Inheritance

The Heritage Tower stood in a remote corner to the northwest of the Lu Family estate. It was an obscure place that barely registered in the Lu family's daily life, and everyone seemed to ignore it.

Tonight, however, an unexpected visitor arrived outside the tower.

It was Lu Yan'an. After dinner, his mind full of questions, he braved the snowstorm and made his way to the Heritage Tower. But the little building before him looked nothing like he remembered...

In his memory, the Heritage Tower had always been a dilapidated place—broken tiles and crumbling bricks, with dust and cobwebs covering the outer walls.

But the building before him was completely different. Its exterior walls were spotless, and intricate patterns had been carved into them. The heavy, sturdy silver doors gleamed with a metallic sheen in the candlelight from the Lu family's backyard. Two silver lions stood on either side of the entrance, adding a hint of menace. Looking at the building as a whole, one word suddenly came to mind: "contradiction."

Perhaps sensing Lu Yan'an's arrival, the alloy doors, which had been tightly shut, slowly opened. The young man took a deep breath, shrugged the snow off his shoulders, hesitated for a moment, then slowly stepped into the mysterious Heritage Tower.

Lu Yan'an proceeded cautiously along the entrance passage, where a layer of dust had long since settled on the floor.

The passage opened out at the far end. What had been a narrow path widened into a spacious corridor stretching from side to side.

The moment Lu Yan'an stepped into the broad corridor, the scene before him seized his attention. "W-what is this...?" The walls of the corridor were covered in countless gouges and fist marks. Judging by their appearance, the damage had been caused by the shockwaves of two people fighting here. The marks stretched all the way to two corpses at the end of the passage.

Yes, corpses!

Lu Yan'an took a deep breath and examined them carefully. One had a burly build, powerful muscles running from his arms across his body. He wore a special suit of Silver Battle Armor, and his eyes were wide open in fury, so much so that the whites showed.

"My God, this..."

Lu Yan'an merely caught a glimpse of those glaring eyes, but his body began to tremble involuntarily, as if he had encountered a tiger as an infant. It was an instinctive reaction to the vast difference in life level between a lower-level life-form and a higher-level one. Though the man had been dead for many years, the remnant of his power was enough to make cold sweat break out across Lu Yan'an's back in an instant.

The other corpse was not human at all. It stood about three meters tall and, at a glance, looked like a black gorilla. Its skin was smooth and dark, without a single hair. Even stranger, there wasn't a single wound on its body. "Not a scratch on it. How the hell did this thing die? Was it a Soul Attack?" But after seeing how intimidating the silver-armored man was, Lu Yan'an didn't inspect it any further.

"Let's take a look in the room inside."

Lu Yan'an didn't dwell on the two corpses. He cautiously passed through the metal door behind them and came to a corner. After turning, he continued for about two hundred meters until he reached another door. Just then, a metal door suddenly dropped in the middle of the passage behind him, blocking the way back.

Before the metal door had even finished descending, Lu Yan'an, who had been walking ahead, reacted. He pushed off hard with his feet and tried to retreat. But the door came down too quickly. Though he had reacted in time, he was still a step too late and was trapped between two doors.

"What's going on?"

"Even though I reacted, there wasn't enough time. I was trapped here in an instant." Lu Yan'an stared at the two metal walls before him. A thought crossed his mind, and in the blink of an eye he charged at one of them, swinging his right arm. His fist, wrapped in the power of Source Qi, slammed into the wall.

With a clanging sound, the wall merely shuddered before quickly settling back into stillness. He looked closely, but there wasn't even a fist mark on its surface.

"What kind of metal is this? Even with Source Qi empowering my full-strength blow, I can't leave so much as a mark..." Lu Yan'an felt a little uneasy. That punch would have shattered even Meteorite Iron, currently the toughest material on Yuan Planet.

"Am I really going to be one of those transmigrators who dies before accomplishing anything? This defense is ridiculous..." Seeing that he couldn't damage the wall, Lu Yan'an began searching the area for a way out. "If I'm really doomed to die here, Dad and the others wouldn't have let me come in. There has to be a way out!"

Just as Lu Yan'an was thinking this, a voice suddenly rang out inside the chamber. "Lu Yan'an, congratulations on meeting the minimum requirements for the master's inheritance. The Named Disciple Inheritance Assessment will now begin..." Pure Yuan Planet Common Language echoed in his ears.

"During the inheritance, you will be supplied with energy and will not need to eat."

"Carved into the walls of the inheritance chamber is the 312 Styles of Illusion Martial Artist Secret Transmission. By learning these 312 styles, you will have a chance to break out of the assessment chamber."

Lu Yan'an turned his gaze to the metal wall he had struck. Countless intricate carvings appeared on its surface: 312 images of the human body, each accompanied by text in the language of an ancient ruin. Even at a glance, Lu Yan'an found them incredibly complicated.

But this seemed to be the secret transmission of the Illusion Martial Artist? The Illusion Martial Artist?

Lu Yan'an remembered that when Luo Feng received the Yunmo Star Inheritance in the original story, he had studied the foundational secret transmission of the Controller branch of the Spirit Readers. Even so, City Lord Luo had taken a year and three months to complete the assessment, and that had only been a basic secret transmission. The Illusion Martial Artist Secret Manual Lu Yan'an had to learn now sounded far more difficult than the Controller's foundational secret transmission.

With a trace of unease, Lu Yan'an continued reading the requirements.

"Named Disciple Inheritance Requirements: Break through to the Planetary Level within one year by relying on the Illusion Martial Artist Secret Manual, then comprehend a domain within ten years and break out of the assessment chamber!"

"If you have not broken out of the chamber within eleven years of the inheritance's beginning, you will have failed."

"Failure means death!"

"Failure means death? Eleven years?"

Lu Yan'an's face turned ghastly pale. There was no way for him to contact the outside world from inside the Heritage Tower! And this "Named Disciple Inheritance Assessment" gave him only eleven years.

Didn't anyone else know? Lu Yan'an did. In the original story, only Hong had comprehended a domain at the Planetary Level, and even he had only managed it after countless life-and-death adventures. It was clear from the story that even among geniuses like the Earth Trio, not everyone could comprehend a domain at the Planetary Level.

Expecting a young man who had only just reached the Planetary Level to comprehend a domain within eleven years was simply too unreasonable.

Lu Yan'an was close to losing control. Knowing too much only made him understand how difficult this assessment was. They had never intended to let him live! At the thought, he began to pound the wall almost hysterically. One punch, two punches, three... He didn't know how long he kept at it before he was completely exhausted and could barely go on. Both fists were battered and bloody.

"I don't want to die here!"

Lu Yan'an sank helplessly to his knees in front of the wall. His remaining reason and resolve told him that mastering the Illusion Martial Artist Secret Manual was his only way out.

"I have no choice but to accept it!"

Lu Yan'an's eyes were sharp as blades as he carefully studied the diagrams and text of the secret manual carved into the metal wall. "Luo Feng managed to break out of the assessment chamber in a year and three months. I have almost ten times as long. It's not impossible for me to succeed!"

And just an hour later, Lu Yan'an had mastered the 312 Styles of Illusion Martial Artist Secret Manual.