Bai Xue nodded after some hesitation; if not for Lu Yin, they wouldn’t have been able to protect even the entire capital, forget this single stone. Since they couldn’t understand it anyway, it didn’t matter. She left with President Lian in tow, leaving him alone.
Lu Yin picked up the stone and started examining it, feeling nothing outside of a heavy chill at first. Unable to glean anything after some time, he put it down and was about to leave when his gaze suddenly went cold and he used Roving Step to appear at a corner. A black shadow looked at him in shock, the air turning cold as they lifted their hand, but his gaze narrowed and he attacked with the Skybeast Claw. The shadow exclaimed and dodged urgently.
Lu Yin had only used the first form of the Skybeast Claw, so the shadow dodged with ease. However, this also exposed her frosty glare.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” Lu Yin asked. This girl was definitely a student, and while not comparable to Munoor, she could still match Raas.
“Jenny Auna of the Auna Family, you should have heard of me before,” she said proudly.
“Nope, never heard of you,” Lu Yin frowned, “Why are you here?”
Jenny sent an icy glare his way, “How dare you speak to me like that?!”
Lu Yin was annoyed; this girl had the same sense of superiority as Raas. The Auna Family was likely a good background, but he didn’t care, “I don’t care who you are. Since you’re here, you don’t need to leave.”
“Stop! I’m the daughter of Snow Mountain Auna, niece of the captain of the Ninth Imperial Squadron! You’re making a mistake!” Jenny was shocked as Lu Yin rushed towards her; she knew that she simply couldn’t match him, and when he grabbed her hand, she didn’t even resist much. She just glared at him, “I’ll warn you again, I’m not the same as Raas. The Auna Family can affect the decisions of the entire Empire, don’t make a mistake!”
Lu Yin’s face suddenly changed and he released the girl, dashing back to the stone at the same time that another figure tried to snatch it away. It was only when he grabbed a silky arm that he realized this was another girl, this one looking like an elf in her all-green attire. She turned around and kicked at him the moment he caught her, and when Lu Yin tried to pull her arm to break the attack, he was shocked to find that she was so shockingly powerful that he couldn’t even budge it. He reluctantly let go of her arm and dodged the kick, using the third form of the Skybeast Claw that could defeat those like Eddy, but even that proved completely useless as she shattered the attack with a direct punch. Her fist barreled right towards him with shocking strength, forcing him to activate the Cosmic Art, but when he saw the details he realized that she was making ten attacks in a row! Barely dodging the attack, he sent her a wary glance.
“You dodged it?!” the girl seemed shocked as well.
Lu Yin frowned, this new opponent was truly powerful. She was just as strong as Munoor, if not stronger, and a bunch of normal punches had been no weaker than the seventh form of the Skybeast Claw. Just where did such a scary powerhouse come from? Was she aiming for the stone?
Right as he was about to speak up, another shadow moved out of a dark corner. All three of these people could hide their star energy to avoid gadget detection, proving just how strong they were, and the third person’s face dropped Lu Yin’s heart; this was Xia Luo, the same youth who’d given him such a strong sense of danger when he first landed outside the capital. Lu Yin clearly remembered that sensation, the same one he’d felt when he first met Silver.
Four people faced each other in the cramped basement, two boys and two girls. Jenny was the most astonished of them all, not having realized there were two other people in hiding, while the girl in green had a similar feeling towards Xia Luo.
“Your aim is this stone?” Lu Yin asked.
Jenny Auna and the girl in green kept quiet, but Xia Luo smiled warmly, “That’s right. Lu Yin, do you know where this stone is from?”
Lu Yin answered, “No.”
Xia Luo continued to smile, “Then we can talk about it. This stone is the inheritance of a powerful clan in the Innerverse. It is rumored that one can learn the battle techniques of that clan from this stone, which is the reason why Qingyu is wanted. Since you didn’t know the function of this stone, I’ll tell you the method of using it and let’s try it out together. What do you think?”
The girl in green looked at Xia Luo in surprise, “You know how to use it?”
Xia Luo smiled, “I know a bit. This stone isn’t useful to anyone other than the people of that powerful clan because no one else can use it. This is also why the clan didn’t bother to retrieve it themselves—in which case the entire Frostwave Weave would have been done for—so there’s no reason to fight over this thing.”
The girl in green looked at Lu Yin as well, “What do you think?”
Lu Yin looked at the three people before him. He was only confident in a battle against Jenny, which also meant that no one in the entire capital could stop them. “Fine, we can study it together, but you can’t take the stone away.”
Xia Luo nodded, “No problem. And if you have friends who want to study as well, they can join us. The method is very easy; blood can activate the stone. It’s up to each person individually whether they can get the inheritance, but I’ll tell you now that it’s almost impossible for us to succeed.”
Lu Yin glanced at Xia Luo and immediately contacted Bai Xue and Zhang Dingtian, who soon arrived along with Zhou Shan and Wu Sheng. Jenny frowned arrogantly while the Sages looked at the outsiders warily; these three people were very powerful and two were at least equal to Munoor; it would be a disaster for Beijing if a fight broke out.
“Don’t worry, we mean no trouble and only wish to study the stone together. I’ll go first,” Xia Luo gestured. Lu Yin tossed him the stone, and he pricked a finger and allowed a drop of blood to drip down. The stone absorbed it and started floating, exerting pressure on everyone in the room as they saw hints of many battle techniques flashing past their eyes. Accompanying those techniques was something terrifyingly vile, but Xia Luo sat down and gazed up at the stone in contemplation.
The girl in green was the second to start, dripping her own blood and sitting down as well. Soon, all of them were sitting in a circle around the sixteen-faced stone. Lu Yin snuck a peek at Xia Luo before starting, although everyone looked defenseless right now, he was certain that they all had their ways to protect themselves and that it wouldn’t be a good idea to attack. He finally dripped some of his own blood onto the stone and watched as it was absorbed, suddenly seeing a primordial fist punching towards his face.
Puff! Wu Sheng suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, color draining from his face. A while later, Zhou Shan joined him in failure. Like a chain reaction, Bai Xue, Jenny Auna, and Zhang Dingtian all failed one after the other, staring at the stone with awe on their pale faces. Meanwhile, Lu Yin saw the fist drawing closer and closer, surrounded by a boundless darkness and the river of time. Countless people had died to this punch that could change day to night.
He subconsciously gritted his teeth, biting his lip as he used the Cosmic Art. The approaching fist started to slow down and he could now see it more clearly; although it covered the entire sky and turned day to night, there was still a way to avoid it.
‘Wait, why avoid it?’ He opened his eyes and three stars revolved around his body, a fourth suddenly appearing as well. The stars exploded into the fist, dissipating it just as it was about to strike it.
In an instant, Lu Yin felt like he had travelled through infinite distance to arrive at an unknown corridor. He was surrounded by boundless darkness on all sides, the only visible thing being this one ancient passage filled with a bloody aura. He couldn’t find words to describe this place; while there was no light source, he could clearly see the corridor in its entirety. And while he could see it all, it changed when he glanced away for a moment. The entire place was dark red, with murals all over the walls that he didn’t understand. There was no sound, but it felt like the figures upon them were screaming and howling, like the wall would drip blood any moment. That blood was the only thing he could smell.
