Forbidden Great Emperor | Xianxia, System, Fusion

Chapter 2 — Ghost Mist Ridge and the Ancient Seal

The branch snapped above Lu Chen.

He stopped before the sound had finished echoing through the trees.

A thin ribbon of blood slid down the broken bark, gathered at its lowest point, and fell onto the moss. The drop struck the ground without a sound. Beyond it, the mountain trail disappeared beneath a veil of pale mist.

Lu Chen did not move.

The wind had changed.

A moment earlier, it had drifted down from the ridge, carrying the damp scent of pine needles and cold stone. Now it seemed to come from somewhere deeper in the forest. The leaves stirred in one direction while the mist crept against them, curling between the roots as though something beneath the earth were breathing.

He lowered his gaze.

Three deep furrows marked the mud beside the trail. Each was wider than his hand. A crushed fern lay beneath them, its stem broken and its leaves darkened by blood.

Lu Chen crouched.

The marks belonged to a large beast. Three claws had cut into the earth, and the weight behind them had driven the mud down to the stones. A dark strand of coarse fur clung to a thorn nearby.

"Iron-Claw Bear," he murmured.

He had heard of them from hunters in Azure Stone Town. They were not the most fearsome beasts of Ghost Mist Ridge, but even a young one could tear an ordinary man apart. Their hides were thick, their claws hard enough to split timber, and their blood essence was valuable to merchants who supplied cultivators.

This one was wounded.

The blood on the branch was fresh.

Lu Chen rose slowly and looked toward the ridge. Somewhere beyond the trees, a bird cried out once. Then silence swallowed the forest again.

He could turn back.

The sensible choice was to return to the main trail, keep away from the wounded beast, and reach the town before dusk. He had only recently left Azure Stone Town. His cultivation remained at the fifth stage of Body Forging, and the iron saber at his waist was a poor answer to a desperate spirit beast.

But the blood trail offered an opportunity.

A beast hide, its claws, and a little blood essence could bring several Spirit Crystals. More importantly, Lu Chen had almost nothing left to sell. The three crystals in his pouch were meant for food and emergencies, not for buying the complete cultivation method he desperately needed.

He studied the trail again.

The blood drops led uphill.

"One look," he decided. "If it is still alive, I leave."

He drew his saber and followed.

The path narrowed between black cypress trees. Their roots twisted over the stone like the fingers of buried giants. The higher he climbed, the thicker the mist became. It clung to his boots and brushed his knees, cold enough to seep through the fabric.

Lu Chen kept to the side of the trail.

He did not hurry. Every so often he stopped to listen, his hand resting on the saber's worn grip. The forest offered little sound. No insects hummed in the undergrowth. No small animals rustled through the leaves. Even the wind seemed reluctant to enter this part of the ridge.

Then he found another mark.

A tree had been struck so violently that a strip of bark hung loose from its trunk. Beneath it lay a clump of dark fur, still wet with blood. Several paces farther on, a shallow groove ran across the stone where something heavy had been dragged.

The bear was close.

Lu Chen moved around a boulder and looked down into a ravine.

The Iron-Claw Bear lay at its base.

Its body was enormous, with shoulders broad as a cart and black-brown fur matted by blood. One foreleg was twisted beneath its chest. Its head rested against a rock, and three long claws had gouged the stone beside its muzzle.

The beast was dead.

Lu Chen remained above the ravine, watching.

He waited for the rise of a chest that never came. He watched the mist around the carcass. He listened for the low growl of another beast claiming its prey.

Nothing moved.

The wound that had killed it was difficult to see from above. A deep gash crossed its neck, but there was little blood around the body compared with the amount scattered along the trail. The bear might have fought something stronger before falling here.

That thought did not comfort him.

Ghost Mist Ridge was not a place where a lone Body Forging cultivator should linger over a fresh carcass. The beast that killed the bear might still be nearby. Scavengers could also arrive once they caught the scent.

Lu Chen descended carefully, keeping his eyes on the surrounding rocks.

When he reached the body, he did not immediately touch it. He circled once, studying the ground. There were no fresh pawprints besides the bear's own. No broken branches showed the passage of another large creature. Yet the ravine felt strangely still.

He crouched beside the bear's head.

Its eyes were clouded. A faint trace of spiritual energy lingered beneath the matted fur, like the last warmth of a fire buried under ash.

"At least you won't be eating me," he muttered.

He tested the hide with the tip of his saber. The blade scraped across the thick fur and caught against the tough skin beneath. Good quality. The claws would also fetch a price.

He could not carry the entire carcass through the ridge, and cutting it apart here would leave him exposed for too long.

Lu Chen looked toward a rocky ledge nearby. A narrow hollow lay beneath it, partly concealed by thorn bushes. He dragged the bear there with considerable effort, stopping twice when the weight pulled him off balance. By the time he had pushed the body beneath the ledge, sweat had gathered beneath his collar.

He rolled two large stones across the opening. They would not keep away a determined beast, but they might discourage smaller scavengers and hide the carcass from a passing traveler.

As he moved the second stone, something caught his eye.

Behind the place where the bear had fallen, the cliff face was split by a narrow crack.

A breath of cold air slipped from the darkness.

Lu Chen paused.

The opening was partly hidden by loose rocks and a curtain of dead vines. It was scarcely wide enough for a man to pass through sideways. Yet the air coming from it carried none of the wet, decaying smell of an ordinary cave. It was dry, faintly bitter, and touched with the scent of old stone that had not seen the sun in a very long time.

He leaned closer.

The wind brushed his cheek.

For a moment, he thought he heard something.

Not a voice. Not an animal.

A low, distant resonance, so faint that he could not tell whether it had come from the passage or from somewhere inside his own chest.

Lu Chen straightened.

He looked back toward the ravine, then toward the ridge above. The mist had thickened. The path behind him was already fading into a pale blur.

He could leave the discovery for another day.

But there was no guarantee he would find it again. Nor was there any guarantee that someone else would not.

He pulled the loose rocks aside and examined the opening. The passage beyond sloped downward. Its walls were smooth, with parallel grooves running along the stone. They were too regular to be natural, and too old to have been made by anyone recently.

Someone had carved this way into the mountain.

Lu Chen returned to the ledge and took a flint and a resin torch from his pack. He struck the flint until a spark caught the resin. A small flame bloomed, throwing amber light across the rocks.

He checked his saber once more.

Then he entered.

The crack narrowed around his shoulders before widening into a passage. The air grew colder with every step. His torchlight crawled over the walls, revealing shallow carvings beneath layers of dust. Some resembled clouds. Others looked like twisting beasts or flowing rivers, though age had worn away their shapes.

The grooves continued downward.

Lu Chen ran his fingers over one of them. The stone was smooth, almost polished, and cold enough to numb his skin. He could not understand the purpose of the markings. They did not resemble the diagrams in his incomplete Qi Circulation scroll.

The passage bent.

A few steps later, the ground sloped sharply into darkness. Lu Chen steadied himself against the wall and descended. His boots disturbed a thin layer of gray dust that had lain untouched for who knew how many years.

Then the passage opened.

He stepped into a chamber.

His torch revealed a ceiling broken by a long fracture. Massive slabs of granite had fallen across one side of the room, burying what might once have been an entrance or another passage. Dry roots hung from the cracks above. Dust covered the floor so deeply that his footprints appeared behind him like dark wounds.

At the center stood a stone altar.

It had been shattered.

One side had collapsed, leaving a broad piece of black stone tilted against its base. The altar's surface was covered in marks, most of them hidden beneath dust and dead vine roots. There were no offerings, no lamps, and no sign that anyone had visited for generations.

Lu Chen raised the torch.

The chamber seemed larger than it should have been. Its far wall receded into shadow, and the flame could not reach the upper corners. For a brief moment, he felt as though he had entered a place that did not belong beneath an ordinary mountain.

He approached the altar.

A broken tablet rested upon it.

The tablet was made of dull black stone. Unlike the surrounding rock, it did not reflect the torchlight. The flame seemed to sink into its surface, leaving the strange marks upon it faint and indistinct.

Lu Chen stopped a few steps away.

He had seen old inscriptions in Azure Stone Town, carved above shrines and merchant halls. Those had been worn by rain and time, but their characters still belonged to a language people used.

These marks were different.

They seemed to shift when he tried to follow them with his eyes. Not physically—not like writing moving across a page—but in the uncertain way a distant mountain changed shape beneath drifting clouds. One moment a mark resembled a blade; the next it seemed to contain the outline of a star.

He could not read them.

Yet something in him responded.

The feeling came from deep within his lower abdomen, where a quiet seed of energy had rested since his arrival in this world. He had never understood why it was there. The incomplete cultivation method had not awakened it, and months of practice had done little more than make him aware of its existence.

Now it stirred.

Lu Chen took another step.

The air inside the chamber grew still.

The torch flame bent toward the tablet.

He reached out and touched the edge of the black stone.

A pale silver light opened within his consciousness.

[Martial Arts Deduction — Active]

The System responded.

But this time, the sensation was unlike anything he had experienced while examining an opponent's stance or studying the movements of a technique.

The marks upon the tablet did not become ordinary words. Instead, a vast and ancient impression unfolded behind his thoughts.

For an instant, Lu Chen saw a boundless darkness.

A river of stars crossed an endless sky. Mountains rose and fell beneath it, their peaks vanishing into clouds that resembled the breath of sleeping dragons. Far beyond those mountains, something immense hung in the void.

A bell.

Its silhouette was indistinct, swallowed by darkness, yet its presence seemed to encompass heaven and earth. The sight lasted no longer than a heartbeat. Then the vision shattered, leaving only the black tablet beneath his fingertips.

Lu Chen staggered.

The System had not translated the inscription. It had drawn out a fragment of meaning buried within it—a remnant of an ancient inheritance.

A name surfaced in his mind.

Primordial Chaos Scripture.

Not the complete scripture.

Only a memory thread, a fragment left behind in the stone.

He tried to pull his hand away.

He could not.

The seed within his dantian suddenly awakened.

A deep tremor passed through his body. It was not the familiar ache of exertion or the strain of attempting to circulate Qi. Something ancient had answered the tablet, and the answer was now moving through him.

The torch slipped from his other hand.

It struck the floor, rolled across the dust, and came to rest beside the broken altar. Its flame continued to burn, but the chamber had changed. The darkness seemed to gather around the tablet, while the marks upon its surface shone with a faint, bronze radiance.

Lu Chen's breath caught.

A presence stirred behind his consciousness.

It was immense.

He could not understand it, could not measure it, and could not tell whether it had noticed him. It felt like standing beneath a night sky so vast that the mind could not comprehend its boundaries.

Then the presence moved.

A dark bronze bell appeared above his head.

It was only an indistinct phantom, its surface adorned with patterns that resembled coiling dragons and ancient clouds. The image flickered in and out of existence, yet the moment it appeared, the chamber seemed to sink beneath an invisible weight.

The broken altar trembled.

Dust rose from the floor.

Far above, somewhere beyond layers of stone and earth, the mountain gave a faint shudder.

Lu Chen's knees buckled.

A surge of ancient energy burst from his dantian and swept through his body. His blood seemed to catch fire. His bones rang with a pain so deep that it felt as though something within them was being remade.

He fell against the altar.

The black tablet slipped beneath his hand, and the bronze phantom vanished.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing but darkness.

Then the pain came.

Lu Chen gasped, his fingers clawing at the edge of the shattered stone. His body trembled uncontrollably. The energy within him was no longer a quiet seed. It surged like a primordial tide, vast and heavy, pressing against the limits of a body that had never been prepared to contain it.

He tried to breathe.

The air would not come.

His vision blurred. The chamber tilted, and the torchlight stretched into long, wavering lines.

He could not tell whether the ancient inheritance had chosen him, whether the System had awakened something it had been waiting for, or whether he had simply touched a power beyond his ability to bear.

There was no answer.

Only the overwhelming force moving through his body.

Lu Chen's shoulder struck the cold floor. His teeth clenched as another wave of pain swept through him. The broken tablet lay beside his hand, its marks dimming one by one.

The ancient chamber fell silent.

Above the altar, the last trace of bronze light disappeared.

And deep within Lu Chen's dantian, the dormant seed continued to burn.

The transformation had only begun.