Chapter 3183: Chapter 3183: Black Lamps

As he hovered in the sky above the desert, Zen looked around but still failed to find anything special.

He flew past the circular desert bordered by grassland without stopping. Soon, he came across another similarly shaped terrain.

This time, the circular area was the grassland being surrounded by a desert.

Without any hesitation, Zen flew past it as well and arrived at the end of a third circle.

“I bet the temple must be around here!” Zen exclaimed.

After going over the area, he was certain they were on the right track.

Elvinia gave her surroundings a confused look. “Why would a temple be located here? There's nothing but sand for miles,” she complained.

The third circular piece of land was a vast expanse of flat gobi, including the end of it. If the temple was here, they should've been able to spot it by now.

Once they landed, Elvinia lowered her head to carefully tread across the ground they stood.

“Huh?”

Her eyes suddenly lit up in surprise. She pointed to the ground and yelled, “Zen! Come and have a look!”

Directly beneath her feet was the long outline of what remained of some sort of foundation. Most of it was buried underground.

Zen walked up and down the foundation's remains, tediously observing it alongside Elvinia.

An idea suddenly popped up in his mind. Swiftly, he flew towards the sky and hovered before looking down and narrowing his eyes.

As expected, everything was much clearer from a bird's eye view.

He hadn't paid any attention to the ground upon arriving.

But now seeing it from up here, he could clearly see the frame of a huge temple beneath him!

“Do you see anything?” Elvinia bellowed from below.

Zen nodded as he made his slow descent from the sky. “Yes. The foundation of the temple is buried underneath the gobi,” he replied.

“Then that means… the temple we've been searching for is right beneath our feet?” Elvinia asked.

“It's possible.” Suddenly, Zen shook his head from left to right as he recalled something. “However, something's still off here. This is the temple's foundation. If we can see it from here, then that means the temple is erected at this spot and that we should've been inside its walls by now,”

Zen raised his hand to point at their surroundings.

“So you're saying we're already inside the temple?” Elvinia asked again, the doubt still all over her face.

“Well, there's one way to confirm that. We won't be able to leave the Other Shore if we're right inside a temple, so let's give this one a try.” Once Zen finished speaking, he began chanting the Illusion Breaking Rune.

Normally, using the rune would've returned him to his cultivation room in the Source World. But that didn't happen this time. Instead, he remained on the Other Shore.

Elvinia's curiosity grew as she witnessed this. She began to follow suit, chanting her own Illusion Breaking Rune. But her Soul of Light, just like Zen, was unable to escape the Other Shore too. Could this mean they were both trapped within the confines of an invisible temple?

“What a strange place this is,”

she commented, the fear making her voice tremble ever so slightly. She walked along the temple's foundation and left the temple's confines before giving it another shot. 𝐫𝐀𐌽ꝋβƐṧ

This time, as soon as she finished chanting the Illusion Breaking Rune, her body of the purified being closed her eyes and knelt down on the ground, motionless. It was obvious that her Soul of Light had left the Other Shore.

It wasn't long before her body began to regain consciousness as her soul returned. As she sat on the ground with an astonished look, she looked up into Zen's eyes. His suspicions were right all along.

“Zen, what's going on?” she asked him.

Zen shook his head and said with a frown. “Maybe we entered the temple in a wrong way, and thus we can't see it even if we are inside it.”

“But how are we supposed to enter it? We can't even find a proper keyhole for the Other Shore Key,” Elvinia reminded him.

If they could use the Other Shore Key, the temple would probably appear clearly in their vision. But now all they could see was miles and miles of barren gobi surrounding them. Where could they find the keyhole?

Zen wandered around as he examined every inch of earth. However, no clues could be found.

He raised his palm to check the map on it. Although he had deeply carved the map into his mind, he had made a new discovery after a careful observation.

Normally, the temple was marked at the center of a map.

But on this map, the temple was located somewhere on the lower portion. Instead, it was the three circular regions Zen had passed over that were in the map's center.

Zen's intuition told him that there might be a hidden meaning to those three circular regions.

“Come with me!”

Zen stepped forward and grabbed Elvinia's hand. They soared high into the sky, once more.

“What did you find?” She asked him curiously.

“The temple is here. I'm sure of it! It's just that we entered it the wrong way,” Zen explained.

“Then how do we correctly enter the temple?” Elvinia asked, confused.

Zen didn't answer. He brought her back to the edge of the first circular region they had passed earlier.

On the map, he discovered a small opening in the north of the circle. As they landed by the opening, they entered the circular region by walking from north to south along the edge of the desert.

As soon as they set foot on the sand, the scenery around them changed dramatically.

Numerous lamp stands rose out of the scorching desert sand one at a time — the tips of their wicks burning with black flames.

The other ends of the extremely long wicks extended to the ground, with shadows bound to them. The shadows were in various shapes. There were shadows of humans, beasts, monsters and so on.

A few shadows sat still on the ground while others struggled in desperation around the lamp stands they were attached to which left circular trails on the sand.

As an ominous aura emanated from them, Elvinia felt a chill running up and down her spine. Frowning, she asked, “What…what is this place?”

“The only way to the temple entrance,” Zen replied calmly, his voice free of any fear.

The high priest from the Elephant Man race had warned them of the dangers this place held.

In fact, three purified beings that possessed great power had met their end here. Zen never expected them to enter this place easily.

“Wait here. I'll go have a look first,” Zen ordered her.

The lamp stands were arranged in such a way that they were at equal distances apart from each other. All lamps had wicks long enough for the shadows to move in a hundred-foot radius around the stands — leaving no space to go around the shadows.

Realizing that there was no shortcut, Zen had no choice but to break through the terrifying path before him.

He slowly approached the nearest lamp stand to which the shadow of a dog was tied. It dozed off, snoring and lying motionless on the ground.

Once Zen entered the area bathed in lamplight, however, the dog woke up and immediately pounced on him ferociously.

Zen subconsciously dodged to the side, but the shadow's speed was surprisingly fast.

Realizing he couldn't avoid the attack, Zen outstretched his hand to defend himself. The dog bit deep into his arm.

However, something odd happened. Zen didn't feel the slightest bit of pain from its teeth. His Chaotic Source Spirits received no damage. As it turned out, the shadow was just like a ghost that could easily pass through his body. All that it left was a vague bite mark on his arm.