After the cavern fell silent, Lan Qingyun did not remain hidden. He waited only long enough to confirm that no second chain would rise from the abyss. When nothing moved and the suffocating pulse below settled into a slow, distant rhythm, he slipped out of the narrow crevice and retreated.
He moved fast — not recklessly, but fast enough that the demonic mist tore past his robes as he crossed twisting tunnels and fractured corridors. The memory fragments he carried gave him a rough sense of direction, yet the terrain began to shift subtly the farther he traveled. After a long stretch of movement, he slowed.
This place did not match the monarch's memories.
The stone texture was different. The veins of black crystal were thinner here, branching like dying roots instead of converging toward a central depth. The demonic aura felt scattered, unstable — as if diverted from some greater source.
Lan Qingyun's eyes narrowed. He adjusted his breathing and began moving with caution, extending thin threads of perception outward.
Then he saw it.
Another altar.
At first glance it resembled the false one near the entrance — the same raised platform, the same carved demonic sigils circling its base. But this one was different. The ground surrounding it was littered with bodies — hundreds of them. Disciples in varied sect robes. Some twisted unnaturally. Some collapsed as though asleep. Some reduced to shriveled husks. The air carried the faint metallic scent of blood mixed with something colder.
At the center of the platform, one figure floated upright in midair — a man. His robes were torn. His hair hung loose over his face. Strands of dark energy spiraled from his body into the altar beneath him. The platform pulsed slowly, like a heart, and with every pulse threads of force extended outward, draining the fallen cultivators and feeding inward.
Lan Qingyun's expression sharpened.
He needed answers.
If he wanted to understand this region beyond fragmented memory, he needed someone alive.
He did not hesitate. He rushed forward.
As he moved, his hands began forming seals rapidly. Complex patterns shifted and overlapped — part orthodox circulation redirection, part forced channel inversion drawn from the monarch's incomplete techniques. His control was precise, but there was strain in it. Among all the secondary fields he had tested since entering this realm, this was the only one he had successfully interfered with; the others had nearly ended in disaster. He still remembered the first time he had attempted alchemy under the monarch's guidance — half the sect compound had nearly exploded.
The memory made him shudder.
Focus.
He reached the edge of the platform and drove his spiritual force into the surrounding channels, forcibly altering the direction of flow. The altar trembled. The draining threads faltered. For a brief, delicate moment, the balance shifted. Lan Qingyun stepped forward and caught the floating cultivator, pulling him down from the air.
The man was barely alive — Mid Golden Core — but his meridians were collapsing, spiritual essence nearly hollowed out. Lan Qingyun retrieved a pill and forced it into the man's mouth, then pressed a palm to his back and began guiding the circulation of inner qi manually, stabilizing fractured pathways and sealing leaking points. The draining weakened. The altar's pulse stuttered.
Then a sharp cracking sound split the air.
The platform fractured down the middle.
Darkness surged upward.
Something emerged.
It did not crawl. It rose — a mass of black liquid that was not liquid, semi-solid, shifting, without stable form. Edges melted and reformed. Surface ripples pulsed like muscle beneath tar. The temperature in the chamber dropped instantly.
Lan Qingyun felt it before it fully surfaced — an acute, instinctive sense of danger. Not like facing a cultivator. Not like confronting demonic beasts. This was different. Predatory. Ancient.
The entity extended upward, swelling in size as though testing the air. Lan Qingyun shifted his stance, spiritual force gathering around his fists, but before he could act the mass recoiled, withdrawing rapidly toward the split altar as if some unseen boundary had been reached. Within seconds, only a small fragment remained outside.
Lan Qingyun frowned.
He was still assessing the situation when the fragment moved. It lunged — no warning, no buildup, pure, silent speed.
Lan Qingyun struck instinctively. His fist cut through the black mass.
No resistance. No impact.
As though punching smoke.
The fragment vanished.
Gone.
Lan Qingyun's heart skipped. A burning sensation flared at the back of his neck — sharp, sudden. He reached up. His fingers brushed heated skin.
A mark.
He immediately sent a thin stream of qi toward the sensation.
The result was wrong.
Every time his perception approached the mark, it distorted, slipped, vanished — as though the mark did not occupy space, as though it receded into void whenever observed.
Lan Qingyun's expression darkened.
He withdrew his spiritual sense.
The rescued cultivator coughed weakly behind him, breath uneven but present.
The altar lay cracked.
The entity had retreated.
But something had been left behind.
On him.
The chamber grew quiet again — too quiet.
Lan Qingyun slowly stood.
This was no simple remnant altar. No ordinary demonic formation. The thing beneath the platform had not attacked blindly. It had tested, then marked, and it had done so without resistance.
Lan Qingyun's gaze hardened.
Lan Qingyun's gaze hardened.
He did not touch the mark again.
Panic was wasteful.
He inhaled slowly, steadying the circulation of his Golden Core. His qi flowed smoothly — no obstruction, no foreign surge. The meridians were intact. His spiritual sea was undisturbed.
And yet—
Something was there.
Not attached like poison.
Not embedded like a curse.
More like… an imprint.
A recognition.
Behind him, the rescued cultivator groaned again, coughing up a thin thread of blackened blood. His eyelids fluttered weakly.
Lan Qingyun turned at once and knelt beside him.
"Stay still."
The man's breathing was shallow, but the pill had taken effect. The draining had stopped the moment the altar fractured. His Golden Core was dim but not extinguished.
"You… you disrupted it…" the man rasped.
Lan Qingyun did not answer. He pressed two fingers lightly to the man's wrist, measuring pulse.
Stable. Barely.
"Which sect?" Lan Qingyun asked quietly.
"…Iron Willow… from the southern ridges…"
Not one of the Top Five. Not even Top Ten.
Expendable in the eyes of many.
Lan Qingyun's eyes flickered briefly toward the scattered corpses around the platform.
These were not sacrifices from a single sect.
They were collected.
Harvested.
The altar was not merely draining stragglers.
It was bait.
He rose slowly, scanning the chamber again.
The demonic aura here was thinner than at the false altar — diluted, almost frayed. The black crystal veins branching across the walls did not converge inward. They thinned as they approached the cracked platform, like roots reaching the end of soil.