The chamber fell into a suffocating silence after the last Crimson Hall cultivator stopped moving. Blood slowly spread across the stone floor, crawling through the carved grooves like thin red threads being pulled by an invisible hand.
Lu Gang stood among the corpses with his sword lowered at his side, his breathing uneven despite the calm expression he tried to maintain. He had killed before, many times, but this was different. These people had followed him through thick and thin, they trusted him.
Some had admired him, and some had genuinely believed he would lead them to new opportunities. Now they lay around the altar as nothing more than offerings. For a moment, his fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, and a flicker of hesitation returned to his eyes. But it disappeared quickly, he had already crossed the line. Regret now was useless, and if he stopped here, then all their deaths would mean nothing.
He dragged the bodies one by one toward the small grooves surrounding the altar, positioning them exactly as the strange man had instructed. Then, with a cold face and a heavier heart than he wanted to admit, he raised his sword and pierced each corpse through the heart. Fresh blood poured out, unnaturally fast, as if the altar itself was drinking through the grooves carved into the floor.
The channels around the altar slowly filled with blood, and the entire chamber began to change as the air grew colder. Lu Gang took out the stone plate from inside his robe, and the moment it touched his palm, it started vibrating violently again. The patterns carved across its surface glowed with a faint dark-red light, pulsing in rhythm as if a heart was beating.
Lu Gang swallowed hard and sat down cross legged in front of the altar, placing the stone plate between his hands. He closed his eyes and began injecting spiritual energy into it without holding back. At first, the process felt manageable, like pouring energy into a normal artifact, but after a few breaths, the stone plate became a bottomless pit.
It devoured his spiritual energy greedily, pulling more and more from his body until his meridians ached and his core trembled from the strain. Sweat gathered on his forehead and slid down his face, but he clenched his teeth and continued.
Nearly five minutes passed like that. By the end, all the blood in the grooves had been absorbed by the altar, and almost all of Lu Gang's spiritual energy had been drained dry. Only then did the stone plate finally stop vibrating.
Lu Gang opened his eyes slowly, his face became pale and his body felt weak. He stared at the altar with burning anticipation, waiting for the promised artifact to appear. An artifact capable of killing an Immortal King. If he obtained it, even if the Crimson Hall took possession of it, his reward would be enormous.
His future would change completely. He waited with bated breath, and for a few seconds nothing happened. Then a faint cracking sound echoed through the chamber. Lu Gang's eyes widened as the space above the altar began twisting unnaturally, folding inward as if something was pressing against reality from the other side.
CRACK.
Another fracture appeared.
CRACK.
The air split further, and the entire chamber shook as black spatial lines spread outward from the center. Lu Gang stood up instinctively, excitement and fear mixing inside his chest. Then, with a sharp crash, the space above the altar tore open into a deep vertical gash.
Lu Gang took half a step forward, thinking the artifact might emerge from within the crack, but the moment he approached, an ominous feeling slammed into his chest like a warning from his own soul. His body reacted before his mind did as he jumped backward, landing several meters away from the altar with his sword raised.
His heart began pounding loudly in his ears. From the other side of the spatial crack came faint footsteps, it was slow and deliberate, each one carrying a strange rhythm that made the chamber tremble. Lu Gang's throat went dry, this was not the presence of an artifact, this was something alive.
A second later, two blood-red hands emerged from the crack. Their fingers were long and thin, ending in curved black claws that gripped both sides of the spatial tear. A horrible screeching sound filled the room as the hands pulled outward, widening the crack forcefully until it was large enough for a person to pass through. Lu Gang watched in terror as a being stepped out from the other side.
The creature was nearly three meters tall, with skin the color of fresh blood and muscles stretched tightly beneath its flesh. Black veins crawled across its body, pulsing faintly with dark energy. Its face was humanoid only in the loosest sense, with sharp teeth, burning eyes, and two curved horns extending backward from its skull.
It looked like something that had crawled straight out of hell and brought the smell of that place with it. Lu Gang's hand trembled around his sword. 'W… What is that…?'
The being did not even look at him at first. It stood before the altar, inhaled deeply, and then slowly turned its head as if tasting the air of the world. A second later, it began laughing maniacally. "Ha… ha…" The sound was low at first, then grew louder and more deranged. "Ha ha… hahahahahaha!"
Its laughter echoed through the chamber, manic and overflowing with savagery. "Finally… finally, I am free from that cursed place!" It raised its head and roared toward the ceiling. "Just you wait, you dogs of the Celestial Sect! When our god arrives, he will wipe you all out!"
Before Lu Gang could even process those words, the devil shot upward with terrifying speed.
BOOOOM!
The roof of the pyramid exploded apart as the creature tore through it like paper, blasting into the sky and disappearing into the distance. Broken stones rained down into the chamber, dust filled the air, and Lu Gang remained kneeling on the floor, trembling so badly that his sword slipped from his hand.
The altar had not released an artifact, he had not unsealed some ancient weapon, he had opened a prison. Worse, he had helped release something that clearly hated the Celestial Sect and served some unknown god.
His mind spun as the full weight of what he had done crashed into him. "W… What have I done?" he whispered, his voice cracking. For the first time since entering the secret realm, ambition no longer burned in his chest, only fear remained.
He fumbled for his spatial ring with shaking hands and took out a communication scroll, activating it with the last scraps of spiritual energy he had left. The higher ups of the Crimson Hall were scheduled to arrive on this planet today, and he relayed everything, the altar, the sacrifices, the spatial crack, the devil, and its words about the Celestial Sect.
…
A few moments before the devil's escape, Arthur had been moving quietly through another region of the forest, collecting herbs, fruits, and strange spiritual plants that caught his interest. He had suppressed his presence completely, moving like a shadow between the trees while carefully storing anything useful inside his Sea of Consciousness.
The fog still restricted ordinary divine senses, but Arthur's perception of lifeforce allowed him to navigate without much difficulty. He had already gathered several rare samples, including a black veined fruit that seemed to contain both poison and vitality, and a silver grass that reacted strangely to spiritual energy.
Then, without warning, the suppression acting on him vanished. It did not weaken gradually. It disappeared all at once, like a massive invisible net had been cut apart. Arthur stopped immediately, his expression sharpening. The forest changed within seconds, monsters that had been moving cautiously before suddenly roared as their spiritual energy returned.
Divine senses swept through the fog from every direction, and fights broke out almost instantly as territorial beasts sensed one another properly for the first time.
Arthur looked toward the deeper part of the forest. "Something happened at the core of the formation." He did not waste time guessing from a distance. With the restriction gone, spatial movement became possible again, and Arthur teleported directly toward the location where he estimated the formation's core should be.
The moment he appeared deeper inside the forest, chaos greeted him. Monsters were fighting everywhere, trees collapsed under the force of their attacks, and spiritual energy surged violently through the fog. He suppressed his presence even further because now that the monsters could use divine sense again, hiding required more care.
He moved quickly through the chaos until he found a small clearing. At its center stood a pyramid shaped structure, though the top had been violently destroyed from within. The building looked completely out of place in the forest, too deliberate to be natural. Arthur's eyes narrowed slightly. "It must be the formation core," he muttered.
He landed silently and entered through the damaged structure. The moment he stepped inside, the smell of blood struck him. His gaze swept across the chamber and immediately took in the scene. Several dead bodies lay around an ominous altar, their hearts pierced and their blood drained into grooves carved into the floor.
The altar itself was still radiating faint spatial fluctuations, and the space above it remained distorted, likely the result of a spatial tear. In one corner, Lu Gang sat trembling, his face was pale and his eyes hollow with despair.
Arthur recognized him immediately. He also sensed fear, guilt, and panic rolling off the man in waves. He approached calmly, his footsteps echoing in the ruined chamber. "What happened here?" he asked.
Lu Gang slowly raised his head, and the moment he saw Arthur, his expression changed. Despair twisted into desperate hope. In his mind, Arthur was still connected to the Celestial Sect, the very organization the devil had cursed. If anyone could save him from the consequences of this disaster, it had to be Arthur.
Lu Gang crawled forward and slammed his forehead against the floor. "P… Please save me!" he begged, his voice shaking. "T… They're going to kill me! The Crimson Hall… they're going to kill me!"
Arthur's expression did not change. He glanced at the corpses again, then back at Lu Gang. He could already guess the broad outline of what happened, classic ancient ruin stupidity. People saw a sealed place and somehow thought, yes, let's open the cursed door, peak genius behavior. Still, he needed details. "I asked what happened here," He said, his voice calm but colder now.
Lu Gang flinched at the tone and immediately began speaking. He spilled everything as fear forced honesty out of him, he told Arthur about the strange man who approached him before the secret realm opened, the stone plate, the promise of an artifact capable of killing an Immortal King, and how he reported everything to the Crimson Hall instead of trusting the stranger.
He explained how the Crimson Hall ordered him to continue the mission, how he brought his own team into the forest, how the stone plate bypassed the formation's restrictions, and how the altar required sacrifice.
His voice cracked when he admitted he had killed his own people to activate it, though whether that was guilt or fear of punishment, Arthur couldn't tell. Finally, Lu Gang described the spatial crack and the blood red being that emerged from it. "It wasn't an artifact," Lu Gang whispered, trembling again. "It was a devil, I released a devil."
Arthur's eyes narrowed slightly at the word. "A devil?"
Lu Gang nodded quickly. "I… I don't know what it was exactly. I've never seen anything like it. B… But it said…" He hesitated, then forced himself to continue because he wanted Arthur to care. "It said its god would arrive and wipe out the Celestial Sect."
Lu Gang looked up with pleading eyes. "You're from the Celestial Sect, right? Please, take me with you, I was used. The Crimson Hall told me to do this, but now they're blaming me for releasing the devil. They said the delegation arriving today will personally punish me, they'll kill me."
Arthur stared at him silently. He had no sympathy for Lu Gang's situation, the man had sacrificed his own companions for personal advancement, and now that the gamble exploded in his face, he wanted rescue. He was not going to help someone like him, he needed to bear the consequences of his own actions.
He extended one hand. "Give me the stone plate."
Lu Gang froze for a second, then scrambled backward, searching through the rubble and blood-smeared floor with shaking hands. After a few frantic moments, he found the stone plate lying near the altar, its glow now dim and lifeless. He picked it up with both hands and crawled back toward Arthur before presenting it like an offering. "Here… here it is."
Arthur took the plate and examined it carefully. The patterns carved into it were unlike normal formations from this world. They carried traces of spatial manipulation, and it was much more complex than the ones he got his hands from the market.
He turned it over in his hand, his expression thoughtful. This object was not merely a key, it was a trigger, and possibly a tracking tool. Whoever gave it to Lu Gang had known exactly what would happen.
Lu Gang remained kneeling, watching Arthur's face anxiously. "Please… please save me. I can tell you everything I know about the Crimson Hall. I can serve you, I can…" Arthur raised his eyes toward him, and Lu Gang immediately shut his mouth.
Arthur looked at the corpses, then at the broken roof where the devil had escaped from. The situation had just become far more complicated than a simple resource hunt inside a secret realm. A being sealed by something connected to the Celestial Sect had been released.
Gods, devils, sealed artifacts, strange men moving pieces from the shadows, this was starting to smell like a much larger game. And Arthur had a bad habit of getting dragged into those whether he wanted to or not.
***
Become a patreon member and read 35 Chapters ahead:
patreon.com/New_Horizon1
You can join my discord channel to discuss my novel and find artwork of this novel!!
https://discord.gg/PmkQsrAdMY