In a high-level martial arts game, a wife is given to you at the start.

Chapter 1000 The Soul Summoner

The floor of the hall was not rock, but a translucent gray keratinous layer. Beneath the keratinous layer, one could vaguely see a dark red liquid slowly flowing—the body fluids remaining inside the ancient beast.

What shocked the four of them the most was the center of the hall.

There stood an altar. The altar's base was pieced together from dozens of enormous black bone plates, each plate covered with densely packed runes. These runes were not the defensive and purifying runes found in the manuscript, but a more ancient and primitive script—not a single stroke was a straight line; all the lines were twisted arcs, like intertwined snakes, or abstract depictions of the blood vessels and nervous system of some creature.

In the center of the altar, a skeleton is kneeling.

Perhaps the term "half-kneeling" is inaccurate, because this skeleton no longer has a lower body—it has vanished from the waist down, and the remaining vertebrae seem to have been instantly severed by some kind of extremely high-temperature energy. The upper body, however, is in a position with hands clasped together and the head slightly tilted back, as if making a final prayer or a final sacrifice.

The skeleton of this remains has an extremely strange color - the bones are permeated by layers of fluorescent blue crystal clusters, and are almost completely crystallized. However, the surface of the crystallized bones is wrapped with wisps of faint dark gray mist. The mist slowly flows and changes, and if you look closely, it looks like a semi-transparent, painfully distorted human face is gradually condensing.

"The Soul Summoner." Mo Yuan looked at the half-crystallized remains in the center of the altar, his voice lowered to the extreme, as if he was wary of a being still watching this place. "According to that senior's notes, this should be the Soul Summoner who sacrificed himself to infiltrate the consciousness of the ancient beasts."

Ajiu's face paled slightly, but her right hand firmly gripped the short dagger at her waist. Mr. Xun took out several small detection runes from his pocket and began to quickly set them up at the entrance of the hall, constructing a simple warning line.

Lin Qiye's gaze fell on the ground surrounding the altar's base. Scattered on the translucent, keratinous surface were things that shouldn't be there—severely corroded weapon fragments, dark red bloodstains, and scattered human bones. Judging from the remaining clothing fragments and weapon styles, they didn't belong to the same group of people, but rather were traces left by multiple waves of invaders over a long period of time.

"These bloodstains and bones... should all have been left by the arena deacons who strayed into this place over the past millions of years." Lin Qiye's voice was calm, but the content made everyone else's hearts tighten. "Some of them may have found this place before the Bone Tower's mutation, while others may have been attracted here after the mutation. But no matter who they were, none of them were able to leave this hall alive in the end."

Mo Yuan slowly drew his narrow sword, but his gaze didn't fall on the scattered remains on the ground. Instead, it remained fixed on the crystallized half-body remains in the center of the altar: "Only a few deacon remains remained within the altar's perimeter; most remains are distributed around the outer perimeter of the hall or the edge of the altar's base. What do you think this signifies?"

"This means those closest to the altar die the fastest." Lin Qiye's gaze swept over the twisted ancient runes on the altar's base. "These runes are likely some kind of passively triggered defensive or offensive mechanism, protecting the remnants of the soul summoner's soul from disturbance. Although the fluctuations of the source energy around the altar are not strong, there is an extremely subtle frequency continuously operating, like—"

"The shallow breathing of someone asleep," Mr. Xun continued. He placed the last detection runestone, stood up, his expression extremely grave. "Have you noticed that the bones scattered around the altar don't have any obvious fatal external injuries?"

Ajiu quickly scanned the scattered bones around the altar, her pupils shrinking slightly: "Indeed. The remains I saw were intact, without cracks or fractures, and even their weapons were still in their hands without any signs of being knocked away. The cause of death was not external force."

"They weren't killed, their source energy was drained." Mr. Xun's voice trembled slightly as he said this. "These intruders, upon approaching the altar, may have had all their source energy and life force drained from their bodies at a single moment, leaving them no time to resist and killing them instantly. It's equivalent to a human sacrifice."

The hall fell silent for a moment.

Mo Yuan's knuckles, gripping the hilt of the sword, turned slightly white, but his voice remained steady: "In other words, once we step into the trigger range of the altar, we may very well be used as sacrifices."

"Very likely. But the problem is—we don't know the exact range of the altar's trigger, nor what the triggering conditions are." Mr. Xun's gaze swept back and forth over the distorted runes on the altar's base, his brow furrowed. "I've never seen these runes arranged like this before; they completely exceed any rune system recorded in the Array Master's manuals of the Overwatch Council. It doesn't belong to the category of known Origin Qi Arrays; it's more like a product of some alien civilization."

Lin Qiye did not participate in the discussion. He stood at the entrance of the hall, the furthest point from the altar, with his eyes closed, suppressing the blood demon power in his body to a minimum.

Deep within his consciousness, the invisible thread connecting him to the ancient beast's heart was trembling gently. Since entering this hall, that resonance had become even clearer—so clear that he could almost perceive the exact location and frequency of the ancient heart's beat. It was below, somewhere deeper underground than this hall, not too far away, at most a few thousand feet.

At the same time, he also sensed another fluctuation emanating from the crystallized remains in the center of the altar. This fluctuation was extremely faint, like a candle flickering in the wind, ready to be extinguished at any moment, but its frequency perfectly matched the rhythm of the ancient beast's heartbeat—not a coincidence, but a precise synchronization achieved after a long period of calibration. The Soul Summoner's soul had not dissipated with the partial destruction of his physical body, but had instead embedded itself deep within the ancient beast's consciousness in some form, merging and coexisting with it, becoming part of the rhythm of its heartbeat.

"We can't shut it down," Mr. Xun suddenly said, his voice clear and firm.

All three of them turned to look at him at the same time.

Mo Yuan frowned slightly: "What do you mean?"

"The soul of the Soul Recaller has already deeply merged with the consciousness of the ancient beast. If we forcibly shut down this altar now, severing the resonance connection between it and the ancient beast, it would be tantamount to tearing a piece out of the ancient beast's awakening consciousness. You won't let a sleeping person wake up peacefully; you will wake it up painfully."

Mo Yuan's expression suddenly changed: "Awakening in pain—you mean, if we forcibly sever the resonance now, not only will it not cause the ancient beast to fall back into slumber, but it will also stimulate it to awaken even more violently?"