Adventure of Zhāng Wújì 1

Zhāng Wújì lies in the dust for one breath, then another. The fall has battered him, but the darkness is gone. Ahead, a vast stone hall opens like a buried world.

One by one, ancient lamps wake without flame. Pale light runs across carved walls, sealed racks, jade cases, and towering shelves that vanish into shadow.

Behind him, the collapsed passage gapes black, a thin thread back toward the Ten-Thousand-Peak Mountains and whatever still prowls above.

He pushes himself upright and looks to the center of the chamber. A black stone monument stands there, sheer and solemn, its surface crowded with writing.

The script should be impossible. Yet the meaning settles into his mind as if it has always belonged there.

The words hang in the lamp light. Around the hall, more sealed doors wait in silence, as if the cave itself is watching to see what he touches first.

Zhāng Wújì searches his memory for any legend or whisper of the Primordial Ancestor, but the name remains a hollow void. No scroll, elder, or village tale has ever spoken of such a figure.

The words echo once in the vast hall, and the monument answers with a low pulse of light across its carved surface.

Meaning floods into Zhāng Wújì's mind all at once. The Primordial Ancestor is the first mortal to discover cultivation, the source from which every later path descends.

The inheritance around him is not a sect vault or a mere treasure cave. It is the Primordial Ancestor's hidden legacy, a complete underground complex of knowledge, resources, and sealed depths.

The realization settles harder than the stone beneath his knees. The dead quiet of the chamber seems to widen, as if even the lamps are listening.

Now the monument stands silent again, its message given. The sealed doors, the libraries, and the deeper halls wait in stillness, as if asking what Zhāng Wújì will claim first.