Night. The sky was blanketed with stars, yet they offered no light. Only a full moon hung luminous overhead, though drifting clouds shrouded it again and again, casting ghostly beams of moonlight when it briefly appeared.
The ground was lined with rows of iron trees, standing like maces driven into the earth. All around Chu Feng, an eerie silence reigned — not even a whisper of wind stirred. And that unnatural quiet only amplified the strangeness of the sounds echoing from the pit.
"Hold on — you're seriously telling me to go down into that? What the hell is making those wailing noises? Don't tell me it's ghosts."
Chu Feng was unsettled. He had never heard anything so wretched, and the fact that it rose from a bottomless pit made it all the more harrowing. It sounded like souls straight out of the underworld, crying out about some ancient injustice — deeply unsettling.
"Don't be such a coward. Don't forget — you're a Spirit World Master. You're destined to deal with supernatural things. How else are you going to help me absorb their origin energy?" Egg reprimanded him.
"No way. So after all that, being a Spirit World Master just means you're a born grave robber?" Chu Feng was speechless.
"What did you think it meant? Spirit World Masters commune with the Spirit World and can perceive things ordinary people cannot. The tombs of powerful cultivators are packed with treasures — they're practically the best shortcut to getting stronger."
"Cultivation is already absurdly hard. Only a fool would skip a shortcut like that." Egg's disdain was palpable.
"So if what you're saying is right, that thing howling down there really could be a ghost?"
Chu Feng's heart clenched. Demons and ghosts were supposed to be legends, but as his horizons had widened, he'd discovered that demon beasts existed, that monstrous creatures roamed the world, and that cultivators who strayed from the proper path could lose themselves to inner demons and become monsters who slaughtered the innocent. If all that was real, then ghosts might actually exist too.
"What's so scary about ghosts? Haven't you already met one?" Egg said.
"When did I ever meet a ghost?" Chu Feng thought hard but couldn't remember ever encountering anything like that.
"Back at the Myriad Bones Graveyard — that old man you saw? That was one." Egg reminded him.
"Wait — he was a ghost? That's impossible! He was incredibly powerful!"
Chu Feng was stunned. The old man he had seen that night had left an indescribably deep impression on him. Even though the old man hadn't released any aura at all, Chu Feng had still sensed his overwhelming power — power beyond description. He never would have guessed that such a being was a ghost.
"When a cultivator reaches a certain realm, their spiritual consciousness becomes immensely powerful. After death, if that consciousness doesn't dissipate, it lingers and wanders — which is what you call a ghost."
"But Spirit World Masters possess exceptionally strong Mental Power. After death, that Mental Power merges with the spiritual consciousness, granting the ability to control its every movement. The spirit then continues to exist in a different form."
"It's not as formidable as when they were alive, but they still possess heaven-defying abilities. The old man you saw that day was exactly that kind of powerful figure. And the seal on your Mental Power — he was the one who unsealed it."
Egg recounted everything in meticulous detail. Back when Chu Feng had fallen unconscious, she had remained aware, so she had witnessed everything the old man did to him.
Listening to her account, the truth dawned on Chu Feng. He had possessed Mental Power all along — it simply hadn't been activated due to some special circumstance. In other words, his Mental Power was something he had been born with.
"Wherever a place possesses that kind of powerful spiritual consciousness, there's almost certainly an ancient burial beneath it. But the Myriad Bones Graveyard had so many bones, and combined with that old man's hidden circumstances — that place is almost certainly no ordinary ancient burial. It's very likely a fierce burial." Egg continued her explanation.