Chapter 113 - - 113 - The Frozen Collection

Chapter 113: Chapter - 113 - The Frozen Collection

"You are not defending the dungeon. You are studying us."

As soon as Lucien spoke those words, the absolute silence in the chamber felt heavy enough to choke on. The remaining monsters froze mid-stride, their glowing eyes locking onto Lucien all at once. Without a single growl or threat, they turned in unison and melted back into the shadows.

Beiro, Caelia, Aelene, and Prince Rumil could only stare at the empty darkness where a horde of violent beasts had been standing just moments before.

"What the hell..." Prince Rumil muttered.

"Why did they retreat?" Aelene asked, her voice trembling with curiosity and residual fear.

"They have learned enough," Lucien said plainly, his eyes scanning the gloom.

"Learned about what?" Prince Rumil demanded, stepping forward with a defensive frown.

"About us," Lucien replied.

Before anyone could press him further, a deep rumble resonated through the stone beneath their feet. The ancient symbols carved into the high stone walls ignited, glowing one after another in a brilliant cascade of light. The entire dungeon seemed to wake up from a centuries-long slumber, pulsing with a sudden, suffocating pressure.

Instantly, everyone took a step backward, weapons raised.

"This wasn’t in any of the clan records," Caelia said, her hand tight around the hilt of her sword as she backed away from the walls.

Lucien ignored the rising panic around him and walked straight toward the center of the chamber. There, hidden beneath thick layers of dust and aged grime, lay an enormous circular formation carved into the stone floor. As the ambient light spread, the intricate grooves became visible, framing a single line of ancient text at the central core.

The rest of the group cautiously approached, crowding around the edge of the circle.

"Can anyone read this language?" Prince Rumil asked, squinting at the sharp, unnatural runes.

For Lucien, deciphering such text was hardly a challenge. With his Divine Inspection Eyes passively active, the ancient script unraveled before his sight instantly. The words themselves were simple, but the message they carried was deeply unsettling.

He translated them aloud. "Do not seek the inheritance of the dead."

The party exchanged uneasy glances.

"That’s all?" Prince Rumil asked, scoffing slightly to hide his nerves.

Lucien didn’t answer immediately. He leaned closer, his eyes tracking a finer set of runes etched directly underneath the main sentence. His calm expression shifted slightly.

"She has not finished cultivating," Lucien read from the inscription.

Everyone stared at the floor in stunned silence. Caelia looked the most shaken of all, her brow furrowing deeply. "She?"

No one had an answer for her, not even Lucien. Crouching down, Lucien brushed away a fresh layer of dust near the edge of the circle, revealing another inscription—older, shallower, and nearly erased by time.

Lucien traced the faded grooves and read it softly. "The dead do not sleep here. They remember."

Standing beside him, Aelene watched the calm, deliberate way Lucien handled the situation. Looking at his broad back and unbothered posture, she felt a small, sudden flutter in her heart. Ever since she was young, she had dreamed of marrying someone reliable—someone strong enough to stand like an unshakeable wall against any threat, just as Lucien was doing now. She looked over at Prince Rumil. She wasn’t one to complain about her engagement, but compared to the man standing in the center of the formation, her fiance simply wasn’t enough.

Suddenly, a faint, rhythmic vibration passed through the floor.

For less than a second, everything went deathly quiet. In that tiny window of silence, Lucien heard something that made his pulse spike. It was breathing. It was not his own, nor was it Rumil’s, Aelene’s, Beiro’s, or Caelia’s.

Someone else was breathing deep beneath the floor.

Lucien slowly raised his head. For the very first time since entering the Hollow of the Ten Thousand Forms, his relaxed demeanor vanished, replaced by an absolute, sharp seriousness. There was something beneath them. Something alive. Something that had been waiting down there for three hundred years—and it had just noticed him.

’Now this might actually be worth my time,’ Lucien thought, a quiet flame of interest igniting in his mind.

Far beneath the dungeon, something massive opened its eyes. In that instant, the Hollow of Ten Thousand Forms remembered what it truly was. It was not a tomb built to honor the departed. It was a prison.

Fine dust began to rain down from the high ceiling, followed by the chatter of small stones bouncing across the floor.

Aelene gasped, drawing back. "Something is coming!"

Caelia raised her sword, her eyes darting across the dark corners of the room. "From where?"

Every single one of them could feel it—a massive, suffocating presence rising toward them. Yet, while the others looked at the dark corridors, Lucien kept his gaze fixed firmly on the ground. He could feel the dense spiritual energy moving directly beneath their soles. It wasn’t charging straight up at them. It was circling. Like an enormous, unseen sea monster, something massive was swimming through the solid earth right under the chamber floor.

Lucien looked back down at the ancient formation. The glowing symbols on the floor and walls were beginning to flicker and fade. One by one, the lights went dark, plunging the chamber back into heavy, oppressive shadows.

"Did we activate something?" Prince Rumil asked, his voice strained.

"Probably," Caelia replied grimly. She immediately turned toward Lucien. "You said the dungeon is studying us."

"It is," Lucien said calmly.

"Then what is it studying now?" Caelia asked.

"Perhaps... fear."

"What do you mean by that?" Prince Rumil asked, his confidence flaking away under the intense dark pressure.

"Look," Lucien said, pointing a single finger toward the floor ahead.

At first, no one noticed anything. Then Caelia caught sight of thin, dark marks appearing across the stone floor. They weren’t cracks, but paper-thin lines spreading outward from the central circular formation like a spiderweb, rapidly covering the entire ground.

"Is this some kind of formation?" Beiro asked, his face contorting in sheer terror as his knees visibly shook. He looked as if he was on the verge of bursting into tears.

"Yeah... it seems like it," Lucien said casually.

Stepping directly onto the active line, Lucien channelled a tiny thread of his own astral energy into the stone. The reaction was instantaneous. The ancient symbols on the far walls reshaped themselves, shifting into entirely new patterns right before their eyes.

Aelene and Caelia watched in utter disbelief.

"The symbols are moving," Aelene whispered. This was all far too overwhelming for her. She had never explored a ancient dungeon like this before, but even with her limited field experience, she knew this went against every rule of normal ruins.

"The dungeon isn’t only sensing our cultivation," Lucien said, analyzing the flow of power. "It’s also recording our reactions. It knows what we are doing."

"Does that mean... it can hear us?" Beiro whimpered, clutching his head.

Lucien ignored the young man’s panic. Before anyone else could speak, a faint, ethereal woman’s voice echoed directly inside the chamber. It was soft, distant, and completely chilling.

"Three," the voice said.

"Did you hear that?" Beiro shrieked, backing into a pillar.

"Yes," Aelene breathed, her hands flying to her mouth.

"Where is this even coming from?" Prince Rumil demanded, spinning around.

"Two," the voice echoed again, louder this time.

"Wait a second... Is it counting down something?!" Beiro panicked, completely losing his composure.

"One."

Without a second’s warning, the formation beneath their feet dissolved into void, and the entire stone floor completely collapsed inward.

"Move, everyone!" Prince Rumil yelled.

Reacting on pure instinct, Rumil leaped backward toward a narrow ledge. Caelia moved instantly, grabbing the panicking Beiro by his collar and vaulting toward a stable wall jutting out from the side.

Aelene, however, was left completely exposed. As a healer, her reaction time and physical speed were nowhere near those of the combatants. She stumbled, staring in horror as the ground vanished beneath her feet.

For Lucien, a sudden collapse like this was child’s play. He didn’t even bother jumping right away. Noticing Aelene falling alone, he casually stepped through the air, caught her cleanly around the waist, and pulled her close before leaping toward the side.

Aelene wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, staring up at his side profile in absolute awe. But before any of them could secure a grip on the walls, the remaining ledges gave way as well. The entire group was swallowed by the dark pit, plunging into the depths.

As they plummeted through the pitch-black air, Caelia slammed her sword into the rough rock face, using the friction to slow her descent. Beiro summoned gusts of wind beneath his feet to cushion his fall, while Prince Rumil fired a series of wind-infused arrows into the walls, using the recoil to stabilize his body.

Lucien used nothing at all. Able to float effortlessly through space, spending his energy on defensive spells was a complete waste of time. He simply drifted down through the darkness, holding Aelene securely in his arms. Down in the shadows, Aelene kept her eyes fixed on him, her heart beating wildly against her ribs as they descended together like weightless feathers.

Caelia touched down first, landing gracefully on her feet, followed quickly by Beiro and Prince Rumil. Moments later, Lucien floated gently to the ground, casually releasing his hold on Aelene as her feet touched the stone. Because of the heavy darkness, Prince Rumil hadn’t seen them during the fall. He had been so focused on saving his own life that he had completely forgotten about his fiancee—and he had no idea she had spent the entire descent cradled safely in another man’s arms.

Reaching for a light talisman, Rumil sparked a glow and caught sight of them. "Aelene! Are you okay?"

"Yes, I’m fine," Aelene said, stepping beside Lucien with a small, glowing smile. "Thanks to Axel. He can even float... I didn’t know he could do that."

"What is this place?"

They all turned to look around, and the breath caught in their throats. This lower chamber was entirely different from the vast ruin above. There were no stone pillars, no carved walls, and no roaming monsters. There were only crystals.

Thousands upon thousands of translucent crystals lined the space, covering the walls and sprouting from the floor like a glittering, frozen forest. Some were the size of a fist, while others towered far higher than a grown man. From deep within every single crystal, a pale blue light hummed softly.

"This place is completely different," Prince Rumil whispered.

Lucien stepped forward, walking slowly between the tall crystalline pillars to observe them closely. As he peered into the pale blue light, his eyes narrowed.

Inside the first crystal, he saw a preserved human hand, perfectly intact, followed by the silhouette of a frozen face. He moved to the next crystal—inside was the face of an old man. Another held a young child. Another held a woman. Hundreds of cultivators sat perfectly preserved within the translucent structures.

"Are they alive?" Prince Rumil asked, stepping up behind him.

"No," Lucien said.

"Dead?" Beiro squeaked from the back.

"Not exactly," Lucien replied, tracing his fingers over the smooth surface of a crystal.

"What do you mean by that?" Caelia asked, her hand resting on her sword hilt.

"They are preserved," Lucien said calmly.

These crystals were not tombs; they were containment vessels. Each one held a cultivator caught at a specific moment in time. Some held ancient weapons, others wore elaborate robes from forgotten sects, some possessed three distinct arms, and a few even bore massive, feathered wings folded across their backs.

"This isn’t a single sect," Lucien noted, stepping back to take in the vast chamber. "And they aren’t only from this realm."

"What do you mean?" Aelene asked softly.

"Look at their attire, their physical traits, and the remnants of their aura," Lucien explained. "They aren’t from the same era. More than that, they aren’t even from the same world."

The group carefully inspected the frozen figures around them, quickly seeing the truth in Lucien’s words. The sheer variety of physical forms and clothing belonged to completely different civilizations.

"This place wasn’t built for one civilization," Caelia murmured, horror creeping into her voice.

"Then what is it?" Prince Rumil asked.

"A collection," Lucien said.

"A collection of what?" Rumil pressed.

Lucien didn’t answer. His attention had already been captured by something at the far end of the chamber.

Standing at the apex of the room was a single crystal, far larger and infinitely more imposing than the rest. Unlike the translucent blue vessels surrounding it, this one was made of solid, pitch-black crystal. Bright golden cracks spider-webbed across its surface, leaking a dense, visible pressure into the air.

Sealed inside the black crystal was a woman, kneeling in a meditative pose. Her hands rested lightly against her thighs, her head was lowered, and her long hair floated around her body as if she were suspended underwater.

Unlike all the other preserved cultivators in the room, she was moving. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm.

She was breathing.

"She’s alive!" Aelene gasped, taking a step back.

"No," Lucien said simply.

"What do you mean?" Prince Rumil asked, staring at the rising and falling chest of the figure.

"She’s cultivating," Lucien said, pointing toward the golden fissures. "Look at the astral energy."

Following his gaze, they saw thick streams of dense astral energy flowing out from the golden cracks, swirling through the air before being forcefully drawn into the woman’s body.

"She’s been doing that this whole time?" Beiro whispered, horrified.

"For how long?" Prince Rumil asked.

"Three hundred years," Lucien replied.

A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the chamber.

Without warning, Caelia began walking toward the black crystal. Her legs moved on their own, drawn forward as if an invisible thread were pulling her toward the sealed woman. Something about the figure felt painfully familiar, though she couldn’t explain why. A strange, crushing pressure filled her chest with every step she took.

As she drew within a few feet, the black crystal pulsed with a deep golden light.

Caelia froze in her tracks.

Instantly, a vivid memory flashed directly into her mind. She saw a dense, sunlit forest. She was standing beside a tall woman she had never met before, but the woman was looking down at her and laughing warmly.

"You swing your sword too stiffly," the woman’s voice echoed in her mind.

Caelia blinked, and the vision shattered like glass.

"What was that?" Caelia gasped, grabbing her head with both hands as a sharp ache pierced her temples.

Lucien, who had been watching her closely, stepped up beside her. "What did you see?"

"I... I don’t know," Caelia stammered, her breath coming in ragged hitches.

"How about you touch the crystal?" Lucien suggested, his voice calm and calculating.

Caelia looked at him in surprise. "Why?"

"Because it reacted to you," Lucien said simply.

Caelia swallowed hard, looking back at the black surface. She hesitantly reached out her hand and pressed her fingertips against the cool, dark crystal.

The moment her skin made contact—BOOM!

A violent shockwave of pure spiritual energy exploded from the vessel. The force blew backward like a gale-force wind, shattering the stone floor beneath them. Caelia was launched off her feet, but before she could slam into the crystalline pillars behind her, Lucien caught her cleanly in his arms, absorbing the kinetic impact without shifting his stance an inch.

"Are you all right?" Lucien asked, looking down at her.

"Yes," Caelia breathed, her heart hammering against her chest.

Lucien released her, setting her safely on her feet before turning his attention back to the black structure.

The golden cracks across the black crystal flared with blinding light. Inside, the kneeling woman slowly raised her head. Though her eyes remained closed, her pale lips parted slightly, moving to form a silent word that resonated directly in their minds.

"Venn..."

Caelia froze, her blood turning to ice. "What?"

"Venn..." the voice echoed again, clearer this time.

Caelia’s breathing became heavy and desperate. "My... my clan?"

The woman’s eyes snapped open. They were solid, radiant gold. For a terrifying second, the ambient flow of time within the chamber seemed to stop entirely.

"My little Venn..."