Lu Chen crouched down and touched the stone slabs. They had been artificially polished, and something was carved into them.
He brought his sword closer to look. Its silver-white glow illuminated a small patch of the slab's surface—it was covered in runes.
Ancient runes, already incomplete, products of the same era as those he had seen in the Azure Dragon Secret Realm.
He rose and continued onward. The stone path grew wider and wider, from three feet to five, from five feet to ten.
The mist was thinner here, and the light from his blade could reach three feet ahead.
He saw the edge of the stone slabs—it was not a road, but a bridge. The bridge was wide enough for five people to walk abreast, with no railings on either side. Beneath it lay a bottomless black abyss.
Something moved within the abyss. It was not a living creature, but liquid condensed from deathly energy—thick, black, flowing slowly like lava.
At the end of the bridge stood a door.
The door was enormous, roughly thirty feet high and twenty feet wide. It was made from some kind of grayish-white stone, the same color as the ashes atop the earthen mound.
The door was covered in dense runes, stretching from the frame all the way to the lintel.
Most of the runes had gone dim. Only a scattered few still glowed with a faint green light. The door was shut, yet an intense surge of deathly energy seeped through the crack—ten times, a hundred times denser than that within the wall of mist.
Lu Chen walked up to the door, raised his sword, aimed its tip at the gap, and lightly slashed.
Silver-white light sliced into the crack like a knife through butter. The deathly energy inside was forced back