The contorted monster's intellect was almost entirely gone. It took the better part of a day for it to finally grasp Li Fan's meaning.
It stopped kowtowing and grew still, though its head continued rotating as if deep in thought.
Not long after, it suddenly began to scuttle away.
It kept turning its head back, gesturing for Li Fan to follow.
The region near the Ruin Twelve was still saturated with the power of disorientation.
To Li Fan's senses, the contorted monster leading the way ahead would suddenly appear behind him, then blink forward a great distance, its position shifting erratically without pattern.
Li Fan followed closely behind the contorted monster, using it as a fixed coordinate and constantly adjusting the direction of his flight.
After several hours, the black light that had been flowing non-stop across the Black Death Talisman grew fainter and fainter, as if it might sputter out at any moment.
Following the contorted monster ever deeper, Li Fan eventually seemed to reach the heart of the Lost Domain.
A vast circular pit, looking like it had been formed by a meteor slamming into the earth, came into view. And within it stood numerous human figures.
Just like the corpses Li Fan had previously seen, they were long since devoid of life.
Yet they were also different. These bodies no longer retained their lifelike stillness in death. Instead, each had undergone a bizarre transformation.
Some had petrified, turned entirely to stone like statues. Others had jade-ified, their bodies emitting a clear, crystalline glow. Some bore skin like tree bark, rough and fissured.
What made Li Fan’s flesh crawl the most were those that seemed to have undergone some kind of insectification. At a glance, these corpses appeared normal. But on closer inspection, their bodies were completely hollow. They were composed of countless, minuscule black maggots. Even after all these years, the creatures continued to writhe.
The closer one drew to the center of the pit, the more extreme the transformations became.
No standing corpses remained.
Instead, the bodies had fused into unrecognizable substances, melded directly with the ground.
After some point, Li Fan sensed the contorted monster’s pace begin to slow almost imperceptibly. At the same time, its entire body shuddered faintly. It seemed that something ahead inspired a primal, instinctive dread in it.
At an invisible boundary, it stopped completely, refusing to take even a single step forward.
After calming it, Li Fan had no choice but to proceed alone.
He raised his guard to the maximum level, prepared to invoke Return to Truth at any moment.
What awaited him was not what he had imagined.
At the very center of the circular pit, there was no terrifying monster. Instead, only a stone fragment lay there quietly.
Characters had once been carved upon its surface, but time had eroded them to near nothingness.
And yet, from the faint traces that remained, Li Fan could barely make out a single word:
“Chaos.”