150. Bronze Demon Arm (Second update, seeking subscriptions)

Indeed, it has to do with ancient cultivators. The so-called hanging coffin is actually the core focal point of a grand formation. Once Chen Fengyun entered the underground depths, he instantly uncovered the truth behind the hanging coffin.

In this age of the end of the Dharma, true cultivators no longer existed in the world, and Chen Fengyun might well be the very last one, which was why no one else had ever discovered the truth of the hanging coffin.

"Hark, this formation turns out to be the entrance to a sub-dimension, sealing a minor space within." After a closer inspection, Chen Fengyun detected an anomaly. He then stepped forward to the underside of the hanging coffin, and his body suddenly vanished before everyone's eyes.

"Oh no! Chen Fengyun is gone!" The surrounding students immediately noticed the abnormality and cried out in shock.

"What is going on?" The supervising teacher had not witnessed it; hearing the students' exclamations, he hurried over to inquire.

"Teacher, Chen Fengyun has vanished! He just ran over to this spot beneath the hanging coffin, and then all of a sudden, he was gone." A student stammered.

"How can that be? Did he go somewhere else?" The supervising teacher inspected the area beneath the hanging coffin for quite a while without finding anything unusual. A daring student cautiously walked over to the exact spot where Chen Fengyun had disappeared, but absolutely nothing happened.

"Teacher, several of us saw it; this is precisely where he vanished." Yet several students insisted this was the case, and the supervising teacher immediately contacted the other instructors, asking everyone to take roll to see if Chen Fengyun had simply wandered elsewhere.

However, the final headcount confirmed that Chen Fengyun was truly missing. The supervising teacher hastily contacted the ruins' management office to review the underground surveillance footage, and sure enough, they discovered that Chen Fengyun had indeed vanished into thin air while standing beneath the hanging coffin.

"A major incident has occurred at the Sanxingdui ruins: an archaeology undergraduate visiting the site has suddenly disappeared." This news swiftly sent shockwaves through the archaeological community. Convinced that momentous changes were about to take place at the Sanxingdui ruins, experts and scholars flocked there from all directions.

Meanwhile, Chen Fengyun had already materialized within a mystic realm space—or what could also be called a heavenly grotto. However, unlike the miniature grotto he had previously acquired, this was a fully mature grotto that had already been permanently anchored in position.

Upon entering the grotto, Chen Fengyun found himself standing at the foot of a mountain range. To his bewilderment, the entire mountain range was cast in a bronze hue, as though it had been poured from molten bronze, and even all the surrounding flowers, plants, and trees shared the exact same metallic luster.

A profound silence reigned all around; aside from the bronze sheen, there was no other color, nor any sign of life. Chen Fengyun summoned his flying sword and soared upward, shooting rapidly toward the peak while sweeping his divine sense across the surroundings to survey the terrain near the mountains.

On the other side of the mountain range lay a river, yet the liquid flowing within it was likewise of a bronze color, entirely devoid of any living creatures, which left Chen Fengyun deeply astounded.

Crossing the bronze river, however, a vast and boundless plain appeared in the distance. The plain was dotted with various structures, though they were too far away to discern clearly.

Chen Fengyun immediately flew toward the plain across the river. About half an hour later, a colossal city emerged before his eyes, constructed entirely of various bronze-colored buildings.

Moreover, Chen Fengyun discovered that the earth, rocks, trees, and everything else along the way were entirely bronze-colored, appearing as if they were literally crafted from bronze with not a single trace of any other hue.

As he approached the cluster of buildings ahead, Chen Fengyun realized that many of them had already collapsed. Right amidst the numerous structures lay a massive cylindrical object, and it was precisely this giant pillar that had crushed and flattened many of the buildings.

Just as Chen Fengyun neared the bronze city, he suddenly felt waves of immense pressure rolling toward him, emanating directly from the colossal object sprawled across the ground.

"Roar—!"

Just as Chen Fengyun pushed forward against the pressure, a heaven-shaking roar suddenly echoed within his mind, causing his body to sway violently and nearly dislodging him from his flying sword. He quickly reined in his wandering mind and retreated backward.

"Strange, what on earth is this thing? It's easily over a thousand meters long and dozens of meters in diameter, yet it radiates such overwhelming might. Could it be some kind of demonic entity?" Chen Fengyun decided to ascend to a higher vantage point to take a proper look.

With that, he drove his flying sword soaring straight up into the sky, continuously closing in toward the center of the city as he climbed. When he reached an altitude of several thousand meters, the shock in his heart reached its absolute peak, for he saw that the object sprawled amidst the city below was actually a gigantic bronze arm.

At the very end of the arm lay an array formation the size of a sports stadium. Furthermore, this formation was not unfamiliar to Chen Fengyun at all; it was identical to the cross-realm teleportation array he had seen in the Changbai underground palace.

That massive arm appeared to have thrust through from within the cross-realm teleportation array, but it had been severed entirely at the root and collapsed downward, not only shattering the grand cross-realm teleportation formation but also crushing a small half of the city's architecture.

Though it was impossible to tell when this demonic arm had arrived here, the bronze aura radiating from it remained intensely majestic, constantly diffusing outward into the surroundings.

"Could it be that everything within this grotto has been bronzified by this demonic arm, which is why this condition has arisen? And those bronze artifacts unearthed at Sanxingdui were actually transformed under the influence of this demonic Qi, only to be carried out of the grotto by surviving ancient cultivators long, long ago."

An astonishing thought suddenly flashed through Chen Fengyun's mind. In ancient times, this grotto must have housed a powerful cultivation clan or sect that had opened up a cross-realm teleportation array, establishing a connection with the distant outside world.

Yet one day, a gigantic demonic arm suddenly broke through the cross-realm teleportation array. A terrifying fiend had attempted to teleport over through the array, shocking the entire sect.

In the end, the powerhouses of the entire sect engaged in an earth-shattering battle against the demonic arm, destroying most of the city in the process. By some unknown means, they ultimately managed to sever the demonic arm while simultaneously destroying the teleportation array.

However, the demonic entity possessed astonishing divine abilities; even though only a single arm remained, a sliver of the fiend's divine will was still imprinted within it. Consequently, it emitted a bronze aura that continuously influenced and altered the attributes of everything around it, ultimately turning all of nature into bronze.

The survivors of that ancient clan or sect had no choice but to evacuate the grotto, subsequently sealing it off entirely and leaving behind a grand formation to suppress the grotto's entrance, with the hanging coffin serving as the core eye of the formation.

Realizing this, Chen Fengyun felt an inexplicable shock. He then descended, entering the city on foot from its outskirts, hoping to test whether his cultivation system could absorb the residual energy remaining within the demonic arm.

Sure enough, Chen Fengyun discovered several bronzified corpses amid the city ruins, alongside various everyday utensils. Yet just as he came within several hundred meters of the demonic arm, a drastic change occurred.

"Roar—!"

Not only did the roar resound in his mind once again, but from the bronze demonic arm itself, streams of bronze liquid began to ooze downward, transforming into a horde of ferocious demon monsters. They stood only half a meter tall, yet they bore twin horns on their heads, possessed four arms, and featured a row of sharp bone spikes along their backs.