Cheat God
22. Cursed man

After brief introductions, Liu Chen quietly assessed his companions’ strength. All were in the Soul Foundation Realm—four at peak stage: Liu Feng, Liu Jian, Liu Han, and Liu Ming. The other five were at mid-level. Before the age of thirty, such cultivation placed them among the elite of the younger generation.

Soon, they gathered atop the ancient teleportation formation at the clan’s highest peak. The white jade platform pulsed with spiritual runes as a vortex of energy coiled silently beneath their feet. Ten direct descendants of the clan, selected for a single mission: to enter the Great Land of Bliss. Clan Leader Liu Tianze arrived without ceremony. With a wave of his hand, ten glowing talismans floated to each of them.

“These are not ordinary communication talismans,” he said. “They will help you to communicate eachother as normal talismans are not useful in Great land of bliss because of their concentrate cursed and heavenly aura.”

No one spoke. Liu Chen inspected his token briefly. It pulsed once—faintly resonating with his soul. Without further words, the formation activated. Nine concentric rings of jade lit up with rotating golden patterns. The air trembled. Space bent inward. In a flash of silver light, all ten were engulfed. The Liu Clan’s mountaintop fell silent once more.

The teleportation tunnel was vast and blinding. Spirit light tore past their figures as they flew across thousands of miles in moments. Liu Chen stood calmly amid the spatial storm, his soul steady. A familiar pressure brushed against him—ancient and cold. He narrowed his eyes. Then, the light ended as they landed.

The moment the silver light of the teleportation formation vanished, Liu Chen felt the strange texture of the earth beneath his feet—rough, cracked, and dry. A cold wind swept past him, carrying with it the scent of dust and something faintly metallic.

He looked around.

They had arrived.

But this land was nothing like what the ancient scrolls or clan legends had described. It was no paradise of soaring spirit lakes or jade forests. Instead, it was bleak—almost haunting. The sky above glowed with a strange, golden-orange hue, like twilight caught in a dying fire. Low-hanging red and yellow mist drifted lazily through the air, reducing visibility to a few dozen meters at most.

The ground was broken and lifeless, scattered with twisted trees—each one a sickly shade of yellow, completely barren of leaves. Their warped branches curved in unnatural directions, clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers. The atmosphere was heavy, as if time itself had slowed.

Liu Chen stood still, his gaze sharp. His group—ten strong from the Liu Clan—landed together, but they were not the only ones. Across the wasteland, more groups flickered into existence as columns of teleportation light descended in slow pulses. Here and there, groups of cultivators appeared—some large and well-equipped, others small and silent. He spotted pairs, trios, full teams of ten. Some wore beast leathers, others robes woven with obscure emblems. One group bore deep black skin and glowing tattoos that flickered in the mist, though the details were quickly lost in the swirling fog.

They could not see every group clearly. The terrain was vast, the arrival zone shattered and spread across hundreds of fragmented locations, scattered like stars in the sky. No single person could see the full scale. And though Liu Chen held the token that connected him to the Su Dynasty’s chosen warriors, there was no sign of them in sight.

None of the newly arrived cultivators spoke. All eyes were drawn to the same place.

A small hill rose not far ahead, no taller than a single-story building. It looked unremarkable at first glance—just a mound of yellowed stone—but what sat upon it held the attention of everyone present.

An old man.

He sat cross-legged at the very top, completely still. His robes were loose and torn, colored a faded grayish-brown like ash, and barely clinging to his thin frame. His skin was a dull, lifeless yellow, cracked and dry as if carved from aged parchment. One of his eyes was shut tightly; the other half-open, glazed with a cloudy film. He didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, and yet… the moment Liu Chen looked at him, he felt the temperature drop.

The man’s presence didn’t radiate power in the traditional sense—there was no surge of spiritual force, no divine aura—but rather something far more suffocating. It was the silence of death, of stillness that defied time.

Then, without warning, the old man’s lips moved.

No great gesture, no dramatic voice. Just a slow breath and a cracked murmur that echoed through the air like thunder wrapped in silk.

"Whatever happens inside… shall be settled inside."

The sound was unnatural—not loud, yet impossible to ignore. It didn't echo across the land; it rang within it, as if the soil itself whispered his words to every ear.

Liu Chen felt a cold shiver pass through his spine. He had heard of this man before. His father had once spoken about him in a hushed voice, describing him not as a cultivator, but as something more ancient, more rooted in the foundation of the continent itself.

He was the Gatekeeper.

A figure left behind by a pact between the greatest forces of the continent. When the Land of Bliss had been sealed ages ago, this man was placed here as its eternal warden—an existence who neither welcomed nor rejected, but simply maintained the boundary between inside and out. Not even Immortal Venerables dared to provoke him. His cultivation was unfathomable. His strength... tied to curses that could rot mountains and silence bloodlines.

Another wave of teleportation light crashed down behind them. More groups arrived. But the Gatekeeper remained still, unmoved by the chaos of incoming cultivators. His cloudy eye stared without focus, and yet it seemed to watch everything.

He spoke again, his voice slow and coarse, like broken glass shifting through sand.

"There shall be no interference from the outside. No titles. No clans. No dynasties. Your lineage has no meaning here."

He paused.

"Inside, strength alone decides survival. Power is earned, not inherited. If you wish to live—fight. If you wish to gain—fight harder. And if you fall… you fall alone."

No one responded. The fog moved slowly, brushing against their ankles, cold and sticky like webbing. No beasts roared. No birds called. Even the air seemed to hold its breath.

Liu Chen said nothing, but his hand closed quietly over the talisman given to him by the Clan Leader. It felt warm against his palm, humming faintly with spiritual connection—but it offered no comfort. Not here.

The Su Dynasty’s group, he knew, must have arrived somewhere as well. But this world was too vast, too fractured to guess where. The Gatekeeper’s words confirmed it—no one would come to help, not unless they had earned the power to help themselves.

Behind Liu Chen, Liu Jian muttered under his breath, "He doesn't care whether we live or die."

"No," Liu Chen replied, his voice quiet. "He only guards the door. What happens inside is none of his concern."