Sign-in and Engraving

Chapter 23: Sign-In and Engraving

The dull thud of the stone door closing behind him hadn't fully faded before Taiyi slid down the cold door, sitting on the ground.

Every bone in his body ached with a soft soreness. He had brute-forced his way through those nine restrictions just now, each layer a direct confrontation. The Chaos Bell in his sea of consciousness was dim now, hanging there like an old, unpolished bronze piece, its hum weak—it had been severely depleted.

His back pressed against the door, he didn't move immediately. Instead, he pricked up his ears to listen for any movement outside.

Dead silence.

But the silence inside the hall was different. It was dark, a thick, inky blackness that couldn't be dispelled, absorbing light and sound, even pulling at one's life force towards the shadows. Taiyi's eyes were open, yet his vision was like looking through ten layers of wet black velvet; he couldn't see a thing.

Yet, he could "feel" it.

Deep within the hall, something was "moving." Not the movement of a living creature leaping, but a slower, heavier, more ancient rhythm, like... a colossal heart buried in the deepest core of the earth, beating only once every ten thousand years or so. Each faint, almost imperceptible beat made the stagnant air in the hall tremble, sending chills crawling out from his bones.

The Heart of Pangu.

Taiyi's throat bobbed as he swallowed a mouthful of bloody spittle. In his Dantian, the crooked, grey-black Chaos Lotus trembled uncontrollably—he couldn't tell if it was fear or some more primal hunger.

[Detected Taboo-level Sign-in Location: Pangu Hall Core Zone]

[Danger Rating: Nine Deaths, One Life (In the current environment, host's survival rate is less than 10%)]

[Defiance Level: Extreme (Demon Race Emperor secretly infiltrating Witch Race sacred ground has touched the Heavenly Dao's bottom line)]

[Reward Calculation Formula Activated... Calculation Complete]

[This Sign-in Reward: Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint Insight (Fragment) × 1, Taboo Points +120]

The system's notification voice struck his mind, still with its emotionless, cold tone.

Taiyi wiped his mouth, his palm coming away sticky with blood. He didn't rush to respond.

He needed to calm down, and he needed to see what this damned place looked like. Closing his eyes to regulate his breathing for about ten breaths, he opened them again. His pupils had barely adapted to the darkness that devoured everything—deep within the hall, perhaps several hundred feet away, a hazy grey light hovered, fist-sized, floating in mid-air, rising and falling extremely slowly.

The light seemed weak, but the moment Taiyi glanced at it, his eyeballs felt as if they were pierced by a red-hot needle, causing him to instantly avert his gaze in pain.

It wasn't an issue of brightness, but of "level." What was contained within that light was of too high a caliber, so high that even the act of "looking directly" became an transgression.

"Fuck..." he muttered softly, his voice echoing slightly in the absolute silence of the hall before being swallowed by the darkness again.

His consciousness sank into his sea of consciousness: "Scan, besides that ball of light, what else is arranged in the hall?"

[Scanning... Warning, high-level will residue exists in the core area. Deep scanning may trigger a strong backlash.]

"Don't touch the light, just probe the edges and corners, see if there are any landmines I can't step on."

[Received. Shallow scan initiated.]

A fluctuation finer than a spider silk spread out from him, crawling cautiously along the cold floor and rough walls. Soon, feedback returned: the space in this hall was strange. It looked square, but the perceived depth was terrifyingly vast, as if it had been folded and compressed. Besides the grey light in the center, twelve pillars stood around the perimeter, so thick that three people embracing them wouldn't be enough. Each pillar was covered in crooked totems exuding a wild aura, each with a completely different energy—chilling, scorching, heavy, sharp... exactly twelve types, faintly corresponding to the origins of the twelve Ancestral Witches. The ground underfoot wasn't stone slabs either; it felt a bit soft, with a slightly sticky elasticity, like... dried blood scabs that had solidified for who knows how many tens of thousands of years.

No additional mechanisms or traps were found.

Or rather, the entire Pangu Hall itself was the biggest trap. The pervasive Pangu pressure that could crush bones, the ancient and profound Dao charm that made it hard to breathe, was the fiercest defense—anything not of Pangu's bloodline would have its physical body and soul continuously eroded and assimilated the longer it stayed here, eventually becoming part of this hall.

Taiyi quickly calculated in his mind. The efficacy of the Witch Blood Powder had about half an hour left. Time was tight.

"Sign in."

He silently recited in his heart.

The moment the words fell—

"Dong!"

Deep within the hall, that hazy grey light expanded by a circle without warning!

It didn't get brighter, but its presence suddenly intensified, so much so that it felt like an invisible giant hand had grabbed Taiyi's heart and squeezed it hard! His vision went black, his throat sweet, and he almost spat out a mouthful of blood. His blood flowed backward, the True Sun Fire origin retreated to the deepest part of his Dantian like a startled rabbit, and even the Blood Fiend power flowing through his meridians froze, instinctively cowering.

Above the grey light, the mist that had been slowly swirling began to churn and condense wildly!

There was no sound, no change in light or shadow, but Taiyi's "spirit" saw—not with his eyes, but a scene directly imprinted into the depths of his true spirit:

A phantom.

It was so indistinct that only a human silhouette remained, so tall it seemed to prop up the heavens and earth (though there was no distinction between heaven and earth within this hall). It stood with its back to Taiyi, holding an equally illusory giant axe, and performed the simplest, yet most terrifying, action—

Raising its arm, it swung down.

The first axe of creation.

Taiyi's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He wanted to look away, but his spirit was pinned, unable to move at all. What was contained within that axe phantom was too complex, yet too pure. So complex it was as if the nascent forms of all laws since the birth of the Great Wilderness, the origin of all order, were crammed inside; so pure that all embellishments and techniques were stripped away, leaving only the most primitive, most savage "power"—the power to cleave chaos, delineate turbidity, and establish the universe.

This was not something he could comprehend at his current level. To look directly at it could grind his true spirit into powder with its lofty Dao charm.

[Warning! Host's cultivation is insufficient. Forcible observation will cause the collapse of the Dao foundation!]

[Activate 'Taboo Resonance' service? Consumes 25 Taboo Points, can temporarily increase Dao charm carrying capacity by 30 seconds.]

The warning came in time, the cold voice rarely carrying a trace of urgency.

Taiyi gritted his teeth tightly, the taste of blood seeping from his gums: "Activate!"

25 Taboo Points were instantly deducted. A cool, yet not biting, energy surged from an unknown source, quickly covering his eyes, forming a very thin, almost imperceptible "membrane" on the surface of his eyeballs. The soul-burning stinging sensation immediately lessened by more than half. Although looking at things was like looking through fogged frosted glass, blurry, he could at least barely focus.

He seized this precious thirty seconds, his eyes aching from staring, fixedly glued to that phantom trace of the axe.

The trajectory... there was no fixed trajectory.

Or rather, it was evolving infinite possibilities in every moment, encompassing all methods of "cleaving." Taiyi saw the black rift where space was brutally torn apart, saw the distorted ripples of time flowing at different speeds on either side of the axe blade, saw the four elements of earth, fire, wind, and water appear and vanish within the axe light, endlessly cycling...

But the core of it all was the point of "nothingness" at the very tip of the axe blade.

Not emptiness, not void, but an absolute "nothing" where the very concept of "existence" had not yet been born. The creation of heaven and earth was a brutal, forceful cleaving of "something" from this point of "nothing."

Taiyi's mind buzzed, as if some solid, narrow understanding had been violently shattered. His lifelong conventional understanding of Grand Unity Golden Immortals blooming twelve petals, his vague unease about his own three flowers growing askew, his confusion about the path ahead... all of it was illuminated by a faint glimmer from that ultimate point of "nothing."

So, the end of "something" perhaps connected to "nothing." And "nothing" was the true starting point.

Thirty seconds, gone in a flash.

The cold sensation in his eyeballs receded like a tide. Taiyi slammed his eyes shut, and two streams of burning tears uncontrollably poured out, sliding down his cheeks and splashing onto the cold ground in tiny blood flowers. His eyeballs felt as if they had been repeatedly seared by a branding iron, burning fiercely, his vision filled with darting golden stars and black spots.

Yet, the corners of his mouth began to curl up, wider and wider, until it became a blood-stained, almost manic grin.

"Worth it... damn it all... worth it..."

He whispered hoarsely, his voice trembling violently, yet filled with an irrepressible excitement.

Even though he had only grasped a sliver of the surface, even though he couldn't possibly digest the profound realization of "creation from nothing" right now, couldn't even touch the threshold, the seed had been planted. That was enough. That was damn well enough!

[Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint Comprehension (Fragment) has been stored in system space]

[Notification: This comprehension contains Taboo-level Dao rhythm. It is recommended that the host's cultivation reach the mid-stage Quasi-Saint before attempting to refine it. Forcible comprehension carries the risk of true spirit disintegration.]

Taiyi ignored the System's routine warning. He propped himself up on his trembling, weak legs, standing unsteadily. His vision went black several times before stabilizing. He roughly wiped his face with his blood-stained sleeve, then turned his head to look at the cold, heavy, time-worn inner wall of the stone door beside him.

Time for the real business.

Leave a "souvenir."

He pulled something out of his system space—not something redeemed from the System, but a personal item brought from the Sun Palace. It was a shard the size of a fingernail, glowing fiery gold, though its edges showed signs of melting. This was the essence condensed from the core lava of the Sun Star after billions of years of cooling under extreme pressure. It was maddeningly hard; even a full-power strike from an ordinary Grand Unity Golden Immortal might not leave a scratch. It was also a top-tier auxiliary material for cultivating the extremely yang path of True Sun Fire.

Now, Taiyi intended to use it as a "brush" to leave his name in this most sacred and dangerous place in the Great Wilderness.

He staggered to the inner side of the stone door and reached out to touch the stone wall. The texture was rough and cold, carrying the ancient chill from the depths of the earth. A layer of extremely faint yet incredibly tenacious Dao rhythm flowed slowly on the surface of the stone wall—the inherent, innate protection of the Pangu Hall. Carving on this was as difficult as carving on an Innate Supreme Treasure.

Taiyi weighed the heavy Sun Crystal Shard in his hand, took a deep breath, suppressed the churning Blood Essence and the soreness throughout his body, and slowly, with great difficulty, poured the remaining magic power within him—a mixture of the scorching heat of True Sun Fire, the ferocity of Blood Fiend power, and a trace of the vague, indistinct "nothingness" he had just comprehended from the Heaven-Opening Axe Imprint—into it.

The crystal shard lit up, not with its usual dazzling golden-red, but with a deep, restrained, almost burning dark gold. Around its edges, a faint wisp of extremely pale gray light flowed, almost imperceptible.

He raised his heavy arm, pressed the sharp corner of the crystal shard firmly against the cold stone wall, and then, with all his might, drew the first stroke!

"Chiii--grind--"

An ear-piercing sound, like metal grinding desperately against metal, exploded in the dead silence of the hall! The faint Dao patterns on the stone wall suddenly blazed, resisting the crystal shard fiercely and erupting in a series of tiny sparks! The muscles in Taiyi's arm instantly tensed and bulged, veins writhing like earthworms. He used his shoulder to push, his entire weight pressing down, moving the crystal shard forward, bit by bit, extremely slowly!

This was not carving; it was a contest of strength! A confrontation with the ancient hall itself, which had existed since the opening of the Great Wilderness and carried Pangu's legacy! The Dao patterns on the stone wall were violently disturbed by this brute force, emitting a low, unwilling hum. The entire massive stone door began to tremble slightly, shedding specks of dust accumulated over eons.

The first stroke, finally drawn with immense difficulty—the beginning of a crooked, yet every turn imbued with a fierce, resolute spirit, the character "East".

Taiyi gasped for breath, like a broken bellows. His tiger's mouth had completely split open, blood gushing out and dripping down the crystal shard, seeping into the fresh carving. The blood was not pure, noble gold, but a dark red tinged with ferocity, and within the red, a hint of chaotic, undifferentiated grayness, blending together to appear bizarre and ominous.

He didn't stop, his eyes fierce, and began to carve the second character.

"Emperor"!

This character was even harder than "East"! The stone wall's resistance became increasingly violent. The Dao patterns glowed so brightly they almost formed a tangible shield, tightly encasing the crystal shard, crushing and wearing down the power Taiyi was pouring into it. Veins bulged on Taiyi's forehead and neck, his teeth grinding audibly, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth again. He gritted his teeth, decisively drawing out most of the 120 Taboo points he had just obtained, mixing them with his almost depleted magic power, transforming it into an even more brutal, more rebellious force, and pouring it fiercely into the crystal shard, pressing down again!

"Kai--!!!"

He squeezed a suppressed roar from his throat, and the crystal shard plunged downwards!

"Crack... boom!"

A few faint but clear cracking sounds. It wasn't the stone wall itself that cracked, but the layer of tenacious Dao pattern protection. Under the impact of this force, a mixture of "Taboo Points" (variable authority) and Taiyi's origin power, it was brutally chipped open, a sliver of a gap shattering! The crystal shard then surged forward, the latter half of the character "皇" completing with the momentum of breaking bamboo, in one go!

After carving this character, Taiyi's vision went completely black for a moment, his ears ringing like thunder, his body swaying violently, nearly falling headfirst to the ground. His magic power was almost completely depleted, and his Dantian ached with emptiness. But he still didn't stop. Leaning against the stone wall, he took a few gasps of rusty-smelling air, the ferocity in his eyes growing even stronger. He continued to carve "Tai" and "Yi".

These two characters were carved quickly, the strokes wild and flamboyant, even appearing broken in places due to his exhaustion. But the unbridled arrogance, the "I've arrived, what can you do about it" spirit, was even more naked and overbearing than in the first two characters! After carving the final stroke, Taiyi was completely drenched, sweat and blood mixing, dripping down his chin, his breathing ragged.

Four more characters to go.

He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, tasting the bloody sweetness, his gaze as fierce as a cornered wolf. After less than a breath of rest, his arm trembled as he raised it again, pressing the crystal shard against the stone wall, and continued to carve!

"To this journey."

The four characters were carved small and hastily, squeezed beneath the flamboyant "Eastern Emperor Taiyi," like casual footnotes added at the end. Yet, it was this casualness, combined with the meaning of the eight characters, that perfectly amplified the extreme sense of provocation: "I've had my tour, leaving my name, what are you going to do about it!"

At the end of the final stroke, Taiyi's arm completely lost its strength. The hard Sun Crystal Shard clattered from his fingers, falling onto the dark-colored ground, rolling a few times, its luster dimming. He could no longer support himself, sliding down the wall, leaning against the bone-chilling cold stone. His vision swam with black spots, and various chaotic light spots and tinnitus assailed him.

It was done.

"Eastern Emperor Taiyi, visited here."

Eight characters, each nearly thirty feet tall, deeply embedded into the rough, ancient stone of the inner wall of the stone door. In the depths of the carved grooves, dark red blood light faintly flowed like living creatures, eroding—it was the Blood Fiend characteristic contained within his blood, continuously counteracting and slowly polluting the Pangu Hall's inherent laws and Dao rhythm, making this inscription like a poisonous thorn embedded in a sacred body, continuously exuding an aura of "anomaly" and "rebellion."

Almost at the same instant the last stroke was completed—

In the deepest part of the hall, the gray light suspended above the residual essence of the Heart of Pangu suddenly contracted violently, as if all light was being sucked into it. Immediately afterward, without any warning, came a world-shattering expansion!

"Dong--!!!"

A heartbeat's roar, hundreds of times stronger and thousands of times heavier than before, struck the very core of Taiyi's true spirit! He spat out a large mouthful of blood, this time with blood seeping from his ear canals and the corners of his eyes simultaneously. This was not a physical attack, but the purest crushing and rage from the residual will of the Heaven-Shatterer—Pangu's long-vanished will, reduced to a mere instinctual echo, was completely ignited by the blasphemous and provocative inscription on the stone wall!

The entire ancient Pangu Hall began to tremble violently!

The blood-clot-like substance on the ground pulsed with a viscous dark red light, as if coming alive; the twelve massive Ancestral Witch Origin Pillars around them lit up one by one, emitting vast auras that were either chilling, scorching, or heavy, and producing a low resonance like the whimpers of countless beasts. The already immensely heavy Pangu pressure, pervasive throughout the hall, suddenly intensified more than tenfold! The air became as solid as iron, space itself seemed to wail, and countless invisible Primordial Divine Mountains crashed down!

Taiyi's bones were creaking under the unbearable load, his knees buckled, and he fell to one knee, the "scab" on the ground sinking slightly under the impact. But he immediately braced himself with his arms, veins bulging in his neck, stubbornly refusing to let his other leg buckle as well.

He bared his blood-stained mouth and, towards the flickering gray light in the depths of the hall, a light that pulsed with anger, he forced a smile mixed with pain, exhaustion, and madness.

"Already... can't take it anymore?"

His voice was hoarse and broken, but he tried his best to raise it, with a reckless spirit, struggling to spread through the roaring, trembling hall.

"Don't rush... there will be plenty of times later... for you to jump for joy..."

After speaking, he stopped wasting words. Using the last ounce of his strength, he struggled to turn around, his blood-stained palm pressing firmly against the cold, heavy stone door.

It was time to go.

If he didn't run now, he'd really leave his life here, becoming a decoration for this damned hall.

The moment his five fingers exerted force and the stone door opened a crack inward--

The churning, gray mist within the hall suddenly converged behind him, solidifying into an axe imprint. Though illusory, it was incredibly solid, exuding the pure destructive aura of the primordial chaos. Silently, it swung towards the back of his heart with absolute finality!

This was not the residual imprint of the Dao he had perceived earlier. This was the pure "punishment" and "annihilation" condensed from Pangu's residual will, thoroughly enraged. The axe imprint locked onto Taiyi's aura as an "anomaly" and a "blasphemer," ignoring spatial distance, and appeared three feet behind him. Its icy killing intent pierced to the bone!

The aura of death, so real, so cold.

Taiyi's scalp exploded, every single hair standing on end.

This axe... he couldn't dodge, couldn't block, couldn't withstand.

He would die.

He was truly going to die.