The Supreme God of Martial Arts

Austin stepped on the altar to collect those spiritual energy crystals, when a sudden dizziness overpowered him. For the next few moments, the whole world around him seemed to sway before his eyes as if he was caught in a mist whirling slowly.

'Is it... Is it a teleportation array?' Austin wondered. Everything around him seemed to be swirling and he was unable to keep a clear head.

Trying hard to focus, Austin suddenly realized that the whole altar was actually a teleportation array, and he had accidentally activated it.

Austin groaned inwardly at this fact. His doubts seemed true as the altar looked very ancient. Quite understandably no one had ever talked about it or knew its story since it was deserted from a long tago. He was worried. God only knew where this array was taking him.

Austin couldn't ignore his fear of the unknown. Even though he was a powerful cultivator, he still got butterflies in his stomach while he was being transported. The idea of not knowing where he would land terrified him. He could only wish that his destination would not be a dangerous place.

For moments which seemed like forever, he kept spinning and shaking. Finally he landed on his feet and regained his balance.

Just when he was back to his senses, the passageway of the teleportation array whooshed and closed behind him. Now there seemed to be no way for him to go back. Austin sighed and looked ahead. He found that he was in a dark and spooky place, which was enveloped with an eerie green light. This seemed no place for the living. There was a strange cold wind blowing incessantly.

Ghastly cries and screams seemed to be coming from the distance. Austin shuddered listening to those voices and feeling the vibes he got from the place.

‘Damn it!" he cursed in his mind. 'Don't tell me, I've been brought to hell.’ He felt utterly uncomfortable and apprehensive.

"Where are we now, master?" Violet's voice rose in Austin's Soul Sea. Although she was kept in the Illusion Bead, she could sense almost everything happening outside. She was eager to know where they had been brought by the teleportation array.

"lI don't have a clue," Austin replied. "Don't cout now. You are not strong enough," he added.

Austin moved around and took a good look at the place.

The light was quite dim, barely bright enough to let Austin see things around. He paid attention to the surrounding and realized that it was filled with vital energy, and the density was incredibly high. It was high to the extent that it started to form white clouds and spread around like thick floating cotton.

"Gee, this is strange! | bet there is more vital energy than air in this place," Austin exclaimed in surprise.

He had been to many places in the PrMartial World, but none of them had held this amount of vital energy. He had never been to anywhere which could be compared to the place where he had just landed.

It was quite clear that no medicinal pills or even vital energy crystals were needed if one wished to improve his cultivation base here. All he had to do was to absorb as much vital energy as possible from there, and wait for the breakthrough to happen.

It was truly an ideal place for practicing and refining if one didn't care about its weird atmosphere.

Austin unleashed his spiritual sense to go as far as it could so that he could investigate more about the mysterious place. After a while, a look of surprise cover his face.

He was getting more ideas about this strange place. First, there was vital energy in literally every corner of the place, like air which filled a balloon.

Second, it seemed to be an isolated and closed space which was about the size of a town. It was about 100 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide, which by no means was a small area.

Besides, there were thick stone walls standing on the edge of that place. There were also stones about a dozen meters above Austin's head which made up the ceiling. When he looked down, he realized that the floor too was made of the skind of stones. It was strange but it seemed to him like he was standing in a huge box of stones.

A stone box about the size of a town. This was really mysterious! The next thing he discovered was that the place was guarded by various dangerous spell formations, restrictions and traps, which gave off a smell of hidden force and killing intent. One would have to face ruthless and horrible attacks if one unfortunately touched them.

The last thing he found there was terribly creepy. It gave him shivers. There were a large number of coffins placed in the stony space. They were scattered around like stars in the dark night sky, but in a spine-chilling way.

One by one, and row after row, there were coffins of huge size. These coffins were placed on the cold ground. It would be fair to say that the place was densely packed with those coffins. All those countless coffins.

But that wasn't the end of it all. There were other things too. The ground beside the coffins was littered with bones, probably it would be right to say there were skeletons. The flesh had already dropped from them and rotted. Clothes that once covered them had now turned into dust, except for a few stranded, tattered pieces clinging onto the bones.

From the look of them all, Austin could make out that those skeletons belonged to people who had died there a long tago. Most of them were still in their skeletal shape, but one could imagine that they had long been weathered. The slightest touch would crumble the bones into powder.

Piles of bleached human bones scattering on the ground, tens of thousands of huge coffins lying silently were enough to give anyone the chills. None of these lifeless things made any sound. The whole space was filled with the air of death. Standing among these filled Austin with uneasiness and even depression. He suddenly felt like he no longer belonged to the living world.

Feeling out of place, he looked more carefully at his surroundings and observed that those coffins were of different weird shapes and colors. That added to the eeriness of the place.

Now Austin understood what exactly created the horrible, "ghostly" atmosphere that he felt when he had set foot there after being teleported by the array. With so many dead things around, the air would be cold and spooky. There was not a trace of life.

Austin reflected how the dense vital energy was not the only strange thing in this place. There was the looming shadow of death, cast by all the bones and coffins.

It was literally a huge and secluded tomb. A tomb where large amounts of vital energy was enclosed in the shroud of death. These two coexisted and achieved a perfect but alarming balance.

Slowly, Austin gathered svital energy to wrap himself up. He was trying to protect himself from any potential attacks. He looked around, and his eyes fell on the nearest coffin. Carefully he walked towards it. He needed to find out more about it.

Soon, he found himself standing in front of the big and spooky eternity box.

He was surprised to find that the lid of the coffin had been left unlocked. For sreason, he didn't expect it to be sealed with any nails. Slowly and carefully, he released a rather gentle vital force to remove the lid. It moved. Discreetly, he lifted the lid up and placed it down on the floor, making the slightest sound possible.

Having done that, Austin took a deep breath. The hair on the back of his neck rose, as he was strangely nervous. He didn't know why, but instinctively he had a sense that he was in dire crisis in this dead space.

He got closer to the open coffin and looked into it. His heart was pounding harder in his chest. There it was! The dead body of a middle-aged man lying peacefully in the box. It was well-dressed. Looking at the body, Austin thought that the man might not have been very old when he died.

He raised his eyebrows in thought. 'Who was he?' He wondered and looked for more details to figure it out. Just then, a small jade badge caught his attention. It was placed on the chest of the body, and had a little dust on its surface.

Swords seemed to be engraved on it. Austin tried to read the words but it was not easy for him.

Intrigued, Austin reached out and took the jade badge out of the coffin.

He held his breath as he pulled the badge up as gently as he could. He didn't want his gentle pull to disturb the ancient corpse.

But that wasn't to happen! No sooner had the jade badge left the body than Austin heard a small crackle.

The next thing he knew, the exquisite clothes that had been covering the body crumbled to dust. That was not all. The skeleton collapsed and reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye as if a hidden bomb had exploded within.

Austin was stunned. For a moment, he didn't dare to move. He was left shocked by what he had seen. Like other dead bodies in that place, the one he had seen crumble, had spent ages in darkness and becfragile. Naturally, it would turn to dust by the slightest touch or disturbance.

Austin turned himself away to avoid the bone dust that was filling up the air. He started to examine the jade badge carefully.

As expected, a few words were carved on it. They were too small but still recognizable.

Austin read it to himself. It said, "Here lies the third Elder of the Veritable Demon Sect, Eddie". Austin could read the date of his death that was engraved below the name.

'Veritable Demon Sect?" Austin read those words again. The nrang a bell. He had cacross it somewhere.

Suddenly, he remembered that Marwell had once mentioned to him about the Veritable Demon Sect when he was introducing all the sects of the Heavenly Dragon Holy Kingdom to him.

Marwell had said that the Veritable Demon Sect was good at transforming human bodies to great strengths and make ferocious men. Those men could be as strong and cruel as beasts, and death was what could be expected if they were in on you in a fight.

Thus, the Veritable Demon Sect was known as the factory of formidable transformed humans in the Heavenly Dragon Holy Kingdom.

And the fact that it was one of the five top sects in that kingdom meant that it had lived up to its name. It was not just stories and myths, they indeed must have been so powerful to leave a mark in the kingdom.

"That's strange! How cthe Elder of the Veritable Demon Sect was laid to rest here? What exactly is this place?" Questions whirled in Austin's mind after he read those words on the jade badge.

He looked at it again. This this eyes were focusing on the date of the Elder's death. He was able to make out something. After a simple calculation, he was shocked to the core.

From what was written on the badge, and if he was not mistaken, the so-called third Elder of the Veritable Demon Sect had died seven hundred years ago!