The big-bellied monk froze as he watched, his wide eyes reflecting the glow of the runes. His face was a mixture of awe, confusion, and fear. The complexity of the runes was beyond anything he had ever encountered.
So characters seed vaguely familiar yet alien at the sa ti, while others radiated a spiritual pressure so intense that rely looking at them made his soul quiver. "What... what is this...?" he whispered, feeling both enlightened and utterly lost.
But then he clenched his jaw, his expression hardening into one of grim resolve. "No matter what this thing is," he muttered through gritted teeth, "today, I will uncover its secrets!" His fingers blurred again as he poured more energy into the black card, every thread of Yin energy in the chamber bending to his will and funneling into the relic.
Under the relentless absorption, the markings on the card beca sharper and clearer, glowing faintly with a mysterious power, yet still their aning remained maddeningly elusive, as if each symbol was a puzzle designed to resist mortal comprehension.
"Forget it, I’ll take it back and study it slowly." The big-bellied monk finally stopped channeling his energy into the strange black card. He reached out and clasped it with both hands, running his thick fingers over the engraved runes on its surface.
A shiver ran through his entire body the mont his skin made contact, as if so mysterious force inside the card had pulsed faintly and resonated with his soul. It wasn’t painful, but the sensation was unsettling, almost like touching a living heart that did not belong to him.
His brows furrowed, and for a mont his usually jovial expression disappeared, replaced by one of seriousness and awe. When he lifted the card into the dim light again, his eyes held more than simple curiosity—they held wariness and confusion. Every instinct scread that this was no ordinary artifact.
Even the faint glow lingering on the edges of the black runes hinted at an origin far older and far darker than anything he had handled before.
Slowly, with deliberate care, he took out a copper box from his storage ring, its surface etched with sealing inscriptions ant to contain dangerous objects. He gently laid the card inside, closed the box with both hands, and only then exhaled, his shoulders relaxing slightly as if a burden had been lifted from his chest.
The box went back into his storage ring, locked away from sight.
Just as he prepared to turn and leave, sothing caught his eye.
"Hmm? What is that?" he muttered, narrowing his eyes and glancing deeper into the cavern. Ahead, the once oppressive surge of Yin energy had weakened dramatically, the suffocating blackness thinning into a murky gray mist.
Right at the heart of that swirling fog lay a huge black shadow, tall and motionless.
Startled, the monk cautiously stepped forward, his robes dragging lightly against the rocky floor. His every step was asured, his senses fully extended as he approached the ominous silhouette. When the mist parted enough for him to see clearly, his breath hitched—it wasn’t a beast, nor so ancient altar, but rather a massive black stone.
His initial excitent at potentially finding another rare treasure soured instantly, replaced by mild disappointnt. A rock? After all this Yin energy, just a lump of stone? But sothing about it nagged at him, tugging at his instincts.
He stepped even closer, his eyes narrowing, and finally noticed it: intricate black lines densely woven across the stone’s surface, patterns that seed to shift and flow like living veins under a transparent skin.
The sight froze him. The black lines weren’t static carvings or simple marks—they moved faintly, sliding like schools of fish through invisible currents within the stone itself. The sensation it gave off was almost alive.
"Nether Stone?" The words escaped his lips in a trembling whisper.
For several breaths, the monk stood there in stunned silence, eyes wide and unblinking as mories from countless ancient texts flashed through his mind. Finally, he let out an audible gasp, his hands clenching unconsciously. "Nether Stone... this is Nether Stone!"
The big-bellied monk was no ordinary wanderer; he was a connoisseur of the rare and the bizarre, soone who had spent decades poring over obscure relics and forbidden tos. His force, the Bright Buddha Palace, had never lacked ancient books, and it was in those yellowed scrolls and fading manuscripts that he had once read about a material so rare and so legendary most people believed it was nothing more than a myth.
The Nether Stone.
According to those old texts, the Nether Stone was a supre forging material from the ancient era, a resource so rare that its quality surpassed even the finest Legendary Rank materials known today.
It was classified as a Demigod Rank material, a level so exalted that most experts could only dream about it. The reason was simple: the Nether Stone was alive.
The ancient records claid that this stone possessed spiritual consciousness, a dormant soul that resonated with heaven and earth.
Forging it into a weapon would produce an item that wasn’t rely a tool, but a partner—a spiritual weapon that could think, cultivate battle techniques on its own, and even act independently to defend its master. In essence, it would be a weapon that fought like a living expert, sotis even more effectively than its owner.
Such a weapon, classified as Demigod Rank, had only ever been ntioned in legends. Many great powers, even peak sects and entire empires, had dismissed such weapons as myths, claiming they existed only in the far-off Divine Realm and not in their mortal plane of Acaris.
Yet here it was, sitting silently before him, radiating an ancient and oppressive energy that confird its authenticity beyond all doubt.
The monk’s heart pounded like a drum. His eyes glittered with unrestrained greed and ambition as his trembling fingers reached out to touch the surface, though he stopped just short of making contact, knowing full well that materials of this level often ca with unknown dangers.
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