Ancient Hall

Han Sen returned from Han Lei's house with a box of items.

While Han Sen was there, his uncle repeatedly mentioned his debts. Han Sen eventually gave him some money.

This was not him being nice, though. He wondered if there was something more of his father's that might have been hidden from him. Perhaps the gift of money would prompt his uncle to give it to him.

Back in his home, Han Sen started to dig through the wares. There were two jackets, documents, various tools, communicators, and a smartwatch datapad that was like a wrist-laptop.

After rummaging through the items, Han Sen ultimately came to the conclusion that there was nothing all that special. Most of the physical documents were work-related, so there was nothing revelatory amongst what he had received.

The datapad was forty years old, too, so that had almost zero monetary value at this point. But that wasn't where its worth would lie.

The datapad was the only thing that might harbor the sort of information he was looking for. Unfortunately, it was password-protected.

Han Sen decided to give Li Xing Lun a call, as he was the sort of fellow who could crack open encrypted computers and hack into all sorts of things.

"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! I'll be done in ten seconds," Li Xing Lun said.

Li Xing Lun established a connection between the datapad and his PC remotely through Skynet. And almost immediately, it was unlocked. Three seconds later, though, the datapad exploded.

"Holy sh*t! What the h*ll?!" Li Xing Lun was frozen at the result.

"It's fine. It wasn't worth anything, anyway." Han Sen kept his smile, but in his chest was a mound of confusion.

"No; this is an A52 Smartwatch Datapad. Why would brute-forcing its password initiate a self-destruct? Let me get a closer look at that," Li Xing Lun said.

Han Sen opened it to nothing. All that remained was the black, smoldering remains of what it had been.

"Someone must have custom-rigged a self-destruct system inside it. Unlocking it caused the thing to blow up. I'm so sorry about this." Li Xing Lun was feeling guilty.

"That's okay. It's nothing important, anyway." Han Sen didn't blame him. It wasn't his fault, and no one could have expected such a system to be in-place.

This smartwatch-debacle just made Han Sen more suspicious about his father.

"The chip is not completely destroyed, though. Perhaps it would be possible for me to extract some data?" Li Xing Lun really wanted to help Han Sen, and he continued, "Don't go anywhere; I'm coming to see you. Maybe I can recover something!"

Han Sen wasn't the wisest when it came to technology. He only had the knowledge he had been taught in school. As a result, he didn't think data recovery would be possible in this case.

But Li Xing Lun was dexterous with technology, and Han Sen trusted him. If Li Xing Lun said some manner of recovery was possible, he thought there'd be no harm in allowing him to try.

Two days later, Li Xing Lun arrived at Planet Roca. He took out the chip and got to work.

Han Sen was quite surprised to see Li Xing Lun work on the remains of the datapad so intently, and he watched him work on it day and night for the next few days. Eventually, Li Xing Lun really did find something.

Of course, because it was damaged, the information was not complete. But still, there was one sentence of text that really made Han Sen frown.

"Entering Ancient Hall... practice blood... sutra..."

There were many words missing from the text, but this sentence was the easiest one to read.

"If I want to enter the Ancient Hall, do I need to practice Blood-Pulse Sutra? Is that what this is implying?" Han Sen's confusion was only becoming greater.

"I'm sorry, but this is all I could do for you." Li Xing Lun was still remorseful over blowing up the laptop. And he felt even worse, not being able to recover as much as he had hoped to.

"Don't worry; you've done enough. Thanks a lot for the help," Han Sen said.

Han Sen did not know why his father had left behind this datapad, but obviously, someone did not want Han Sen or anyone else finding out what was inside it.

After Li Xing Lun departed, Han Sen researched what he could about the existence of Ancient Hall. It was still just a myth, though. There was no factual evidence supporting its existence.

As a result, Han Sen was unable to find out much from humans. What he did find out, though, was where the myth of the Ancient Hall originated from.

It was from the shura. The myth said that the Ancient Hall was where the deities or gods of the shura resided. It was a forbidden place for the shura to go, and only their kings were able to visit there, sometime before their death.

It was like a tomb for the monarchs of the shura. If shura kings died outside the hall, they must be left where they were, as no else could enter the hall.

Of course, this information was only obtained from Skynet. And Han Sen could still not find any information on the Ancient Hall's whereabouts. But he did find two pieces of information on the hall's architecture; it was said to be a palace built from stone, and outside it stood a shura statue.

Han Sen was unsure whether or not the Ancient Hall in the extracted data was the one associated with the shura, though. Something could have been lost in translation, and there was no way for him to know for sure.

"But if these two Ancient Halls are indeed the same, why would my father have an association with it?" Han Sen, once again, was confused.

He knew he himself was a human, but there was one person who he wasn't quite sure about.

If his great-grandfather was Han Jingzhi, and if Zero's identity had something to do with Blood Legion, things could become muddy.

"What happened to the Han family, in the past?" Han Sen destroyed the rest of the chip, so no one else could ever read what was written.

He was not strong enough to investigate these matters alone, and there still wasn't enough to go on. But once he had the appropriate leads, and his power had grown, he'd follow it through to the end. But whatever happened, he still acknowledged he couldn't let himself get too deep into these affairs. He might eventually find himself unable to return.