pjbooks Chapter 115 Kunlun Ruins
Chapter 115 Kunlun Ruins
When the special plane landed on a makeshift helipad in the heart of the Kunlun Mountains, it was just past noon.
The high-altitude sun was blinding and icy, shining directly through the thin clouds onto the perpetually snow-covered surface, reflecting a dazzling white. Jiang Chen stepped down the gangway, the hem of his school uniform fluttering in the biting high-altitude wind. He squinted, looking towards the western mountain ridge shrouded in mist.
That's where the remnants of the Zhou Tian Xing Dou Grand Formation are located in the photo.
At the edge of the tarmac, Chen Beiyuan personally led his team to wait. The head of the Awakened Ones Administration was wearing a heavy, cold-weather combat suit today; his white hair was slightly disheveled by the cold wind, but his black eyes, smoothed and rounded by time, remained as bright as ever. Behind him stood Ye Wuhen, Zhou Tianze, and Luo Qinghe—all three SSS-level Awakened Ones were present. Further back were a dozen researchers in white hazmat suits, busily working around a portable energy detector.
"Jiang Chen." Chen Beiyuan greeted him, without any further pleasantries, and handed him a paper report. "The preliminary detection results of the ruins are in. The energy fluctuations inside that mountain peak have been continuously increasing since early yesterday morning, and reached a critical point this morning. Our instruments cannot measure its upper limit—just like the energy reading when you unleashed that sword strike outside Liangzhou City, it's beyond the measurement range."
Jiang Chen opened the report, his eyes quickly scanning the dense data and charts. His fingers stopped on the third page.
The page displayed a high-resolution photograph—a drone image taken from the crack revealing the core of the remnant array. Golden light outlined an extremely complex array of runes in the darkness, with a jet-black stone tablet suspended in mid-air at its center. The tablet's surface was covered with densely packed ancient characters, each slowly glowing, the rhythm of the light perfectly synchronized with the frequency of the remnant array's operation.
Jiang Chen recognized the characters.
That was the ancient seal script of the cultivation world. In the scripture pavilion of the Qingyun Sect, he had spent a full ten years studying this script. It was one of the oldest scripts in the cultivation civilization, even older than the history of the Qingyun Sect, and could be traced back to the ancient masters who created the world in the primordial era of the cultivation world.
The inscription on that stone tablet was a single sentence.
"The stars of the heavens suppress demons here."
Jiang Chen's pupils contracted slightly.
"Old Chen." He closed the report, his voice a few decibels lower than usual, "This site is not from ten thousand years ago. It has existed for at least thirty thousand years."
Chen Beiyuan frowned: "Thirty thousand years? Human civilization has only about five thousand years of recorded history. Thirty thousand years ago, there shouldn't have been any humans on this planet."
"Then it wasn't left by humans." Jiang Chen handed the report back to Chen Beiyuan, his gaze returning to the cloud-shrouded mountain ridge in the west. "It was left by cultivators. Cultivators from the cultivation world."
The tarmac fell silent instantly. The high-altitude wind howled, whipping up fine snowflakes that stung everyone's faces, but no one moved. Ye Wuhen's fingers tightened slightly around the hilt of his broken sword, Zhou Tianze lowered his arms from his chest, and Luo Qinghe's cold eyes reflected the chilling light of the distant snow-capped mountains.
"You mean," Chen Beiyuan's voice remained steady, but each word seemed carefully considered before uttering, "that before the birth of human civilization, cultivators from the cultivation world had visited this planet?"
"It's not that I've been here before. It's that I've fought here before." Jiang Chen raised his hand and pointed west. "The Zhou Tian Star Array is an ancient sect's protective array in the cultivation world. But its original version wasn't used for protection—it was used to suppress demons. The ancient books of the Qingyun Sect record that in the primordial era, a great war between immortals and demons swept across the entire universe. In that war, the immortal emperors of the cultivation world used the Zhou Tian Star Array to seal countless ancient demon gods. If this remnant array really does suppress something—"
He paused for a moment, then his voice lowered.
"What's sealed inside is very likely an ancient demon god from 30,000 years ago."
Everyone's expression changed.
"An ancient demon god from 30,000 years ago," Zhou Tianze's gruff voice broke the silence. "Compared to Balsaron, who is stronger?"
Jiang Chen glanced at him, a slight smile playing on his lips. The curve was faint, yet it sent chills down the spines of everyone present: "Balsalon is nothing but an ant in its presence."
Zhou Tianze cursed and took the broken spear off his shoulder. The silver metal foil on the spear blade gleamed coldly in the sunlight.
"Should we still go in?"
"Go in." Jiang Chen strode westward, the hem of his school uniform fluttering in the highland wind. "Whether it was 30,000 years ago or 300,000 years ago, since it's still functioning, it means that what's sealed inside is still alive. If we arrive a step later, what's inside will awaken a step sooner."
He took a few steps, stopped, and looked back at Ye Wuhen.
"Sword Saint Ye, your sword is broken. Perhaps there is a sword belonging to the cultivation world within this ruin."
Ye Wuhen's grip on the broken sword hilt tightened suddenly. Thirty years had passed since his sword broke when he emerged alive from the First Apostle's Hall, and he had never held a complete sword since. He had never expressed regret for losing his sword on any occasion, but at this moment, as Jiang Chen uttered those words, something was awakening in his deep and weary eyes, honed by years and battles.
"Let's go." Ye Wuhen stepped forward to catch up, his pace faster than ever before.
The main force advanced westward along the hastily dug mountain path. The closer they got to the ruins, the more pronounced the energy fluctuations in the air became. The ordinary soldiers' spiritual communication devices all malfunctioned three kilometers from the rift, replaced by an extremely low, humming sound that seemed to emanate from the depths of the earth. That hum pierced through their heavy winter clothing, penetrated their flesh, and resonated directly in their bones, instilling a primal fear from the very marrow of their being.
"This isn't a sound," Luo Qinghe suddenly spoke, her ice-type spiritual energy flowing around her as she tried to sense the source of the buzzing. "It's some kind of spiritual resonance. It's scanning us with its divine sense."
"It's not scanning," Jiang Chen's voice came from the front. "It's counting. It's counting how many of us there are."
This statement was like a bucket of ice water poured over everyone's head.
The entrance to the fissure came into view two hours later. It was the side of a black mountain covered by millennia-old ice, with a huge crack stretching from the mountainside to the foot, about thirty meters wide and towering to the top.
"This sword strike is at least thirty thousand years old." Jiang Chen walked to the edge of the crevice and reached out to touch the smooth rock wall. The moment his fingertips touched the rock wall, the golden sword mark on his palm suddenly lit up, resonating with the lingering sword intent deep within the rock wall. Thirty thousand years had passed, yet the sword intent that had cleaved the mountain had not completely dissipated. It had slumbered within the molecular structure of the rock wall for thirty thousand years, and now, awakened by Jiang Chen's true essence, it surged forth from every molecular gap, transforming into a pale golden sword shadow that stretched across the heavens and earth within the crevice.
Ye Wuhen stood behind Jiang Chen, looking at the golden sword shadow that stretched across the sky and earth, his hand holding the broken sword hilt trembling slightly.
"How does the power of this sword compare to your Sword Dao of Myriad Forms?" Ye Wuhen asked.
Jiang Chen was silent for a moment: "This sword strike was made 30,000 years ago. Compared to it, the sword strike I used to kill Morgana in the Apostle Hall can barely be considered a beginner's level."
Ye Wuhen's breath caught in his throat for a moment.
"Thirty thousand years have passed, yet the sword intent remains." Jiang Chen withdrew his hand, and the golden sword mark on his palm slowly faded away. "If the person who unleashed this sword strike is still alive, they should have already surpassed the Immortal Emperor."
He stepped into the crevice. The others followed closely behind.
Inside the fissure was a downward passage. The rock walls on either side of the passage were covered with densely packed ancient seal script, each character slowly flowing and breathing under the golden light. At the end of the passage was a massive spherical space large enough to contain the entire city of Jiangzhou. On the dome of this space, countless golden rays of light were slowly rotating, outlining a grand celestial array covering the entire space. At the very center of the array, suspended in the air was a jet-black stone tablet, inscribed with eight large characters—
"The stars of the heavens suppress demons here."
Beneath the stone tablet lies a skeleton.
It was a skeleton dressed in a long blue robe, the style of which was exactly the same as the one Qingyunzi wore in Jiang Chen's memory. The skeleton sat cross-legged, its hands folded on its knees, its posture serene, as if in meditation. To its right lay a sword, its blade entirely silver-white, a cold, sharp light gleaming across its edge—for thirty thousand years, the sword had not rusted. On the skeleton's left finger bone was a ring, its surface engraved with an extremely ancient rune.
The moment Jiang Chen saw the rune, he froze on the spot.
He recognized the rune. It was the sect mark of the Qingyun Sect. On his first day as a disciple of the Qingyun Sect, Qingyunzi personally engraved this mark on his palm, telling him, "This mark is passed down through generations of the Qingyun Sect. Whoever holds this mark is a disciple of Qingyun."
Thirty thousand years. The sect mark of the Qingyun Sect appeared on the hand of a skeleton that had been buried on this planet for thirty thousand years.
Jiang Chen walked towards the skeleton, his steps light, as if treading on a thousand years of memories. He knelt down on one knee before the skeleton, and gently touched the ring with the Qingyun Sect's mark on the skeleton's left ring finger with his right index and middle fingers together.
The moment the ring was touched, two pale golden lights suddenly shone in the empty eye sockets of the skeleton.