Ch-24:Exiting the Ruins
The ruins were visible in all their former glory for all to witness, as it was nearing the time limit and no one outside knew anything about the inside.
The test conductors had purposely put this as a test with a time limit, knowing fully well that it would fail, but what they saw was definitely out of their expectations.
Someone had uncovered the entire ruins that wouldn't budge no matter what from the inside, and it was one of the disciples with their meager cultivation.
The outside of the ruins was in a commotion between the Elders of all the disciples from different worlds (planets) and the upper realm people separately.
The inside of the ruins wasn't any better, as all the disciples felt vibrations as the entire ruin was being uncovered and they weren't being protected at all, which made most of them lose their balance.
A few disciples who were in fights, traps, or other things got injured or died right away due to the suddenness of the events, which caught them totally unaware.
Inside a chamber deep inside the ruins was a man who seemed to have decaying skin that was falling as he moved, but he was chained to the chamber.
Surprisingly, the ruins had not awakened due to his interference, but it wasn't like he wasn't the cause of that event to some extent.
The man with the females had reached 10 floors above this chamber, where this decaying energy was seeping through.
The energy was so strong that none of his scouts were even able to step near the entry to the next floor before completely dying.
He was barely able to protect himself using his energy to reach the next floor alone, but he returned quickly as the usage was a little too much for him to be able to stay there for long.
He estimated that he could survive for a few months if he used his energy sparsely, but what about traps or fighting?
It was not like he knew about the next floors or even the number of floors that needed to be descended to reach the bottom-most one.
He gave up on going down as he started exploring from the last floor upwards and started returning towards the entrance.
Unfortunately, the decaying man had opened his eyes, or rather, gained consciousness, as his eyelids had decayed, making his eyes permanently open.
"I am close... I'll definitely take it…"
"This time...for sure..."
As the decaying man was muttering, he sensed the aura of life as a few souls appeared in front of him, helping him weaken the seal.
No more than a handful of weak souls appeared as the man entered the next floor himself before returning quickly.
"This aura... Impossible..."
"He...He died..."
As the man was muttering meaningless words that wouldn't be understood by anyone except him, there was another man who had neared the last 20 floors alone.
This man was Raon, as he could somehow feel where the next floor was by detecting the increase in the decaying energy.
He was unaware of the process or the meaning of it, but he was unaffected and unaware of the decaying energy that his senses were leading him towards.
Unaffected, he walked for a few minutes to a wall as he reached a dead end, but the density of the detecting energy was increasing, making him think of some hidden path.
He had followed this path, as the density increasing here was slightly higher than the other one that supposedly led to the lower floor.
As Raon was exploring the wall, one of the wounds he received here ended up scraping off the wall, leaving a single droplet of his blood.
His blood was seamlessly absorbed by the wall, going straight to the sealed man, weakening the seal while healing the man.
Raon spent the next few minutes exploring a secret path when he couldn't find one and decided to swing his sword at the wall in hopes of destroying it.
He was well aware that all the other walls were too strong for him to break through, but he wasn't using any cultivation energy, only his highly developed sword intent.
The ethereal energy of the intent washed through the wall, leaving only a few scratches on it that were too minuscule to notice.
The wall did open, though, immediately after his sword, but it wasn't through his efforts. The wall was forced open by the sealed man in the hope of absorbing Raon, which would aid in freeing him.
At the moment when Raon was going straight down 20 floors, the entire ruins shook as they surfaced, but it had nothing to do with Raon as he was enjoying the energy that had strengthened his energy for 2 months back then.
...
A few minutes earlier, the man who had returned 10 floors above the deepest one was exploring that specific floor when he felt a subtle vibration of energy.
He, being very sensitive to energy flow, obviously noticed it and went towards the source of the vibration while his females were taking all sorts of treasures and resources.
Surprisingly, none of the 7 around him were able to sense anything, even after giving their all at the place he felt the origin was located.
He detected the origin without using his energy, but he couldn't detect anything around the origin that was suspicious to him until he fell off the grid and separated from the others.
He was able to notice a weird mechanism around him, and he felt naturally attracted to it while the mechanism was giving off an energy that warded off all the decaying energy.
This mechanism stirred actively as soon as Raon was being transported, while the man here totally enjoyed the direct baptism of such an energy source, using it to break through to the next realm.
Raon only felt that baptism until he reached the core and sat around to cultivate as the man here broke through.
After his breakthrough, the mechanism went into a slumber as it had very little energy, but the man felt that something was calling him.
As soon as the man reached near, he saw a white ring with a yellow-gold shine from its ornate design and a very bright jewel of white color sitting around.
The ring was covered with the same decaying energy, but it was too weak to protect it from the man. He hurriedly took it out, but the decaying energy made him bleed.
The blood was absorbed by the ring, the mechanism, and the decaying energy that dissipated after absorbing it.
The entire ruins sifted through the ground emerging above it when the mechanism manifested, but now it was totally protected, prohibiting any entry above the cultivation realms allowed already.
Raon had also arrived in front of the sealed room, as its seal wasn't supposed to be opened, yet it opened without any issue, much to the surprise of the chained man.
The entity that had failed to entice Raon after Lia's death had used Raon as its conductor to appear there, paying a heavy price.
Both the entity and the chained man looked at each other in shock, but the entity was in delight while the latter was in disbelief at what it was witnessing.
Raon observed the two for a few seconds before both of them spoke something completely undecipherable to Raon as his body was dragged by the entity inside the sealed chamber against his control.
He couldn't fight against it, as it wasn't trying to take over him but just dragging him along inside near the chained man due to it being unable to entice Raon and possess him.
Unfortunately, Raon wasn't able to maintain his sanity as he fell into a completely dark void that seemed to have perfect stillness set in motion.
In that dark world, three white lights were dimming down as Raon tried to move towards them before they ceased to exist.
As if to mock Raon, the three lights sent him images of his entire life before the three were extinguished, only for Raon to see two very small white lights even farther than them.
All the lights in his dark void ceased to exist before he could move, unaware of how he could see them when he himself didn't seem to exist inside the dark void.
Suddenly, the milky white crystal on Raon's forehead burst forth, piercing the entity as well as the chained man, making the dark energy around the entity unstable and the man's decaying fasten.
It transformed into a woman before a faint smile appeared on her face as she dove back into Raon's soul, breaking apart the dark void and waking him up from one nightmare to another.
For Raon, a bright white light had pierced through the void as he saw the sight that no one would want to witness.
His hands were inside the decaying man's chest as he grabbed and took out a crystal from the heart that directly entered his heart.
"No... It can't be... I have waited... It is mine..."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
"IT'S MINEEEEEEEEE"
As the old man screeched in disbelief at his lifetime's work being taken by someone else, he used his remaining soul power to attack and kill Raon.
Unknowingly, the entity that failed to entice Raon took that hit head-on as the seal itself activated, sensing the disturbance.
Raon was sent flying out of the chamber due to the shockwave, while the entity and man were sealed against their will back inside.
Even destroying his soul wasn't enough because even his soul fragments were sealed using that entity's energy before its link was destroyed to its main body.
The ruins at this exact moment started going back into the ground, but not before ejecting the intruders altogether.