Ruins

‘An unfamiliar ceiling...’

As soon as Baek Cheong opened her eyes, she saw an unfamiliar ceiling.

The bed supporting her back was so soft that her body sank into it, and a curtain embroidered with silver thread hung by her head.

The pillars and walls were adorned with blue jade, while the luminous pearls set into the ceiling cast light as bright as broad daylight.

No matter where she looked, it was a lavish bedchamber unlike anything she had ever seen in the Yeonha Baek Clan.

‘Where am I?’

Baek Cheong sat up on the bed and climbed down, first checking her own body.

She had no injuries, and her spiritual power moved as usual.

The spatial magical treasure hanging over her chest was also still in place.

‘Everything’s fine, but...’

As she gradually regained her senses, she quickly recalled what had happened just before.

The yellowish belly shell that had shot out on its own in the depths of Yeonha.

The silver light flowing from each engraved mark had swallowed her up, dragging Profound Void Perfected Person into it as well.

“Grandpa Profound Void Perfected Person?”

But no answer came from anywhere.

She quickly checked beneath the bed and behind the curtain as well.

There was no one in the bedchamber besides her.

Wondering if he had woken first and gone outside to look around, she approached the door, but sensed no sign of anyone.

‘He was definitely swept up with me.’

When the silver light spread, Profound Void Perfected Person had been manipulating the Dao-Guarding Formation directly in front of her.

After her vision was covered in silver light, she could not even remember what she had seen.

First, she needed to determine where she had landed.

‘Let’s examine the surroundings first.’

Before opening the door, Baek Cheong cautiously spread her divine sense.

Her divine sense swept over the walls and door of the bedchamber in turn before spreading outside.

It detected a long corridor, rooms of similar size, and part of a hall that continued in layers above and below.

The eaves curved upward, and the walls were filled with decorations modeled after huge shells and scales.

The entire area outside the hall was surrounded by blue water.

Light filtering in through the gentle ripples shimmered as it brushed against the jade.

‘A Dragon Palace?’

The thought arose unbidden when she imagined a lavish hall submerged underwater.

Since they had disappeared in the waters of Yeonha, it was not an entirely baseless guess.

However, the hue of the water was different from what she had seen in the depths of Yeonha.

There was almost no pressure in the water surrounding this place, and the deep-water qi that had interfered with her divine sense was faint as well.

For now, she could not even tell whether this was underwater somewhere else or in the deep waters of Yeonha.

Fortunately, not a drop of water had entered the hall.

Moreover, no matter how thoroughly she searched the rooms and corridors, she sensed no signs of any living creature.

There were no hidden killing intents or formations aimed at her, either.

For someone who had been left alone in an unfamiliar place, the situation did not seem dangerous.

‘Come to think of it...’

Baek Cheong recalled the silver light that had engulfed her.

It had happened too quickly for her to react in any way at the time.

But when she closed her eyes and retraced her memories, she sensed something faint that remained.

The marks that her eyes, hands, and divine sense could not perceive had briefly revealed themselves within the silver light.

They were different from both the natural workings of heaven and earth and the will of the Heavenly Dao.

In the instant she was swept into the silver light, she faintly sensed a principle that bound nature and will together and folded space away.

‘As expected, they were glyphs of a law.’

She was only now certain of the caliber of the marks engraved on the belly shell.

But she had not fully deciphered any of the law glyphs.

If someone asked her to explain what they meant, she could not even describe a single stroke.

Even so, the way they had been used had given her the answer through her own circumstances.

The law glyphs engraved on the belly shell were clearly related to teleportation.

‘It does feel like a ticket, though...’

The belly shell had not activated just anywhere.

It had shot out through her spatial magical treasure only after she reached the bright waters deep beneath Yeonha.

It made sense to think of it as a key that opened a door only at a designated place, or a token that allowed entry.

Once her thoughts reached this point, anticipation rose before wariness.

‘This happened after I obtained merit.’

Right after she obtained her first merit, the turtle demonic beast had come all the way to Cheonnam Alliance headquarters.

The turtle had led Baek Cheong and Profound Void Perfected Person into the depths of Yeonha, and the belly shell had let them enter a hall that appeared to be a hidden place.

The sequence of events was too perfectly arranged to dismiss as coincidence.

‘So it came to repay the cost of the fifty high-grade spirit stones.’

Baek Cheong smiled faintly as she recalled the turtle demonic beast’s enormous mouth.

The belly shell it had handed over after eating the high-grade spirit stones was indeed no ordinary object.

The turtle she had suspected of eating and running off had instead prepared a ticket to a hidden fortuitous opportunity for her.

All her regret over the fifty high-grade spirit stones vanished without a trace.

Rather, if she met the turtle again, she thought it would be fine to shower it with rain from the Rain-Calling Art and feed it a few high-grade spirit stones.

‘As for Profound Void Perfected Person...’

She was not thrilled about having to share her fortuitous opportunity.

But if Profound Void Perfected Person had not deployed the Dao-Guarding Formation, they would never have made it down to the depths of Yeonha.

Above all, the moment they followed the turtle, it had been no different from stepping into the fortuitous opportunity.

A quasi-fifth-tier formation master would have plenty to gain from ruins like these as well.

‘It can’t be helped.’

Baek Cheong decided to share the fortuitous opportunity’s spoils, as though she were being magnanimous.

Of course, that was only after she found Profound Void Perfected Person.

For now, she did not even know where she was.

‘Then this must be ruins, right?’

It was a place that used a belly shell engraved with law glyphs as an admission ticket.

Even the jade and luminous pearls decorating the hall made it clear that this was not an ordinary cultivator’s dwelling.

It could have been a cave abode left behind by a grand cultivator from the ancient era, or ruins that had drifted down from a higher world.

Either way, there was no reason to return empty-handed.

‘At last, I have a fortuitous opportunity too!’

Unable to wait any longer, Baek Cheong opened the door to the bedchamber.

The corridor outside the door was far more splendid than it had appeared through her divine sense.

Golden patterns ran along every pillar carved from blue jade, and the ceiling was densely set with pearls shaped like waves.

Yet the floor was spotless, without a speck of dust.

It was far too intact for ruins that had been abandoned for ages.

Even so, she did not quicken her pace.

Without retracting her divine sense, she moved along the corridor while repeatedly surveying the surroundings.

Whenever she saw a door, she checked inside, but none opened onto anything remarkable.

One room contained a bed and a table, while another had facilities that seemed intended for washing.

She also came across several spaces that looked like an empty storeroom or a small kitchen.

They were all ordinary facilities, like guest quarters or servants’ rooms.

‘There’s not even a treasure, let alone a person in sight.’

Still, it was too soon to be disappointed.

The hall she had detected with her divine sense was several times larger than the corridor she had explored so far.

Moreover, even the ordinary facilities had one feature that clearly set them apart from those outside.

‘The spiritual energy is abundant, but...’

The spiritual energy filling the hall was so dense that it was hard to believe.

Every time she inhaled, concentrated spiritual energy seeped into her entire body, and her Five-Element Spirit Roots moved on their own even without circulating a technique.

It was as though countless high-grade spirit stones had been piled up and filled the surrounding air.

‘If I had come here during the Qi Condensation stage, I might have suffocated to death from the spiritual energy.’

Even now, spiritual energy constantly poured into her dantian despite her not activating the Five-Element Technique.

Her third-star Foundation Establishment True Origin could withstand it, but with the meridians of the Qi Condensation stage, her entire body might have burst apart.

If this was what the guest quarters were like, it was impossible to imagine what the master’s residence contained.

This thought made her steps quicken slightly.

When she reached the end of the corridor, the unnatural wall she had detected with her divine sense blocked her path.

The decorations on the left and right and the pattern on the floor continued on, then abruptly stopped at that point.

It was not a shape that could have formed if the wall had been there from the beginning.

As she drew a little closer, she noticed a formation laid out like a round platform on the floor before the wall.

It was large enough for three or four people to stand on side by side.

There were no formation eyes or flags, but hundreds of glyphs were layered and engraved across the entire floor.

‘Anyone can see it’s a formation for moving somewhere else.’

With a glyph-carved platform at the end of a corridor blocked by a wall, it was difficult to think of any other use.

And because she thought she had found a formation related to teleportation, she crouched down before its edge.

Without touching it with her hand, she narrowed her divine sense and examined the glyphs one by one.

The hundreds of glyphs differed in level from those in the formations she had seen until now.

Glyphs of heaven and earth that pulled and pushed space continued along the bottom, while glyphs of the Heavenly Dao that drove the flow in a predetermined direction covered the top.

Between the layers of heaven and earth and the Heavenly Dao were embedded glyphs that kept slipping from perception no matter how long she looked at them.

They were glyphs that would have appeared to be empty spaces with nothing in them in the past.

But now, with the lingering sensation of having been swept into the silver light in the depths of Yeonha, she could recognize at least their faint outlines.

‘Glyphs of a law.’

Unfortunately, she still could not read their meaning.

Nor did she know what law the glyphs contained.

She could only guess that all the surrounding glyphs of heaven and earth and the Heavenly Dao flowed toward those marks.

She could only surmise that they twisted space, set its direction, and then carried out the role of crossing the final boundary.

If she had not first known from the circumstances that it was a teleportation formation, it would have been difficult even to recognize its purpose.

‘The ones engraved on the belly shell were a similar type.’

Baek Cheong became convinced that the unidentified belly shell was related to teleportation.

If she could properly take apart the formation before her, she might gain a clue to understanding the law glyphs as well.

But her joy did not last long.

Her divine sense tracing the formation’s outer edge discovered several broken strokes.

In places, parts of the glyphs had been worn away, and the spiritual-energy flows that should have connected to one another were completely missing at intervals.

One of the law glyphs had lost nearly half its form.

The source that supplied spiritual energy had also dried up long ago, leaving the entire formation deathly still.

‘It’s broken.’

She examined it thoroughly, reluctant to give up, but the damaged sections were far beyond anything she could easily repair.

If only the glyphs of heaven and earth had been broken, she might have connected the flow by another method.

She did not even know the meaning of the law glyphs, much less have any basis for guessing the missing strokes.

If she repaired it incorrectly, she might create a teleportation formation that sent her somewhere no one could predict.

“Tsk.”

Baek Cheong rose from her crouch, shaking off her lingering regret.

The hall was so vast that even her divine sense could not survey it all at once.

It was a place where rows of guest chambers stood, with similar facilities continuing along every corridor.

There was no way a place this large would rely on a single broken teleportation formation as its only means of getting around.

‘There couldn’t be only one teleportation formation.’

Taking her eyes off the broken formation, she turned toward the places she had not yet explored.