The golden mist roared behind him like a tide breaking on rock.
Dozens of pythons surged toward the gate, scales flashing molten in the haze, their killing intent pressing against Wang Li's back with almost physical weight. He didn't turn to look. Didn't dare.
"Don't stop. Don't look back. Just run!"
He drove the Great Void Technique to its limit, and space folded around him in short, unpredictable bursts—there, then gone, then there again three feet to the left, always half a heartbeat ahead of the jaws snapping shut behind him.
*Boom!*
He crossed the threshold.
The pythons skidded to a halt at the gate as if they'd struck glass. Dozens of triangular eyes glared after him, furious and frustrated—but not one of them crossed the line. It was as if some invisible wall stood there, one that even fairy-king-tier monsters knew better than to test.
"Hoo... hoo..."
Wang Li braced his hands on his knees, heart still hammering, and let himself breathe.
Then the strangeness of it caught up with him.
*Even the guardian beasts born and raised on this island won't set foot in their own master's home.* What could possibly still linger here, centuries after Emperor Guixu himself was gone, that his own creatures still feared it more than they feared him?
A chill crawled up his spine—the kind he hadn't felt since his earliest, most reckless days in this world.
But there was no going back now. Not with fourteen—no, closer to fifty—golden pythons waiting just beyond the gate.
He straightened and looked around instead.
The mansion sprawled before him, vast and half-swallowed by silence. Toppled pillars of white jade, thick as ancient trees, lay scattered like fallen giants across a courtyard gone to ruin. Faded formation arrays still pulsed faintly along the walls, ghosts of a power that must once have been staggering. Even the golden mist thinned here, curling low across the stone as though reluctant to intrude too far.
This didn't feel abandoned. It felt *sealed*.
Wang Li's smile faded. He filed the thought away—and reached for the one habit that had never once failed him, no matter how strange or dangerous the place.
"Let's sign in first."
**[Congratulations to the host for successfully signing in at the Guixu Fairy Mansion. Reward: one drop of Guixu Immortal Emperor's Origin Blood Essence!]**
Wang Li's pupils contracted.
Origin blood essence—the condensed inheritance of an entire lifetime at the peak of the Immortal Dao. A single drop, properly refined, could rewrite a cultivator's bloodline from the root up. Wash the meridians clean. Grant insights that decades of solitary cultivation might never surface on their own.
A small golden droplet formed in his palm, warm and pulsing faintly, like something still alive. He sealed it away in his storage ring with the care of a man handling spun glass.
*My path to the fairy king realm just got a lot shorter.*
Emboldened now, he pressed deeper into the ruins, the mist parting reluctantly ahead of him like a curtain that resented being touched. He passed a collapsed hall lined with shattered steles, their inscriptions worn past reading. He passed a dry fountain carved in the shape of a coiling dragon, its eyes set with stones so dark they seemed to drink the light around them.
Everywhere, the same feeling followed him: something here was still watching. Still waiting.
"Sign in again."
**[Sign-in cooldown: 22 hours, 41 minutes remaining.]**
"Tch. Can't be greedy, I suppose."
He clicked his tongue, more amused than disappointed. Two rewards in one visit already—and he'd barely scratched the surface of the place. If this generosity held, a few more days here could change everything.
He walked on, senses stretched taut, ready to bolt at the first true sign of danger. Fear of death had kept him alive through worse than this. It wouldn't fail him now.
Then, past another collapsed archway, he stopped.
Ahead rose a colossal structure—round, tiered, the size of a small mountain, its surface carved with rings of ancient script that shimmered faintly even beneath centuries of neglect.
An altar.
At its summit, half-buried in drifting gold, something glinted. Dull. Ominous. Waiting.
Wang Li's throat went dry. Every instinct that had ever kept him breathing screamed caution—and beneath it, quieter but just as insistent, something else screamed *opportunity*.
He took a step toward it.
*To be continued in Chapter 152.*