Alive

Han Feng opened his eyes slowly. He didn't have any strength in his body and felt pain everywhere. He was laying on a damp ground on his back. His wounds were still bleeding and soaking his already wet clothes, what was left of them.

The first thing he saw was a dark sky full of stars. 'Is this the afterlife? It's beautiful...' This thought popped up in his mind.

But then he noticed that his pain was not gone. His wounds were still fresh.

"Am I alive? cough-" He tried speaking but the voice that came out of his mouth was cracked and distorted. In the end, he coughed a mouthful of blood.

'It hurts...'

'I am actually alive! I survived...' Han Feng felt a sudden burst of joy. But soon exhaustion followed. He didn't have the strength to even move his finger. He just lay there, motionless and breathing.

He looked at the sky closely. The stars looked too uniform and he couldn't see any constellation. So he started paying more attention to the stars.

He looked around and discovered that it wasn't sky at all. There were countless small pearls stuck to the roof of a cave. They looked like countless stars stuck in the sky.

It was a damp cave covered with these pearls all over the place. He looked as far as he could but didn't see the walls. That meant the cave was by no means a small one. He focused on listening to any sounds but could only hear the sound of flowing water.

He could also feel the presence of wind which meant that this cave was not completely sealed and there was some passage for the wing to move inside it.

He laid there and tried to think about how to get out of here. But first, he must have enough strength to lift his damaged body. He waited for some time more and then tried to recover his strength.

He closed his eyes and entered the meditation condition. Then ran his cultivation technique in order to heal himself. After a few rounds, he found that he was in a very bad state. Most of his bones were broken and all his internal organs were damaged severely.

He ran his cultivation technique but he couldn't sense even a little bit of spiritual energy in the air.

'Strange... why can I not feel any spiritual energy here.' He thought.

Spiritual energy was everywhere in this world. He has always lived in its presence but this was the first time he was devoid of it. He felt uncomfortable just like a fish without water.

He took out a spirit stone from his ring and started cultivating. But only after a few minutes, he noticed the anomaly, the drain of spiritual energy from the spirit stone was a lot quicker than the normal rate. Even stranger thing was that he wasn't even absorbing that much amount of spiritual energy. It was dispersed in the air and followed a particular direction only.

Han Feng could only take out another one and continue his cultivation. His injuries were far from being even remotely healed.

This time he noticed it again. The spiritual energy was draining at a much quicker speed now and soon the spirit stones turned to dust.

'What the hell is going on? What is this place? What is the reason behind all this?' Han Feng completely recovered from what little joy he felt.

He knew that the situation was more difficult than he imagined. He had never encountered something like this and without spiritual energy, he was as good as dead. If his wounds didn't heal properly, he wouldn't be able to escape this ghostly place.

He gritted his teeth and took out more spirit stones and started cultivating and little by little restoring his condition.

The same thing happened and all the stones turned to dust but this time he wasn't surprised. He took out some spirit stones once again and repeated the process.

In this way an hour passed and all his spirit stones were nearly exhausted. He had roughly 500 spirit stones in his space ring but now he was left with 11.

The good thing was that his injuries were a little better. He was good enough to walk properly. It just hurt whenever he moved his body, but it was lesser than the pain in his heart. He used up almost all of his spirit stones fo something that didn't even require spirit stones.

Normally only after reaching the Foundation Establishment Realm would one needed to absorb a large amount of spiritual energy. So they used low-level spirit stones during cultivation because the spiritual energy in the air couldn't meet their demand.

At the Body Refining realm, one only needed to use the spiritual energy to refine the body and not to store the spiritual energy inside them. So the spiritual energy present in the air was more than sufficient.

"I can only earn spirit stone if I am able to get out of here... I should focus on that." He consoled himself in this way. His goal was to get out of this ordeal first and think about spirit stones later.

He slowly got up and checked his injuries. His clothes were shredded and there were wounds all over the place. The strange thing was that even after several rounds of cultivation they didn't heal completely.

His wounds had turned black and weren't closing up. Although the blood stopped flowing out of them, it didn't heal completely. Han Feng suddenly remembered the black sphere of energy hitting him into the lake.

"So this is a curse? I don't feel anything except the fact that my wounds aren't healing..." He was worried and inspected himself again and again to find the effect of the curse but he couldn't find anything.

He didn't know that it was already in effect. His current situation was direct proof of that. It was maybe this curse that led him to the cave from that lake... He didn't even think in that direction as he was more concerned about finding a way out.

"I should get out of here first. The spiritual energy was disappearing in that direction..." He looked in the direction where the spiritual energy was being pulled. There was nothing but darkness in that direction or any other direction. The small pearls above him weren't enough to supply him a sufficient amount of light.

He thought for some time and took out firestone and a piece of wood from his ring. He burned the wood using the firestone and used it as a torch. Now he could see where exactly he was standing.

He was in a big cave filled with water everywhere. He was standing on a small section of the ground which was the only place without water.

"How did I get here in the first place?" He wondered.

He started walking while holding the torch in front of him. As soon as he stepped into the water, he found that the water wasn't deep at all. It was just up to his ankles. He was relieved and slowly moved forward.

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On top of a Mountain

Four people were sitting in a semicircular fashion inside a small cave. Countless small threads connected them to a platform that was floating in front of them.

It was completely black in color and the shape of a rectangle. It was floating high above the ground and beneath it, you could see a huge circular disk glowing with millions of patterns and mysterious designs. It glowed with a faint red light and slowly rotated in its place.

The rotating disk was an array, a Grade-6 array to be exact. It was the array that sent all the clans and the sect into a state of chaos.

The four people that were sitting in meditation were from the Fleeting Cloud Sect. They were the Formation masters that were trying to exploit the loopholes of the array and break it.

At this time, Zou Yan just reached in front of that cave. There were Elders of the sect present to guard it.

Upon seeing Zou Yan they hurriedly bowed and gave a sigh of relief. "Greetings, Sect Master."

Zou Yan waved "At ease. I will take it from here, you all go down the mountain." he spoke.

"Yes sir!" Everyone replied and left. They were relieved upon seeing Zou Yan. These days have been very hectic for them as the task of guarding was far too important than even their own lives. They couldn't mess it up in any way and had to be vigilant at every second.

Soon one after another more figures appeared beside Zou Yan. They were the Grand elders of his sect. Not far from them, the people from the Red Stone city also arrived.

"The array is in front and the Formation masters of my sect are trying to solve it. It should be done anytime now so let us wait for a while. Is that clear?" Zou Yan spoke in a serious tone. This was the most crucial time in breaking of that array, he didn't want it do be jeopardized in any way.

Jiang Long and the other patriarchs looked at each other and nodded. "Okay, we shall wait." He replied on behalf of everyone else.

Zou Yan nodded then ignored them completely and closed his eyes. All he had to do was wait. The ancestor of their sect was also watching the situation from the shadows. So he was sure that nothing wrong could happen in his presence.

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Han Feng continued walking inside the cave. The air was becoming less damp as he moved forward. Whenever he felt he was walking in the wrong direction, he would take out a spirit stone and then follow the direction of the leaking spiritual energy.

In this way, he reached the end of nowhere. There was no path for him to follow. He could see a wall in front and nothing else.

Han Feng was very disappointed but not completely discouraged. He took out the remainder of the used spirit stone and observed it. The energy was still being driven in the direction of the wall.

"There must be something behind this wall. The spiritual energy is being drawn towards something in there... Is there some treasure hidden behind this wall?" Han Feng's eyes lit up. He thought that there must be some treasure behind the wall that was absorbing all the spiritual energy from the spirit stones and even the surrounding spiritual energy inside the cave.

"Maybe there is some kind of mechanism that could move this wall." Han Feng went closer to the wall in order to check for some possible mechanisms to open the passage behind it.

As he went forward, he noticed that the water was getting deeper and deeper. There was water everywhere inside the cave but the area in front of the wall was particularly deep. As soon he reached in front of the wall he was already neck-deep into the water.

Han Feng touched the wall and started randomly pressing his hand on it. As he couldn't see inside the water so he tried to get a feel of it with his hands.

"Hmm? What is this..." When he was pressing his hand over a part of the wall underwater, he felt some weird carving on the wall, like a pattern of some sort.

He tried to figure it out by feeling it through his hands but it was only faintly discernible.

He didn't notice that his blood, which was mixed in water, was getting absorbed by that pattern. One by one, all the space inside it was filled with Han Feng's blood. As soon as the last bit of empty space disappeared, the pattern started glowing.

"This is..." Han Feng also noticed the faint glow inside the water. Now he could barely see the carving on the wall due to sudden light.

Before he could register exactly what it was, he got sucked inside the wall through that pattern.

If he could see clearly, he would notice that the pattern on the wall had a sword, pointing upwards, in the middle of two wings that looked like the wings of an Angel.