Second Patriarch: Rise Of The Liu Clan

Liu Zhu didn't fall far after the stone slid open, coming to a stop after a couple dozen feet. Falling from this height hurt a bit, but since even a mortal might survive the fall without wounds, it wasn't even close to a problem for a cultivator. As he stood up, regaining his bearings, he noticed that the opening he'd come through was slowly closing again. "Hopefully I can still leave with that closed." Liu Zhu paused for a moment before worriedly muttering. "F.u.c.k, could I have even reached that high if it was open?" After the entrance closed he began to look around the room. It was a circular chamber made of the same blue stone as the entrance. The floor was covered in more abstract carvings, and murals covered the length of the wall, although they were caked in dust and impossible to make out completely. At one end of the room was a stone pedestal with a couple of small objects on it.

When Liu Zhu got up he stirred up a cloud of dust, making him involuntarily cough "This place must have been untouched for ages." First he went towards the wall opposite of the pedestal, hoping to clear off some of the dust that had gathered and take a look at the murals covering the wall first. He had no idea why this chamber was built, or by who, so it only seemed prudent to try to discern that before touching what appeared to be the only important thing in the room.

As Liu Zhu cleared the dust from the walls, coughing all the while, he was able to make out the murals covering the wall. They were all carved into the stone, and to his relief, formed a comprehensible picture when the dust that had been previously caked on was removed. The first section that Liu Zhu cleared of dust was a picture of a giant fish. Surrounding it were small fishing boats full of people, bowing towards it, along with many smaller sea creatures seemingly showing reverence towards the giant fish, facing towards it. To the immediate right of it was a smaller carving of the fishing boats coming back, their boats and nets laden with fish. Liu Zhu quietly muttered to himself as he moved to clear off the next section of the mural. "Some sort of mythological creature? Maybe a god this area used to worship?"

Dusting off the walls filled the area with even more dust, but at this point Liu Zhu had already become accustomed to it. In total the mural covering the wall was split into nine sections. Eight of them were cleared off, but Liu Zhu had ignored the last one, as it was directly behind the stone pedestal. Each carving depicted some sort of massive animal, and all of them were being worshipped by humans. He wasn't able to determine the exact meaning of this, but Liu Zhu's best guess was that some tribe near here had made these creatures up as either gods or personifications of nature, and that this chamber was some sort of temple built for them, long since abandoned.

This conclusion left a few questions left for him to mull over, namely "Why is everything so simple if it's a temple?", "What's the force surrounding this place?", "Why could I enter when others couldn't?", and "Why would a beast horde originate from this place?" The first question didn't seem to be very important either way, so Liu Zhu just decided that whatever tribe made the place must have preferred a minimalistic style and left it at that. The second and third were definitely interconnected, and figuring out one question would probably reveal the answer to the other. The fourth might also be related, but since figuring out the answer to that seemed impossible for the time being, Liu Zhu tried to figure out what was different from him than others for the time being. His defense, stamina, and physical strength were all above average for his cultivation. Especially the first two factors. Still, there were people with a cultivation far beyond his here. If it had anything directly to do with that, then they would've been able to come up here first.

After a couple of minutes, Liu Zhu came to the only reasonable conclusion he could: It was because of his vitality. He didn't have much worldly experience, but no matter what someone told him, he wouldn't believe that out of a few hundred randomly chosen cultivators in the Northern Wastes, one of them would have as much vitality flowing through their blood as he did. Since the lucky chance he'd experienced in the cave, his body had been full of enough vitality to rapidly speed up the recovery of his wounds, and possibly speed up his cultivation. Soul Foundation cultivators could probably recover from their wounds as quickly as he did, but they had more than just their body's vitality aiding them. That meant that based on his guesses, his vitality matched, or possibly surpassed that of a Soul Foundation cultivator. If there was any one factor, it had to be related to that.

If the restriction surrounding the hill was related to vitality, that would explain a lot. Body Tempering improved the strength and vitality in one's body. The increase in physical abilities was more evident, but the vitality that improved one's resistance to disease and ability to heal also went up, although it was more dependent on each individual than one's cultivation. This matched how people had been spread out across the hillside- roughly based on cultivation, but with many exceptions. The concept of vitality being improved in Body Tempering was something that Liu Zhu had heard a long time ago, and the full depth of it wasn't necessary knowledge for the average cultivator, so it'd taken him a bit to think of, but it made sense. This realization led to the new question of why this restriction existed in the first place, but maybe it was just set up to keep people away from this place of worship. At this point there wasn't a way to narrow it down by much, so it wasn't worth wondering about.

Now that Liu Zhu had come up with plausible answers to most of his questions, that simply left the question of why a beast horde would have originated from this place, which he had no way of finding out for the time being. Given that the only thing left of interest in the place was the pedestal, Liu Zhu sat down and began examining it from a distance. He would have gone towards it immediately, but since the place was likely some sort of temple, that meant that whatever was on the pedestal was probably an offering. Offerings could be booby-trapped. There was also the chance of stealing getting him cursed by some sort of god, but as far as those things went Liu Zhu wasn't particularly concerned. There was a decent chance of there being some god, whether they were an incomprehensible martial artist who had overcome the laws of the universe and become immortal, or some other sort of being. What there wasn't any chance of was a tiny tribe in the Northern Wastes coming into contact with them and then worshipping him somewhere like this.

With these concerns in mind, Liu Zhu grabbed a stray rock from the ground and threw it towards the objects on the pedestal, curious what would happen. If there were any traps then there was a good chance they'd only be set off near the pedestal, and he'd be safe by standing across the room. Still, Liu Zhu prepared to leap for the ceiling as he watched the rock hit whatever was on the pedestal. Much to his surprise, besides some dust being thrown into the air, nothing happened. No booby-traps were set off, nothing cursed him, and the objects didn't do anything in response. His worries lessened at this point, and he proceeded to throw more stray rocks and pebbles at the objects, forcing them off of the pedestal. He did this in case there was a trap activated by the weight of the objects. To his continued surprise, there was no such things. The now dustless objects fell to the ground without any fanfare, and Liu Zhu, now unconcerned, curiously went to examine them more closely.