'This room… has no splendor.'
Ken raised his eyebrows in disappointment from the plain room. On second thought it made sense, as there was no reason to make a prison cell dazzling.
Looking around him, he found a room made of stone, not different by any means from the many stone rooms he entered in the secret realm. It was almost a theme in the secret realm. A grey and boring theme.
The room was rather small; it was a squared room, four meters long and four meters wide. In the middle rested a large coffin made of wood, inscribed with many long, complicated runes that Ken could not read.
'So this is a ninth-grade coffin. High-grade coffins actually must be much more common than I think; the strongest and richest cultivators in the world probably buy high-grade coffins to protect their corpses after they die.'
Ken thought to himself as he spread his Runic Qi and other types of Qi all over the room, trying to see if he could locate any kind of danger. Only after probing every centimeter of the room for a whole hour, he was willing to walk inside.
"Why are there no formations inside the room?"
"Hmph. There was one that contained my coffin, but since I was directly inside it, I could easily destroy it, unlike the door."
"Easily? How long did it take you?"
"Ahm, 1833 years," Edmund confessed with an embarrassed tone. The time didn't make it sound like he could 'easily destroy it'. He spoke again right away to change the subject.
"Anyway, open the coffin."
"What stops you from killing me after I release you?"
"The goodness of my heart, Kid. I'm not as cruel as you to kill innocent others, and I have my own pride as an eighth-stage cultivator. Besides, the coffin halted my aging process, but it will catch up with me once you release me. I will only have a few minutes to live before dying of old age."
The elder explained his situation to Ken. It was easy to hear the eagerness in his voice to be finally free, even if by getting killed. The reason he wanted to get out of the confines of his jail was so his soul will be released back to the circle of reincarnation and his mind will be put at ease.
Remaining trapped and having his soul and mind enslaved for thousands of years were much worse than death, and being trapped in a collapsed realm was even worse. Those three months in which he got to talk to a new generation and watch them struggle were the best months he had lived in two thousand years.
"All right."
Ken smiled innocently and approached the coffin. When he got there, he lifted the lid with a swift motion, pushing it to the ground and revealing the contents.
"I'm finally free! Hahaha! Don't worry, I will gift you for your hard work!"
Edmund started laughing maniacally in his excitement. Then, there was silence for a few seconds, and the corpse inside the coffin opened its eyes, ceasing to be a corpse.
"Wait, am I inside the coffin?"
Edmund raised his arm and paled when he realized he was still in his own body. His skin and body were aging at an alarming rate, fast enough for him to physically notice the changes that took effect.
"How am I here???"
"Haha, old man, did you really think you can snatch a young body that easily? You should've aimed at someone less talented; your rewards would be lower, but you would still be alive now."
Ken laughed and flashed his beautiful yet devilish smile at the horrified elder.
"What did you do? I will kill you!"
The elder leaped from his coffin and landed in front of Ken with a fire of rage in his eyes. However, Ken's next words shocked him beyond belief.
"Kneel."
"What?"
The elder kneeled despite his struggle to resist the command. His eyes opened in fear when he recognized this damned, hateful sensation. It was the same sensation that coursed through his body whenever one of the seven supreme elders of the Bloodthirst Sect gave him an order.
"THE SLAVERY COLLAR!"
Edmund bellowed with a mix of anger, fear, and sorrow. He thought he was finally free of restrictions, and even capable of taking over a new body with an unprecedented foundation.
The plan seemed seamless; Ken was the perfect target as he didn't even reach the fifth stage which would turn his soul too powerful for a takeover, and his cultivation was peerless. He was only at the fourth stage yet could fight the strongest fifth-stage cultivators in the continent, not to mention his young age.
However, now, all hope was lost, and the elder that lived the last 2,000 years as a slave was going to die, still as a slave.
------------
A few hours ago:
'I can't trust this elder. Everything here sounds like a large plot hole. How can he be unable to destroy the formation on the door? How can there be no additional formations inside the room? It can't be that simple. No matter how much I think about it, it's impossible that a door is the only thing protecting such a valuable prisoner from outsiders.'
Ken never trusted others, and now was no different. He would never trust the words of an old man full of agendas and self-interests.
Thus, he didn't solely work to break the formation. Instead, he researched it as much as he could. While it'd take around 5 days for a highly skilled sixth-rank formation master to break the unguarded seventh-rank formation of the door, Ken wasn't merely highly skilled.
'The timing is also too fishy. How can he invite me right before the end of the secret realm with a time window that's just barely enough to bypass the formations?'
He never believed in such coincidences, especially since the elder could invite him here right after the Mind Tenacity Challenge. Thus, he had come up with another plan.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel