Chapter 77: The Sealed Tomb of the Golden Requiem

Deep within the shifting, misty boundaries of the fifth Hidden Realm, the environment was a stark departure from the humid ravines and dense forests of the other trial zones. Here, the air was unnaturally still, saturated with a thick, hypnotic violet fog that twisted and turned upon itself, casting dizzying visual mirages across the landscape.

This was the **Illusory Mistwood**—an ancient, artificially concealed sector of the trial grounds that was strictly restricted by the Supreme Evolution Academy’s high elders.

Standing in the center of a clearing surrounded by towering, pale-barked illusion trees was **Lady Sera**.

She stood with quiet, regal grace, her silver-white hair swaying gently in the cold breeze. Her flawless face bore its characteristic expression of chilly detachment, though her piercing icy-blue eyes scanned the surrounding fog with intense, focused calculation.

Sera was not merely participating in the academy’s entrance trial like the other common applicants or imperial princes. She carried a covert, generational mission bestowed upon her directly by her father, the ruler of the Frost-Peak Duchy.

Decades ago, when her father had participated in these very entrance trials as a young man, his unique mystic ocular power—the legendary **Secret-Seeking Eyes**—had accidentally brushed against an anomaly in this exact region. He had discovered the hidden, heavily sealed ruins of the **Golden Requiem King**, an ancient monarch who had predated the current empire eras. However, trapped by multi-layered divine formations, ancient defensive runes, and a maze of deadly spatial illusions, her father had been forced to turn back empty-handed.

Through years of relentless research, decoding ancient texts, and mapping stellar alignments, her father had finally unlocked the secret bypass codes to the Requiem King’s burial vault. Knowing that the academy deliberately kept the tomb sealed to prevent outsiders from plundering its legacy, he had secretly arranged for a team of elite peers—young warriors and weapon masters of her exact generation—to be teleported into the trial realm alongside Sera, acting as her personal vanguard.

Behind Sera stood a disciplined unit of six youths, all seventeen-year-old prodigies who had reached the pinnacle of **Rank 3**. They were outfitted in high-grade imperial equipment:

* **Vane the Vanguard**, a hulking brute clad in heavy, interlocking obsidian-steel plate armor that hummed with defensive earth-mana, gripping a massive, jagged tower shield.

* **Lyra the Swift-Blade**, a nimble female duelist wearing form-fitting mithril leather armor and dual-wielding curved wind-element daggers that sparked with static electricity.

* **The Four Elemental Strikers**, brothers who wore matching royal-blue battle robes reinforced with runic silver threads, wielding heavy polearms and long-range caster staffs.

"My Lord," Vane spoke up, his deep voice rumbling as he rested his heavy tower shield against the mossy ground. "The illusion density in this sector is rising. The academy’s protective formations are active. If we step blindly into the mist, we could be scattered across different spatial pockets."

Sera didn’t turn around. She slowly reached into her silver-trimmed pouch and withdrew a pair of specialized, monocle-like optical lenses forged from polished starlight quartz and inscribed with microscopic gold runes. She slipped them smoothly over her bridge, adjusting the frame over her icy-blue eyes.

"You don’t need to worry about the illusions, Vane," Sera’s voice was crisp and calm. "Hand these out to the rest of the team. Wear them immediately."

The team members quickly accepted and fastened the starlight quartz monocles. The moment the lenses locked into place, the swirling violet fog before their eyes instantly shifted. The blinding mirages vanished, replaced by a hyper-clear, glowing schematic of the terrain. Hidden spatial traps, tripwires woven from lethal soul-threads, and phantom-image barriers projected by the academy’s defensive arrays were laid out starkly in bright red outlines.

"Incredible..." Lyra whispered, staring at a floating spatial snare just inches from her face that she would have walked right into. "These lenses sync directly with Lady Sera’s ocular vision. We can see right through the academy’s highest-grade concealment spells."

"Keep your weapons ready," Sera commanded, her own eyes beneath the lenses suddenly flickering as her pupils dilated, turning a brilliant, luminous gold. Her innate **Secret-Seeking Eyes** fully activated, pulsing with a divine resonance that pierced straight through the illusory forest floor, locking onto a faint golden energy trail leading deep underground. "The guardian beasts of the Requiem King’s outer perimeter are approaching. Do not let a single one breach our formation."

*ROAR—!*

As if responding to her words, the ground beneath them trembled violently.

The violet mist parted as a pack of monstrous guardians burst from the shadows. These were not ordinary magical beasts; they were ancient, mutated horrors bred specifically by the academy to patrol the tomb’s perimeter.

First to charge was a **Three-Tailed Phantom Panther**, its body shifting between physical form and spectral smoke, its razor-sharp claws dripping with a paralytic venom that could rot flesh in seconds. Charging right behind it were two **Armored Rock-Trolls**, towering twelve-foot brutes whose skin was encased in thick, diamond-hard crystalline plates, roaring with enough sonic force to shatter eardrums.

"Vane, hold the center!" Lyra shouted, her daggers flashing with blue lightning as she leaped forward.

*CLANG—!*

Vane slammed his heavy tower shield into the ground just as the Phantom Panther lunged. A barrier of brown earth mana erupted from the shield, absorbing the beast’s kinetic impact in a violent shockwave of sparks and shattered stone. The panther hissed, trying to phase into smoke and slip around the defense, but Vane’s heavy metal gauntlet lashed out with crushing brute strength, catching the beast mid-air and slamming it into the dirt.

Simultaneously, the four elemental strikers moved in unison.

"Formation: Frost-Lightning Prison!" the lead caster shouted, slamming his staff onto the ground.

A web of crackling blue electricity intertwined with freezing ice crystals shot across the clearing, wrapping tightly around the legs of the two charging Rock-Trolls. The massive brutes roared in fury, attempting to smash the ice, but the extreme cold froze their crystalline armor solid, locking them in place.

"Leave the rest to me," Lyra muttered coldly.

Her body dissolved into a streak of silver wind. She zipped past the frozen trolls, her dual mithril daggers glowing with concentrated piercing mana. With two precise, lightning-fast thrusts, she drove her blades straight through the soft joints of the trolls’ necks, bypassing their diamond-hard plate armor entirely.

*THUD!*

The massive heads of the Rock-Trolls rolled onto the mossy earth as their bodies dissolved into glowing streams of trial-realm energy.

From above, two more winged beasts—**Sky-Piercer Vultures** with razor-sharp steel feathers—dove down from the treetops like falling spears, aiming directly for Sera’s head.

Sera didn’t even flinch. She didn’t draw a sword or cast an ice spell. She simply raised two fingers, her golden-rimmed Secret-Seeking Eyes tracking the exact trajectory of the incoming vultures down to the millimeter.

*’Weak point: left wing-joint, third vertebra,’* her mind calculated instantly.

"Lyra," Sera commanded smoothly.

Without needing a second prompt, Lyra pivoted in mid-air, hurling her charged electric dagger like a throwing spear. The blade cut through the air with pinpoint accuracy, piercing the exact vertebra Sera had targeted. The Sky-Piercer Vulture shrieked as its wing paralyzed instantly, sending it spiraling out of the sky to crash heavily into a boulder.

Within minutes, the entire pack of ferocious illusion-beasts lay defeated, their blood staining the pale moss of the mistwood.

The vanguard team stood breathing heavily, lowering their weapons as they looked around the quiet clearing. Not a single member of Sera’s squad had sustained a serious injury, thanks to the combination of their high-tier equipment, tactical coordination, and Sera’s infallible ocular guidance.

Sera adjusted the starlight monocle on her face, her glowing gold eyes returning to their natural, piercing icy-blue as the divine resonance subsided. She looked past the clearing, staring at a massive, stone-carved gateway half-buried beneath ancient vines and protected by a shimmering wall of golden runes.

Beyond that gate lay the entrance to the **Golden Requiem King’s Tomb**.

Sera stepped forward, her starlight monocle adjusting automatically as she finally stood before the massive burial gateway of the Golden Requiem King.

The tomb entrance was a breathtaking and ominous sight. Carved directly into the sheer face of a black obsidian cliffside, the double doors were forged from a dark, non-reflective metal encrusted with ancient, glowing golden runes. These runes weren’t static; they writhed and pulsed like living serpents along the surface, weaving intricate geometrical formations that radiated a crushing, suppressive gravitational field. Interlocking divine seals and spiritual chains—etched by pre-cataclysm masters to permanently entomb the monarch’s secrets—shimmered with a faint, iridescent light whenever the ambient mist brushed against them.

Sera stared at the complex runic arrays, her piercing icy-blue eyes analyzing the microscopic flows of spiritual energy weaving through the gate.

"It will take some time," Sera spoke calmly, her voice carrying absolute authority as she addressed her vanguard team. "I need to decode these primary runes, realign the secondary energy formations, and precisely adjust the formation-breaking talismans at the exact node intersections. Guard the perimeter and make sure nothing disturbs me while I work."

"Yes, Lady Sera!" the six elite Rank 3 warriors chorused in unison, instantly spreading out into a defensive semicircle around the clearing, gripping their advanced weapons and raising their shields.

However, none of them—not Sera, nor the heavily armed vanguard team—had any inkling that they were under absolute surveillance.

Perched high on the gnarled branch of an ancient ghost-tree directly above the burial site, completely submerged in an absolute shadow-fold, a solitary figure stood motionless.

It was **Ethan**.

His dark grey cloak blended seamlessly with the swirling violet mist, and his crimson-tinged eyes gazed down at Sera and the sealed tomb with quiet, calculating amusement. Through his synchronized shadow-clones and blood-magic perception, he watched every movement, analyzing the golden runes and the precise methods Sera was using to dismantle the ancient formations.

*’The Golden Requiem King...’* Ethan thought, a cold, knowing smile curving his lips. *’Even the academy’s high elders believe this tomb is completely locked away. They have no idea that the heir of the Frost-Peak Duchy has spent years cracking the code.’*

He rested his hand casually against his cloak, making no move to interrupt or expose them.