Eternal Thief

When Ace saw those traces, he knew whoever it was had tried to conceal their path, but the death-saturated environment made perfect concealment impossible. Every action disturbed the delicate balance of accumulated laws.

With great curiosity, Ace followed the trail for several kilometers until the terrain subtly shifted.

The ground sloped downward, jagged rock formations rose on both sides, narrowing into what looked like a shallow canyon. Thick, gray-black mist pooled ahead, heavy and unmoving, obscuring vision beyond a few dozen meters.

“This place…” Ace murmured softly.

Unlike the open wasteland, this area felt hidden, as if deliberately carved out or shielded by natural formations. The aura of death and killing intent here was even denser, coiling sluggishly within the mist like something alive.

As Ace stepped closer to the edge, he saw the trail led straight into it.

A trench-like ravine stretched downward, its walls steep and uneven, riddled with cracks and hollow cavities. The mist clung tightly within, swallowing sound and light alike. From below, faint fluctuations echoed upward, distorted and unclear.

Ace’s eyes glinted with a mix of caution and curiosity.

’Could it be someone found something worth hiding?’ He thought. ’Or something they don’t want others to notice? It shouldn’t be the former because the Evernight Council won’t leave anything precious for others.

’But these traces of activities and this strange place suggest there should be someone else living here. Since it couldn’t be a participant as they won’t get anything by going through such trouble, does this mean this trial ground has indigenous beings?’

The moment this thought came into Ace’s mind, he became more curious about this place.

After all, this was a place selected by the Evernight Council as a trial ground, and one needed to pass the Evernight Sanctuary Gate to enter here, or the gate was a teleportation point; either way, this ancient battlefield filled with killing intent and death was worth investigating.

Ace glanced at the live fate map, and the terrain was still dyed in crimson, but he could see clearly that the path ahead was divided into multiple sections, which seemed quite strange for a ravine.

Without hesitation, Ace slipped into the mist-filled trench, his figure dissolving into the gray haze as the death-saturated air closed in around him.

As Ace descended deeper into the ravine, the mist thickened until it became almost tangible. He also felt the mist cling to his skin, seep into his clothes, and coil around his limbs like a living thing.

The air carried a sharp, bitter stench, layered with decay and madness. This was not ordinary fog. It was miasma, saturated with killing intent and death aura to such an extreme degree that even breathing felt hostile.

Ace’s brows furrowed slightly, ’The mist is corrosive. Not to flesh alone, but to Qi itself. Almost like a higher grade of Qi Radiation, but somewhat different, or it could be the same, since I haven’t encountered Qi radiation after ascending to the Second Heaven….’

Ace was aware of what Qi radiation could do to a cultivator, while this miasma seemed to be even worse, as any cultivator relying on circulating natural Qi would find their protective layers eroding steadily, like metal submerged in acid. Once that protection failed, the miasma would invade their meridians, corrode their foundation, and poison their very soul.

Even those with strong physiques would not last long as the miasma devoured Qi faster than it could be replenished, and worse still, there was no trace of natural Qi in the surroundings.

The land was completely dead. Trying to refine this air would not only be futile but also suicidal.

Anyone foolish enough to do so would either go mad from the overwhelming killing intent or die outright as the corrupted Qi tore them apart from the inside.

’This place would kill most Abyssal Guardians!’ Ace concluded.

Yet for Ace, it was different. Just his Universal Physique absorbed the corrosive pressure effortlessly, his body adapting instinctively as if this environment were merely harsh weather.

Meanwhile, his Primordial Foundation functioned like an ancient furnace, refining and neutralizing every invasive trace of foreign and harmful Qi before it could cause harm.

Ace moved forward calmly, and his pace was unhurried, though his vigilance did not lessen in the slightest.

He activated his Law Thief Sense, letting it spread outward in thin, invisible threads. Normally, this sense allowed him to perceive disturbances in laws, traces of Qi circulation, hidden formations, and even lingering intent.

But here, there was nothing. Only jagged stone walls, uneven ground, and a gloomy, ghostly corridor stretching endlessly ahead.

The canyon walls were scarred with deep grooves and fractures, as if something massive had clawed its way through long ago. Bones were embedded directly into the rock in places, fused there by time and death.

More troubling still, the traces he had been following were gone; completely erased without any residual aura or disturbed killing intent, and whoever had entered this place had simply ceased to exist.

It was as if the miasma erased it all, like a natural protection against invaders like Ace. At this moment, Ace slowed his steps.

’Either they discovered a way to perfectly erase their presence,’ he thought, ’or this place itself swallowed the evidence.’

Neither option was comforting. But he continued deeper, the ravine gradually narrowing until the walls on either side were barely ten meters apart.

The mist here grew darker, almost black, and faint whispers seemed to echo at the edge of his hearing. They were not voices, but fragmented emotions like rage, despair, madness, left behind by countless deaths, and now turned into pure corrosion.

However, Ace simply ignored them because they couldn’t affect him after he had mastered the Law of Sin.

Suddenly, he stopped as his gaze snapped to the Live Fate Map.

“This…”

His pupils constricted because on the map, the space ahead was no longer marked as a solid wall; instead, a pathway appeared.

A narrow passage branching off to the right, cutting straight through what his eyes clearly told him was solid stone.

Ace slowly raised his head and stared at the canyon wall, but there was nothing there. No crack, distortion, or fluctuation of Qi or law. Even his Law Thief Sense detected nothing unusual.

“…Interesting,” Ace muttered.

The fact that even his thief sense failed to detect the pathway meant only two possibilities. Either the concealment was based on laws far above his current cultivation, or this path did not exist in a conventional sense at all.

Yet the Live Fate Map did not lie, and Ace’s eyes narrowed.

’If my cultivation were higher, I might’ve sensed it directly,’ he reasoned. ’But since it’s already revealed itself… there’s no reason to hesitate!’

He stepped toward the wall, and the moment his foot crossed an invisible boundary, the world shifted!