I started on a rocking horse and relied on watching ads to dominate the highway survival charts.

The light emitted by the pearls on both sides of the passageway cast a long shadow of Huo Yunzhi, which swayed back and forth with her steps. The ground beneath her feet was a large, well-polished stone slab.

The seams between the stone slabs were filled with some kind of grayish-white filler, so stepping on them no longer produced the sound of stepping on broken seashells as before.

When they reached the corner, Huo Yunzhi cautiously peeked out from the wall, keeping half her head close to the wall.

At the end was a domed space three or four times larger than the previous cave. The dome was at least four or five zhang high above the ground, and the surrounding stone walls were covered with holes of different sizes, arranged densely like a honeycomb.

Each hole is inlaid with pearl shells, some closed and some half-open, letting through a faint light of various colors.

A bead hangs in the very center of the dome.

It is exactly the same moon white color as the Tide Sound Bead, and the same size.

But after Huo Yunzhi took two steps closer, she discovered that the threads flowing inside the bead were not golden but black.

A thick, ink-like black substance slowly churned inside the bead. Each time it churned, a dark purple line would appear on the surface of the bead, flashing like lightning before disappearing.

Several chains of unknown material hung directly below the bead, with a woman bound to the other end of each chain.

When Huo Yunzhi first saw this woman, she thought she was dead.

After all, a woman who is motionless with her head slightly lowered, her long hair hanging down from her shoulders and covering the ground, and her eyes tightly closed, doesn't look like a living person at all.

Huo Yunzhi was about to turn around and leave, but the Tide Sound Bead in her hand began to struggle violently, and even broke free and flew directly in front of the woman.

Just as the Tide Sound Pearl flew in front of the woman, she slightly raised her head.

Huo Yunzhi finally got a clear look at her face.

It was a very young face, looking even younger than Li. The features were so delicate they didn't seem real, and the skin was so white it looked like it had been polished from the smoothest layer inside a seashell.

The only incongruous thing was that her eyes had no distinction between pupil and sclera; the entire eyeball was pure black, as if it had been soaked in ink.

He looks like a blind person.

However, Huo Yunzhi quickly dismissed this conjecture.

Because the woman tilted her head in the opposite direction from Huo Yunzhi, her lips twitched slightly, and then she slowly smiled.

"Ghost messengers?" Her voice echoed several times in the domed space before fading away: "What? Are all the officials in the Underworld dead? Only trash like you left?"

Huo Yunzhi didn't speak. The red silk slid silently down her arm, wrapped around her body, and the muzzle of the Red Lotus Firearm peeked out from the gap in the silk, pointing at the woman.

The woman shifted her body slightly, and the chains tightened around her even more.

Golden blood began to drip onto the ground.

"You smell like Li." She lowered her head and sniffed the air, her pure black eyes narrowing slightly. "Have you seen her?"

Huo Yunzhi subconsciously pressed down on the life-bound scale in her pocket.

The natal scale was slightly warm; you could feel the temperature rising even through the fabric.

"Looks like we've met." The woman chuckled, adjusting her position as if to make herself more comfortable. "What did she ask you to do?"

Huo Yunzhi did not answer.

"Did she send you to find the key to the sea prison?"

The woman didn't care whether Huo Yunzhi responded or not: "I advise you not to be foolish enough to listen to her. Turning around and leaving now is the best choice. You were also coerced into coming to this strange world by **, weren't you?"

"What did you say when you were muted?" Huo Yunzhi instantly caught the censored message from the system: "The system can monitor this too?"

"System?" The woman repeated Huo Yunzhi's words: "So that's what you call it... I guess so, this is also a place it can reach."

"Then who exactly are you? A vengeful ghost?"

"Who's that filthy thing? My name is Ao Ling." The woman sneered, her legs transforming from her waist down into a water-blue dragon tail large enough to cover an entire room. "Didn't you just kill one of my clones? Don't you recognize me now?"

"Are you that demonic dragon from before?"

"That's just that the body has been corrupted by the energy inside this bead and lost its own consciousness; it's not demonization."

Huo Yunzhi followed Ao Ling's gaze and indeed saw the black substance inside the pillar being injected into Ao Ling's body through the chains.

"Every time I feel like my body can't hold on any longer, I use a piece of my dragon tail as a clone to take over, but in the end only the one on the outside is still alive."

Ao Ling moved his dragon tail, and the pearl shells in the holes of the dome suddenly lit up all at once. The colorful light intertwined into a dazzling net, making the entire dome space brighter than daytime.

Huo Yunzhi was shaken so much that she tilted her head to the side.

In that instant when he turned his head, the bead that was hanging above Ao Ling's head disappeared with a "whoosh" and reappeared less than two feet above Huo Yunzhi's head.

The black substance inside the bead overflowed from its surface, turning into more than a dozen thin black threads that hung down toward Huo Yunzhi's head, shoulders, and wrists.

The moment the thin thread touched her skin, she felt a burning pain, as if a red-hot wire had been pressed against her.

Huo Yunzhi endured the pain without dodging, but the red ribbon immediately extended from bottom to top, wrapping around the black threads and pulling them apart.

The red ribbon and black silk spun together, making a hissing sound, as if two forces were devouring each other.

The dark gold patterns on the surface of the red silk brightened and dimmed, dimmed and brightened again, and finally broke most of the black silk, with the remaining few strands shrinking back into the beads as if fleeing for their lives.

Ao Ling let out a "Huh," and half of the amused smile on her face disappeared.

"Where did you get these things?"

Huo Yunzhi didn't answer her. Instead, she took out the golden bow that the ghost messenger had given her, planted one foot firmly on the ground, and used the other foot to push off the bow. She used the Red Lotus Fire Gun as an arrow and shot directly at the bead with a "Hou Yi Shoots the Sun" technique.

The Crimson Lotus Fire Spear touched the bead smoothly, passing through it as if it were water.

The black substance inside the bead churned once, then returned to its original state.

"Don't waste your energy," Ao Ling said slowly. "This thing is beyond the capabilities of your current level of weaponry."

She reached out with difficulty to touch her dragon tail, finally stopping on a scale that was a gradient of pink and blue.

Ao Ling hesitated for a moment, then with a slight pull, he plucked the scale from his hand: "Leave the key in your hand, and then take this out to give to Li."

She then pointed to Huo Yunzhi's wrist: "Then take out that dragon tendon you've been hiding."

"What are you doing?"