Free Web NovelThe hall fell into a deathly silence.
Only the occasional faint crackle of charcoal came from the fireplace.
Su Ming sat quietly. He could imagine the devastating catastrophe that had occurred a thousand years ago. A single Nascent Soul cultivator's rage could wipe out a prosperous dynasty. In the face of that kind of absolute power, schemes, military tactics, and grand ambitions were nothing but a joke.
"Master, you mentioned the Lantai Secret Garden. Does it have anything to do with the Great Yan Dynasty?" Su Ming raised his head and asked.
Elder Qingquan nodded. "Correct. The Lantai Secret Garden is a hidden underground secret realm left behind by the Great Yan imperial family back in the day. It's said that not only does it contain the rare treasures collected by the Great Yan Dynasty, but also many lost ancient formation diagrams. When Great Yan fell, that final emperor sealed the secret realm's entrance with the last of his life force."
"When I passed through the capital back then, I also took a stroll through those ruins. Unfortunately, that stone gate is covered in an extremely ancient restriction that requires a specific imperial key to open. Although I'm well-versed in the path of formations, if I were to forcibly break the array, it would only trigger the secret realm's self-destruction. In the end, all I could do was look at the residual patterns of those formations from the outside."
Elder Qingquan set down his teacup and looked at Su Ming with a warm gaze.
"These past few days, the Northern Barbarian delegation hasn't arrived yet, so we're stuck with idle time. You have an extremely high comprehension in the path of formations. Go take a look at the Lantai Secret Garden. You won't be able to get the things inside, but studying the patterns of those ancient formations from the outside will be immensely beneficial for you to solidify your formation foundation right now."
Su Ming didn't hesitate for a moment.
He didn't care about the treasures of the previous dynasty, and he knew that with his current cultivation level, he couldn't even handle things at that tier anyway. But if it was formation knowledge that could improve his ability to survive, that was a different story entirely.
He stood up and respectfully bowed.
"Disciple will go take a look first thing tomorrow morning."
......
The next morning, the fog in the capital was thicker than usual.
The cold, damp air carried a hint of the desolation unique to late autumn. Su Ming wore that gray long robe, with a purple jade token representing his status as a True Disciple of the Cloud Hidden Sect hanging from his waist. He walked alone along the bluestone slab road leading to the northwest corner of the capital.
The Lantai Secret Garden was not located in the center of the imperial palace, but in a desolate area on the outskirts of the imperial city, completely enclosed by towering crimson walls.
This place had once been a restricted area heavily guarded by the Great Xing court. But when Su Ming flashed that purple jade token before the eyes of the Imperial Guard commander at the gate, those mortal soldiers clad in heavy armor immediately knelt prostrate on the ground as if avoiding venomous snakes, not even daring to lift their heads. Trembling, they pushed open the heavy, rusty iron door.
Su Ming stepped through the high walls.
Just one wall apart, yet it felt like crossing a thousand years of time.
There were no carved beams or painted rafters, no pavilions or towers. What greeted his eyes was an extremely vast, yet utterly desolate ruin.
Massive white jade pillars were broken into several sections, lying haphazardly in the waist-high wild grass; remnants of glazed tiles glowed with a dim, eerie light in the morning mist; the ground beneath his feet even showed glass-like scorch marks left behind by horrific spells a thousand years ago.
A cold wind blew through the wild grass, producing a sound like a mournful wail.
This was the site of the Great Yan Dynasty's imperial palace back then, the central battlefield where those Nascent Soul level 'gods' had clashed.
Su Ming did not let his guard down because of the surrounding desolation. He circulated the liquid spiritual energy within his body to his eyes, and a faint blue light flickered in the depths of his pupils.
In his field of vision, beneath this seemingly lifeless ruin, countless dense, spiderweb-like residual spiritual energy veins were hidden. Although these veins had lost most of their power, they were still like countless sleeping venomous snakes. The slightest misstep in contact would trigger a fatal backlash.
"Such violent residual spiritual energy. Even after a thousand years, it hasn't dissipated cleanly." Su Ming felt a sense of gravity in his heart. Treading with the footwork of the Like Water Art, as if stepping on the surface of water ripples, he lightly and nimbly avoided one hidden spiritual energy trap after another.
After crossing most of the ruins, Su Ming stopped behind a massive, half-collapsed artificial mountain.
There was no road ahead.
Instead, there was a massive chasm deeply embedded into the underground rock layer. And at the end of the chasm, embedded into the rock, was a colossal stone gate, ten zhang high and five zhang wide.
The entire stone gate was a oppressive bluish-gray color, its surface covered with mottled traces of age and thick moss.
Standing at the edge of the chasm, Su Ming looked up and stared at that stone gate.
Even from a distance of dozens of zhang, he could still feel an extremely ancient, desolate, and oppressive aura rushing towards him. This gate was like a silent old man, coldly watching every intruder who tried to spy on the secrets behind it.
Su Ming took a deep breath and, following the edge of the chasm, slowly walked to the foot of the stone gate.
Up close, he could see that the surfaces of these two massive stone doors were densely covered with extremely complex, ancient seal scripts.
These seal scripts were completely different from the runes commonly used in the current cultivation world. They lacked that ethereal Dao resonance; instead, every stroke and line exuded a killing aura of clashing arms and horses, as if they had been forcibly chiseled into the stone with swords and blades.
Su Ming looked up, his gaze sweeping across the ancient seal scripts one by one.
Suddenly, his heart skipped a violent beat.
An extremely strange sense of familiarity surged into his mind.
"These characters..." Su Ming furrowed his brow, his fingers instinctively rubbing his chin as he murmured to himself within his Consciousness Sea. "I feel like I've seen them somewhere before. And... more than once."
But when he tried to think carefully, that memory seemed shrouded in a thick fog, impossible to grasp.
Su Ming had never been someone to dwell on things. Since he couldn't remember, he simply stopped trying. His gaze returned to its usual calm, as still as an ancient well.
He stepped forward, reached out with both hands, and gently pressed them against the cold, rough surface of the stone gate.
A thread of liquid blue spiritual energy, following the center of his palm, carefully probed into the stone gate.
"WOOOOM—"
The moment his spiritual energy made contact with the inside of the gate, the entire stone gate trembled violently. The ancient seal scripts covered in moss on its surface instantly lit up with a layer of dark gold light.
A massive, suffocating force of counter-shock surged back along Su Ming's arms like a tidal wave.
Su Ming let out a muffled groan, his feet carving two deep furrows into the bluestone slabs beneath him. He slid backward continuously for over a dozen steps before barely managing to dispel that terrifying counter-shock force.
His qi and blood churned violently. The liquid spiritual energy within his body frantically cycled through three major circuits before it completely neutralized the dark gold energy that had drilled into his meridians.
"What a tyrannical restriction."
