Chapter 103: The Solitary Scholar

Chapter 103: The Solitary Scholar

The heavy archway swallowed Lothe in complete darkness.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the residual warmth from Seana’s fingertips faded entirely from his skin. The silence in this corridor was different from the silence before; it was vacant, hollow, and suffocating.

Lothe did not rush.

He paused five steps beyond the archway, closing his eyes to let his senses recalibrate.

The Veiled Identity Talisman beneath his collar hummed faintly against his chest, projecting the illusion of an ordinary, exhausted scholar with plain features and dull, ink-stained robes. His posture naturally adjusted—shoulders lowered slightly, chin angled down, a demeanor that seemed frail and unremarkable from the outside.

Beneath that facade, however, his meridians were primed like coiled steel.

Ping!

[SPATIAL ANCHOR DEPLOYED]

• Anchor ID: Mark-01 (Seana’s Dispersal Coordinate)

• Distance: Obscured by dimensional folding

• Signal Strength: Stable (Faint)

• Status: Monitoring active

"She’s alive," Lothe muttered under his breath, his voice cold and flat. "The anchor can still catch her residual frequency."

He opened his eyes. The pupils were as dark as frozen obsidian.

He didn’t know where the palace’s teleportation matrix had tossed her. He didn’t know if she was facing swarms of beasts, collapsing rooms, or other cultivators. But he knew Seana. Her instincts had been forged in blood, her poisons were lethal, and she was far more dangerous than she appeared.

Trusting her to survive was not negligence; it was necessity.

Panicking would only turn him into prey.

Lothe raised his left hand.

A thin sheet of yellow Spirit Paper slipped out from his sleeve, hovering above his palm. With his right index finger coated in faint, pale-blue Qi, he swiftly traced a circular rune onto the surface.

[Light-Gathering Rune]

FZZZZ.

The talisman ignited into a soft, steady orb of pale-white luminescence that floated three inches above his shoulder. It didn’t cast violent light that would announce his presence to the entire corridor; instead, it illuminated only a three-meter perimeter around his boots.

He began walking forward.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The sound of his cloth boots against the stone floor was the only noise in the corridor.

The walls here were ancient. They were not made of crude brick or modern reinforced concrete, but colossal slabs of dark, moss-tinted basalt. Every few meters, tall stone stelae were embedded into the stone, each one carved with weathered pictograms of human figures kneeling before four colossal beasts, their heads bowed in eternal submission.

Lothe activated [Qi Sight].

The faded stone was not dead.

Beneath the dust and moss, thin, luminous threads of ancient Qi flowed through the rock like veins inside a corpse. The energy was ancient, dense, and slow-moving, far purer than the ambient spiritual energy currently leaking into the post-apocalyptic world above.

Ping!

[ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN]

• Location: Sub-Corridor — The Hall of Inscribed Stelae

• Structure: Single-Path Trial Route

• Ambient Energy: High-Density Ancient Qi

• Warning: Dormant defensive runes detected in the floor tiles!

Lothe halted his foot mid-air.

He looked down.

Three inches ahead of his toe, the dust on the floor masked a circular groove carved into the basalt. If he had taken one more step, his weight would have compressed the stone, triggering whatever was hidden beneath.

"Another pressure array," Lothe whispered, his tone showing neither surprise nor fear.

He crouched down, his flowing black sleeves pulled back to reveal his pale fingers. He withdrew his Earth Spirit Brush and gently blew the dust off the basalt tile.

The groove wasn’t a teleportation trap like the one that took Seana.

It was an Incineration Node.

A spiral array composed of twelve interlocking fire-element runes lay dormant beneath the stone, waiting for foreign kinetic force to ignite its compressed heat. If an ordinary Level 4 or Level 5 cultivator stepped on it unaware, a pillar of ancient flame would turn their legs to ash in a fraction of a second.

Lothe did not attempt to smash the tile.

Smashing a rune was the method of a brute. In a place as interconnected as this palace, destroying one node could trigger a chain reaction that collapsed the entire corridor.

Instead, Lothe dipped his brush into his small vial of Spirit Ink hovering beside him.

With a steady, surgical hand, he painted a single horizontal stroke directly across the spiral’s central convergence point.

[Severance Rune — Inversion Ink]

Sssss...

The faint red glow buried beneath the stone tile flickered. The lines of ancient fire-energy shuddered, finding their pathway blocked by Lothe’s ink, before harmlessly dissipating into the surrounding stone.

Click.

A faint mechanical sound echoed beneath the floor as the trap neutralized itself.

[Array Disarmed: Minor Incineration Node]

[Soul Energy +10]

[Proficiency in Ancient Array Deconstruction slightly increased.]

Lothe stood up without a change in expression.

He didn’t celebrate the minor gain. He simply stepped over the deactivated tile and continued forward, his eyes scanning every crack, every shadow, and every stone carving with relentless precision.

Ten paces.

Twenty paces.

Fifty paces.

The corridor gradually widened, the low ceiling arching upward until it disappeared into a cavernous gloom. The damp smell of moss was replaced by the dry, suffocating scent of incinerated ash and old parchment.

Ahead, the passage opened into an octagonal stone chamber.

In the center of the chamber, illuminated by faint glowing moss clinging to the ceiling, sat an ancient stone platform. Resting atop the platform was a petrified wooden chest, wrapped in thick, rusted iron chains.

And standing before that chest was a guardian.

It was not a beast, nor was it a multi-limbed insect like the blood mites.

It was a humanoid figure roughly two meters tall, carved entirely from dull, cracked obsidian. It had no face—only a smooth, blank surface of polished black stone where its features should have been. In its right hand, it held a massive, double-edged stone broadsword, its tip resting against the floor.

Across its chest and limbs, dozens of pale-yellow runes were engraved, pulsing with a slow, mechanical rhythm.

Thump... thump... thump...

The moment Lothe stepped into the octagonal chamber, the obsidian statue’s head tilted.

CRACK!

A layer of stone dust broke off its shoulders.

The blank face of the statue suddenly split down the middle, revealing a single, glowing azure eye made of polished spirit crystal!

Ping!

[INSPECT]

• Target: Inscribed Slate Warden

• Category: Ancient Stone Construct / Gate Guardian

• Estimated Strength: Early Level 6 Combat Tier

• Key Traits:

- Stone Body: Extreme resistance to physical slashing and blunt trauma.

- Rune-Empowered: Absorbs raw elemental Qi attacks.

• Vulnerability: Runic control nodes located at joint articulations.

"Level 6 construct," Lothe murmured softly, his hand slipping inside his robe.

He didn’t draw his Void Spear.

The weapon was too distinct. If there were foreign cultivators observing through the palace’s formations, or if another human stumbled into this chamber, the spear’s spatial distortion would immediately expose him as the one who had clashed with Situ Li.

To survive this trial, he had to fight like what he was pretending to be:

A scholar of formations.

BOOM!

The Slate Warden moved without warning.

Despite its massive stone frame, the construct launched forward with explosive speed! Its stone broadsword left a trail of screaming wind in its wake as it cleaved downward toward Lothe’s head!

WHOOSH!

Lothe did not panic. He did not even flinch.

His feet shifted half an inch to the right.

Instead of jumping away, he dropped his center of gravity and slid forward beneath the downward arc of the broadsword!

BOOOOOM!

The stone broadsword pulverized the basalt floor where Lothe had been standing a fraction of a second prior, sending sharp stone fragments whistling through the air like shrapnel.

While still sliding beneath the Warden’s massive torso, Lothe flicked his wrist.

Three yellow Spirit Papers flew from his fingertips!

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

The three talismans adhered directly to the Warden’s right knee, left ankle, and the small of its back.

"Array: [Triple Gravity Lock]!" Lothe intoned coldly.

HUMMMMM!

The three talismans flared with deep golden light. The gravitational pull around the Warden’s lower limbs multiplied by twenty in an instant!

The Warden’s forward momentum jerked to a violent halt. Its massive stone knees buckled under the sudden weight, cracking against the floor tiles with a deafening crash.

ROOOOAAAR!

The construct let out a grinding, mechanical screech from its chest. The runes across its obsidian armor flashed violently as its internal power core tried to force its limbs upright through pure brute strength.

It can break the gravity lock in three seconds, Lothe calculated instantly.

Three seconds was an eternity for a master array user.

Lothe didn’t retreat to create distance. He stepped closer, right into the creature’s striking zone.

His left hand held his Earth Spirit Brush, while his right hand pinched a slender, dark-purple talisman.

He didn’t attack the chest where the armor was thickest. Remembering the vulnerability highlighted by his system, his sharp eyes locked onto the Warden’s right shoulder joint—where the obsidian stone was hollowed out to allow the arm to rotate.

Inside that gap, a small, circular blue rune was pulsing rapidly.

The movement node.

"Disrupt," Lothe whispered.

He thrust the purple talisman straight into the shoulder crevice!

[Interference Rune — Runic Short-Circuit]

BZZZZT!

A violent discharge of chaotic purple lightning erupted inside the joint!

The blue rune inside the Warden’s shoulder flickered wildly, the pathways of ancient energy scrambling as Lothe’s talisman forcefully injected inverted Qi into its circuit.

SNAP!

The Warden’s right arm went completely limp!

The massive stone broadsword slipped from its petrified fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone floor.