Chapter 1916: 538 Lord of Darkness

…

Matthew couldn’t help but feel a bit astonished at the sight of the Ancient Yellow Jade Dragon.

In his memory,

he thought that the Yellow Jade Dragon should be slumbering on the Eternal Island right now.

Once dragons of this kind fell into slumber, it was exceedingly difficult to awaken them unless an event occurred that could impact their living environment.

Could it be that something had happened to the Eternal Island?

Matthew silently shook his head in his heart.

Not likely.

The Sun Elf Dudley and Hussman, the Lord of the Rotten Sac, both maintained frequent communication and contact with Matthew.

They spent most of their time on the Eternal Island.

According to their recent statements,

the Eternal Island should have been peaceful.

They didn’t mention anything about the Yellow Jade Dragon Clayde awakening.

“Could I have seen it wrong?”

“Is this another Yellow Jade Dragon?”

Matthew was somewhat unsure in his mind.

After all, humans perceiving dragons and dragons perceiving humans were much the same; he couldn’t distinguish the face of a dragon in detail. He could only approximately identify them based on their racial characteristics.

Matthew could only confirm that this was a dragon that looked extremely similar to the Ancient Yellow Jade Dragon…

“His body seems to be miniaturized compared to Clayde.”

“Even if you lay on the battlefield’s distant peaks, the head of the real Ancient Yellow Jade Dragon shouldn’t be just this small…”

“He even used an invisibility spell, huh? The Spiritual Avatar naturally has an anti-stealth effect?”

Matthew realized this with some surprise.

He then asked Mrs. Wolf.

And received her affirmative reply–

The Spiritual Avatar could perceive the existence of all life forms from a spiritual standpoint.

It was well-known.

As long as a life form was active, some excess spirituality would appear in their body or active area to varying degrees.

With the unique carrier of the Spiritual Avatar,

the anti-stealth effect was merely a natural, accompanying characteristic.

After all, ghosts could also easily see each other.

“This ability is indeed quite handy.”

With that, Matthew closed his eyes, quickly received and reviewed the information transmitted back from the other spiritual avatars, and then dismissed them all.

Before that,

Matthew typically used surveillance spells, summoned creatures like death crows, animal companions, Ask Nature, and other methods to scout for enemy positions.

But outside of the material plane,

these methods had all been somewhat weakened.

The Spiritual Avatar was different.

As long as your mental power was strong enough, this ability could provide extremely powerful intelligence support.

It happened that mental power was one of Matthew’s strengths.

In such a powerful combination, the effect was indeed quite significant.

“Come, follow me!”

Matthew led Mrs. Wolf in the direction where he had earlier spotted the Yellow Jade Dragon.

He wasn’t so much looking to verify the identity of the Yellow Jade Dragon.

Rather, the portal that seemingly led to the Deep Black Castle was indeed located near that battlefield.

Naturally, Matthew had no other choice.

As the two made their way, when encountering dangerous areas, Matthew occasionally used a combination of “Avoid Calamities Cling to Fortunes + Spiritual Identity” to explore the path, but the results were somewhat inferior to Mrs. Wolf’s.

According to her speculation,

this was because Matthew himself was lucky enough.

“If you have particularly good luck, you actually don’t need to use an avatar to scout, you can just walk straight over with your main body…”

Mrs. Wolf looked enviously at Matthew:

“I can use this combination of abilities because my teacher said my luck is exceptionally poor.”

Matthew could only smile at this helplessly.

No matter what,

after some minor setbacks, the two finally arrived at their intended area as they wished.

There,

they crossed a clearly man-made bridge and arrived at a space where the material layer was more stable.

This place should be where the entangled space of the Projection Lands of the Air Elemental Plane and Purgatory was located.

Due to the highly entwined laws, elements, and strengths of both worlds, the stability of the material layer itself was much higher than the astral world.

At least they didn’t have to worry about falling into the Void Turbulence while walking.

After crossing the bridge,

they quickly discovered a large amount of demon activity.

Matthew soon realized.

The skirmish between demons and air elementals he had seen earlier was just a minor battle among many.

On the other side of the bridge, in that space riddled with mountains and rivers, countless divided battlefields were in full swing!

Devil Armies and air elemental settlements were entangled together in various forms.

Occasionally interspersed by some ferocious Eagle Men,

they turned the whole sky and ground into a chaotic battleground.

By comparison,

the portal that seemingly led to the Deep Black Castle seemed to be somewhat neglected.

Matthew only saw a few demons tasked with guarding nearby, and they didn’t seem to be elite.

His brows slightly furrowed.

“It seems that the Phantom Baron’s side doesn’t value that portal much. Could it be that it doesn’t lead to the Deep Black Castle after all?”

Matthew quietly discussed with Mrs. Wolf.

However, she shook her head:

“I have an impression of this gate, and it should be the one!”

“The reason it’s not valued might be because air elementals are unlikely to attack Purgatory. Once elemental life enters Purgatory, it will be targeted by the Blood River Will, and the corruption speed is alarmingly fast.”

“Similar things have happened in history many times, so the demons are not worried about it.”

Matthew thought for a moment, and this situation did seem reasonable.

Elemental creatures, due to their overly simplistic constituting elements, were indeed more prone to corruption and control.

And the Will of Purgatory was notoriously powerful in this regard.

Most of the elemental creatures dared not enter Purgatory of their own volition.

So it made sense that the Phantom Baron wasn’t very defensive about it.