Walking through the labyrinthine expanse of the seemingly interminable halls, the illumination waned with each passing moment, casting elongated shadows that stretched and contorted like spectres dancing in the twilight. Even the undead creatures guiding their path appeared to falter.

"Where are they leading us, Shizun?" inquired Liang Zhiguan, his attempts at navigation hampered by the encroaching darkness. Sensing his struggle, Xue Xinyu gently clasped Liang Zhiguan's hand, guiding him with a reassuring touch. "I cannot say for certain, but their urgency is palpable," Xue Xinyu replied, his voice betraying a hint of concern.

In the dimness, Liang Zhiguan couldn't help but notice the warmth emanating from Xue Xinyu's touch, a sensation that kindled a subtle blush upon his cheeks. Grateful for the obscurity offered by the shadows, he concealed his embarrassment from Xue Xinyu's perceptive gaze.

Undeterred, Xue Xinyu pressed onward, following the faltering footsteps of their undead guides.

After what felt like an eternity of stumbling through the enshrouded darkness, the corridor yielded to a vast chamber, aglow with the radiance of countless flickering lights.

At first glance, the chamber bore the semblance of a sepulchre, its walls lined with rows of ornate coffins, each bearing silent witness to the passage of time. At the farthest reaches of the chamber, a staircase ascended to a raised dais, upon which rested a single coffin adorned with intricate carvings and delicate filigree.

In an instant, Xue Xinyu's grip on Liang Zhiguan's hand loosened, his body tensing as he slipped into a defensive stance, his eyes scanning the room for threats. The chamber filled with the sound of creaking bones, the skeletal horde moving in eerie unison.

Liang Zhiguan, heart pounding, braced himself, ready to follow Xue Xinyu's lead, but he couldn't shake the lingering warmth from Xue Xinyu's touch—a fleeting moment of calm before the storm.

"Fren'ka vel'drak shaz, zex'deth'karin*" one of the undead creatures spoke, its hollow voice reverberating through the chamber like a distant echo. The words were foreign yet laden with a sense of urgency. Translated, they meant, "Please, do not attack them. They are of us."

Xue Xinyu, ever cautious, relaxed his stance but kept his guard up, his sharp eyes studying the skeletal figures. He waited, heart steady, as silence stretched between them.

The creature continued, its tone almost apologetic. "Drek'sha fren'ka vel'dor'zul'dor"—*We apologize for not explaining earlier.* There was an ancient weariness in its voice, as though centuries of regret had weighed it down.

Then, the creature's gaze seemed to drift, as though peering beyond the veil of time itself, lost in memories that no longer felt like its own. In the mists of time, those distant days evade my grasp, it began, speaking now more to itself than to Xue Xinyu, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass. Centuries, perhaps epochs, have passed since then, shrouding the memories in a veil of uncertainty.

The skeletal figure's hollow eyes flickered as it recalled a time long past, Amidst that bygone era, we marched in lockstep alongside our revered general—a beacon of hope guiding us through the tempest of war. His spirit, indomitable, was our guiding star. In him, we saw our salvation. He did not lead us into battle; he carried us on his shoulders.

To him, we were not soldiers, but precious gems, fragile and priceless. Each step we took, he shielded us from the storm, his compassion a silent promise that we would return home. How rare a thing, to be treasured so. He regarded us not as tools of war, but as companions, bound by more than duty—by loyalty, by trust.

The creature's voice grew distant, a faint reverence in its tone, His charisma was a force, a siren's call that drew us into his fold willingly. We were not conscripts, but followers—willing to march into oblivion for the cause he championed. Under his command, we were more than a unit. We were a family.

With him at the helm, we became something unstoppable, a force that could weather any storm. Under his banner, no foe was too great, no war too fearsome. We believed we were untouchable, invincible, invulnerable.

But then, the tone darkened, a sorrow creeping into its words. Yet, as with all things, victory is fleeting. In the shadows, a new adversary emerged—the creatures from Ende. Beings born of death, yet driven by some twisted form of life. They were not like us, nor like anything we had ever encountered.

A pause, the creature struggling to articulate the horror of that memory, They came with lifeless eyes, their will unfathomable. We did not understand them, nor could we comprehend their motives. We held our ground, thought ourselves prepared. But they were relentless. They did not fight as we did. They did not tire, they did not fear. They were death itself, but somehow worse—mocking the life we once knew.

The creature's hands clenched, its voice wavering as it recalled the turning point, At first, we believed ourselves victorious, that our strength would carry us through. But then, like the tide, the Undead Orden swept in—a legion that bore the resemblance of humanity but none of its soul. Their arcane prowess was unlike anything we had ever faced. They tore through our ranks like a storm, their powers of dark blue flame scorching everything in their path.

We thought we had won, the creature whispered, as if speaking to an old regret, but we were wrong. And from that moment, the world was no longer ours.

Xue Xinyu stood still, listening to the lament of the undead, a tale of hope and ruin told by those who had once lived and fought with hearts full of fire but were now reduced to bone and dust. There was nothing left to say.

The silence that followed was not merely an absence of sound, but the weight of a history long forgotten, carried only by the remnants of those who could never die.

Little was known about the Undead Orden, their origins veiled in shadow, their motives unknowable. What we understood was gleaned from the battlefield, a grim autopsy of chaos. Among their legions, we identified three harrowing classifications.

The first wielded a darkness so profound it seemed to consume the very air around them, a magic black as the abyss. Yet even this was overshadowed by a sorcery more terrifying still—the crimson-red arcana of their demonic brethren. These were twisted beings, their bodies warped with horns and claws, as if forged in the furnace of some infernal realm.

But it was not the demons who filled our hearts with the deepest dread. That terror was reserved for the third class: those who commanded dark blue magic, a power beyond comprehension. We called them the "Stars of Destruction." They were living calamities, their footsteps trailing devastation, their magic an unnatural fusion of our own techniques twisted into malevolent forms. Against them, no defense held. It was as though they could unmake the very laws that governed our world.

In the heat of battle, it became painfully clear that destiny had turned against us. Where once we fought with the hope of victory, now we struggled only to survive, clutching at that fragile hope as it slipped through our fingers like sand.

Still, we did not yield. We fought on, though each moment claimed more of our own. Comrades who had fought beside us for years fell like candles snuffed out by a merciless wind. One by one, they disappeared into the maw of death, leaving us standing alone against an enemy whose numbers never seemed to dwindle.

The tides of war eroded our resolve. We were not merely fighting the Orden—we were fighting against the inexorable force of time itself, against the grinding certainty of our own extinction. And yet, we fought.

I cannot recall when we fell. It is a blur in my mind, a shadowy transition from life to this—this grotesque parody of existence. At some point, death claimed us, but death was not the end. No. We awoke in this place, entombed in the cold silence of the burial chamber. It was as if the world itself had consigned us to rot in this forgotten hall.

Perhaps our surviving comrades laid us to rest here, as warriors worthy of honor. But the years passed, and with them, any sense of peace. New faces appeared among us, undead like ourselves, but hostile, foreign. They came not to mourn or join in shared grief but to bring menace, their intentions clouded with malice.

We tried to speak, to communicate, but it was futile. Our words—our very voices—seemed to no longer matter. What could we say? We had become creatures of despair, our language a hollow echo, the only sound in these halls the endless reverberation of our own anguish.

And so, we remained. Time ceased to have meaning. Decades passed, perhaps longer. The eternity of undeath stretched before us, empty and bleak, as we languished in the forgotten crypt, prisoners not just of this place, but of our own existence—caught between life and death, with no hope of release.

Each passing day carried the relentless specter of our general, his lifeless form standing as a chilling monument to our inescapable fate. While he remained untouched by time—frozen in that last moment of defiance—we were not so fortunate. The curse of undeath weighed heavily upon us. Some had decayed into little more than skeletal husks, their hollowed eyes a testament to the years spent in this forsaken limbo.

And so, like a grotesque ritual etched into eternity, we bore witness once more to the arrival of another group of souls, each fighting against the chains of their own imprisonment. Each time, we hurled ourselves at them in desperate fury, not out of malice, but from a need so deep it had eroded our minds: a cry for release long since drowned in despair.

But this time, something was different. There was an energy about these newcomers, something that stirred a long-dormant fear within us. Their auras pulsed—one with the cold brilliance of dark blue, ancient and terrible, and the other with a fierce swirl of dark red entwined with gold, as though strength and purity had been violently fused.

For the first time in countless years, uncertainty gripped us. Were these strangers here to end our torment, or merely to prolong it? We hesitated, our movements faltering in mid-attack as an unfamiliar chill crept into the marrow of our bones.

The elder among them, the one with the blue aura, struck first. His chains wrapped around us with terrifying precision, and panic spread through our ranks like wildfire. The thought of dying once more—of facing a second death in this miserable half-life—was unbearable. Yet, as our fear grew, so did a flicker of hope. Could this be the end we had longed for, the release we had forgotten how to beg for?

But then, like the cruelest twist of fate, the elder faltered. Something—whether a mistake or an act of mercy—caused the younger one to release us from our binds. We stood there, stunned, as our would-be liberators gazed at us with confusion. They didn't understand. They couldn't hear the silent screams that echoed within our hollow chests.

And in that moment, a wave of regret swept over us, heavy and bitter. What had we done? We had dared to strike at those who might have freed us from this hellish cycle. What fate awaited us now, having raised our broken hands against the very ones who could have ended our suffering?

The undead figure spoke, its voice like the rasping wind through a crypt, but Xue Xinyu understood its meaning instantly.

"Those with pitch-black power—apparitions. Dark-red wielders—demons. Dark-blue warlocks, the most feared."

In this new age, cultivators might stand against them. But in the past, these beings had risen suddenly, catching the world unprepared. Their ranks swelled unnaturally, as many undead were driven by a primal hunger. Once they completed the two sacred steps, they were nearly unstoppable, their numbers growing exponentially.

And so, we waited, our fate once again held in the balance, the weight of ages pressing down like a shroud upon our cursed forms.

The steps appeared deceptively simple:

Step 1: Reach adulthood.
Step 2: Encounter one's soulmate.

Yet beneath this straightforward veneer lay the potential for a transformation of cosmic proportions. Upon meeting their soulmate, these beings underwent a profound metamorphosis, driven by insatiable desires—a change ignited by the sacred bond between soulmates.

In the realm of Ende, such unions were of paramount importance. Engaging in intimacy outside the sanctity of this bond was considered a grievous offense. It was the unfulfilled yearning for this union that spurred their transformation when they finally encountered their soulmate.

Curiously, gender held no importance in the matter of soulmates. In Ende, true connection transcended the physical form, allowing the bond to be purely spiritual and emotional.

Zhao Lian, a notable figure in this realm, stood as a symbol of defiance against these sacred principles. His vast harem—filled with everyone but his true soulmate—was a blatant display of his disregard for Ende's laws. His protests were always the same, wrapped in a thin veil of innocence: "It's not my fault they haven't appeared."

To those who understood the profound weight of these unions, his excuse was hollow. In a world full of paths to finding one's soulmate, it seemed Zhao Lian had made no real effort to seek the one who could fulfill him. Instead, he surrounded himself with distractions, forsaking the sacred journey for fleeting indulgences.