The silence in the room grew heavy, broken only by the soft creaking of the wood as she kept her eyes fixed on Ethan.
"He did exactly what I studied for years: he stayed on the edges, never daring to enter more than necessary. He knew the rumors, but one day he went inside and was transported to this place" said she.
Ethan frowned, processing the image of that cautious man breaking his own rule out of pure necessity.
"He arrived here badly wounded, Ethan. I know that inside this place there are no natural dangers that could cause such damage, so I am certain he was ambushed outside and had to enter the unknown just to save his life" said she.
"So it wasn’t a choice, it was a desperate escape" said Ethan.
"It was, but what he found upon crossing was even more hostile. As soon as he entered, he was attacked by all the forces guarding the site. Up to this point, there are eight known gates in the world, and each one is under the control of powerful organizations guarding them to prevent catastrophes" said she.
Ethan straightened in his seat, visibly surprised by the revelation regarding the geography of the entrances.
"I always imagined the entrance was a random phenonon, a glitch in space, but if there are organizations guarding them, it ans the arrival point never varies" said Ethan.
"Exactly. And the place he arrived at was guarded by an ancient clan. They attacked him with all their might as soon as they saw him appear, but that day, the world learned for the first ti that formation masters were terrifying beings" said she.
"An entire clan against a single wounded man?" said Ethan.
"With just a wave of his hand, he destroyed all their attacks. With his power, he had neutralized an entire clan in seconds; an impossible miracle. In a panic, they sent out an ergency call and the Union arrived to the rescue. All the powers of the world gathered to attack him at once, but once again, with just a movent of his hands, all those powerful attacks vanished, terrifying everyone" said she.
"Impossible... how?" said Ethan.
"Formation masters are invincible within a similar cultivation level" said she.
Ethan looked at her with a mix of confusion and curiosity, prompting her to explain further.
"Imagine that you are a bucket of water. Your energy and power depend entirely on the water you have inside you. You can use it to its limit, but it will always be the sa force. If two cultivators throw their water at the sa power, then power is not the deciding factor. The difference is that a formation master does not use his own water. You can imagine him connecting directly to the energy of the world, as if he were connecting to a fire hydrant. So, you with your small amount of water face an enemy who can control an entire river... do you understand now?" said she.
Ethan closed his eyes for a mont, visualizing the vast flow of a river compared to a single bucket, and nodded as the realization hit him.
"So, what happened to him?" said Ethan.
"When they saw it was impossible to win, everyone surrendered and knelt. But he had no ill intentions; he explained who he was and his purpose for coming. Everyone was excited since they thought they could finally leave this cursed place. So weren’t as happy, but no one dared to say anything in front of soone so powerful" said she.
She paused, looking toward the horizon as if tracing the man’s long journey.
"During the last one hundred and fifty years, that person has traveled the world analyzing everything, and now we understand so things about this formation. First, it is not a fortress as many believed, since it has been proven that it does not stop those from the outside from entering. It seems designed to prevent sothing or soone from escaping. What the inscriptionist master found while excavating the ruins is that there seems to be a very powerful being in this place. If it were ant to hold only humans, like a farm, the power of the formation would be excessive. They must not want sothing to escape" said she.
Ethan felt a chill run down his spine at the ntion of a prisoner more powerful than the formation itself.
"Furthermore, he found records that just like this ’world,’ there are more than seven, perhaps eight, and that there was a way to move between them. He found several terminals that, according to the inscriptions, could teleport us to the lateral islands, but they all seem damaged. Lord Truth Seeker has tried to repair them, but materials are missing and they seem destroyed by sothing, not by the passage of ti. The one in the best condition is five thousand ters under the sea, in an underwater cave, and it is broken in half as if cut by a sword. Another at the top of Mount Everest looks like it was crushed by a giant rock. One in the heart of the Amazon jungle is completely destroyed. And at the foot of Mount Tai, in a hidden cave in China, there is one that looks like it was shredded and placed as a pillar, with a note on the ground that says: Damn it, I hate this desolate place" said she.
"A note?" said Ethan.
"Lord Truth Seeker speculates that perhaps the guardian got angry and destroyed it in a fit of rage, as there are marks of attacks but not of battles. The general conclusion is that this place is a giant prison that at so point had guards, but they either died or left for so reason. However, the protection chanism, the main array, is active and draws all the spiritual power from the area to keep itself active eternally. That is why energy is so scarce in the air" said she.
"In the air?" said Ethan.
She reached into her spatial ring, pulled out a white stone, and handed it to him. As soon as Ethan touched it, he felt as if he were drinking water after a terrible thirst that had lasted for weeks. Without his control, the white stone began to release energy, and Ethan’s body drained it instantly, leaving only a gray stone like common gravel.
The Matriarch was surprised once again. It wasn’t because he devoured the energy—that always happened when a body that had never been in contact with spirit stones finally touched one. She had been ready to snatch it away, as beginners usually end up inflating until their ridians explode. But Ethan’s body gave her another surprise. It seed the boy was also restricted; his body had already surpassed the allowed threshold of this world, but the restrictions didn’t allow him to use all his power. This made her think he was even stronger than he truly was.
She did not realize that the true reason for that absorption power was his athyst eyes, which were storing the energy like two ergency tanks of spiritual power.
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