The old man slipped out of the room through a crack in the window, sneaking around. He had thought he could catch Bai Yang off guard and clobber him, but things didn't go as he'd imagined. The moment he left the room, he was plunged into endless darkness.
Darkness surged like a tide. He couldn't tell front from back or left from right, and he couldn't feel time passing. It was as if he had been banished into an endless void of eternal silence.
"What the hell is this place... Oh no!"
The old man looked around, but before he could figure out what was happening, an overwhelming terror seized him.
First, the clothes he wore, which looked ordinary but were anything but, burst into ash and vanished. Then his hair, skin, and flesh began to rapidly disintegrate.
The sight terrified him out of his wits. The old man had robbed ancient tombs and trespassed in forbidden places; he had even left his footprints in the sacred grounds of several empires. Yet he had never encountered anything so horrifying.
Facing the overwhelming terror of imminent death, he flipped his hand and brought out a jade tablet shimmering with blue light. It hovered above his head, its blue divine radiance flickering as the sound of chanting seemed to echo around him. One blue rune after another flew from the tablet, protecting him.
The runes protecting him seemed cast from blue divine iron, etched into the void and brimming with divinity. The jade tablet that had conjured them was something he'd found in an ancient tomb, an extraordinary defensive treasure. Once he brought it out, he relaxed a little, thinking he was safe.
The tablet was a ninth-grade artifact, also known as a Sacred Artifact. With no Extreme Dao Divine Weapons in