light and shadow are colorful and the light flows and turns.

Once the dazzling lights subsided, Chen Qing noticed that he had been transported to a deep cave. As soon as he stepped inside, he sensed something was amiss.

He looked around and saw that the cave was empty and seemed to have no end. The stone walls in the cave were not ordinary rocks, but strange stones with a faint glow. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the stone walls were covered with countless door patterns.

With a slight frown, Chen Qing leaned closer to examine the surroundings and saw a bronze archway with coiled dragons, a heavy palace gate with mottled vermilion lacquer, and a moon gate entwined with vines...

Each door is unique in shape and exquisite in decoration, with very few being the same.

"They're all doors..."

Thinking about the strange feeling in his heart, he naturally took it to heart, so he focused his attention and gradually noticed the clues.

The portal on the stone wall was not an inanimate object; wisps of pure spiritual energy, as dense as a substance, emanated from between the cracks, swirling into mist, mixed with a trace of cold demonic energy. The two intertwined, forming a dangerous balance.

"The spiritual energy here is far more abundant than that of the spiritual vein nodes of Xiaoyingzhou! If I had arrived here before entering the Immortal Dynasty Dreamland, I would have thought I had stumbled into an ancient secret realm and regarded it as a treasure land! However, why is the spiritual energy stored in a gate? Why are the forms so different?"

Just as I was pondering this, I suddenly heard the sound of chains dragging on the ground, mixed with faint panting.

Looking in the direction of the sound, they saw a person half-embedded in the wall, a bizarre sight!

The person's lower body had merged with the white stone wall, and the texture of his skin had turned into stone patterns. Only his upper body still retained a human shape. His hair was tangled like wild grass, and his beard was so thick that it almost reached the ground. Underneath his tattered clothes was a skeletal frame.

Chen Qing scrutinized the man for a moment, then his pupils suddenly contracted. He saw that the flesh on the man's chest was bulging and twisted, forming a miniature portal. The portal seemed to be open but not quite, with spiritual light and demonic energy emanating from it.

The man looked up and saw Chen Qing. He was stunned for a moment, then burst into a hoarse laugh: "Cough cough! Another unlucky fellow! You brat, where did you get involved in karma, awaken your spiritual gate, and then recklessly cultivate, only to be dragged into this Ten Thousand Doors Wall?"

Chen Qing's gaze narrowed slightly: "Wanfei Wall? You seem to know this place very well?"

"You don't know this place?" The man's laughter stopped abruptly, and his face showed extreme surprise. "Then how did you cultivate the Spirit Gate technique? Without inheriting the secret formula, how could you have triggered the resonance of the Spirit Gate and been drawn into this place?"

The methods of the Spirit Gate?

Chen Qing's mind raced, and he used his divine sense to observe the strange shadow of the gate hidden in his heart. He said in a deep voice, "Please enlighten me, what is the origin of this Spirit Gate technique?"

"Origin?" The man's expression grew even stranger, a mixture of crying and laughing. "What legitimate origin? It's nothing more than an ancient beast-trapping trap! We all obtained some kind of mystical cultivation technique by chance. During our cultivation, we sensed spiritual seeds in the void, and believing we had received an ancient true teaching, we used this method to communicate with other worlds and steal an endless stream of spiritual energy, thus advancing our cultivation to the divine realm..."

He seemed to have not spoken to anyone for a long time. Once he opened his mouth, he poured out his words like beans from a bamboo tube, becoming more and more detailed: "Little do people know that every bit of spiritual power refined by the Spirit Gate method is equivalent to branding a door mark on one's own soul! When one's cultivation is profound, it is like a ripe fruit that will be forcibly taken by this Ten Thousand Doors Wall, and one's entire cultivation will be transformed into another door on the wall, providing spiritual opportunities for the mastermind behind the scenes for eternity!"

Chen Qing frowned upon hearing this: "I wonder what exactly this Spirit Gate Technique is? Also, you keep mentioning 'we,' could it be...?"

His gaze swept over the murals on the surrounding stone walls, and his heart sank.

"The 'Spiritual Gate' is a general term; it's actually a collection of methods that all lead to this point. On the surface, it seems like an ordinary path, but once you start cultivating it, you'll find it strange at every turn." The man shook his head. "Take the 'Spiritual Gate: Spiritual Energy Gathering Chapter' that I cultivate, for example. It's called 'Spiritual Energy Gathering,' but it's actually 'borrowing spirits.' It's borrowing spiritual energy from another world to cultivate first..."

As he spoke, a look of reminiscence crossed his face: "According to what that book says, everything is difficult at the beginning because ordinary people do not have enough spiritual energy to lay a foundation. So as long as you can borrow the first bit of spiritual energy to build a foundation, you can simply repay it while cultivating in the future. It's just a pity that this spiritual energy also has interest, nine out of thirteen returns!"

He became more and more agitated as he spoke, and dust began to fall from the stone parts of his body: "And I have to borrow a huge sum of money, which will take three hundred years to repay! I don't know what I was so bewitched to borrow it. Since then, I have been working hard and never daring to stop for a moment. Only after going through all this did I realize that this technique is a scourge! Even if I walk on thin ice all my life, I will eventually be eaten dry, left with no one to rely on in my old age, and turned into firewood."

He raised his frail arm and pointed around: "Look at these doors all over the walls, carved beams and painted rafters, vermilion lacquer and gold nails, each with a different style, simply because they came from all corners of the world in their previous lives, with different sects, cultivation levels, and even races! That bronze door with the coiled dragon belonged to a concubine of the Dragon Palace in his previous life, and that black jade hanging flower door belonged to an elder of the Northern Lands..."

As he spoke, the man in the stone grinned again: "However, the cycle of karma is inescapable! This spiritual method has harmed people greatly and will surely diminish their virtue. Therefore, even the sect that founded this place cannot escape its doom!"

Upon hearing his words, Chen Qing's mind stirred, and he asked, "Is that sect the Taiyi Dao Palace?"

"Oh? You actually know?" The man nodded with a smile. "This Ten Thousand Doors Wall is a legacy of Taiyi. Over the centuries, many exceptionally talented descendants of the Taiyi Dao Palace have come one after another to search for its treasure, only to end up hanging on this wall..."

As he spoke, he seemed to suddenly realize something, his smile vanished, and he stared at Chen Qing: "Something's not right! You've been standing here for so long, yet the Myriad Doors Wall hasn't absorbed or assimilated you? There's something strange about you!"

Just as Chen Qing was about to speak, the void not far away suddenly twisted, and a black light stumbled out, revealing Liu Yin's figure.

His face was pale, and he held a cracked compass in his hand. Before he could even stand properly, he exclaimed, "This is the true palace's secret treasure recorded in my Liu family's secret scrolls! The ancestral guiding compass is indeed..."

Before he could finish speaking, Liu Yin saw Chen Qing, and his pupils contracted sharply.

"It's you?! How could you have arrived before me? Could it be that you're also..."

The words stopped abruptly.

Because the entire stone wall behind him suddenly rippled!

Many of the portal reliefs shone brightly, and chains of runes emerged from the void, binding Liu Yin's limbs and torso!

The compass in his arms shattered completely with a "crack," and a burst of essence blood merged into the wall.

A sudden suction force pulled him towards the wall! "What's going on?"

Liu Yin realized something was wrong and struggled in terror, unleashing a burst of Golden Core level spiritual power, but he was unable to stop the irresistible suction force.

In the blink of an eye, he was violently pulled towards the stone wall. The moment his back touched the wall, the rocks rippled like water, slowly engulfing him!

Within moments, most of his body was embedded in the wall, his face filled with despair and disbelief.

"Impossible! My Liu family are true disciples of the Dao Palace, why..."

Upon seeing this, the previously trapped man burst into maniacal laughter, tears streaming down his face: "Hahaha! Another one! Relying on the smattering your ancestors stole and a token, you really think you can come here to inherit the treasure? Your Liu family ancestor was merely an outer sect steward of the Taiyi Palace, who stole and copied a few lines of incantations, and dares to claim it as a secret transmission? You're courting death! That's satisfying! That's truly satisfying!"

Liu Yin struggled to turn his head from the wall, his eyes wide with fury upon hearing this: "You...how do you know about my ancestral origins?!"

The man ignored him, his laughter subsided, and he turned his head, his deep-set eyes looking at Chen Qing: "Boy, you are no ordinary stray. The Ten Thousand Doors Wall cannot absorb you, and the Spirit Gate Seal cannot shake you. Who exactly are you?!"

Chen Qing had no way to answer the question posed by the man in the stone.

Should I tell them that I had a fleeting glimpse of the Immortal Dynasty tens of thousands of years ago, which left a mark on my heart and led to my involvement?
Just then, Liu Yin suddenly let out a muffled groan, and a strange change occurred in his body. His chest bulged out, revealing a spiritual gate that exuded an ancient, scholarly aura. All the surrounding gates shook, and spiritual energy surged and resonated with it!

At this moment, the mysterious door in Chen Qing's heart also trembled, becoming clearer and more solid. The sun, moon and stars rotated on the door, and mountains and rivers appeared and disappeared. Strands of mysterious light burst out from his body!

In an instant, countless fragments of thought flowed like an icy river into his sea of ​​consciousness, where he sorted and pieced them together.

The prisoner inside the wall, witnessing this scene, was first stunned, then, as if he had thought of something extremely terrible, all the color drained from his face.

"call--"

With a long sigh, Chen Qing suppressed the radiance emanating from his body, having basically figured out the Taiyi Dao Palace's scheme.

"The so-called reforging of the Gate of Mysterious Female is not about creating another heaven-reaching spiritual treasure, but about constructing a vast system that spans the real and the virtual and steals spiritual energy! To this end, they preach across the continents, spreading many spiritual methods, and enticing cultivators to refine themselves into miniature nodes of the gate."

Through this "gate," cultivators can sense and absorb spiritual energy from other worlds, making rapid progress at first, as if they have received ancient teachings.

But with each bit absorbed, the Dao Foundation becomes more closely connected with the "Taiyi Mother Sect," until it completely becomes a part of this vast system!

At that time, the cultivator's entire cultivation would be transformed into fuel to nourish the Mother Gate, dragged into this Ten Thousand Doors Wall, becoming yet another living door relief on the wall, still circulating its cultivation techniques, eternally providing spiritual energy for the "Taiyi Mother Gate"!

"What a grand scheme! What a ruthless calculation!" Even with Chen Qing's composure, he felt a chill run down his spine at the Dao Palace's ancient plan. "Using all living beings as fuel to ignite one's own path! Is this the behavior of a true Xuanmen sect? It is clearly..."

His gaze swept over the various doors on the wall, and a flash of inspiration struck him!
"What that otherworldly energy absorbed wasn't pure spiritual energy, but... demonic energy?!"

As Chen Qing gazed at the wisps of demonic energy churning in the spiritual light and being forcibly purified, a sudden enlightenment dawned on him.

"What the Taiyi Dao Palace did was steal demonic energy from beyond the realm, transform and purify it through unknown means, turning it into spiritual energy that cultivators could absorb! Wanfeibi and these countless 'Spirit Gate' cultivators are a link in this transformation chain!"

The moment he realized this truth...

"Buzz!"

The entire Ten Thousand Doors Wall trembled violently, and all the thousands of door reliefs on the wall lit up!

About a dozen doors suddenly burst open, releasing torrents of spiritual energy that rushed toward the "mother door" in Chen Qing's heart, which had become completely solidified and was radiating a clear light!

His Yin spirit buzzed, emitting a strange Daoist charm that was "endless and inexhaustible." However, along with it came a trace of cold and chaotic distracting thoughts, which tried to erode his Yin spirit and pollute his soul!
"So that's how it is. This strange gate in my heart was a 'Gate of Mysterious Female' that I copied by chance. It can draw spiritual energy from the sub-gate, but at the same time it is also subject to demonic influence. That's why I had so many distracting thoughts after obtaining this gate! Because I was constantly being corrupted by demonic energy!"

Chen Qing understood immediately and focused his mind, activating the Blood River Avatar and the Wheel of Annihilation to forcefully suppress and obliterate the wisps of demonic intent.

But this is by no means a long-term solution.

He could sense that as long as the connection with this "Mother Gate" existed, the erosion of demonic thoughts would continue unabated, and would intensify as he absorbed more spiritual energy!
"This technique is not perfect, and we must not linger here! Otherwise, more and more gates will resonate with me, and the demonic intent will deepen. Even with the Blood River True Form technique, we will not be able to eradicate it completely!"

With this thought in mind, he suddenly looked up, and the space around him rippled. The spiritual talisman in his Niwan Palace vibrated, and the gate in his heart provided a surge of spiritual energy!
Fingers drawn together like swords, slashing through the air!
"crack!"

"Thorn-"

A deep rift was torn open in the space, and the familiar aura of the Blackwater City ruins wafted from the other end.

Chen Qing took one last look at the desperate portals on the wall, and at Liu Yin, who was still struggling to resist assimilation with a face full of horror and resentment, before stepping into the spatial rift and disappearing without a trace.

Only the man in the stone suddenly went mad: "He escaped? He's completely unrestrained by Wan Fei? Indeed, this person is the one that Taiyi Dao Palace has been plotting to harvest for eternity!"

(End of this chapter)