THE DAWN OF THE NEW WORLD

"Ashura of the Six Paths," Hao Xuan quietly muttered under his breath, "I met him in that mountain by complete coincidence and ended up with such a powerful technique. Although I'm sure he never thought I would be able to have any success with it simply because I lacked the resources and the foundation needed to practice it."

,m "But now that I have that skill I can use it with this body, one which has nearly inexhaustible vitality and the foundation to bring forth its true power."

*Bang*

A punch landed on a poor grunt's head blowing it away completely. It was quickly followed by a triple kick and an elbow strike that was sharper than most swords, finishing off the remaining grunts in the near vicinity.

Hao Xuan paused to look around and strangely enough found himself standing alone in the old forest.

The grunts had stopped coming at him.

He could see a few figures running away in the darkness while unsuccessfully trying to hide behind the trees for cover.

"Are they scared?" he wondered but quickly shook his head, "No that's not likely. Then....the Synapse has given up? Or is it focusing on the city again? Either way, I'm almost there. I'll see for myself soon."

Without any of the grunts to slow him down Hao Xuan sprinted towards the source of the psychic force that was controlling the grunts and soon enough he was able to feel its presence even without consciously trying to sense it.

It was everywhere. The very air felt heavy, it felt alive as if it was trying to poke and prob at him.

Hao Xuan quickly wrapped himself in a layer of Chaos Qi which kept it at bay.

But the farther he moved the stronger that presence became until he felt like there were numerous pairs of eyes watching him from every direction. And in the silent darkness of the old forest, it was more than a little eerie.

He kept jumping from one tree to the next until there were none left and the forest that seemed like it would go on for an eternity came to an abrupt end.

Hao Xuan jumped down and landed on the ground that had turned into a marshland. He looked up to stare at the massive tear in the sky. It looked like an eye that was weeping black tears.

Only those black tears were the bodies of grunts and other corrupted spawn being hurled down from the surface world.

The mud came up to his ankles bringing with it a stark coldness. Hao Xuan kneeled down to inspect the ground. It was definitely mud but the liquid that created it was not water.

It was an odorless pitch black liquid. But its consistency was not foreign to him.

"This the blood of the grunts."

He looked left and right to see that the marshland's outer boundary went on further than he could see and it was expanding constantly.

The giant trees of the old forest were slowly being pulled into the ground, just like him.

But just as he was about to pull himself free he noticed faint vibrations coming through.

"Is it underground?" was his first thought but then he noticed they were all coming from the front, where the center of this marshland would be, right under the gaping eye in the sky.

Using a lot more strength than he originally expected to use Hao Xuan pulled his legs free and moved towards the center of the marshland using the Qi to cover the soles of his feet which acted as a cushion between him and the ground.

It took him approximately two minutes of running at full speed to reach the intended destination which was not at all what he expected.

Firstly it was all downhill, quite literally. There was an incline from the beginning of the marshland until this point.

And secondly, the soil and the mud itself was slowly moving towards the center along with him. Although it was so slow that he didn't notice it at first but the closer he got to the center the faster it became until now it was as fast as a small stream of water.

Hao Xuan stood at the edge of what looked like a gigantic basin. About half a meter from him there was a sudden drop. It looked like a massive crater that was at least a kilometer in radius forming a perfect circle.

The drop was approximately 40 meters and the inside of the basin was filled to the brim with grunts.

They were all running anti-clockwise in a circle along the outer rim of the basin while slowly being pulled inward by the moving earth.

And there, smack dab in the center of the crater was a 200-meter-wide pool of the same pitch-black liquid.

😉