Chapter 1: Prologue

Mount Tai, China, 2024.

Inside one of the secret tunnels of Mount Tai, deep beneath the ancient rock formations of China, two men carefully navigated the narrow, deep passage.

The dim glow of a flickering torch cast ghostly shadows on the humid stone walls, while the air carried the musty scent of earth and centuries-old secrets.

Victor, a man in his early thirties with sharp features and an intense gaze, led the way. His dark brown hair was slightly damp from the humidity, and his rugged hiking clothes bore traces of dirt from their long adventure.

In his left hand, he held a brass compass, its needle shaking slightly, and in the other, a small torch that illuminated their path.

"Are you sure the treasure is here, Victor?" Qingfang asked, his breath slightly ragged from exertion.

"Yes, I'm sure," Victor replied without turning back. "All the clues I discovered led to this place."

Qingfang, a slightly chubby man in his late twenties, struggled to keep up.

He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and huffed, squeezing through the tight space. "But your Li family's secret texts could be wrong, couldn't they? I mean... how can magic exist in this world?"

Victor let out a sigh of irritation. "Then why are you even here, Qingfang? I could have come alone, you know."

He didn't slow his pace or spare a glance backward. His eyes remained locked on the tunnel ahead, where the rocky path sloped downward, disappearing into the unknown.

Qingfang puffed his cheeks before exhaling, pushing himself forward. "It's because you're my friend, Victor. How could I leave you alone? And that too, in my own country?"

Victor's lips twitched slightly, though whether it was amusement or silent acknowledgment remained unclear. The only sound that followed was the steady dripping of water from the tunnel ceiling and their own footsteps echoing through the darkness.

Victor was born in China but raised in the United States, his mother's home. His full name was Victor Lee. His father's family came from a long lineage of Lees, and they had a particular interest in treasure hunting and tomb digging.

It seemed Victor had inherited that trait from them. From childhood, he was fascinated by treasure hunting and uncovering the ancient secrets of the world.

After graduating from college, he didn't look for a job like others. Instead, he turned his passion for treasure hunting into his profession, even though it was frowned upon in this age.

Historians were one thing, but his research went beyond that—it delved into the supernatural.

He believed humans had greater potential than simply living an ordinary life, clinging to religious beliefs, and eventually dying.

That idea sounded boring and illogical to him. Was everyone truly born just to die? He believed humans could uncover their hidden potential someday and experience another side of life that the world had yet to offer.

To speed up the process, he began researching the supernatural and excavating the tombs of mythological figures. Figures whose names couldn't be spoken casually.

If others knew of his work, they would either ostracize him or throw him behind bars.

Over time, he had acquired special skills in this field. Which helped him escape life and death moments a lot of times..

People called him crazy, a man chasing myths and fantasies, but Victor didn't care. Through years of relentless searching, he had acquired ancient texts from different civilizations—manuscripts that spoke of how the ancients once wielded supernatural abilities.

To others, these were mere legends, exaggerated stories passed down through generations. But to Victor, they were glimpses of a forgotten truth.

He firmly believed that something extraordinary had once existed on Earth, lost to time and buried beneath layers of history and evolution.

His greatest clue had come from his own family's ancestral grave. Hidden within its depths, he had discovered a tattered piece of an ancient map, hinting at the existence of a magical treasure kept somewhere in secrecy.

However, the map was incomplete. The aged parchment provided no clear description of the treasure, nor did it reveal the full location. It was merely a piece of a much larger puzzle.

Determined to complete the map, Victor embarked on an arduous journey across the world. Over the years, he uncovered three more fragments, each hidden in places that only deepened the mystery:

– One was buried within an ancient tomb, its walls inscribed with warnings in a forgotten language.

– Another lay beneath the ocean, concealed inside a box, within the remnants of a sunken ruin, untouched for centuries.

– The last piece was found among a collection of antiques in New York, disguised as an ordinary relic until Victor deciphered its true significance.

It had taken him five long years to gather all the missing pieces.

Once he assembled the map in its entirety, cross-referencing it with his research, everything pointed to a single location—Mount Tai, in Shandong Province.

And at the end of this passage lay something extraordinary.

Victor didn't know what kind of Treasure it was.

It was something spherical in shape, and its power was unlike anything recorded in history.

That was all his family's secret texts had revealed.

As for Qingfang, he was Victor's childhood friend, and they often communicated over the internet to maintain their relationship.

Victor often visited China for explorations and to go adventuring in the sacred mountains.

That's how they somehow became good friends, though Qingfang didn't share his belief in the supernatural like Victor did.

But to ensure his safety and out of loyalty, Qingfang accompanied Victor on this journey too.

Back to the present...

Victor and Qingfang walked for an hour more, and the torchlight in Victor's hand began to flicker, eventually dying out mysteriously.

"It's so dark, Victor!" Qingfang muttered, trembling with fear. "Why are the torches not working?"

They were currently hundreds of meters deep inside from the surface, and a simple mistake could bury them alive.

"I don't know. Don't speak aloud." Victor warned.

Victor was worried too. With all this darkness around, he wasn't able to see anything either.

But he knew they couldn't just back off now. Their path of retreat was high above, like a cliff with a stairway of slippery rock and moss.

Retreating that high without a torch was extremely difficult. A simple slip of the foot could lead to their demise.

Taking these dangers into account, he had initially packed a few more torches, but all of them started malfunctioning for some reason. Some kind of invisible force was disrupting the electronic devices too. Like their watch and phone.

But as an experienced person, Victor maintained his calm.

"Just follow my voice, Qingfang. Don't touch anything else," Victor said, intending to reassure his friend.

Qingfang nodded.

"Alright, Victor. But be careful."

With that, Victor carefully led the way, putting his years of experience to good use.

Despite that, he was still tense and nervous.

After a while, Victor saw a source of light amidst the darkness.

He sighed in relief, while Qingfang still followed him silently.

Very soon, Victor and his friend landed on a stone platform and stood before a stone door.

The door was open, and some light was coming through it.

There was something written on the right part of the door, from which the light was coming through.

"What does it say, Victor? We should understand it before entering," Qingfang, ever the cautious person, warned, his face covered with grime and dust.

Victor read the text carefully and understood some part of it.

It says, "Fortune Favors the Brave." I can't understand anything else." Victor said.

"So cliché... I tell you, Victor, there's definitely some kind of trap waiting inside."

Victor chuckled, shrugging it off. "Oh, come on. If a trap were really set, we would have died many times on the way here. Come, let's take a look."

Victor tried to push the big stone door but wasn't successful alone.

But with Qingfang's help, the door was finally fully opened.

"Amazing!"

Inside, they were greeted with a magnificent view of a chamber, with moonlight coming from above through mysterious means, and walls bloomed with white moonflowers.

There was a Stone alter in the middle, and the moonlight targeted it specifically.

On top of the altar lay a small black sphere, looking completely ordinary.

The moonlight falling on it, though, felt as if it were being absorbed by it.

"Don't remove it, Victor. Otherwise, this place would collapse like in those movies," Qingfang warned seriously, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

Victor looked at his friend in speechlessness.

"Come on, Qingfang. Life cannot be that cinematic. Come, let me prove it to you..."

With that, Victor stepped ahead and removed the black sphere from the altar.

"See, I told you..." Victor grinned, holding it on top of his right hand fingers, feeling it was light.

However, Qingfang's face paled with horror as he saw cracks appearing behind Victor.

The cracks weren't ordinary; they were akin to unleashing something sealed, something forbidden from another dimension.

"Behind you, Victor! Quick... Move away!"

Qingfang ran desperately toward Victor, trying to save him.

While this was happening, the black sphere transformed like a coiling snake and delved inside Victor's body.

Victor didn't notice, as he was baffled by his friend's desperate behavior momentarily.

He turned back to see what had made Qingfang so afraid.

But it was already too late for realization.

BOOOOOOM!

Right before his eyes, a concentrated explosion of fire, erupted with annihilative force.

In that moment, all Victor could feel was regret.

The explosion instantly reduced them to dust, alongside the whole mountain, and spread outward as its source.

Mount Tai, which stood tall for ages was reduced to ashes in mere moments.