"Who's there!"
Chu Fan barked, whipping the Firewood Splitter from his waist.
But there wasn't a soul to be seen in the room.
"Come!"
"Come!"
Though no one was there, the voice echoed relentlessly in Chu Fan's mind, impossible to ignore.
A chill ran down Chu Fan's spine, and his grip on the blade tightened.
The room was a scene of utter ruin.
The old wooden cabinet his parents had used was overturned, its drawers scattered. The old clothes inside had been tossed about in a mess.
Chu Fan turned slowly, his gaze sweeping across the surroundings. Other than the eerie voice in his head, there was nothing else out of the ordinary.
'If there was really something strange, Liu Da and that constable would have noticed it long ago.'
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Chu Fan caught a faint blue flash from the floor to his right!
He reacted in an instant, dashing out of the house in a single bound.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the voice in his mind vanished without a trace.
Chu Fan took two steps back and peered at the spot where the blue light had been, but the floor was completely unremarkable. There was no light to be seen.
'Was it my imagination?'
Clutching his Firewood Splitter tightly, Chu Fan stepped back into the house.
The instant he entered, the eerie voice started up again, grating on his nerves.
He took two steps toward the spot where the blue light had appeared.
The moment he drew near, a pattern of strange, flickering Runes abruptly materialized on the floor, emitting a pale blue glow!
'What is this!'
Startled, Chu Fan scrambled back several steps.
The moment he retreated, the pattern of strange, flickering Runes on the floor vanished as if it had never been there.
'It appears when I get close and disappears when I move away?'
Chu Fan stood motionless. In the silence, his own breathing and heartbeat were exceptionally clear.
Suppressing the fear in his heart, he slowly walked toward that patch of floor.
The closer he got, the faster the blue light on the floor flickered, and the clearer the pattern of strange Runes became.
But as for what the pattern actually was, Chu Fan couldn't make heads or tails of it.
'Did Mom and Dad leave this behind?'
Chu Fan crouched down.
'This pattern must have something to do with me.'
When Liu Da and the others, including the constable, entered this room, the pattern didn't appear.
But when he got close, it appeared.
When he moved away, it disappeared.
The strange thing was, he remembered entering this house many times after his parents passed away, but he had never discovered anything unusual.
'It's as if the damage caused by Liu Da and the others is what made this pattern appear.'
After a moment of silence, Chu Fan reached his hand toward the floor.
The instant his fingertip touched the pattern...
WHOOSH!
The pattern of strange, flickering Runes abruptly transformed into a vortex!
An immense force erupted, pulling Chu Fan straight in!
Chu Fan felt the world spin. When the dizziness subsided and he opened his eyes, he found himself in a dim, dark passageway.
A musty smell mixed with a biting chill washed over him, colder than the wind and snow outside, seeping deep into his bones.
'This looks like a stone cave.'
The stone walls on both sides were smooth, but strangely shaped stalactites hung from the ceiling.
The walls were also embedded with glowing stones. Though their light was faint, it was enough for Chu Fan to see his surroundings clearly.
Chu Fan turned around and found a solid stone wall behind him. It was damp and covered in moss.
'Is this under my house?'
'How is that possible!'
'Cyan Yang Ancient City is a good distance from the nearest mountains. How could there be a cave like this underneath the city?'
"Come!"
The voice in his head continued.
With no way to retreat, Chu Fan could only grip his Firewood Splitter and cautiously move forward.
The passage was extremely narrow, just wide enough for one person.
After another dozen or so steps, it constricted again.
After walking about sixty feet, he came to a fork in the path.
The intersection where his path met the fork formed a Y-shape.
Always cautious, Chu Fan used his Firewood Splitter to carve a few marks on the wall of the passage he'd just come from before continuing.
After walking another fifty feet or so, the passage suddenly opened up into a secret chamber about ten feet square.
The four walls of the secret chamber were all made of bluestone blocks.
By the light of the glowing stones in the walls, Chu Fan saw a stone stele, taller than a man, standing in the center of the chamber.
The stele was as black as ink, its surface covered in fine, dense patterns—part rune, part drawing—that exuded an air of ancient solemnity.
Despite the passage of time, it showed no signs of weathering.
Chu Fan slowly approached and saw three powerful, large words carved on the front of the stele, their strokes as sharp as a knife.
He had never seen this script before, though it bore some resemblance to the oracle bone script from his previous life.
He walked around to the back of the stele and saw it was densely covered with all sorts of characters. They were as small as tadpoles, and each one shimmered with a faint light, an extraordinary sight.
Chu Fan circled the stele a few times, a plan forming in his mind.
He possessed the "Map of Mountains and Rivers," which allowed him to understand and perform Refinement on certain objects simply by touching them.
That day he entered the Seven Stars Gang, he had touched Li Qingxue's saber and learned its name was the "Cold Moon Lone Shadow Saber." He had also seen the "Seven-Star Bead Slash" Sword Technique that she cultivated.
'This Ancient Stele is no ordinary object. If I want to learn more, my only option is to touch it.'
Chu Fan took a deep breath and placed his hand on the stele's surface, his fingertips clearly feeling the contours of the carved marks.
The stele was bone-chillingly cold. An invisible force traveled up from his fingertips, causing the blood and qi in his body to churn uncontrollably...
[Item discovered: "Demon Suppression Stele." Refinement requires 1,500 points of Spiritual Essence. Insufficient Spiritual Essence. Unable to perform Refinement.]
[Refinement will yield the Cultivation Technique: "Demon Dragon Celestial Spirit Scripture"]
In a daze, countless strange and bizarre images flashed through Chu Fan's mind...
Demon dragons soaring through the sky!
The light of blades annihilating worlds!
Countless soul-shattering scenes flickered through his mind at incredible speed.
He tried to grasp one or two of them, but he could only catch a fleeting glimpse before the image vanished.
"Huh?!"
Amidst the chaotic images, a man in flowing white robes standing on the edge of a cliff suddenly turned and looked directly at Chu Fan!
Chu Fan's heart seized, and he hastily pulled his hand back.
HUFF!
HUFF!
HUFF!
He gasped for breath, feeling as though that brief touch of the Demon Suppression Stele had subjected him to countless lifetimes of reincarnation.
Even that fleeting glimpse, where he couldn't even see the images clearly, was enough to chill him to the bone!
In the dead of winter, Chu Fan was drenched in sweat!
'What in the world did the owner of this Demon Suppression Stele experience? In those rapidly flashing images, the scenes of worlds being destroyed felt so real, as if I were witnessing them myself!'
Demon Suppression Stele...
Chu Fan subconsciously glanced at the ground.
'Could it be that some terrifying great demon is suppressed beneath this place?'
But that didn't seem right either—
'What legendary mighty figure would be foolish enough to suppress a great demon underneath a city?'
'Wouldn't the slightest disturbance doom the entire city's population?'
However, he couldn't be certain if this cave was truly beneath Cyan Yang Ancient City.
'What if that pattern of strange, flickering Runes transported him thousands of miles away?'
He had too little information. No matter how he guessed, he couldn't make heads or tails of the situation.
Even if he guessed correctly, he had no way of verifying it.
Deciding to stop his wild speculation, Chu Fan turned and walked back the way he came.
He followed the passage all the way back to the end where he'd entered. After fumbling along the stone wall for a long time, his hands smeared with moss, a single thought popped into his head—
'It was fine when I came, but now I can't get back...'
On the stone wall at the end of the passage, there was no pattern of strange, flickering Runes at all!
Chu Fan felt around the wall for a good while, his hands becoming covered in moss and dampness, but it was useless.
After a moment of thought, he returned to the fork and headed down the other passage.
Thankfully, when he reached the end of that passage and approached the wall, the pattern of strange, flickering Runes appeared as expected!
Chu Fan reached out and touched the pattern. His vision blurred...
When he came to his senses, he was back in the ransacked room.
Looking at the fragments of the chair on the floor, Chu Fan was speechless.
'I practice martial arts.'
'But it seems Mom and Dad were engaged in Cultivation.'
'But if they were cultivators, how could they have fallen ill and passed away one after the other?'
'Cultivator parents... It's one thing that they didn't leave me a Cultivation Technique, but they didn't even leave behind a few ingots of silver...'