Despite the woman having her eyes closed, she looked just like Dorothy.
But the ornaments she wore in her hair, the expression on her face, and the aura she emitted, were
completely different from Dorothy's.
"Who is Dorothy?" the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord asked curiously.
Zen told him about Dorothy's origin and how she had suddenly disappeared.
Once he had heard the story, the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord thought for a while. "In that case, I don't
think it's a coincidence," he said, still thoughtful.
It wasn't rare for two women in the world to have the same appearance. The key point was that
Dorothy's origin was mysterious, and she might have something to do with the woman on the throne.
Unfortunately, Dorothy had been missing for a while now, and without her presence, it was difficult to
confirm the connection between the two.
Once he retreated from the diversion, Zen returned to the junction of the three roads and chose to
enter the ice gate in the middle.
When Zen came into contact with the ice gate, he felt his hands grow heavy.
"This door is so heavy!" he exclaimed.
But then, Elizabeth's words about the Cold Prisons came to mind.
Even after pouring the water from a sea into a Cold Prison, one could only get a thumb-sized piece of
ice.
No one knew how much water had been used to condense this ice gate.
However, Zen's strength was no longer what it used to be. He had barely put his hands on the gate,
when the power of his arms suddenly burst out.
A powerful aura surged around Zen's body, the shock waves of which were destructive. They left whip-
like marks on the ground surrounding him.
"Open!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ice gate scraped the ground before a fist-sized crack appeared on it.
Zen was about to increase his strength to push the door, when a hand reached out from the crack and
pressed to the side of the ice gate. The door swung open slowly.
A hunchbacked old man appeared in the doorway. He had one eye, and his lifeless-looking skin was
deathly gray.
Zen instinctively took two steps backwards. On one hand, he was surprised that there was a living
person inside. On the other hand, the old man had opened the gate so effortlessly, which indicated his
great strength.
The old man then glanced at Zen, turned around to go back inside.
"Sir!" Zen shouted before the old man could disappear.
The old man turned a deaf ear to him.
Behind the ice gate was an open, circular ice hall, within which were many bodies scattered
everywhere on the ground. These bodies looked to be the same as the bodies of the human spirits he
had seen outside. They were not dead, but all of them had lost their souls.
The old man picked up a body from the ground, placed it on an ice platform in the middle of the hall,
and began to carefully clean it.
The body seemed to have been there for a long time, and was covered in a layer of brown dust.
The old man cleaned up the dust on the body with a duster, little by little. He then put the body back on
the ground before picking another body and placing it on the platform.
"Sir, why do you clean them?" Zen asked, looking around him.
The old man didn't answer this question either. He just continued to work mechanically.
"Zen, why not check if this old man has a soul?" the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord suggested.
"Wouldn't it be impolite?" Zen said, hesitant.
But on second thought, he knew what the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord meant. He reached out a hand
and pressed it against the old man's forehead.
The old man didn't resist or get angry.
The moment Zen pressed a hand to the old man's forehead, he felt the immensely strong aura of a
Treacherous Being. Zen became uncomfortable, completely overwhelmed by this unpleasant feeling.
"He has a soul," he said, looking warily at the old man. He hesitated before saying, "No. This is a
Treacherous Being that hasn't awakened yet."
"It is indeed a friendly type of Treacherous Being!" the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord exclaimed, having
been right in his conjecture.
Many Treacherous Beings had obsessions that they always acted upon before they could meet the
requirements that would allow them to awaken.
Some Treacherous Beings of the friendly type were not vicious. They merely repeated doing one task
at all times.
This old man was obviously one such Treacherous Being. As long as Zen didn't stop him from cleaning
up the bodies, the old man wouldn't attack him.
He cleaned up the bodies one after another and then placed them in order.
Presumably, the human spirits that lined up outside in order were the old man's doing.
"He can't respond to us since he is not awakened," Zen said, dejected.
It was not easy to wake a Treacherous Being. Campbell had once possessed Zen and taken him all the
way from the Whining Road to the Pure Sky Platform. That was when Campbell had finally woken up.
It would be unrealistic to expect the old man to wake up in such a short time. All Zen could do was look
for other clues.
Zen passed through the scattered bodies before arriving at the innermost layer of the ice palace. A
door stood here as well.
The moment Zen approached the door, the old man suddenly turned around and began to sing a
rhythmic song.
"He's speaking!"
Zen exclaimed, whirling around to face the old man.
The old man tilted his head as he looked at Zen, and continued to say something.
Zen quickly activated the core of the Heavenly Obsession Civilization, which then began to decipher
the Sanskrit words the old man was speaking.
A short while later, the core of Heavenly Obsession Civilization passed the translation to Zen.
"That's the master's room. You can't go there. It's very dangerous and you will face the anger of the
master."
The old man repeated this sentence over and over again.
It was more like a hint from a machine rather than words being said through logical thinking.
Zen asked tentatively, "Who is your master?"
The group in his inner world began to work and help Zen pass on the message through a song.
"It's our king, Master Kincaid," the old man said, his voice still numb and singsong.
At these words, Zen's and the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord's hearts began to race.
Finding Kincaid had been the biggest goal of this trip, and this sentence that the old man had just
uttered meant that they had mostly succeeded.
"How do you know it's dangerous? Have you been there?" Zen asked again.
The old man shook his head. "I have never been in there, but Cornelius had. He died inside."
"Cornelius?"
"The Snake Spirit King? Died inside?"
Zen was shocked.
If the door of the altar needed the key from the Soul City to open it, he should have been the first
person to enter it.
But why had the Snake Spirit King been able to enter this place before him?
Zen related what he had heard to the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord, who was also lost in thought.
The old man's unintentional words had created a strange situation for them.
After a long while, the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord said, "What if the Snake Spirit King had long since
known of this key's existence?"
"You mean he opened the door of the altar with the key?" Zen said, baffled.
The Grand Supreme Elderly Lord nodded before saying, "Yes. If that's the case, then the Snake Spirit
King must want to get something from the Human Spirit King. But not only did he not get it, he was
even killed inside when he was in the form of a Treacherous Being!"
"And the Snake Spirit King then secretly put the key back in the Soul City?" Zen said contemplatively.
"This does not make sense. The Snake Spirit King couldn't have been so confident about my strength!"
he said.
The Grand Supreme Elderly Lord fell silent for a long while before he seemed to figure it out. "The
Snake Spirit King's confidence in you is not because of your strength, but because of your identity."
"My identity? What identity?" Zen asked suspiciously. He had thought of the ancestry-level bloodline,
but even if the Snake Spirit King had superb foresight, it was impossible for him to have predicted that
Zen would definitely absorb the ancestry-level bloodline.
"Your identity as a human," said the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord.
Kincaid might kill people of other races, or any Treacherous Beings that entered the place. But he
might not kill a human.
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