The world before them was dead long before they arrived.
""This place is wrong," Xiao Yang said quietly.
Xiao Yang stood at the edge of the broken plane, spear in hand, eyes narrowed at the lifeless horizon.
Beside him, the old man remained still, gaze fixed on something far beyond mortal sight.
"Xiao Yang, come with me. I sensed a strange disturbance in the chaos energy. Maybe we will come across some treasure in this barren world," the old man's expression didn't change.
But just as he was about to take off into the void of space, he suddenly realized that he could not even take flight in the void.
"Grandpa, I can't fly...?"
Before the elderly man could utter a word, his grandson Xiao Yang spoke in surprise.
"Hmm... It appears that this plane was at least a high level one before being destroyed, because with our cultivation, we should be able to at least walk in the void. Yet, I can't even take a step into the void here. "Every step here carries a price," the old man said.
Xiao Yang was shocked by his grandfather's words, because he had never thought about such a thing before coming to this small plane.
Xiao Yang nodded, unease creeping in despite his confidence.
The old man and his grandson walked toward the energy fluctuation emanating from the area in front of them.
While walking toward that, the old man spotted stains of dried blood scattered across the ground.
But not just normal blood, if it were, the river of time would have erased it long ago in such a barren world.
----
After only a few steps, the old man halted.
From his old experience, the old man quickly came to a serious determination.
They continued at full speed until they reached the center of the plane.
The land ahead erased all remaining doubt: Countless bodies had been killed and decomposed down to bones.
Blood still soaked the ground, fresh enough to deny the passage of time.
Some corpses still wore skin; others were nothing but hollow bone.
Both grandson and grandfather were taken aback, staring at the sight of these men, whose body parts had been pierced by weapons.
Even breathing felt like a mistake.
The stench of death hung low over the mountains of corpses.
"This wasn't slaughter," the old man said.
"It was erasure."
Many of the corpses were so disfigured they could hardly be recognized, yet their disfigurement was a sign of the tragic end they must have met in the last moments of their lives.
"Grandpa… Look, over there! What is that?" Xiao Yang suddenly pointed into the distance, his eyes widening with surprise.
The old man followed his gaze.
The moment he looked, he froze.
"What… is that…?" His expression stiffened for a moment, unable to process why such a thing would appear here.
However, the vision was blurred while being shrouded by layers of thick, bloody clouds, with zero visibility.
"If we cross this line," the old man said, "we may not return."
"Places like this exist to erase those who enter," the old man said quietly.
"Since when did you fear ruins?" Xiao Yang said, forcing a grin.
"How many times have we gone through situations worse than this? This is just a small, desolate world?" Xiao Yang scoffed, though his grip on the spear tightened against his will.
With that, he continued rummaging through the remains scattered across the land, turning over broken corpses in search of valuables.
He inspected shattered storage rings and rusted weapons, but disappointment filled his face, his expression becoming darker.
Time's erosion had turned nearly everything to dust.
"Useless junk," he spat, throwing aside a cracked blade that disintegrated upon touch.
The old man finally sighed and said, "Very well. Since you insist, finish your search here first. If nothing valuable remains, we'll head into that bloody mist and see what lies hidden beyond it."
They searched for two full days, combing through hundreds of thousands of corpses. Yet no matter how deep they dug, they found nothing of worth here.
"Just nothing more than dust..!!"
"Fuck…" Xiao Yang cursed loudly, his face twisting with frustration.
"How disappointing. I've looted plenty of small worlds, but this… this is worse than dust! Five years wasted to break the formation and enter this wretched place, and we get nothing?!"
"Five years," Xiao Yang muttered. "Just for dust."
Clenching his fists, Xiao Yang's eyes burned with infinite greed and frustration.
"Whatever remains," Xiao Yang said, eyes fixed ahead, "is there."
The old man said nothing, already calculating how much this journey might cost.
Something within them … something that made even his experienced heart feel uneasy by just looking at that
Since there was no profit yet, he decided to explore more.
The two of them walked toward the bloody, clouded place and finally reached it after a few days, while exploring other areas too.
The moment they stepped forward, the world fell away.
When both of them finally stepped into the crimson haze, even the minor strands of Chaos Qi that had lingered in the atmosphere seemed to vanish entirely.
The air clung to their lungs, thick and metallic, scraping their throats raw with every breath.
The fog was not mist, it was resentment, condensed and rotting.
The old man's eyes squinted as his head began to tilt forward; a little green light rippled from his hand, pushing aside the haze just enough to see more than a few feet ahead.
"Grandpa, this place… feels fucking weird." Xiao Yang muttered as he gripped his spear tightly, looking worriedly.
The Dao itself is screaming," Xiao Yang whispered.
The old man did not respond right away.
Instead, he reached out with his soul sense, only to have it crushed by a heavy, invisible force, before it could even touch the fog.
The old man's cultivation, strong enough to survey mountains and rivers in the blink of an eye, even the entire part of the continent, was now resisted and forced back within dozens of feet.
"This haze rejects life," the old man said.
This was no battlefield; it was a tomb where even the Dao had been buried.
They continued, feeling an unnatural pressure in their feet, each step sinking into blackened and brittle soil, like devouring them.
The ground cracked softly, as if the land itself were giving way under buried horrors.
Xiao Yang pushed his way closer and, upon pulling away, confirmed that the dew was blood.
He backed up instinctively, spear raised. "What the hell is this?"
"Blood Lotus…" Xiao Yang breathed in shock.
"A flower born from relentless slaughter, watered with hatred.
The old man's hand stopped mid-air. His expression darkened."Do not touch it."
Xiao Yang looked at the Blood Lotus. His greed spiked, by just hearing the name of it.
He reached out, but his hand froze. A cold, invisible tether jerked his soul back.
He didn't feel fear; he felt a hollow, artificial confidence.
"Those are distractions," Xiao Yang said hollowly.
"The real treasure is ahead."
He didn't realize his own eyes were leaking black ink.
After ignoring it.
----
They advanced carefully, avoiding the Blood Lotus fields like traps.
As they went deeper into the field, the mist became thicker until even the old man's somewhat weak protective aura deemed itself useless against it.
The ground cracked softly, as if the land itself were giving way under buried horrors.
A sound echoed directly within their souls.
A subtle sound, like the beat of a war drum, resonated in time with their hearts.
Each beat caused the mist to tumble and convulse, revealing glimpses of shadowy figures dancing in and out of existence.
"Illusion....no," the old man said slowly. "Memory."
The mist tore open.
Before them, the landscape transformed into a battlefield.
Armored figures clashed, swinging weapons of light and darkness, their twisted faces reflecting profound hatred and animosity.
The earth was sundered apart, shaped by the falling divine techniques that rained down like meteors, and rivers of blood cascaded across the land, while shattering the galaxy with just a single move.
The vision appeared so vividly real that Xiao Yang instinctively raised his spear, as though they might join the fray.
And then, in the next moment, it was gone.
Silence returned, dense and suffocating beneath the red haze.
A sharp pressure bloomed behind Xiao Yang's eyes, like something brushing his soul.
. "Grandpa... just now, was that..."
"Yes," the old man interrupted.
"A remnant of what occurred here, as a battle overwhelmed this plane. It wasn't even a skirmish; it was a war that occurred between forces that we can't comprehend. Possibly... "Whatever fought here was beyond us," the old man admitted.
At the last words, his voice even started to tremble.
Xiao Yang swallowed hard as he sensed a degree of smallness he had never allowed himself to realize before.
They ventured deeper. Hours passed, or perhaps only moments.
What used to be a city lay in ruins. Huge walls made from a jade like stone stretched across the view, cracked and broken, with every fragment marked by runes so old even the old man could not fully recognize them.
"This world should not have existed at this level."
"These markings are what is left of a Supreme Dao Formation. That a simple plane was destroyed... is just unreal, that they can't believe it!"
The sight pressed against the mind, cold and merciless.
The only thing coming from the old man's mouth.
As they grew closer to the city remnants, the temperature dropped considerably.
Their breaths came out pale like mist, as did the blood colored haze.
----
In the middle of the ruined city was a massive crater, as if a single strike from the heavens had destroyed everything that once existed there.
And in that crater, through the mist, a large stone tablet appeared half-buried among the rubble. Strange runes crawled across its surface like a living organism.
"Grandpa... look." Xiao Yang said quietly, amazed.
"That tablet... it seems to be calling us."
The old man's eyes darkened. "Be cautious. Anything that survives destruction on that scale is unusual. No matter if it's a treasure or a curse, it may decide our fate."
----
The blood mist continued to swirl tighter, seemingly a reaction to their presence.
The war drumbeat returned, louder this time, from deep beneath the crater formed there.
It was the first time the old man felt a true tingle of fear run down his spine since entering the haze.
Time lost meaning within the mist.
As the blood mist twisted and the echoing war drums faded away, the vague silhouette of the stone tablet disappeared into the fog.
The ground beneath their feet trembled again.
hen Xiao Yang saw it, he even forgot how to breathe.
It loomed beyond the crimson fog like a ghost palace.
And unlike the ruined city wall, this was beyond he has ever seen.
A manor that stretched far beyond what the eye could see, as if carved directly into the bone of the plane.
Its roof peaks pierced the fog, cracked and dulled by endless ages.
The building held an ancient greatness that could crush a heart, as if the structure, along with its countless silent bricks, could peer back at them, dormant like an ancient god.
Xiao Yang froze, the tension so thick it could be cut like butter, notwithstanding its crushing weight.
"Grandpa… Is that… a palace?"
The old man's eyes became keen, his pupils shrinking. "No… more than a palace. That... is the ancestral mansion of a clan, or of a great power that has fallen into the river of time."
Just as he was speaking, he saw an ancient charector on the ruined palace.
"Shen…" The word drained all strength from the old man's voice..
Only then did the old man understand that this path had never been his to choose.