Cultivation Through Artifacts

Once Khal jumped into the unknown, he watched as the surroundings around him quickly turned darker and darker.

Khal was free-falling about five minutes straight already, yet he still failed to touch the bottom with his feet.

Naturally, he was not worried that he will die from falling as he had already summoned his armor around his body. Furthermore, his Physical Resistance was improved drastically thanks to him doing his quests daily, hence he was pretty sure he will be perfectly fine.

"Just how deep this canyon truly is? It feels like I'm falling for an eternity!" Khal mumbled, but immediately as the last word left his mouth he felt as his feet finally touched something solid.

BOOM!

'Okay, I am here. Now what?' Khal asked Nova, completely ignoring the fact that his fall just created a hundred meters deep and wide put, while he also just survived something that normal cultivators would be unable to.

[You are close to the seal. If I am right, it should be just ahead..]

Khal nodded and began to walk forward, but he made sure to remain vigilant as Nova told him the place he will enter will be filled with hundreds of dangers, thus he was ready to fight at any given moment!

He even activated his Heaven's Eyes and Bloodshed Touch beforehand to see if he could find anything in the dense darkness, but luckily, he found nothing.

After walking for several minutes straight, Khal suddenly noticed a small, white marking on a small piece of rock ahead and immediately became happy. It seemed he has found the seal Nova was talking about.

"Is this it, right? What should I do with it?"

[Just go and pour a bit of your Essence into it. The rest will follow suit automatically.]

Khal took a deep breath before he nodded and did just as Nova said. Grabbing the stone and pouring a bit of his Essence into the rock, Khal watched as the white symbol on its surface suddenly lit up like a lantern, before the whole ground around him started to shake like crazy as though an army of giants appeared and started to walk around him! 

"What is happening?" Khal instantly raised his weapon and glanced around, but except for the violent tremor, he saw no danger at all.

However, it wasn't long before his eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of something emerging from the ground a few meters away from him, seemingly being a gate that looked rather old and rusty.

"A gate?" Khal frowned and walked before the gate, which now entirely emerged, and took a better glimpse.

[Gate? No, what you can see at the moment is a teleporter.]

"A teleporter? To where?" Khal asked, his interest piqued immediately after he heard Nova's voice.

[To the Zero Realm.]

"What? This piece of stone can summon the entrance into the Zero Realm?" Khal was shocked beyond belief and stared at the piece of rock with bewilderment.

He already knew that there existed a total of six realms that almost every being knew about, while there existed a seventh realm, the Zero Realm, which was so hidden and mysterious that only a handful knew about and even a few of them knew how one could enter that realm.

The book stated a few places where Khal would have been able to enter the Zero Realm, but all of those were in places where not even a Ninth Stage Cultivator could enter much less wander around freely until they found the entrance.

However, the book never stated there is an entrance in a place like this, which was shocking news. It seems that the book was not that all-knowing as it stated. 

[That piece of stone is, in fact, a Realm Key, thus I would recommend you not to play with it so recklessly. As for your answer, yes, it indeed can summon one of the infinite amounts of gates into the Zero Realm, but this one is a bit more than special than the rest of the entrances.]

"Special? In what way?" Khal asked calmly.

[As you may already know, if one finds a way to enter the Zero Realm, they will meet with existences stronger than those in the Sixth Realm.]

[However, with this Realm Key, you will be capable of entering a region of a Zero Realm where the creatures will be only slightly stronger than a Ninth Stage Beast from the First Realm.]

"I see. So, can I keep this Realm Key with me?" Khal asked quickly before he decided to enter through the gate.

[Yes, you can. But if you wish to use it, you have to come back here and activate it around here or it will be nothing but a piece of rock.]

"I see, thank you," Khal said and after tossing the realm key into his spatial ring he took a step forward and placed his palm atop the gate.

Once his fingers got into contact with the rigid surface of the ancient-looking gate, Khal watched as the ground began to shook once again before the gate's doors opened wide, revealing a swirling colorful vortex.

Khal stared at the vortex with a nonchalant look before he took a deep breath and stepped inside the vortex, teleporting himself into somewhere new and unknown.

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Meanwhile, somewhere in an unknown dimension where the space seemed to be collapsing, two old but muscular looking humanoid creatures, one with a pair of dragon wings on his back and one with a third eye in the middle of its forehead sat before each other while their gazes were fixed on a wooden table that seemed to be a chessboard.

"Old Eye, did you know there was a ruckus in the lower realms not long ago?" asked the humanoid creature with the dragon wings, his eyes never leaving the chessboard, not even for a second.

The creature with the third eye hearing the question grabbed a black figure before him that looked akin to a spider and placed it before a white figure that looked like a humanoid fox.

"Yeah, I heard about it."

Hearing the brief response from his friend, the creature with dragon wings frowned and asked, "Do you think it was 'his' doing? I mean, they say the light that pierced the first three realms was and felt similar to when 'he' ascended from the First Realm."

Old Eye remained silent before shaking his head and saying, "It was not 'him'. He already died when he challenged the Ancient Stairs into the Fourth Realm, so it was someone else."

"Yeah, I was thinking the same." nodded the creature with a calm expression, then continued, "It would be a pain in the ass if that bastard reincarnated again after so many years. The higher realms would definitely be brought into pure chaos if he were to come back."

"Yeah, I am pretty sure it would." Old Eye nodded calmly.

And thus, after saying those words, the two remained silent, continuing to play their game with great concentration.