In one of the houses—toward the far side of the village—there was a faint, peculiar Spirit pulse.
It wasn’t strong, but it was distinct enough to stand out from the rest of the empty surroundings. This was something worth investigating.
Aksai quickly made his way over to the house in question. From the outside, it looked just as decrepit as the others—its wooden door barely hanging on its hinges, and the walls worn down by time. But there was a subtle hum of energy emanating from within.
He pushed open the door, careful not to make too much noise, though the creaking hinges betrayed his presence anyway. Inside, the house was just as worn as the exterior—dust covered every surface, and cobwebs draped the corners.
‘Hm? Cobwebs? It means that there should be a food chain in this domain. But where are the rest of the animals?’ Aksai thought to himself before putting that thought at the back of his mind.
The house he had entered was just like any other in the region. It just looked relatively more ancient, as if it was the very first house that was created in this region, at least a few hundred years before the rest of the houses were made.
However, it wasn’t the decay that caught Aksai’s attention. It was the faint glow coming from the floor in the center of the main room.
Moving closer, Aksai knelt down to inspect the source of the glow. There, beneath a layer of dirt and dust, he saw it—a small, intricate pattern of runes etched into the stone floor.
These Essence Equation runes were active, humming softly with power. Aksai brushed away more of the dirt to reveal the full design. It was a formation of some sort, but one he hadn’t seen before.
“An information-type formation,” Aksai muttered to himself, his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of it.
Yelia’s voice echoed in his mind. “It can still be used, my lord.”
“I figured as much,” Aksai replied. He studied the pattern closely, wondering if this formation was meant to guard stored information or perhaps serve as a signpost to another part of the Holy Land.
His Spirit Sense told him the energy here was dormant, but not entirely inactive.
Aksai extended his hand toward the formation, his fingers hovering just above the surface. He hesitated for a moment, considering whether it was wise to tamper with something he didn’t fully understand. But curiosity won out. He needed to know what this formation was hiding.
Carefully, he infused a small amount of his Spirit Essence into the runes. The moment his energy made contact, the runes lit up, their glow intensifying. The once-dormant formation sprang to life, and Aksai felt a surge of energy pulse through the room. The floor beneath him began to tremble slightly, but nothing more.
Then, just as quickly as the surge had come, it subsided. The runes dimmed, their glow fading back to a soft hum. Aksai waited, expecting something more—perhaps a hidden passage opening or a mechanism activating—but nothing else happened.
He frowned. “That’s it?”
Yelia chimed in. “It seems the formation is incomplete. Or perhaps it requires a specific trigger—something you haven’t found yet.”
Aksai stood up, dusting off his hands. The formation was certainly interesting, but without more information, it seemed like a dead end for now. Still, it was a clue—a sign that there was more to this village than met the eye.
“I’ll come back to this,” Aksai said quietly, making a mental note of the house and its location. There were still many unanswered questions, but for now, he had to keep moving.
Aksai moved cautiously from house to house, scanning each one in search of anything useful. The town’s eerie silence felt more pronounced with every empty room he passed.
Finally, he came across a house with a formation nearly identical to the one he’d previously activated. This one, though, looked far more damaged, its lines barely visible beneath layers of dust and wear. When he tried to activate it, nothing happened—it was too far gone to be of any use.
But something else caught his eye. Resting on a worn wooden table nearby was a thick, palm-sized wooden token. He picked it up, immediately feeling a faint energy pulsing beneath the carved surface.
Flipping it over, he saw that one side depicted a sun with beams that radiated outwards, each beam forming small, intricate Essence Equation runes. The other side showed a dense woodland scene.
From a distance, it might look like a common object, but up close, it was a sophisticated access token for Spirit cultivators. Aksai studied it for a moment, running his fingers over the carved runes, and a thought sparked in his mind.
Quickly, he left the damaged formation behind and returned to the first house he’d entered—the one with the almost-intact formation. The setup here had been confusing at first, but with the token in hand, he felt more confident.
Even though it couldn’t be said that his attainments in the field of array formations were very high, they weren’t bad for his cultivation base either.
With his neural link fabric’s computational abilities assisting him, he carefully studied the formation and decoded the token’s Essence Equation, a complex set of runes that protected the information within.
Finally, he held the token up to the formation, channeling his Spirit Essence into it. The moment he did, the runes in the formation lit up, casting an ethereal glow over the room. His heart quickened—he knew he didn’t have long.
The formation wouldn’t hold indefinitely, but it only needed to work once. His neural link fabric would store the information on its memory when that happens.
In the next moment, a projection filled the air above the formation: a spectral map of the Holy Land Torel, unfolding like a large, transparent scroll. This map was as big as an 85 inch TV screen.
Aksai’s eyes widened in both surprise and delight. The scale of the projection made it clear how vast this isolated domain truly was—it spanned an area larger than two of the largest kingdoms in the Dadangar Subcontinent combined.
As he took in the sheer size of it, he realized the Holy Land Torel covered a landmass more expansive than the Rokur Kingdom, ruled by the Purple River Lord, and Isla Kingdom, under the Sun Ocean Lord, put together.
“If I tried to cross this whole land…even at full speed on my flying sword, it would take more than a week. And that’s just going from one end to another without any distractions caused by exploration,” Aksai thought, the enormity of the place sinking in.
He quickly brushed aside the distracting thoughts, focusing on the map itself.
A small red blip flashed in the lower southeastern part of the map, blinking at the same rhythm as the formation’s own glow. It took only a moment for him to understand: this was his current position within the Holy Land.
As he traced his finger along the map, he could see vast areas densely packed with woodlands, mountains, and twisting rivers. Peculiar spots scattered across the map caught his attention too; they were marked with subtle symbols that seemed to suggest areas of special interest.
What stood out even more, though, were clusters of habitable regions similar to the village he’d just traversed. Each cluster, positioned at the map’s edges, had the same pattern of houses he’d seen here. This setup meant that no matter where one entered the Holy Land Torel, they’d likely stumble upon one of these settlements first.
As the formation began to flicker, Aksai mentally noted the details he could gather. Just before the formation’s light faded, Aksai managed to catch sight of a strange, faint glow marking a particular woodland area near the center of the Holy Land. He took note of it immediately.
The map faded, and the formation fell silent once more, the house returning to its former, darkened state. Aksai exhaled. He had a rough layout of the Holy Land Torel at this point.
As Aksai stepped out of the house, he mulled over Yelia’s surprising insight.
“Yelia, do you think these houses with map-formations belonged to the leaders of the people who once lived here?” he asked, glancing around the desolate village.
“There wouldn’t have been leaders among servants,” she replied firmly before adding, “Or, if you prefer, we could call them head servants.”
Aksai raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying all these houses at the edges belonged to servants?”
“That’s most likely the case,” Yelia responded. “Humans were only regarded as servants here during that era.”
The notion gave him pause.
If this region had once been entirely populated by servants, it meant the original inhabitants of the Holy Land Torel might have been something far more formidable.
His mind buzzed with questions, but he decided to save them for later. Right now, the goal was to explore and find something more solid to go on.
Aksai refocused on his surroundings, his vision summoning up a spectral version of the map he’d recorded.
His neural link fabric projected it before his eyes, casting a faint glow over the empty landscape.
It was a remarkably useful tool, eliminating any risk of getting lost in this vast place.
Without hesitation, he set off toward a specific area he’d seen on the map.