Further Descent

Chapter 12

The darkness suddenly fainted, Mark opening his eyes to see surprisingly no injuries.

He stood up and looked around, to find himself in an unimaginable place, an underground place clearly lived in but long ago, crystal shards lighting the place up like it was day, he currently stuck in a plaza, stone paths below him, dead bushes filled with sticks surrounding him, a rock pile to the side and above it a large chunk in the solid rock wall.

He moved forward, before realizing the place was abundant in Qi and had a feeling he had before.

"Recovery Formation!" He exclaimed, amazed, the formation seemed more powerful than Elder Hao's

He took in a bit of Qi only to see it was more dense and even 10 times more abundant than the outside world, immediately making his cultivation take a leap that would take 4 days in the outside world.

Dismissing his happiness at his quick cultivation, he figured he needed to quickly get out, looking above, the hole he fell down was too long, him just barely able to see out, the rest of the ceiling filled with darkness.

Finding no other way, he figured he could only travel one of the two paths. Above each path had signs filled with text and an icon, although barely visible, some of the text faded away, the symbols luckily barely changed though.

On one side it had indecipherable lettering and an image of a bottle, and on the other it had more writing and a Circle with another smaller circle inside of it.

Not seeing how a bottle could help him, he decided to go to the other pathway, having no clue what the symbol or text meant.

He walked through the path, it having a large arch overhead on both ways, and a pathway wide enough for 10 people to walk side by side, the stone cave walls eventually changing to rotted wood or crumbled stone, the walls infested with the glowing crystals, seemingly accelerating the crumbling of the ruins.

He kept walking forward, eventually arriving at a giant room, the ceiling at least 20 ft tall, multiple doors all around and a giant space to walk around.

He looked around the room, to discover with great fear, multiple skeletons, laying on the ground and chipped. He walked up to one, some clothes covering its body. He nudged it with his shoe, for it to simply crumble to dust, bones and clothes, immediately disintegrating into a pile of ashes, dirtying Mark's shoe.

He continued looking around, the great hub this place must have been, ruined by time.

It seemed this place was a hub area, meant to access more areas, with doors all around it, having the same signs he had seen, in a bit better shape, although some of them simply lay on the floor and some have major damage that couldn't be repaired.

He figured he had to get out, so he looked around at the different signs.

The signs had a myriad of different symbols, some having a hammer, some having a flag, eerily similar to the one Elder Hao uses, some having a book, and one even having a depiction of a beast, not one he had ever heard of though.

Eventually, Mark decided on the symbol of a stairway, a simple symbol and one of the ones in best shape. Upon looking closer, the sign must have been powered in some way, the stairs were continuingly moving upward, changing constantly.

He walked forward through the path, upon encountering many grand metal doors in his way, except they were decayed enough that he managed to force them out of the way with a little effort.

To his disappointment, upon reaching the end of the hallway, the stairs did not lead up like he thought, but down.

He decided to walk down anyway, already coming this far, thinking that this hopefully leads to another hub that had a path that went upwards.

He gradually went down, right with his prediction, coming upon a small open area like before, even more in ruins, more crystal then wall, and what seemed like seats to be spectating the open hub from one side of the room.

There were more signs here, leading to different paths, but instead of being filled with symbols, they were all filled with blank faces, such as a shadow, the outline of the head but no features.

Having nothing else to do, he looked through them all to find the head outline slightly changed for a few. Finally, after almost going through all of them, he found a sign in better condition than the rest, faint, but the head had details, showing an old man, bald with a long beard, seemingly as old as the world itself.

Mark looked around the room for a bit longer, but finding nothing but dilapidated signs either hanging by a thread or laying on the floor, this was the only path that seemed different, so he took it.

He walked down the path, in better shape than the rest of the ruins so far, but it was still very destroyed, with only a bit more of the wall being intact.

The pathway continued further forward, and had a side path.

Mark decided to walk forward down the path.

It opened to what seemed to be the house of a wealthy person, the room filled with the slightest hint of luxury that you could barely make out, like the decorative stone in the room, probably shiny once, but dulled with time

Thinking that he probably shouldn't intrude, he turned back and took the side path.

He walked out to a giant chamber, only a platform connected to the path floating in the middle. Walking out onto the middle of the platform, the pathway behind him sunk away, leaving him alone in the giant empty chamber, gray in color, but not messed with in the slightest, the first fully intact room.

"Challenge Initiated" A voice rang out.

Mark, surprised, grabbed his spear out of his ring.

"Analyzing Challenger" The voice said

The voice paused for a while, Mark being left to ponder the origin of the voice, before it interrupted him, "Challenger is not recognized. Unable to assess the level of the challenger, summoning Qi Condensation 1st Realm enemies."

Hearing that, and having no other choice, Mark readied himself for battle.