104 Black Stele

"Fight," the elder shouted. The young man immediately got into a fighting stance with a blue shining sword in his hand. Alex took out his new unnamed sword as well.

Not knowing what exactly to do, he waited for his opponent to start the fight. As soon as his opponent charged at him, he started using his Focus mode.

Suddenly, everything around him started to slow down. The blue light from his opponent's sword got much brighter as he saw both fury and despair in the young man's eyes.

Alex easily sidestepped the thrust and used the flat side of the blade to hit the man on his back. With a cultivation base higher than his opponent by an entire minor realm, his force was enough to make the man fly out of the 20-meter wide stage.

Alex looked at where the man had gone to and turned around to look at the elder. He didn't know the rules to a fight and was wondering if going out of the stage was considered a loss or not.

Once the elder gave the signal for the match over, he walked over to the elder and got the badge with the number '275' on it. The other man was already standing up and walking towards the elder to get his new badge. Seeing how low it was, he immediately got in the line outside the fighting hall to fight some higher opponents.

Alex on the other hand didn't know what to do. He didn't want to immediately fight after coming to his new sect, so instead, he walked around the sect looking at the different buildings.

There weren't a lot of buildings. There were only 4 buildings there, aside from the Fighting hall. They were a Training hall, a library, a disciple hall, and surprisingly a production hall. He hadn't expected a sect focused on fighting to have a dedicated hall for productions. He learned that one could produce talismans, artifacts, and pills in there.

'At least there is a place here where I can practice alchemy,' he thought.

Almost all of the other places in the sect crater were just fighting ground, except for one. At the very center of the crater, there was a massive black stele with texts on it that shined iridescent colors.

Alex tried to read the texts but realized he couldn't understand them. The text didn't belong to the language the mortals used or the ones cultivators used. 'Can it be?' he wondered and compared the text to the one in the Heaven's Impact book. They were the same.

"What a coincidence. I hope this is another spiritual technique." This type of text required him to read with a spiritual sense for some reason, so he decided to do so. He tried to use his spiritual sense to read it but he suddenly felt something attack his spiritual sea. He immediately brought back his sense and crouched on the ground with his hands around his head.

It hurt him like crazy. "Arghhh… What was that?" he thought. It took a while before the pain in his mind subsided and he realized he had lost all of his Spiritual Sea. It was totally dry.

It would take some time to restore, but if he hadn't reeled back his senses in time, he would have taken some real damage. He felt his forehead brimming with sweat as the fear started to die down finally. He looked towards the black stele once more with some remaining fear in his eyes.

'Screw this,' he thought and went back to his new home. It took him a while to return back to house number 275. Once he finally did reach it, he was confused as to how to open the doors.

He looked around the doors for a second but didn't find anything. So, he started using his spiritual sense to check for any locks. Suddenly, he noticed a formation plate inside the wooden board outside the house.

'That looks similar to the one on my badge,' he thought. He took out his badge and placed it near the wooden board.

KADAK

The door opened. He walked inside with his badge and pushed the door back and heard it lock back. Now that he was inside, everything inside started lighting up.

The house was fancy with multiple lanterns, but in the end, it was still just a single room. He sat on the bed and looked up. Suddenly, his eyes went wide.

On the wall in front of him, there was a large wooden board that had many names on it. He counted them and realized there were exactly 274 names in there. 'Everyone that is higher than me?' he wondered.

He memorized the names starting from the top. When he looked at the name on the top, he was surprised. "Well, I shouldn't be, but it's still surprising."

The name in the first place was Luo Mei. He also found another name he knew, Meng Yun, around 112. 'Wasn't she in the 7th realm of Bone Tempering back when I met her? Wonder how much stronger she has gotten.' He thought.

"hmm..." he was shocked to see a few names that just didn't match the other names in the list. "Lucy, David, Adam... " he started reading a few more names in the list.

"These are Players? Wow, I didn't think I would meet one here. Hong Wu sect has none of them." He was finally in a sect with players.

It was time for his dinner, so he logged out to get some food. He returned back to the game shortly after and realized something was different in the room.

The wooden board that had names on it was now blank with a bit of dim light around its edges. There was a black circle on its bottom left corner about the size of a small bowl.

'What's that?' he decided to check with his spiritual sense. Suddenly, he realized that behind the wooden wall was a massive metal plate that has the formation scribbles on it. While next to it was a smaller, circular metal plate, very similar to the one outside.

He walked up to the board and placed his badge on it. Suddenly, the light around the wooden board died and a bunch of texts started appearing on the wooden board.

"Come to the top of the mountain, behind the sect leader's building. Try not to be seen by other disciples if possible, since I want your existence to be a secret for now. I will wait for you— Master"