An Unexpected Discovery, a Mysterious Valley!
The smell of blood lingering in the air gradually gave way to the fresh scent of grass and trees in the forest.
Xiao Han looked at the three gruesome corpses on the ground, his expression calm, as though he had merely crushed a few bothersome insects.
He stepped forward and deftly searched the three bodies.
The pickings were slim.
Aside from a few dozen exotic beast crystal cores of varying quality, worth only tens of thousands of Federation coins in total, there was a shoddily made first-grade martial technique manual, the Mountain-Splitting Axe Technique. Xiao Han casually tossed it aside, thinking it not even worth the space in his system space.
"Paupers."
Xiao Han curled his lip in disdain.
It seemed robbery and plunder weren't such promising professions after all.
He was about to circulate his spiritual power and destroy the three corpses to leave no loose ends when something unexpected happened.
The Eternal Night King Martial Soul, which had been floating quietly in his sea of consciousness, suddenly sent out an extremely faint yet remarkably clear pulse.
The sensation was strange, like a compass finding the right direction. Carrying a trace of longing, it pointed somewhere deep in the forest.
"Hmm?"
Xiao Han paused, raising an eyebrow.
The Eternal Night Monarch held dominion over shadow, space, and stealth, and was extremely sensitive to unusual energy fluctuations.
Anything capable of provoking a response from it was no ordinary thing.
He abandoned the idea of dealing with the corpses. Exotic beasts ran rampant in this area anyway, and before long, the three bodies would become food for some creatures.
Following the faint sensation from the Eternal Night Monarch, Xiao Han changed direction and used A Step to the Ends of the Earth, his figure vanishing like a ghost into the depths of the dense forest.
He gradually strayed from the routes Martial Artists usually traveled. The trees around him grew older and thicker, their vines intertwined, and signs of human passage became scarce.
The air around him grew considerably damper.
A thin mist rose silently.
The farther he went, the thicker the mist became.
The distance he could see shrank rapidly.
Eventually, the fog became so thick it was nearly impenetrable, leaving nothing but murk before his eyes.
A deathly silence reigned all around.
Even the chirping of insects and birds had vanished completely. Only his own barely audible footsteps carried through the mist, sounding strangely jarring.
Xiao Han, however, keenly noticed another change.
The concentration of spiritual energy here was rising at a terrifying rate!
It was far more than a few times denser than outside!
The damp air seemed to be filled with particles of pure energy, and a single breath was enough to invigorate him.
"Such dense spiritual energy... Could this place be hiding some heavenly treasure?"
Xiao Han's heart stirred, and he grew even more cautious.
A place this good often meant enormous danger as well.
He slowed his steps and quietly circulated the Eternal Night Monarch's power, suppressing all signs of his presence to almost nothing.
At the same time, he sharpened his five senses to their limit, alert to the slightest rustle of wind or grass around him.
At last, he reached the end of the thick fog.
The scenery before him suddenly came into focus.
He found that, without realizing it, he had walked into a fairly deep mountain valley.
Mist drifted through the valley, and sunlight actually penetrated the haze, illuminating the valley floor in scattered patches.
What made his heart jump even more was that spiritual herbs and medicines rarely seen outside grew everywhere in the valley!
Clumps of faintly glowing Starlight Grass.
Patches of Jade Orchids with leaves like jade.
He even spotted several Blood-Coagulating Flowers that were quite old...
Any one of these could fetch a good price at the Martial Artists' market.
Xiao Han forced himself to resist the urge to pick them immediately.
His eyes remained fixed on the deepest part of the valley.
The sensation from the Eternal Night Monarch originated there!
Keeping close to the cliff wall, he crouched and crept forward, deliberately avoiding the spiritual herbs.
He headed straight for the depths of the valley.
At the far end of the valley floor was a fairly open stone clearing.
There, he found the source of his martial soul's reaction.
It was a strange plant that stood half as tall as a person.
It looked much like a lotus.
But its entire body was a deep, glossy black, as though it would absorb all the light around it.
Only along the edges of its petals could wisps of silver-gray light be seen flowing unsteadily.
On closer inspection, the space around the silver-gray light seemed slightly distorted, giving off faint spatial fluctuations.
The black lotus simply grew there in silence. It gave off no earth-shaking aura, yet it had an indescribably mysterious, ancient quality, as though it did not belong in this world.
A broken stone stele stood beside the black lotus.
The stele was covered in marks of weathering, and vague ancient symbols were carved into it, most of them too indistinct to make out.
"What the heck is this thing...?"
Xiao Han's pupils abruptly contracted.
His heart began to race beyond his control.
The pitch-black lotus struck him as extremely dangerous, yet it also held an irresistible allure.
In particular, its faint spatial fluctuations somehow resonated with the Eternal Night Monarch's power.
He was almost certain that this thing was definitely no ordinary heavenly treasure!
It might even have something to do with martial souls themselves!
Xiao Han could no longer hold himself back. He was just about to get closer for a better look when—"Roar—!!!"
There was no warning at all!
A terrifying roar suddenly exploded!
The sound set his ears ringing, as though it would tear his soul apart!
It came from the shadows behind the black lotus!
The entire valley shook violently from the earth-shaking roar.
The sound waves instantly blasted the dense fog apart, revealing the source of the roar.
It was an exotic beast as massive as a small mountain!
It resembled a giant ape, but its entire body was covered in ink-black scales that gleamed with a cold, metallic luster.
A pair of enormous scarlet eyes, like two giant lanterns, locked onto Xiao Han, filled with violence, bloodlust, and an inviolable majesty!
What made Xiao Han's scalp tingle most was the terrifying aura pouring from the black giant ape, bearing down on him like raging waves!
That pressure far surpassed any opponent he had faced before. It was even far more terrifying than the aura Teacher Lin Qingxia had casually released at the awakening ceremony!
The Martial Master Realm!
And it was definitely not as simple as having just entered the Martial Master Realm!
It was at least at the middle stage of the Martial Master Realm, if not higher!
Under that terrifying pressure, Xiao Han felt his breath catch, and the blood in his body seemed to freeze. His body tensed beyond his control, and even moving a finger became incredibly difficult!
The gap was too great!
A cultivator at the Fourth Level of the Martial Artist Realm facing a terrifying exotic beast at least at the middle stage of the Martial Master Realm was a praying mantis trying to stop a chariot, a mayfly trying to shake a tree!
Run!
I have to run right now!
The thought flashed through Xiao Han's mind.
But the black giant ape's enormous scarlet eyes had already locked firmly onto his aura. Its terrifying pressure pinned him in place as though it were solid, making it exceptionally difficult even to use A Step to the Ends of the Earth to escape through the shadows!
The shadow of death loomed over his heart as never before!
At this critical moment, the system's rather "cheeky" notification sounded in his mind like heavenly music.
[Ding! The host has been detected in an unprecedentedly desperate situation, with his desire to survive at its peak! God-Level Choice has been triggered!]