This wasn’t the only issue Red found out with Viran over the years. In fact, the more he thought about the circumstances of their meeting and how the old warrior came up with this technique, the more absurd the whole situation became in retrospect.

Even Red’s master, who might have ascended to another world, wasn’t able to create a technique to overcome the curse of the Moon gaze. While Viran was also a strong cultivator, how could he come up with a solution to the problem that even his master, a once in a millennia cultivator, couldn’t find over who knew how many decades? Not to mention, he apparently did it in a matter of months, and all inside that hellish underground landscape with no resources to help him.

Suffice it so say, it was very unlikely. Someone must have passed on this technique to him, and Viran in turn passed it on to Red. Yet, this only raised more questions.

Why would Viran lie? Who passed on this technique to him? Why did they do it? How was Red involved in all of this?

Red sighed. Once upon a time, he hoped to leave behind all matters related to the underground. Yet, with every step he walked forward in his journey, he found himself more baffled and confused by the circumstances surrounding his curse.

‘Viran’s technique will only carry me so far. I will still need to find a way to store more Moonstone energy inside my body if I hope to survive.’

The only thing Red could think of was to absorb it inside of his Spiritual Sea. Still, that would require him to come up with a circulation technique, a task that was most daunting for someone with as little experience in cultivating as him. Not to mention, Red would also be cultivating the Storm’s Blessing technique and he knew it was not wise to keep two kinds of energies stored inside one’s Spiritual Sea. How that would be solved, he had no idea.

Even more demotivating was the fact this wasn’t a permanent solution. As long as the curse remained, the energy required to fight against it would continue to increase exponentially. What bothered Red wasn’t necessarily the direness of this conundrum, but more so the fact this meant he would never be able to rest and cultivate in peace. He would need to hurry and find every single way possible to increase his strength and stop this curse, never to meet a moment of rest.

It wasn’t his ideal life as a cultivator, but Red would do what he needed to do to stay alive.

He pulled a green crystal out of his pouch, staring at it. This was the insectoid core, yet compared to seven years ago, it had gone through some changes, seemingly being bigger and brighter. Not only that, but the Moonstone Energy it could contain seemed to increase too.

Red didn’t know how this happened. A monster’s core didn’t increase in strength after it was taken out of the beast’s body. Or at the very least, it shouldn’t.

The youth imagined this might have been caused by absorbing the ghosts back then, but that was more than seven years ago, and the stone continued to grow stronger without any signs of stopping after every Full Moon. This transformation was a double-edged sword, though.

On one hand, it meant Red had more Moonstone energy to absorb. On the other hand, it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide its existence. In fact, Red was planning on crafting a container to hide its emissions with Goulth’s help, but he was too occupied lately to give much attention to the matter.

‘There are still no signs of the Curse Breakers.’

This was yet another reason why the core worried him. The undead-hunting organization was not seen in the region for seven years, which made Red suspicious. Did they not plan on investigating the death of one of their knights? What about the floating head? The necromancer?

What could have prompted their sudden disappearance?

Red couldn’t even investigate it, afraid this might bring attention to himself. For all he knew, maybe they were just biding their time, waiting for the enemy to reveal itself. In which case, Red couldn’t become careless.

The youth sighed.

Even in these last half-decade of relative peace, his mind was constantly plagued by worry and caution. Red often found himself waiting for the worst, for his secrets to be revealed, or for his enemies to find him. The fact it never came didn’t put him at ease. Instead, it only made him dread the uncertainty even more.

‘I can’t allow myself to be distracted.’

Red took a deep breath to calm himself down. Even if things were bound to turn for the worse eventually, it didn’t mean he was unprepared.

The youth had already gathered a substantial amount of the materials needed for the Parting Storm Formation. His hunting and forging efforts had earned him a large amount of money, which he used to exchange for the materials needed in bulk, more than he needed even taking into account the possibility of failure. Of course, this only accounted for common materials.

The elemental-aspected Spiritual Stones still eluded him. Rimold asked around the capital while on a trip, but he was unable to find anything even in the black market, or so he claimed. At the very least, it didn’t seem like Red would be able to acquire those stones without a large amount of money and influence to back his search first.

‘Maybe Rog was right… I should try selling my formation.’

It was the easiest solution he could think of. Yet Red didn’t feel compelled to think about these matters right now.

He focused on cultivating, swallowing a Vein Opening Pill to assist him. Red still had a lot of those pills remaining that the Hawk gave him, and by the time he was done opening all his acupoints, he would probably have at least a few dozen remaining. He didn’t mean to sell them, though, considering the fact he did not want to leave any possible evidence connecting him to his master behind.

Halfway through his cultivation section, Red felt something suddenly pulling at his consciousness. He frowned.

It was the mist, calling to him inside of his own body.

Red didn’t even need to enter his meditative state to understand what it wanted.

‘It’s that time again.’

The youth let the Spiritual Energy inside his veins dissipate with no hesitation and laid down on the bedroll. He closed his eyes, and a few minutes later, the darkness of unconsciousness had overtaken him.

…

The next time Red opened his eyes, he found himself in a familiar environment. An endless black-sand desert, a crimson sky, enormous bone mounds, and a dark sun that the youth didn’t dare to look at, even for an instant.

He was back in this hellish dimension.

‘A pointless endeavor.’

Red sighed. Back then, the youth’s visits to this place were rare and limited, mostly prompted by his consumption of blood. Yet, since he started to communicate with the mist more frequently, he found himself being pulled against his will to this place in his dreams.

At first, Red resisted quite vehemently, and the crimson mist respected his wishes. However, he found that no matter what he did, whenever he went to sleep, he would always find himself here. The youth questioned the mist about it, to which he received only a single word as a response.

Inevitable.

Red was not happy, but he had yet to find a way to resist this pull. In any case, at the very least nothing of note seemed to happen to him during these visits, as long as he avoided staring towards the dark sun in the sky.

Another thing that surprised him was the fact he was still just a child in this place. Age didn’t seem to reach this dream of his, and the youth was still just as young as he had been on the first day he entered this place. He was also carrying the bone knife he had taken from that strange knight’s skeleton, as well as the scar he had inflicted himself back then.

This meant he could be hurt, but he was still unsure how that affected him in the real world.

Red frowned and looked ahead, towards a giant bone mound. It was the same gigantic rib that the youth had been trying to reach since his very first night here. Still just as out of reach from him as it had always been.

It was hard to discern the passage of time in this place, but Red assumed from all his accumulated time in this realm, he had been walking for months in a straight line towards this mound. He would have given up already if there was anything else for him to do in this place.

Unsurprisingly, there was nothing he could find in their library to help him in this strange situation. Not even his experience in the infinite lands of the trial was of any help.

So, with no choice, Red started to walk.

And he walked for who knows how long.

At some point, the youth started to feel his strength fade. This was a telltale sign that his time in this realm was coming to an end, with his collapse from exhaustion, that is.

Just as Red was feeling his vision start to blur, he saw a slight change in scenery. He paused and blinked, completely baffled.

Yet, no matter how many times he did it, the result was the same. He could swear the bone mound had gotten closer to him.

‘How is this possible?’

Red couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened, but this sudden discovery gave him a second wind to fight past his exhaustion. He continued to walk forward, and sure enough, the bone mound continued to get ever so close to him, until it was almost occupying his entire vision.

It was enormous. Bigger than anything Red had ever seen, and the fact it might have once been a part of a living creature was impossible to wrap his head around.

Yet beyond its unimaginable size, there was something else that caught the youth’s ascension. Something seemed to be inscribed on the surface of this bone, too faint and distant for Red to discern, but he was certain of it.

It was writing. Not to mention, it was writing he recognized.

‘Arcane Scripture.’