Demon Suppression Stele, Parents Who Cultivated Immortality?

"Who goes there!"

Chu Fan let out a cold shout as he swiftly drew the Cleaving Knife from his waist.

Yet there wasn't the slightest trace of anyone in the room.

"Come!"

"Come!"

Though no one could be seen, that voice echoed repeatedly in Chu Fan's mind, impossible to dispel.

Chu Fan felt his scalp prickle with numbness, and his grip on the knife tightened further.

The room was filled with scenes of ruin.

The old wooden cabinet his parents had used in life had been overturned on the floor. The drawers lay scattered, and the old clothes inside had been rummaged through until they were a complete mess.

Chu Fan slowly turned around, his gaze sweeping across the room. Apart from the strange voice in his mind, there was nothing unusual.

If anything truly strange had been happening, Liu Da and the Constable should have noticed it long ago.

Suddenly...

From the corner of his eye, Chu Fan caught a faint flash of Blue Light on the ground to his right!

His reaction was extraordinarily quick. With a single stride, he rushed out of the room.

The instant his foot crossed the doorway, the voice in his mind vanished without a trace.

Chu Fan took two steps back and craned his head toward the spot where the Blue Light had appeared Just now, but the ground looked perfectly ordinary. Where was there any light?

"Was it an illusion?"

Chu Fan clenched the Cleaving Knife tightly and stepped into the room once more.

The moment he entered, the strange voice rang out again, stirring his mind into turmoil.

He walked two steps toward the spot where the Blue Light had appeared earlier.

The instant he drew near...

A strange Hexagram Pattern suddenly appeared on the ground, followed by a pale-blue radiance!

What was this?

Chu Fan was startled and hurriedly retreated several steps.

When he withdrew, the Hexagram Pattern on the ground immediately vanished, as though it had never appeared.

"When I approach, the pattern appears; when I move away, it vanishes?"

Chu Fan stood perfectly still, hearing only his own breathing and heartbeat, both exceptionally clear in the silence.

Suppressing the fear in his heart, he slowly walked toward the ground.

The closer he got, the faster the Blue Light on the ground flickered, and the clearer the Hexagram Pattern became.

But Chu Fan couldn't understand the slightest thing about what this pattern actually was.

"Did my Parents leave it behind?"

Chu Fan squatted down.

This pattern was likely connected to him in some way.

When Liu Da and the others, along with the Constable, had entered the room, the pattern hadn't appeared.

But the moment he approached, it appeared.

When he moved away, it vanished.

Strangely, in his memories, he had entered this room many times after his Parents had passed away, yet he had never discovered anything unusual.

It was almost as though the destruction caused by Liu Da and the others had made the pattern appear.

After remaining silent for a moment, Chu Fan reached toward the ground.

The instant his Fingertips touched the pattern...

Whoosh!

The Hexagram Pattern suddenly transformed into a vortex!

A tremendous force surged forth and dragged Chu Fan straight inside!

Chu Fan felt the world spin around him. When the dizziness faded and he opened his eyes, he found himself in a dark, gloomy passage.

A musty smell mixed with a chill rushed toward him. It was colder than the wind and snow outside the room, burrowing straight into his bones.

This looked like a Stone Cave.

The stone walls on both sides were smooth, but strange, bizarre stalactites hung from the ceiling.

Glowing Pebbles were embedded in the stone walls. Their light was faint, but sufficient for Chu Fan to see the surroundings clearly.

Chu Fan turned around, only to find a stone wall behind him. It was wet and covered in moss.

Was this beneath his own home?

How was that possible?

Qingyang Ancient City was quite some distance from even the nearest mountain. How could such a cave exist beneath the city?

"Come!"

The voice in his mind continued.

There was no retreat behind him. Chu Fan could only grip the Cleaving Knife tightly and cautiously move forward.

At first, it was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for a person.

After walking another dozen or so steps, it became extremely narrow again.

After walking roughly sixty feet, a Fork in the Road appeared ahead.

The passage he was walking through intersected with it, forming a shape surprisingly like the Chinese character for "person."

Chu Fan acted cautiously. He used the Cleaving Knife to carve several marks into the wall of the passage he had come through before continuing onward.

After walking more than fifty feet, the space before him suddenly opened up—a dark chamber about ten feet square had appeared.

All four walls of the chamber were built from bluestone.

Borrowing the light from the Glowing Pebbles in the stone walls, Chu Fan saw a stele standing in the center of the chamber, taller than a person.

The stele was as black as ink. Its surface was carved with dense patterns resembling talismans or paintings, exuding an ancient and solemn air.

Despite having endured the passage of time, it showed not the slightest trace of weathering.

Chu Fan slowly approached. He saw three vigorous characters carved across the front of the stele, their strokes sharp as knives.

But he had never seen this writing before. It looked somewhat similar to the oracle-bone script of his previous life.

He walked around to the back of the stele and saw it densely covered in all kinds of writing, each character no larger than a tadpole. Every character even glimmered with a faint light, strange and extraordinary.

Chu Fan circled the stele several times, already making calculations in his heart.

He possessed the Mountains and Rivers Map. As long as he touched something, he could learn about it and refine certain objects.

That day, when he had entered the Seven Star Gang, he had touched Li Qingxue's saber and learned that it was called the Cold Moon Solitary Shadow Saber. He had also seen the Seven Stars Bead Cut saber technique that Li Qingxue cultivated.

The ancient stele before him was certainly no ordinary object. If he wanted to learn more information, he had no choice but to touch it.

Chu Fan took a deep breath and placed his hand against the surface of the stele, his Fingertips clearly feeling the ridges and hollows of the carvings.

The stele was cold to the bone. A surge of Invisible force traveled along his Fingertips, causing the blood and qi within his body to roil uncontrollably...

[Discovered item "Demon Suppression Stele." Refining this object requires 1,500 Spiritual Essence. Insufficient Spiritual Essence; unable to refine.]

[Refining it will yield the cultivation technique "Demon Dragon Celestial Gang Scripture."]

In a daze, countless bizarre images flashed through Chu Fan's mind...

The Demon Dragon soared into the sky!

Blades of light brought World Destruction!

Countless terrifying scenes that made souls fly from their bodies swept through his mind at astonishing speed.

He tried to capture one or two of them, but could only catch a hurried glimpse. Before he could steady himself, the images had already vanished.

"Huh!"

Amid the chaotic images, a Man in fluttering white robes standing at the edge of a cliff suddenly turned around and looked toward Chu Fan!

Chu Fan's heart jolted, and he hurriedly withdrew his hand.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

He gasped heavily, feeling as though he had experienced countless cycles of reincarnation from merely touching the Demon Suppression Stele.

Even though he had only glimpsed the images in haste without seeing them clearly, they had already left him trembling with terror!

In the dead of winter, Chu Fan was drenched in sweat!

What had the master of this Demon Suppression Stele experienced? The scenes of worlds being destroyed that flashed past so quickly had seemed as vivid as if he had witnessed them with his own eyes!

Demon Suppression Stele...

Chu Fan instinctively glanced at the ground twice.

Could some terrifying demon be sealed beneath this earth?

But that wasn't right—

What legendary great expert would be so foolish as to suppress a great demon beneath a city?

At the slightest disturbance, wouldn't that make the entire city's people perish alongside it?

Yet he couldn't determine whether this cave truly lay beneath Qingyang Ancient City.

What if the Hexagram Pattern had transported him a thousand miles away?

The information was far too limited. No matter how he guessed, he couldn't make head or tail of it.

Even if he guessed correctly, he had no way to verify whether it was true.

Chu Fan simply stopped letting his thoughts run wild and turned to walk back.

He returned all the way to the end of the passage through which he had come. After groping around the stone wall for a long while and getting both hands covered in moss, a sentence suddenly surfaced in his mind—

It had gone well on the way here, but he couldn't get back...

There was no Hexagram Pattern on the stone wall at the end of the passage!

Chu Fan felt around the wall for a long time. His hands became covered in moss and water stains, but it was completely useless.

After thinking for a moment, he returned to the Fork in the Road and walked down the other passage.

Fortunately, when he reached the end of that passage and approached the stone wall, a Hexagram Pattern flickering with Blue Light appeared on the wall!

Chu Fan reached out to touch the pattern and felt his vision blur...

When he regained his senses, he had returned to that chaotic room.

Looking at the fragments of chairs on the floor, Chu Fan was speechless.

He cultivated martial arts.

His Parents, however, seemed to have cultivated immortality.

But if his Parents had cultivated immortality, how could they have fallen ill and died one after another?

His Parents, who had cultivated immortality, had left him no cultivation technique. That alone would have been bad enough, but they hadn't even left behind a few ingots of silver...