Chen Ping spent three whole days immersed in the library cave, searching through the mountains of bamboo slips and animal skin scrolls for any words or phrases related to the crack.

Most of the accounts were consistent with what he had heard from the old man of the underworld.

The crack appeared 10,000 years ago, required a sacrifice, and the investigation team never returned.

But on a tattered animal hide scroll that was mostly eaten by insects, he saw a passage of text that was out of place with the other records.

The text was written in an extremely ancient demon script, the characters were hasty and hurried, as if the writer had carved each stroke in a state of extreme fear:

“Of the twelfth group of explorers, seven entered the rift, six were trapped inside forever, and one returned three days later, his soul shattered and his mind completely gone… The one who returned had reversed the flow of Yin energy throughout his body, his meridians severed, and he could only keep repeating one word…”

The word was traced over and over again, the strokes overlapping to the point that it was almost unrecognizable.