Liu Xuan put the two maps he had obtained together. There were no words marked on them, only mountains, rivers, and towns, along with a route traced in red paint.
At the destination, someone had drawn an obelisk.
“Why does this part of the map look so familiar...?”
The city nestled between two mountain ranges, the valley to its north, and the fork in the road beyond it—with a forest on the right-hand branch...
Wasn’t this Orenburg?
The more Liu Xuan examined it, the more convinced he became. Although the city on the map had no name, the surrounding terrain was far too similar to Orenburg to be a coincidence.
The Cursed Forest, the wasteland where he had found Russo, and even the mountain he was currently standing on were all depicted on the map.
There was no mistake. This was definitely Orenburg.
Following that line of thought, Liu Xuan looked at the obelisk marking the destination. It was located north of Orenburg, at the end of the middle road at the fork.
Liu Xuan remembered passing that intersection when he had gone to Dawn City.
If he recalled correctly, the place was known as the Godless White Tower.
At the time, Finch and the village chief had said it was where criminals were judged and executed.
But now, it seemed that things were far more complicated than that.
If the legion truly served some kind of deity, then the so-called “Godless White Tower” should have been called the “Godly White Tower.”
Liu Xuan put away the map and turned to leave. As for the books here, he could have the NPCs move them back later.
Everyone spent their days grinding levels and fighting monsters. Reading some books for entertainment now and then would be a good way to pass the time.
Besides, there might even be a great deal of hidden information buried among them.
However, just as he turned and started walking toward the passageway, he suddenly felt that something was off when he saw the several toppled crates at the entrance to the main hall.
From this angle, the crates were positioned directly in the way to the passage, and they had fallen outward to either side at an angle.
It looked as if someone had been rushing from the main hall toward the passageway, knocking over several crates that had been blocking the way. The crates had consequently fallen outward at an angle.
Then there were the books in the passageway. The marks of trampling and dragging on them suggested that, while fleeing in a panic, someone had kicked books out of the crates, sending them farther and farther away.
But what could have frightened people so badly?
Liu Xuan scanned the main hall again. All the other crates were arranged neatly, stacked one after another in an orderly fashion starting from the walls and extending outward.
Only the crates at the entrance had been knocked over, and they were blocking the passage in an unnatural position.
In that case, those crates might have been the last ones brought in. The people carrying them had not yet had time to stack them properly when some kind of accident occurred, causing them to flee in panic and knock the crates over in the process.
The damage had not been caused by someone entering later.
With the thought that “since I’m already here, it would be a waste not to figure this out,” Liu Xuan carefully searched the main hall and the several side chambers beside it, but found nothing.
When the cult had been exterminated many years ago, nearly everything that could be destroyed had already been ruined.
Anything on the walls that protruded even slightly had been smashed. Even the chairs where the followers had once prayed had been dismantled and carried away.
The only thing left was the stone platform where the statue had originally stood.
However, Liu Xuan had inspected the thing from top to bottom several times and found nothing unusual.
“Forget it. I can’t waste any more time. I’d better hurry to the Godless White Tower.”
Liu Xuan shook his head, hopped down from the stone platform, and prepared to leave.
But the moment he landed, the stone tile beneath his feet suddenly emitted the sound of a mechanism turning.
Fortunately, Liu Xuan reacted quickly and immediately darted aside.
The stone tile began to tremble, then slowly sank into the ground, revealing a square pit about half a meter wide.
“There really was something hidden here?”
Curious, Liu Xuan wondered what the cultists had hidden beneath the temple.
The mechanism had clearly been constructed by those cultists. What could they have stored below?
Liu Xuan slowly approached the square pit. Just as he was about to lean over and look inside, a mass of red mist suddenly surged out of it.
He hurriedly retreated another two steps.
The red mist continued pouring out of the pit without the slightest sign of stopping. After thinking for a moment, Liu Xuan stepped forward and entered the mist.
“-200”
“-200”
“-200”
A string of damage numbers instantly appeared.
The mist was poisonous!
And it was not damage over time. It dealt environmental damage—and, more importantly, all of it was true damage. Liu Xuan’s “Tit for Tat” could not remove it.
Don’t assume that 200 damage was insignificant. That was the damage Liu Xuan took after the 500-point reduction from “Heavenly Being.” For anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to remain in this mist for long.
But Liu Xuan had no real problem with it.
He pushed through the mist until he reached the edge of the square pit, then leaned over and looked down.
The depths below were impossible to see. Red mist continued to surge upward, making the pit resemble an entrance leading straight to hell.
Liu Xuan suddenly came up with a bold guess.
Could the evil god worshiped by those followers be down there?
“Let’s go take a look!”
He had always lived by one principle: If something was safe, then it was time to take a risk.
And right now, he felt that things were safe enough. Even if the thing below really was the “evil god” worshiped by those followers, he had nothing to fear.
The logic was simple. If the thing below was truly an “evil god,” then this temple above must be its headquarters, the birthplace of its faith.
It could not be a secondary temple built by locals after the religion spread elsewhere.
In other words, this pathetic evil god had even managed to lose its own headquarters and have all its followers wiped out. How much strength could it possibly have?
Judging from the temple’s size and location, it was obvious that the so-called god had merely deceived a small group of ignorant people into becoming its followers.
Liu Xuan felt that it might not even be a “god” at all. It was probably just a relatively powerful monster.
The four feet remaining from the statue on the stone platform were proof enough of that.
Thus, Liu Xuan jumped into the square pit without the slightest hesitation. Bracing himself against the smooth stone walls with both hands, he slid downward.
It took him more than two minutes to reach the bottom.
By then, everything before his eyes had turned crimson. The mist was so dense that he could see only two or three meters ahead.
Liu Xuan stamped his foot and found that the ground was made of relatively hard soil. It did not feel like a space excavated by human hands.
The red mist was too thick, however, and he could not determine which direction he was facing. He simply picked one at random and started walking.
After a while, Liu Xuan was astonished by the vastness of the underground space. He had been walking in the same direction for more than ten minutes, yet still had not reached the end.
Along the way, he also found several red trees. Their surfaces were sticky, as though they had been coated in a layer of blood.
Other than that, there was nothing else.
The surroundings continued repeating endlessly. After walking for another ten minutes, Liu Xuan finally stopped.
“Continuing like this isn’t going to work...”
Not only was it possible that he had chosen the wrong direction from the start, but with the mist so dense, he could not even tell whether he was walking in a straight line.
Then he suddenly noticed that the environmental damage caused by the red mist had quietly increased to 240.
In other words, he was moving toward an even more dangerous area.
“If this environmental damage changes depending on location, then shouldn’t I just keep moving in the direction where the damage increases?”
With no better options available, Liu Xuan decided to give it a try.
or! A blessing for those who struggle with love, a guidebook for dating novices. Quickly match with your dream goddess! Complete walkthroughs earn rewards, and perfect walkthroughs unlock limited achievements!】 Shen Yi, an ordinary office worker, accidentally downloads a mini-game called Dating Simulator. The mini-game is simple: randomly search for dating targets, simulate dates, and receive rewards upon successful confession. Rewards include but are not limited to money, attributes, and skills. The higher the evaluation, the better the rewards, with perfect ratings unlocking mysterious achievements. Shen Yi plans to use this mysterious mini-game to continuously pursue targets and improve himself, making his life better and better. ...... However, after several successful walkthroughs, Shen Yi suddenly notices something strange - the targets he previously simulated dating seem to be searching for him in real life?
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
