Single Wish: Rise Of The Omniscient Paragon
Chapter 831 - 828: Grand Hall (Bonus)

Chapter 831: 828: Grand Hall (Bonus)

Corey stepped into the grand hall, and the moment he did... he paused.

It wasn’t because of a threat. And it surely wasn’t because he sensed danger.

No

It was because of the atmosphere.

The air inside was still, truly still and heavier than what he had experienced in the tunnel. And this time around, it was not in a spiritual sense.

It was different.

As though the entire hall was frozen in a single moment of time. A moment that refused to fade, refused to be forgotten, even after thousands of years.

’Time has been frozen in this place. But the frozen time only affects the hall itself, not anybody that enters it.’

His eyes moved slowly, and he observed the grand hall before him.

The hall was massive, but not in the way of vast palaces or high castles. The ceiling arched like the interior of a cathedral.

There were several columns in the hall. Dozens of them, and each one was tall and thick. They were also carved from obsidian-black stone, and at first, Corey thought the columns were placed in a formation.

But it was unlike any formation he had ever seen.

He ignored it since it was not truly important to him at the moment.

Every single column was inscribed with a name, and when Corey glanced at the names, he realized that the names were of the past Kings of Virendell.

The names pulsed with dull red glow, and beneath the names were intricate carvings of scripts, runes, and also diagrams.

Some pulsed with a faint reddish light. Others were cracked, broken, or completely faded.

And some? Some had what looked like bloody handprints and claw marks.

Corey frowned when he saw this. However, his mind was on something else entirely.

The inscriptions and texts beneath the names on the columns. He came to realize what they were the longer he looked at them.

They were cultivation manuals.

Cultivation Manuals the past Kings of Virendell had used, and Corey’s glinted when he saw them.

With every second that passed, his Stars of Consciousness were constantly going through the books he stored in his Tri-Pupil Eyes.

Most especially, the cultivation manuals.

After comparing the cultivation manuals he had in his Tri-Pupil Eyes to what was on the columns, he was certain that the writings on the columns were cultivation techniques.

Unfortunately

None of them were complete.

He had not tried them, but he could see some either having cracks on them, dried blood stains, or they had faded out of existence.

’That’s too bad... But regardless, incomplete is still better than nothing.’

Without thinking twice, Corey recorded everything he was looking at in the grand hall.

’If I’m lucky enough to keep on running into ancient cultivation techniques, I can create my personal unique cultivation technique.’

’If I can do that... I’ll just have to find a way to rid myself of the Universal System and also make sure that my cultivation technique has the potential to make me as powerful as the Paragon Ancestor... Or maybe more powerful.’

A strange glint flashed in his eyes as he walked slowly through the space between the columns and continued his observation of the grand hall.

The floor was polished stone. It was dark, smooth, and reflective.

But beneath the glassy surface were bones. Bones of different shapes and sizes.

He could see skulls, ribcages, femurs, and so much more of humans, beasts, monsters, and several other creatures.

Some were broken. Some were fused together, and some had symbols carved into them.

And yet none of it felt chaotic.

In fact, everything felt deliberate. Like a massive formation.

Corey came to a stop and looked around.

"This... looks like a ritual site... A ritual site beneath a library?"

His voice was soft and quiet.

He looked at the columns again, then at the floor before shifting his gaze to the center of the grand hall where a massive stone slab stood.

It was rectangular and black. It was also tall enough to dwarf Corey three times over.

It was covered in runes, and there were tens, hundreds, and thousands of runes.

They moved. They shifted. And they twisted whenever Corey blinked.

He could feel the runes calling out to him, and it was not a type of ominous call that one would sometimes hear from an evil god, spirit, or being that was attempting to tempt you with power.

No.

It was like the runes were pleading, begging for him to come.

His gaze remained stoic, and he could feel their ’desperation’.

And he knew why.

On the runes were not only runes but a claw mark.

A single massive claw had torn through the stone slab, cutting deep from the top-left to the bottom-right.

The mark looks old, but it still literally bled power.

Corey could feel a power of annihilation and death around the claw marks, and he knew that the one who had left that mark was not something he could face even after mastering majority of his skills to the Transcendent level.

’Strange... I can’t sense mana from it or even death energy or spiritual energy.’

’... I wonder what caused it.’

He slowly walked toward it, and his steps made no sound at all.

But his mind was entirely different. He began recalling every single thing he had seen, read, and experienced in the Archive.

’The carvings on the tunnel wall... the tree... the corpse with roots as legs... the crown of bones... the eyeless figure.’

’The Hollow Creed... their madness... their beliefs.’

’The Accord between cities... the Rift War... the Archmage that fell to madness...’

’This place... this city... Virendell...’

’... Why does it remind me so much of the Shattered Dimension of the Old Ones?’

Corey stopped right in front of the stone slab. He could feel the pressure emanating from it, and he knew that if any member of the Thirteenth Dawn tried to stand before this stone slab, their spirits would be crushed and death would be their solace.

He raised his hand, and then he touched the slab.

---

The world blinked.

Then vanished.