On their way there, the hare kept on sharing glorious stories of his ancestors, "We skeletons reproduce through souls. Once we die, our souls will be kicked out from our body and by then, we will enter another skeleton. After his passing, my grand ancestor's scattered soul entered his son's skeleton, then his son's son and so on, the people of my bloodline couldn't even read even though the heritage of the ancestor is still there!"
With a broken heart, the hare said, "And that is the worst! God knows what the weird language within the ancestor's heritage. I may be able to enter his grave, but when faced with these words, I only managed to decipher a tiny bit of the heritage. Speaking of which, you came from the outer world so you must know these words too, right?"
With eyes filled with hope, the hare stared at Zhong Yue with his burning eyes.
Lost for words, all Zhong Yue could do was to look at the hare and nothing else. This hare was so talkative that before Zhong Yue could even interrogate or ask anything from the hare, he had already given out all kinds of information about him and his ancestors.
"Judging from that reaction, I assume you can't read as well."
The hare sighed pitifully and now, he turned around and comforted Zhong Yue by saying, "It's okay, none of us in this world can read so no one will laugh at you."
At a loss for words, Zhong Yue merely shook his head and ignored the hare.
If this skeleton hare could enter to tomb of the Realm Lord, it must be because of his soul. Skeletons in this world are also a kind of living being created by remnants of spirits.
After the death of the Realm Lord, his spirit must have entered a skeleton, thus, a new generation and because of his first death, the new generation still possesses quite a complete memory of the Realm Lord. After a few deaths, however, his memory slowly faded until he eventually lost the ability to read the words he left behind. Then when it got to this generation of this hare, he can't even comprehend pictures anymore, only some overly simple techniques and skills.
Though the hare was weak, his soul was also the remnant spirit of the Realm Lord and that was exactly why the hare could walk within the tomb without worry.
I wonder if the Realm Lord left behind any ways or clues to get out from this strange world….
While he had hopes that the Realm Lord had indeed left behind some method to get out, he wasn't optimistic. If the Realm Lord had a way to get out, he would've left long ago before he died.
But since he had been here for such a long time and he is after all, a Realm Lord, whatever he achieved was much higher than me, and perhaps I could learn a thing or two from what he left behind.
Time slowly passed and Zhong Yue kept on achieving new levels and after sweeping across many cities, he finally cultivated his inner core to the limit.
The immortal body is useless.
Zhong Yue stared emptily into the air; he activated his immortal body just now but there was no flesh growing out from his body!
Crack—-
He broke a rib bone. After a few moments, another new bone grew in its place, but there was still no flesh.
The immortal body was of no use! It had failed to let Zhong Yue to regain a body with flesh!
He shook his head and chased out all unnecessary thoughts and continued following behind the hare towards the Realm Lord's tomb in hopes of finding something to help him get out of the current situation. But the Pale Bone Plains was so vast that they had yet to reach their destination.
"There! The palace of my ancestor!" The skeleton hare shouted out all of a sudden as he pointed at a direction. Zhong Yue looked towards the place he pointed at and he was amazed by what he saw; a gigantic mountain made from bone stood highly on the ground with its peak piercing into the skies and a marvelous palace standing atop the top of the mountain.
They then proceeded to hike up the mountain and once they got to the top, Zhong Yue saw a bone tablet being hammered onto the ground in front of the palace and he forced himself to keep cool as he examined it.
There were some words carved into the tablet. "I was trapped in this place, corroded by the power of reincarnation and turned into a skeleton. First I was terrified and shocked but soon, I was overcome with happiness as I realized that I could be reborn, allowing me to make decisions that I may otherwise regret."
The more Zhong Yue read, the more shock and terrified he got.
Back then, when the Realm Lord turned into a skeleton, he too, had a shock but later on, instead of worrying, he was very happy, happy that perhaps he could reborn and make things right again, to get rid of his regrets and cultivate into an even higher level.
But soon, after he succeeded and triumphed over all the living beings here and became the Bone Emperor after vanquishing all his foes, he realized to his horror that he was trapped in this place.
There was no way out and no method for him to regain his flesh.
Time passed quickly and many years later, his soul grew old, but he was now a Deity Emperor. Yet, there were still no way to escape even after flipping this entire world upside down.
The last sentence on the tablet read, "If you can read the words on this tablet, it means that you're like me, and that you too, have been trapped in this place."
After he aged tremendously, the Realm Lord came up with a hypothesis, which is that while the power of reincarnation was present, the power of Six Paths was not. He strongly felt that if he wanted to leave this place, the two powers must be met and from that, he could possibly reawaken his "previous life's" body.
Zhong Yue turned quiet and realized he couldn't sense any Six Path power either. When he first entered Gui Xu, the power of Six Path was immense and the Pan Gu Celestial Being in his Dao Yi Wheel even started to absorb this power by itself, simulating the Six Path Reincarnation.
This suggested that there should be an even more immense power of Six Path in the Ancient Land of Gods Grave, but somehow, there was no movements coming from the Pan Gu Celestial Being.
The power of Six Path and Reincarnation was greatly different; Zhong Yue had experienced the power of Six Paths, and this time, when he was "reborn" into a skeleton, he also felt that strange power of Reincarnation and the differences in power was palpable.
Due to his lack of understanding of the two powers however, he couldn't glean any more details.
The Realm Lord's research on the power of Six Paths must be hidden in this bone palace and if I want to take a look at his notes, I will have to get in there.
After a moment, Zhong Yue looked at the palace and walked forward suddenly. When his feet landed on the ground, the initially calm and peaceful palace suddenly emitted an overwhelming divine power as the seals protecting the palace emerged!
Zhong Yue stared at the palace and the seals for quite some time before he shook his head and left.
"Why? What's wrong?"The hare quickly asked.
"There's no way in, not for me atleast and not for now. I will only be killed if I try to force my way in. I will be back once I am strong enough!" Zhong Yue said resolutely as he sped away while the hare followed him quickly and shouted, "So you can read! Good! Good! Don't you dare try to leave me here!"
Two years later, at the same place and now at the Heavenly Dharma level, Zhong Yue left this place again after staring at the seals of the palace for some time.
"No, I still can't make it. Not strong enough!"
Time passed quickly and four years later, Zhong Yue revisited this place while now at the True Spirit level, having cultivated both his sun and moon spirit into innate true spirits. He was now at the same level he was in his "previous life".
However, his Yuan Shen had become extremely powerful to a point far outstripping the strength of his Yuan Shen in his "previous life:!
This time, I will not leave no matter what! I've been trapped in this place for seven to eight years and the levels after the True Spirit level are not that easy to cultivate anymore….
Zhong Yue took a deep breath before he started advancing.
His level now was the exact same level as his "previous life". The sole reason he managed to cultivate to such level in such a short time was because he had been in those levels before. The levels after this however, he knew nothing about them so he had to explore the secrets of these levels by himself. If he wanted to keep doing what he had been doing, it would take more than just four or five years, perhaps forty to fifty years before he would be able to make a breakthrough.
This time, he did not come here to destroy the seals for it is entirely impossible, perhaps it was still impossible for him even after becoming a Celestial Overlord, these seals were created by the Realm Lord who was a Deity Emperor.
What he was going to do today was to comprehend these seals and merge himself with these seals so that he could enter the palace!
Again, as he entered the seals' area of protection, the seals were activated and the palace was shrouded in immense power and the paths leading into the palace were sealed.
The hare followed behind him tightly and he stared at Zhong Yue nervously.
Zhong Yue continued walking and he stopped right in front of the seals, examined them and started to study these seals along with Xin Huo who read the seals through the third divine eye on Zhong Yue's forehead.
Though Xin Huo was very knowledgeable, he had little understanding on the Six Path Reincarnation and he too had things that he couldn't do so Zhong Yue would have to try his very best on his own.
In half a month time, the first layer of seals were deciphered by the two of them.
And that was another step forward for Zhong Yue and after another month, he stepped out his third step.
Day after day, month after month and year after year.
Thirty to four years later, Zhong Yue finally arrived at the gate of the palace and took another six years to decipher the seals on the gates before he finally managed to open the door.
"Xin Huo." Zhong Yue said in his psyche, "A day in the Six Path World, a year in Hell. We are trapped in this place for forty eight years so it should be forty eight days on the outside, yeah?"
Xin Huo kept quiet for awhile and he said, "You are saying that we can't get out anymore?"
With a nod, Zhong Yue said, "The soul token is probably useless already. It is very likely that we are trapped here forever."
"Then why still try so hard to get in?" asked Xin Huo.
"Because I do not want to give up!" Zhong Yue shouted as he walked into the palace shrouded by the immense power of the Deity Emperor. His totem carvings, celestial writing, and pictures were scrawled all over the palace; these were the inscriptions of the Prison Realm's Realm Lord, the master of this palace.
……
These words, totem carvings and pictures were still moving around as time failed to corrode the energy that was still surging this place.
The Realm Lord had marked down everything he knew and learnt about this place and he constantly kept searching for ways to get out.
"This is not the right way!"
"Wrong method!"
"Again!"
"Everything is just not right!"
….
Zhong Yue looked at these words left behind by the Realm Lord as he tried to explore ways to get out; he went through everything and thought he had cracked the puzzle multiple times before realizing they were all dead ends!
Zhong Yue went through everything before finally finding the final simulation the Realm Lord made about the power of Six Path and Reincarnation. What stood in front of him now was a gigantic calculation table that is still running; although the master of this had place died long ago, this table was still operating in search of finding out the relationship between the Six Path and Reincarnation power!