Rong Tian tried to move his hands and immediately realized that he could not. Coarse ropes bound his wrists and ankles tightly enough to cut off circulation if he struggled too much.He was inside a swaying carriage, being taken somewhere unknown.“Good. You are awake.”The hoarse voice came from the corner of the carriage.Three men dressed entirely in black sat facing him. This time, they wore no masks. Their hard faces showed no concern over whether he saw them, because they clearly had no intention of allowing anyone who had seen their faces to leave with those memories.Rong Tian counted silently. Three men inside. One driver outside, judging by the sound of the reins. Four in total. His hands were bound. His feet were bound. His chance of escaping from a moving carriage in this condition was nearly zero.“I have been kidnapped,” he thought. Instead of panicking, his mind moved to the next question faster than he had ever realized it could. “By whom? And why? I have no wealth. I

Rong Tian crashed onto a thick mound of sand spread across the bottom of the Abyss of Suffering. His body struck the surface at full speed, and the soft sand absorbed the impact in a way he had never expected but could not refuse.It was an unexpected stroke of fortune. The sand pile saved him from death, or at least from fatal broken bones. Had he landed on stone or hard earth, his story would have ended there.However, a sharp pain in his abdomen quickly reminded him that he was still trapped in unending suffering. The wound left by the destruction of his spirit pearl throbbed as though something continued to strike him from inside.Covered in injuries, he crawled weakly and tried to gather the remnants of his strength. Every movement drained what little energy he had left, but remaining still meant dying even faster.Around him, dozens of glowing eyes reflected an unnatural light. They surrounded him like inevitable shadows, ready to pounce. The distance between Rong Tian and that

Rong Tian’s expression changed at once. The gloom and despair on his face faded, replaced by a faint brightness that had not been there before.It was as though the fog surrounding him had finally begun to disperse, taking away the emptiness that had weighed upon every step he took. A new thread of hope slowly rose within his heart, replacing the despair that had ruled him until now.Rong Tian looked left and right, his eyes sharp as he surveyed the surroundings. He needed a safe place where he could take shelter and examine the contents of the chest without being disturbed.His intention was simple. He wanted to open the chest somewhere protected, far from the threat of savage creatures that would return once night fell.Yet as far as his eyes could see, there were only neglected graves and human skeletons lying beneath layers of dust. Some of those bones might have rested there for years, perhaps even centuries.They belonged to people who had fallen into this place before him and n

Rong Tian slowly opened the scroll.His fingers moved with caution, as though he were holding something that could be damaged if gripped too tightly or too loosely.Inside, rows of ancient characters filled the silk. They had been written by hands that were surely no longer part of this world.Every stroke carried a different pressure, as though the writer was speaking directly through the lines.“This is not an ordinary copy,” Rong Tian thought as his eyes moved through the text with the reading speed he had trained since childhood.“Every character was written with a different force. Some strokes press deeply into the silk, while others barely touch it. This was written by someone who moved while writing, someone who understood every word through experience.”Rong Tian rolled the silk back up with hands that were not entirely steady. He tucked it into the nearest fold of his robe, close to his body.Then his fingers found another book.It was older and more worn than the scroll, wit

“Kill it!”Mo Zhengsheng’s command cut through the air like a blade drawn from its sheath.His finger pointed directly at the mysterious bat-shaped creature hovering in the darkness. It did not tremble in the slightest.The giant bat’s wings spread wide, forming a terrifying silhouette beneath the crescent moon. Its wingspan covered enough space to make ten cultivators feel small at once.“Sword Formation!” Han Shan shouted.His scarred face looked fierce beneath the shadows.His voice echoed across the desert, breaking the silence that had been filled only by shifting sand and wind. He was clearly trying to restore the courage of the cultivators who had lost half their nerve after the enormous shadow covered the moon.“Is that really a demonic bat?” a young cultivator in the back row whispered.His hand was already on his sword hilt, but his feet refused to move forward.“Just look at its size,” the person beside him answered in a low voice. “I have never seen anything that large in