“This is your ancestor’s entire legacy!” Jared shut his eyes, drinking in the knowledge. “The charm is a legacy array. Any bearer of Flaxseed blood will trigger it, move, now!”
Flaxseed hurried forward and pressed the token against the shining stone.
Light exploded. Thousands of runes swarmed around like pale fireflies before melting into his flesh. In his mind bloomed complete mastery, from crafting simple paper charms to creating grand, realm, spanning arrays.
His spiritual energy grew purer, blocked meridians opened, and his cultivation began a steady, unstoppable climb.
“It’s real! Every word of it!” Overwhelmed, could find no further words. Jared kept silent watch, absorbing every stray shard of knowledge that leaked from the glowing stone.
Though the true legacy eluded him, even those fragments deepened his understanding and nudged toward a higher cultivation level.
At last, the radiance faded. Flaxseed opened his eyes, a keen light flashed within them. He had broken through to the Earthly Immortal Realm.
“I’ve broken through!” He flexed his fists, savoring the flood of power. “If not for your warning, Jared, I’d have missed this chance forever!”
“You didn’t just borrow someone else’s legacy,” Jared said, his voice calm yet certain. “You woke a strength that was already yours. No inheritance alone could have made you grow this fast.”
Jared understood that Flaxseed’s power had always run deep. Cycles of death and rebirth had pressed it down, as though some unseen seal held everything in place.
Now, the borrowed legacy had cracked that seal, letting a portion of the man’s true force spill free, and that was why had vaulted so quickly into the Earthly Immortal Realm.
Jared had no doubt the floodgates would open wider with each step they took. His eyes dropped to a fine line of script etched along the base of the stone tablet.
“We need to move,” murmured. “It says an ancient demon general is trapped in the core of the Abyss of Fallen Demons, and the seal is thinning. If that thing breaks loose, the price will be more than any of us can pay.”
“Then the treasure Lunaria wants must be sitting in that core, right?” Flaxseed asked, a dark cloud crossing his face.
“Looks that way,” Jared replied.
“The demons have tried for centuries to set the creature free,” went on. “If Lunaria’s people reach the magical item first, they’ll use it to command the demon general. We have to find it before they do, or everything unravels.”
Neither man dared waste another heartbeat.
They slipped behind the tablet and followed a narrow passage that bored deeper into the mountain. The farther they walked, the tighter the walls pressed in and the heavier the demonic aura grew, but the ancestral runes on the stone and the token at Flaxseed’s waist kept the demonic aura at bay.
Half an hour later, the tunnel opened onto a molten lake. Dark-red magma rolled and hissed, baking the surrounding rock until it glowed.
No bridge spanned the pool, only a few thick iron chains stretched to the far side, each rust, eaten link threatening to snap under its weight.
“How are we supposed to cross that?” Flaxseed stared at the churning lava. “Those chains wouldn’t hold a child, let alone the two of us.”
Flight was impossible here, whatever power stifled the air pinned them to the stone. One misstep would be deadly.
Jared‘s gaze swept the cavern walls. Every few yards, a stone block jutted from the rock face, each one carved with cooling runes.
“Those are our footholds,” said. “The runes will keep the heat off. Step where I step, and don‘t look down.”
