Zephyr hopped off his bed, grabbed a sword next to him, slowly slipped it into his scabbard, and sneakily opened his door, making sure not to make any noise. When he got outside, he closed his eyes and concentrated.
With his eyes closed, he sensed a faint yellow line that passed through a small bar in the street to the right of his house.
Bingo
He slowly walks towards the house, making sure to focus on the yellow aura in front of him. Slowly opening the door of the house, he witnessed the most wrecked bar he had ever seen. Tables and chairs were thrown everywhere, and the floors were all greased with food, plastered with bowls and chopsticks.
What the hell happened here?
Ignoring the mess and making sure Zephyr didn't make any noise, he continued to follow the faint yellow aura approaching the back of the bar.
The yellow aura is going downward? What the hell?
He felt around the bar, seeing if he could find any useful clues there. Under the bar table, on the shelves, and the brown wooden cups they used to pour drinks, but he couldn't find any switch or anything leading him to believe that the bar was hiding something.
Hm, there has to be something. What if it's not a contraption that involves something physical to activate, but something that requires one of the four different energies...
Upon further examination, he felt a strange energy coming from one of the cups.
What? Why is there a minuscule amount of mana in this one cup?
After touching every single cup and placing each one on the counter, he discovered that each cup had different amounts of mana inside. Zephyr roughly ordered them based on how much there was, but it was hard to tell because there was just so little inside.
What do I even do with this information?
After pondering for a bit, Zephyr decided to recheck everything, but this time tried as hard as he could to detect any other type of energy that could be lingering. As Zephyr reached under the counter again, he felt something dark and cold.
Wait, is this dark energy?
Dark energy is energy that's similar to qi, but instead of taking the energy from life and the environment, it takes the energy from death and destruction. These two energies, if put next to each other, would easily repel each other, but unlike qi, mana easily stuck to dark energy. The dark energy would suck the energy of mana for some reason, a reason Zephyr had no reason to question until now.
Zephyr had noticed that the dark energy had been arranged across the wooden platform under the counter in small circles, one having a larger concentration than the one before it in increasing order. Zephyr placed the wooden cups from left to right on the platform, starting with the lowest concentration. After he finished rearranging the cups, he felt the mana leaving the cups, and a small opening appeared right under the counter next to the platform where he put the cups.
After debating whether or not Zephyr should crawl through the hole that angled downward into darkness, he figured he had no choice but to crawl through it.
After crawling out of the hole, he slowly stood up, revealing a cavern lit up by a row of torches. Slowly unsheathing his sword, he slowly walked in the direction of the torches, expecting something malicious to be at the end of the tunnel.
After walking for a couple of minutes, he spotted a box located on a shelf. The divine energy was practically exploding as he approached the box, confirming that this was exactly what Zephyr was looking for.
As Zephyr approached the box, he felt a strange foreign energy. Not from the box but somewhere near the box.
Zephyr moved to the right of the box, pushing it aside.
A chest? There's a strange, foreign energy in this box. I've never felt this before.
For a second, Zephyr didn't want to approach something that he didn't know anything about, but something was calling him. Something beckoned him to find out what was inside the box.
Zephyr lifted the box out of the hole. Unsheathing his sword, he formed a layer of qi over the sword, allowing him to cut the chain tethering the lock on the chest. The chain was made of a weird metal with a language he had never seen. More importantly, the dark energy seemed to envelop the room even more as soon as he broke it. Zephyr couldn't wait any longer; he had to find out what was in that box. As Zephyr got closer to the box, his vision got darker; it was like the darkness had completely enveloped him. Zephyr lifted the lid, revealing a tome.
The tome was wrinkly and old. The texture was similar to that of human skin, and it felt somewhat... alive. At this point, Zephyr, barely being able to see, reached his hand out and touched the book when Zephyr's vision suddenly turned dark.