The massive door was forged from some dark, heavy metal, its entire surface covered with intricate carvings so complex they made the eyes spin. But these weren't auspicious immortal beasts of the traditional kind. Instead, the carvings depicted twisted fiends and distorted souls, radiating an eerie, ominous aura.
Xie Zhaolin cautiously extended her divine sense toward the giant door, only to feel a fierce repulsive force the instant she made contact.
"Silent Heart Chamber…" she murmured, repeating the name Jiu Jiu had mentioned earlier. Her sharp gaze swept across the door and the surrounding walls. "So this is where Youji Shàngrén's true core inheritance lies."
Jiu Jiu had schemed so much just to push her in here. It definitely wasn't out of kindness.
Behind this door, danger surely lurked. But at the same time… there could be a great opportunity waiting as well. Blessing or curse, it was no longer her choice to make. Since she was already here, retreat wasn't an option. She rose slowly to her feet and walked step by cautious step toward the massive black door. She needed to find a way to open it, or… perhaps another path out of this place.
Every step was deliberate. Her divine sense stretched taut, scanning for the faintest fluctuations of spiritual energy or hidden marks of restrictions. Her breath was held, her focus sharp as a blade. She drew closer and closer to the ominous, oppressive door.
Thirty feet… fifteen feet… nine feet…
Her entire body tensed, the Liuyun Ribbon coiling with power, ready to counter any restriction, trap, or sudden attack. But when her fingertip brushed against the door's ice-cold surface, nothing happened. No light flared, no runes came alive, no carvings awakened. Even the repulsion she'd felt earlier dissipated instantly upon contact.
The door stood silently, like nothing more than a simple, heavy slab of metal.
Her brows knit tighter. Far from feeling relieved, her vigilance only heightened. Something that abnormal couldn't be right! She pressed her palm flat against the door and pushed slightly.
Creak—
A faint grinding sound broke the silence.
The door moved.
And it wasn't heavy at all. Instead… it felt light, almost weightless. With barely any effort, it slid inward, leaving a narrow gap. The ease of it all made her wariness spike. How could the place Youji Shàngrén left as his core inheritance be this simple to enter?
She stopped, sending her divine sense through the gap.
Beyond the door wasn't a hidden chamber or passage. It was… nothing but endless darkness. That darkness was so dense it couldn't be dispersed. Her divine sense slipped in and was instantly swallowed whole, vanishing without a trace. All she could feel was a suffocating void.
Her eyes hardened. There was no way back now. Taking a steadying breath, she pushed the door wide open.
The massive slab swung smoothly, revealing what lay beyond.
Her pupils shrank sharply. For the first time, her face betrayed shock she couldn't conceal. It wasn't empty void or some sinister death trap. It was another circular stone chamber—almost exactly the same as the one she stood in!
The same pitch-black polished walls, the same ceiling stretching into endless height, the same emptiness. And directly opposite, another identical black door stood tall, its surface covered in the same grotesque carvings. It was as if… she had simply stepped from one stone chamber into another perfectly identical one.
Whipping around, she looked back.
The door she had just pushed open still stood wide, revealing the chamber she had come from. And that chamber was no different from the one she now stood in.
An unsettling chill ran down her spine.
She quickly crossed back through the doorway, returning to the first chamber. Her gaze swept over every inch. Yes, this was the very chamber where she had been teleported.
Then she walked once more to the opposite door, forcing it open. Sure enough, it led to the exact same chamber with another identical door.
Her expression darkened.
This time, she didn't keep walking. Instead, she stayed put, divine sense unfurling with all her might to probe both chambers and their connecting doors.
No signs of an illusion formation. No traces of folded space.
Both chambers and both doors were real, existing side by side as if built together. And the two identical doors served as the passage connecting them. But how could such a thing be possible?
Why would Youji Shàngrén leave behind such a meaningless, childish structure at the very heart of his inheritance?
Her steps carried her to the new door in the second chamber. She pushed it open.
Another chamber. Another door.
She opened the next… and the next… and the next.
Five doors in total. Five identical stone chambers.
Every single one was the same.
It was like she had stepped into a labyrinth of endless repetition, a cycle without end.
By the time she reached the fifth chamber and raised her hand toward the sixth door, she stopped mid-motion. Continuing like this was pointless. It wasn't simple repetition. There had to be a hidden truth here, some secret she hadn't uncovered yet.
Was it testing patience?
Requiring a special method of opening?
Or… was this very repetition a higher form of illusion?
She shut her eyes, abandoning sight altogether. Instead, her divine sense surged to its utmost limit, feeling the tiniest details—the grain beneath her feet, the faintest flow of qi in the air, the subtle lines of energy embedded in the carvings on the door.
She refused to believe there could be two things in this world that were absolutely identical.
Especially not in the core inheritance ground of Youji Shàngrén .
Time trickled by in silence.
The chamber lay still, broken only by the sound of her faint breathing.
At first, nothing revealed itself. But she didn't give up.
The more flawless a trap, the more its flaw hid in the smallest, most easily ignored detail.
Her focus locked on the carvings etched into the giant doors. The snarling fiends, the writhing souls… at a glance, every door bore the exact same design. But when her divine sense sharpened to the extreme, probing the patterns at the tiniest level, she finally caught it. A subtle difference.
Not in the carvings themselves. In the energy flowing within them!
Each fiend and twisted soul was laced with faint energy veins. The flow of those veins—their nodes, the rhythm, the strength—differed slightly from door to door. The differences were so minute they would've been impossible to detect without patience and divine sense far beyond her peers.
But they were there.