Night returned to the expedition site, but sleep did not. Even with the fog gone, an unease hung in the air — like the breath of something vast just barely exhaled.
Lin Ho sat atop a jagged cliff overlooking the deep chasm that marked the edge of the secret realm. His blade rested beside him, its surface faintly reflecting the stars above. The silence here was heavy, almost sacred.
But within his mind, a storm brewed.
He had remembered a technique — one not in any manual, one not passed down. It had surfaced from within, raw and complete.
> "Where did that memory come from…?"
He stared at his hands. Golden-black lines of Chaos Qi shimmered across his veins.
Bai Qing approached quietly, wrapping her cloak tighter against the cold.
> "You always isolate yourself after battles."
> "I prefer quiet," Lin Ho replied.
She sat beside him anyway.
> "What did you see in the fog?"
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he handed her a spirit-infused stone.
> "This memory… it wasn't just mine. It was as if someone older — someone like me — left it behind. A warning, or a gift."
Bai Qing studied him.
> "You're not like the rest of us, Lin Ho."
> "I never was."
---
Meanwhile — Deep Within the Secret Realm
A group of masked cultivators knelt inside a broken temple submerged halfway in black moss. At the center stood a stone slab, carved with ancient characters long forgotten by the world.
One of the figures stood, lowering their hood.
A young woman — pale, eyes like frozen ash.
> "He's here," she whispered. "The inheritor of the First Chaos."
An elder behind her stirred uneasily.
> "Are you sure?"
> "I felt the ripples in the fog. No one else could have dispersed the illusions so purely. It's not just a talent… it's a legacy."
> "Then we must begin the Rite. The Sleeping Lord must be awakened before the chaos child matures."
---
Qingye Sect Expedition Camp
Elder Qiu summoned Lin Ho that night.
Inside the command tent, several scrolls lay spread over the table — maps, formations, forbidden realm boundaries.
> "A second realm has opened within the first. An anomaly. Our scouts found ruins… and corpses turned to ash."
He looked Lin Ho dead in the eye.
> "You're going in with a special unit. Four cultivators. Two elders. Minimal contact. Maximum caution."
Lin Ho nodded.
> "What's the objective?"
> "To retrieve an object left behind by the ancients — an artifact forged during the Old War. It may react to your presence."
> "What is it called?"
Elder Qiu's face grew grim.
> "The Core of Ruin."
---
Later That Night
Lin Ho stood by the expedition gate, armored and ready. The others soon gathered: Bai Qing, a silent youth from the Black Rain Sect, a flame-haired prodigy named Yan Wu, and two masked elders bearing Qingye insignia.
As they prepared to enter, Lin Ho turned his gaze toward the northern sky.
Something was coming. He didn't know what.
But Chaos remembered.
And Chaos was never still.
---
End of Chapter 56