Rise of the Alchemy God

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Long Jian had come mainly to inform his father of the appearance of this strange and very powerful creature.

The appearance of such a high-level being was cause for concern, so he had to inform his father.

He was certain that with his father's level of cultivation, he had already sensed this figure's appearance and was just waiting for him to return to report what he had discovered.

But the problem was that he hadn't learned much about this creature.

Those who had summoned it were dead, and the Phoenix Sect didn't seem to know much about these people or the creature in general.

The only clue he had was that wooden sword he had picked up from the battlefield.

He had come in the hope that by examining the sword, infected with the same energy as the monster, his father could uncover something, and indeed, he did.

But...

"It seems they've found a way to weaken the barrier," his father said, his face expressionless, but his eyes hiding an indistinguishable emotion.

Hm?

Upon hearing these words, the prince couldn't help but frown, asking:

"Father, do you know something about this?"

He questioned his father's figure in front of him, seated on the throne while examining the object floating a short distance from him.

This was Long Hao, the second emperor of the Long Empire, and the most powerful figure on the continent.

Currently, there were five people on the continent who had reached the Fifth Stage of the Mortal Realm, mainly the three masters of the three ruling sects of the Long Empire, Prince Jian, and Long Hao.

If Prince Jian was the weakest among these five experts, then his father was the strongest.

Had it not been for him uniting the other Fifth Stage experts under his empire, the continent would be divided among various powers rather than under one empire.

The prince had no idea how old his father was, but he could tell he had lived more than ten times his own years.

Currently, Long Jian was over 150 years old, relatively young for high-level cultivators, especially for those at his level.

With his current cultivation base, Long Jian could comfortably live for more than a thousand years, so while he had lived far longer than most ordinary people, he was still considered very young.

The Long Empire's history spanned only a few thousand years, and his father was barely its second emperor.

This was because his father had already lived for over a thousand years.

He could be considered one of the oldest beings in the empire, if not the oldest.

Yet despite this, his appearance didn't show more than 30 years of age.

Long Hao, upon hearing his son's question, contemplated something for a few seconds, then rising from his throne, he walked to one side of the hall, telling the prince to follow him.

Long Jian didn't ask questions and followed his father.

In no time, they passed from the throne room to walking in a long corridor beneath the castle, dimly lit by the flickering flames of torches on the walls.

The prince wanted to ask where they were going, but decided to hold back his questions and continued walking.

He had to admit the corridor was unusually long.

They had been walking for several minutes, yet there was still no end in sight.

Moreover, something felt strange about it.

With his enhanced vision, he should be able to see hundreds of meters ahead, yet when he tried, he saw nothing but complete darkness.

He didn't believe the corridor was so long that it was impossible to see the end, even after using his enhanced sight, so he could only assume some sort of spell was cast on it.

This made the corridor all the more mysterious.

He wondered how he had never noticed the existence of this passage in all his years living in the imperial palace.

After a while, the prince finally saw the end of the corridor.

The total time it had taken to reach this point was no more than ten minutes, confirming the prince's suspicion that there was some kind of formation altering their perception in the corridor.

At the end of the corridor, there was a large door made of what seemed to be bronze, with some barely visible engravings on it.

But these details weren't what stood out most to the prince.

What was strange about the door was that there didn't seem to be any lock to open it, nor the central line that should divide it into two parts.

It couldn't be a single door given its large size and arched shape.

His father, however, didn't seem bothered by these inconsistencies and simply approached the door calmly.

Once he reached it, he extended one of his hands and placed it on the metallic surface, right in the center.

As soon as he touched it, a circle appeared on the door's surface, from which several streaks of light shot out, moving irregularly toward different points on the door.

Shortly after, some symbols, unfamiliar to the prince, appeared where the light had touched.

These symbols, which had appeared out of nowhere, glowed in a faint yellow hue and came to life, detaching from the door's surface and floating around the circle where his father's hand rested.

As the various symbols, which seemed to be runes, circled the area, his father appeared to channel a bit of his spiritual energy into the door, and instantly, the symbols stopped moving and settled in place.

A straight line, starting from where his father had placed his hand, split the massive door in two.

Before the prince could understand what was happening, the door began to move, splitting in two and slowly opening.

Within seconds, the door was fully open, and his father had already stepped inside.

Seeing this, the prince followed.

As soon as he entered, he noticed that the door led to a spacious room.

While not as large as some rooms in the castle, it was still big enough to hold hundreds of people.

The room was rather dark, but soon, torches hanging on various points of the walls began lighting up, and in no time, the room was fully illuminated.

The prince paid little attention to this and instead immediately noticed that the walls were covered in various frescoes, seemingly depicting different scenes.

If that had been all, he wouldn't have given it much thought and would have focused on the platform that appeared to be at the far end of the room.

But as he took a quick glance at the various depictions, he frowned.

'What?'

Among the many frescoes, only seven stood out to his view.

They were seven circles, each with a diameter of about two meters, scattered around the room, and in each of these, there seemed to be different images.

The reason Long Jian's attention was drawn to these seven frescoes in particular was not due to their peculiar feature of being enclosed in circles, but because of the images, some familiar and some not.

The first one he saw was a depiction of an irregular piece of land set against what seemed to be a vast blue distance.

Initially, he thought it was simply a depiction of some island in the sea, but noticing some details of the piece of land, he had to reconsider.

'Why does it resemble our continent?'

A part of the piece of land resembled the characteristics of the continent where they lived, but the rest of the land did not.

For a moment, he considered a possibility, but then dismissed the thought.

'No, it's not possible. If there were other lands, we would have known,' he thought.

Infact, aside from their continent, no one had ever sighted the existence of other lands.

Many over the years had tried to travel the seas to see if there was anything beyond their continent, but none of those who departed ever returned.

Over time, it began to be thought that the sea was too dangerous, so people stopped trying.

Especially after even powerful cultivators tried to travel, only to never return.

The prince himself, over his many years, had wondered what lay beyond the sea.

Once he reached the fifth stage, he instinctively felt it was dangerous to travel over the sea.

It wasn't dangerous if one stayed near the continent, but once beyond a certain distance, one was sure never to return.

In a sense, they were trapped on this land, not knowing if there were other lands beyond their own.

But the painting before the prince made him think there could be others, but they didn't seem to be separate continents, rather, a single vast land that seemed to include their own continent as well.

Moving from this image, he went on to the rest of the frescoes, and just like the first one, the rest depicted scenes that seemed to be a mix of reality and what seemed entirely unfamiliar.

Some showed two armies fighting, one human, and the other beasts of all kinds.

Another appeared to depict a gory scene where several mutilated bodies of people and beasts were scattered everywhere, with some survivors seeming to be in agony, their faces completely obscured.

The more the prince looked from image to image, the more he felt something was off about these representations.

In the end, he could no longer resist and turning to address his father, who was at one end of the room, he couldn't help but ask:

"What is this place?"

The emperor, standing before a raised platform about a meter high, kept staring at an object elongated on it as he answered.

"This is the room where the only piece of history about the forgotten past of our continent is kept," he said, as he gestured with his hand to float the wooden sword forward and place it on the raised platform.

The prince, noticing this, was able to see the other object present on the platform, and as soon as he saw it, he couldn't help but frown:

"A sword sheath?"

Indeed, the object on the platform resembled a sword sheath, strangely matching the dimensions of the wooden sword placed beside it.

Seeing this, the questions in the prince's mind grew more numerous.

The more time he spent in this place, the more unanswered questions he had.

After placing the sword on the platform, the emperor observed both objects for a few seconds, contemplating something in his mind, then diverted his gaze from them and turned to his son.

"See, there are some important events from our past that were not recorded in books due to certain circumstances, and to ensure they were not completely forgotten,

my father had this room built so that at least future generations of our family could remember these events."

He said, looking at the frescoes on the walls, more specifically, at the seven scenes the prince had just examined.

"He had done it not only to preserve the memory of certain past events...

but also to warn us of a catastrophe that would inevitably one day strike our continent."

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