Chapter 156: Divine Mysteries [2]
Roy moved through the suffocating gloom of the subterranean cavern like an untouchable shadow.
Every few dozen paces, the darkness writhing around him burst into violent motion as wild, mutated Beast-stage F-class Abominations lunged from the damp stone walls.
Iron-scaled serpents, multi-limbed arachnids, and crimson-eyed beasts charged with open maws, driven by the instinctual urge to tear the divine intruder to shreds.
Roy did not even slow his stride.
With a simple flick of his wrist or a passive surge of his divine authority, the beasts were instantly crushed into fine, bloody mist before their claws could touch his robes.
Yet, despite his disdain for these mindless creatures, Roy made sure to collect their mana cores.
With a subtle sweep of his sleeve, invisible threads of divine energy plucked the glowing, crystal-like cores from the gore, storing them neatly within his spatial ring.
Though useless to a Divine Spirit, these low-grade F-class cores held immense value for Eurenia and Alisa, serving as vital catalysts to refine their internal channels and accelerate their Martial General cultivation.
The deeper Roy descended into the bowels of the earth, the more volatile the surrounding environment became.
The air grew heavy enough to crush the chest of a standard human cultivator, choked with raw, unrefined spatial pressure.
Yet, to Roy, it was utterly irrelevant.
He was an Apostle—a living Divine Spirit. Nothing on this mortal plane, regardless of its ancestral lineage or corrupted stage, held the power to harm his true divine vessel.
Even if a True God from the upper realms descended into a mortal avatar, destroying Roy’s fundamental essence was a feat beyond their reach.
Suddenly, Roy brought his boots to a smooth, silent halt.
Before him stood a massive, solid wall of ancient bedrock.
The dark tunnel simply ceased, leaving no hidden passages, no cavernous side-paths, and no further descent.
Roy stared at the damp, bare stone for a long, quiet moment, his dual golden-crimson eyes scanning the dead end.
A trace of genuine disappointment flickered across his face.
"Nothing..." Roy murmured softly, his deep voice echoing flatly off the stone. "Just a hollow pocket of corrupted earth."
Shaking his head, Roy turned on his heel to retrace his steps back to the surface.
As he pivoted, the toe of his boot casually struck a small, loose pebble on the cavern floor, sending it skittering across the smooth rock.
Clink.
The moment the stone struck the base of the wall, a faint, near-imperceptible ripple vibrated through the air—a subtle, intoxicating hum of divine resonance that brushed against his soul.
Roy froze.
His eyebrows furrowed into a sharp, dangerous line.
He slowly turned back toward the dead end, his eyes narrowing as he focused his divine perception onto the space directly before him.
"An illusion..." he whispered, a cold, mocking smirk touching his lips.
He tightened his right fist, drawing upon the primordial wellspring of his divine essence.
Crimson energy flared around his knuckles like condensed starfire.
With effortless, terrifying precision, Roy thrust his fist forward, punching the empty air.
CRACK!
The spatial structure of the cave groaned violently.
Visible fissures of fractured light webbed across the air, splitting the dark void open like shattered glass.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Roy plunged his clawed fingers directly into the tears of the cracking space, channeling his crimson divine essence to tear the veil wide open.
THUNDER-CLACK!
The illusory divine veil shattered into thousands of sparkling, intangible shards, dissolving completely into the atmosphere.
As the false wall vanished, an overwhelming, suffocating weight settled over Roy’s heart.
The atmospheric pressure dropped drastically, replaced by an ancient, tragic aura that made the ambient mana reel in revulsion.
Directly beneath his feet yawned a staggering, pitch-black abyss—a bottomless hole dropping straight into the mantle of the continent.
No light reached its floor, and no sound drifted from its depths.
Driven by unyielding curiosity, Roy stepped off the ledge and plunged into the abyss.
He descended at lightning speed, cutting through the roaring subterranean winds like a golden meteor.
He kept his posture relaxed, his arms folded loosely behind his back as his glowing golden hair whipped through the darkness.
With every passing second of his fall, the intoxicating scent of pure, unadulterated divine essence grew exponentially stronger—thick enough to drive an ordinary human cultivator insane with spiritual overload.
To Roy, however, it was child’s play.
He absorbed the divine pressure effortlessly, converting it into passive fuel for his vessel.
Minutes passed before the pitch-black void finally gave way.
Roy adjusted his momentum with a swift shift of his divine essence, landing silently upon solid ground without kicking up a single speck of dust.
He straightened his posture, turning his gaze toward the horizon of the subterranean realm.
His dual golden-crimson eyes widened in genuine awe.
Standing before him in the center of a subterranean realm was a towering, magnanimous palace.
The structure was breathtakingly ancient, built from divine white marble that now lay cracked and weathered by the passage of millennia.
Withered, petrified flora clung to shattered stone pillars, and massive iron gates lay broken off their hinges, crushed as if by the strike of an ancient giant.
It was a monument of celestial grandeur buried and forgotten beneath thousands of feet of blood-stained mortal soil.
Roy stepped through the broken iron gates, his curiosity piqued.
His eyes remained locked onto the grand central castle at the heart of the palace grounds, where the concentration of divine essence burned like a beacon.
ROAR!
Suddenly, the shadows surrounding the ruined courtyards burst open.
Dozens of Beast-stage F-class Abominations—corrupted beyond recognition by centuries of exposure to leaking divine essence—surged toward him from every corridor.
Razor-sharp claws, dripping fangs, and tail blades aimed directly at Roy’s throat.
Roy didn’t even bother to raise a hand. He didn’t have time to play with mindless beasts when a true anomaly stood just yards away.
BZZZZT!
Roy activated his Divine Authority of Mindcraft.
An invisible, golden wave of pure mental dominance rippled outward from his forehead.
The moment the psychic wave struck the charging horde, the beasts froze in mid-air.
Their savage red eyes diluted into hollow, glassy spheres as their beastial instincts were instantly broken, erased, and rewritten into absolute submission.
The monsters crashed onto the stone floor around him, whimpering softly like obedient hounds, completely paralyzed by his mental grip.
Roy walked past them without bestowing a single glance, stepping up the grand marble stairs of the central castle.
He reached the towering, double-arched doors carved with ancient celestial runes. Raising his hand, Roy pressed his palm against the heavy wood and pushed.
CREEEEAK...
The doors groaned as they parted, revealing a grand, cavernous throne room illuminated by dim, ethereal light filtering from a cracked crystal chandelier high above.
Roy took a single step into the hall, and his breath caught in his throat. His golden-crimson eyes shook with profound disbelief.
There, resting upon the blood-stained altar at the far end of the hall, bound in heavy, dark iron chains that drained its very soul, lay a battered, divine creature.
Six massive, magnificent feathered wings extended from its back—though four were snapped, torn, and heavily matted with dried, golden blood.
Unconscious, breathing in shallow, agony-filled rasps, the entity radiated a pure, celestial aura that defied the rules of this mortal realm.
Roy’s body shuddered, his deep voice echoing through the silent, ancient hall in a rare moment of sheer shock.
"W-What is an Angel doing here...?"