"Rejecting me?" Qian Fan licked his bloodied teeth and clenched his fist again, his aura growing sharper. "Then I'll try anyway!"
The instant his fist touched the black passage again, his entire hand lost all sensation, turning numb and cold. Qian Fan watched helplessly as a dead gray pallor spread up his arm from his fingertips, as though its vitality were being rapidly drained away. The veins beneath his skin stood out clearly, an eerie blue-black.
He jerked his arm back, but felt something burrowing toward his heart through his blood, bringing a bone-piercing chill. Just then, the blood-red markings on his neck suddenly lit up. His primordial bloodline burned within him like boiling molten iron, releasing a powerful force that drove the strange cold out of his body. It finally condensed into a pitch-black fleck in his palm.
"Entropy energy?" Qian Fan's pupils contracted sharply, and he cried out in shock. He had only read about this energy, capable of dismantling all order, in ancient texts from the Ten Thousand Monster Domain long ago. It supposedly existed only in the Doomsday Dimension; he had never expected to encounter it here. He clenched his fist, crushing the black fleck in his palm into powder. It became a wisp of smoke and dissipated in the air. "No wonder I couldn't sense any energy fluctuations. This stuff annihilates energy itself."
A sound like bones grinding together suddenly came from deep within the passage. The black substance churned more violently, as though some terrifying presence were awakening. Qian Fan noticed fine golden lines beginning to appear along the passage's edges. Arranged in an orderly pattern, they looked like ancient runes slowly revealing themselves, emitting a mysterious glow.
He cautiously threw a loose stone from the ground toward the passage. The moment it touched