With the soft whirring of a chanism, the enormous scroll hanging at the front of the dark chamber began to unfurl from the top, revealing itself inch by inch.
Lin Ye stared without blinking, his entire focus fixed on what lay ahead.
As the image was revealed, Chang Siming’s voice began to echo slowly through the spacious, dark chamber.
"The *Candlelight Illuminating the Nine Netherworld Map* uses the Candle Dragon from our Great Xia mythology as its visualization core. It tempers the Spirit by harnessing the dragon’s supre power—creating day when it opens its eyes and night when it closes them."
"To visualize this image, you must construct a grand scene within your Sea of Consciousness: the Candle Dragon coiled in the Nine Netherworld, devouring and expelling yin and yang."
"You must gradually comprehend the Ultimate Truth of the heavens and earth contained within the cycle of day and night, the alternation of light and dark. This will make your Spirit as perceptive as a dragon’s eye and your will as unshakeable as a mountain."
His voice seed to carry a guiding power, giving everyone a preliminary understanding of the image about to appear and filling them with anticipation.
However, the entire image had yet to be fully unfurled.
All that had appeared on the scroll so far was a vast, boundless sky and a majestic, sacred peak that seed to pierce the very firmant.
The main body of the Candle Dragon was nowhere to be seen, not even its shadow. Only a few imnse scales on its back were faintly visible, appearing and disappearing amid the clouds and mist at the mountain’s summit.
Yet even this re tip of the iceberg was enough to make one’s spirit tremble!
"Ugh!"
A suppressed grunt suddenly rang out in the silent chamber.
It was imdiately followed by the dull thud of a body collapsing to the floor.
Chang Siming seed to have expected this, letting out only a soft sigh.
From outside the dark chamber, several instructors on standby quickly entered. With practiced movents, they carried out a student who had fainted, their face deathly pale.
A cold voice called out from the doorway.
"Zhou Kai. Spiritual Power insufficient. Attempted to observe regardless. Ten points deducted."
This scene sent a chill through the hearts of the students still conscious.
’Just as we thought. Soone gambled, forcing their way in despite having insufficient spiritual strength.’
"Do not push yourselves,"
Chang Siming’s voice rang out again, tinged with a warning.
"You don’t need to view the entire *Candlelight Illuminating the Nine Netherworld Map*. At your current level of spiritual strength, simply committing a portion of the image to mory will be enough. You can use it for visualization later and achieve the sa effect of tempering your Spirit."
"If any of you have sufficiently formidable Spiritual Power, you may attempt to view the entire image. Try to morize as many details as you can, as this will be highly beneficial for your future visualizations."
His words were a wake-up call to everyone present.
They realized they had been too fixated on the wrong thing.
Their goal shouldn’t be to stubbornly withstand the entire image, but to comprehend its symbolism and etch it into their minds as an "anchor" for their future training.
Realizing this, many of them, whose minds had been stretched taut, began to relax slightly.
The scroll continued its slow descent.
「A few breaths later.」
A colossal Spiritual Visualization Image, over thirty ters high and fifty ters wide, was finally revealed in its entirety before them all!
Thanks to cutting-edge projection technology, the precision and color of the painting reached an astonishing level.
The screen before them seed to vanish, transforming into a massive window.
On the other side of that window, everything was terrifyingly real!
BOOM!
An indescribable aura of primordial desolation and tyranny rushed forth from the image, seemingly crossing endless ti and space to assault them!
"Argh..."
THUD!
Another series of muffled grunts and thuds of bodies hitting the floor followed.
The instant they saw the complete image, several more students were unable to withstand the terrifying spiritual pressure. The whites of their eyes showed as they passed out cold.
The instructors entered again, carrying them away one by one.
The point deductions were smaller this ti, but the penalty was still significant.
The once-crowded dark chamber now held fewer than thirty people.
Every single person who remained was an elite whose Spiritual Power far surpassed that of an ordinary person.
Lin Ye endured the terrifying pressure that felt as if it would crush his very soul, his eyes locked on every corner of the enormous image.
’I have to burn every key point and detail of this entire image into the depths of my mory before I collapse!’
On the scroll was a crimson divine dragon whose majesty defied description.
Its body was impossibly vast, coiled around the lofty peak that pierced both heaven and earth. The part of it that was visible alone was enough to blot out the sun and sky.
The painting focused on its head; the rest of its body and tail disappeared beyond the edges of the fra, making it impossible to even imagine its true size.
Upon the dragon’s head, each crimson scale seed to burn with an eternal divine fire, glowing with a molten luster.
The Candle Dragon was perched atop the summit, its head lowered to overlook the world below. Its half-open eyes were the focal point of the entire painting.
Its left eye was open just a crack, from which a dazzling golden light erupted. It tore through the heavy clouds, illuminating half the sky as if it were broad daylight.
Its right eye, however, was nearly closed. From it, an endless darkness and shadow spread like a tide from the right side of the image, subrging the other half of the world in an eternal night.
Light and darkness were sharply demarcated in the painting, yet they coexisted in perfect harmony.
Beneath the sacred peak lay the bottomless Nine Netherworld.
It was a ceaselessly churning black abyss, where countless twisted, pained, and despairing phantoms bobbed and wailed—a physical embodint of all the world’s negative emotions.
Yet, neither the light of day nor the shadow of night could fully penetrate that abyss. It seed even the light of the Candle Dragon could not illuminate that gloomy underworld.
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