His head was spinning—
It felt like waking from a long, dreamless sleep.
When Luo Chuan finally came to his senses, he found himself standing on a patch of dark crimson earth.
The air reeked of decay, the stench so sharp it made him frown.
He scanned his surroundings.
A dim, suffocating sky loomed overhead, painted in dull, ashen tones.
Everything about this place radiated oppression.
The jagged mountains in the distance resembled the twisted corpses of ancient giants. Trees—if they could even be called that—stood warped and crooked, as though tormented by time and madness.
With the System's Invincibility Buff active, Luo Chuan could feel it clearly—
This world reeked of destruction.
He was in a swamp now.
Around him, the land was choked with black, viscous sludge and sewage. The surface bubbled slowly, as if the very ground was rotting from within.
Here and there, pale bones drifted in the murky water like forgotten memories.
Luo Chuan sighed.
"Yep… it's this kind of place again."
The ground beneath him suddenly lurched.
The bog began to churn violently, and from its depths emerged a creature straight out of a nightmare.
It had no clear form—its body was made entirely of surging black mud, shifting and reshaping itself constantly. It radiated a blasphemous aura, a madness that clawed at the mind.
As the mud swirled, bits of eroded bone were exposed within its body, like grotesque trophies.
This thing… should not exist.
Its very presence felt like a violation of life itself.
Then it screeched.
The sound didn't travel through the ears, but stabbed directly into the spirit, a psychic screech that would leave most cultivators reeling.
Luo Chuan's expression didn't change.
From what he could sense, this creature was likely around mid-stage Pathseeker.
A dangerous threat to most—
But to him?
Just another bug.
Still, if this entire ruin was crawling with creatures of this level… that would be concerning.
Unless, of course—
"Maybe my luck is just that bad again," he muttered.
Even Pathseeker cultivators would've been caught off guard by that ambush.
Too bad for the monster—
It had chosen the worst possible opponent.
Snap.
A single, crisp snap of Luo Chuan's fingers.
The air shimmered.
The creature disintegrated, vanishing like dust caught in the wind.
For a fleeting moment, a strange, haunting aura faded along with it.
Luo Chuan lowered his hand, thoughtful.
"I should give that move a name… 'Death Snap' sounds pretty cool."
After wiping out the creature, he didn't bother sticking around.
This entire place felt… wrong.
Everything from the air to the soil grated on his senses.
"System," Luo Chuan asked mentally, "that teleportation altar earlier—did everyone get teleported at the same time?"
System: "Negative. To ensure optimal conditions for the host to complete the Rising Stars Mission, the system manually intervened in the transmission process."
Luo Chuan's brow twitched.
"I knew it was you."
He took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to punch something.
"You teleported me directly onto that monster's head. You sure you didn't do that on purpose?"
System: "The host's arrival point was determined randomly."
Luo Chuan: "...Right. Totally random."
He silently gave the system a middle finger in his mind.
Not because he was especially forgiving, but because there was no point arguing with it.
More and more, he felt like the system was getting less reliable… and more sadistic.
The dim sky remained unchanged, and the ground continued to glow with dull crimson and dark brown hues.
Flying above the desolate terrain for over ten minutes, Luo Chuan felt himself growing visually numb.
Same colors. Same terrain. Same depressing vibe.
And strangely enough—
He hadn't encountered a single cultivator this whole time.
That wasn't normal.
An ancient ruin of this scale should have drawn thousands.
"Where is everyone?" he muttered.
Was the ruin simply that massive?
Or had something… separated them?
A chill ran down his spine.
This place was far from ordinary.
And somehow, he knew—
The worst was yet to come.
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