He continued on his way, entering the ruined city, being as stealthy as possible to avoid attracting the attention of any hidden specters.
At a crossroads, he had to stop suddenly and pressed himself against a wall.
Shrr-
The sound of a rock falling echoed as the wall beside him shook, but it quickly returned to stability. Fortunately, his mistake of hitting the wall and creating that noise did not alert the specter on the other side of the road.
It was alone and had been seen before by Xiaotian when he was studying the city.
'Now I understand why it's alone.'
He remembered that the guy had been three blocks away the first time he saw him, which meant he had a large area to protect.
Ruins are usually divided by region. Common specters tend to group together to protect a certain region of a ruin, while the more powerful ones tend to work alone and protect a larger area.
When he studied the city and found only eight specters in such a large area, he immediately understood that groups of two were the weakest and that messing with those who were alone would be dangerous at first. That's why he chose to attack those two.
Although they were all Level 1, the difference was noticeable.
In terms of cultivation, it would be easier to contextualize.
Among the different realms of power in Cultivation, the first is:
Body Strengthening Realm.
Then comes the Elemental Root Realm.
Root Master Realm.
Specialized Master Realm.
Lord of Specialization.
Emperor of Power.
Overlord of the Earth.
Saint of Heaven.
And finally, the Ninth Realm is called "God."
Therefore, just as there are nine cultivation realms, there are also nine levels for these mystical ruins. So, it could be said that a Level 1 Specter is equivalent to a cultivator in the Body Strengthening Realm.
This realm is divided into four stages: Initial, Intermediate, Advanced, and Prime.
Each stage is significant, and the strength of one is not comparable to that of another. Therefore, if lower-level Specters have a strength between the Initial and Intermediate stages, the strongest of the same level have a strength between the Advanced and Prime stages.
The difference is crucial to understanding the difficulties at the same level.
In this case, this Specter was alone and protected a large piece of land in the city, so it was strong. Surely at the Advanced stage. He could rule out the Prime Stage because surely only the boss of the Ruin was there.
'But the Advanced stage is still difficult. Attacking it head-on is out of the question; I couldn't win.' He looked around.
There were many ruined buildings, and everything seemed to be falling apart. It was extremely difficult to sneak up on that specter, especially since he was in an open area.
There was rubble, but it wasn't very high.
'Crawling, perhaps?'
He devised a plan with a mental map of the city, looking for the alternative of crawling away, but he couldn't do it. A mistake in that position would not give him time to react, so he ruled it out.
As he tried to find an alternative, he suddenly stopped looking at one area of his field of vision.
In front of him, a little far away, was a house that was not yet completely destroyed. Despite the weather and degradation, it still looked like a large mansion, albeit partially destroyed.
Its windows were covered with rubble, but its door...
'I can see right through to the other side,' he thought.
That meant that even though rubble blocked the natural passage, if he crawled on the ground, he could get inside. That house was just across the road.
'Crossing it would bring me closer to the specter's back.'
The problem was: What if there was only debris inside the house, and he got trapped by a collapse? After all, everything here looks like it's about to fall down. The slightest disturbance of the mass in a rickety structure could cause it to collapse immediately.
And if not, it's still a house in ruins. The probability of a specter being inside was quite high.
If he had another choice, he wouldn't pick this one. But he didn't think twice before starting to walk crouched down, hiding among the nearby rubble, as he got closer and closer to that house.
It took him a few minutes to get there safely.
Up close, the house was more imposing, and thanks to that, he didn't have to hide as much now, as the structure concealed him.
This allowed him to carefully study the structure and look inside.
'There's no debris covering all the windows or all the exits. Plus, it looks sturdy,' he thought.
He knew that in a ruin, hesitation was deadly. So he didn't think too much about it. Once he knew that going in was a good option and that there was an exit on the other side, he began to enter, crawling through rubble that covered part of the door.
The dust accumulated on the floor was disturbed by his arrival and began to rise with his breathing.
'Who knows how many years of dust have accumulated here, because according to the system, this ruin awoke about 50 years ago, but in 50 years, there couldn't have been so much destruction.'
There seemed to be thousands of layers of dust on the floor, although much of it had already solidified. Even so, he had to be slow and careful; kicking up too much dust would also attract the attention of those specters.
Although they are not very intelligent, the little intelligence they have allows them to understand certain things and unusual movements.
'This house is huge.' Xiaotian looked up at the mansion's ceilings, staircases, and everything else. It was a full-fledged high-end mansion. In his entire life, he had seen few houses of this caliber.
It still had some luxury items, which he found astonishing. After making his way through the rubble covering the doorway, he finally managed to get up and walked toward those places, curious to understand what these paintings and pieces of furniture that were still intact were made of.
But when he went to touch the first painting from a bygone era depicting a swordsman, it scattered.
'Damn... It's been so long that even things disintegrate into dust."
Stunned, he tried to grab another painting... and exactly the same thing happened.
'Unbelievable. It's like magic.' He smiled and bent down to touch one of the pieces of furniture, formerly white, now painted with dust.
When he touched it, the first thing that happened was that the dust rose, and then the section he had touched broke off and disappeared into dust.
'...'
There was no furniture left. What remained were... shapes made of dust. The material of the furniture had been corroded by time, and the only thing that time could not corrode was that dust, which would continue to exist for all eternity.
He suddenly tensed at this thought and looked at the ceilings, the walls...
'What if everything here is like this?' he thought.
Perhaps the house itself was like this, with dust falling from above.
He told himself he had to be careful. He had wanted to go up to the second floor to look around, knowing he had some time, but he immediately dismissed the idea. The stairs were surely the same, or at least they would not support his weight.
So he thought about leaving.
'Hm?' As he walked toward the windows on the other side, he frowned and looked to his right.
One of the doors to a room was open. That wasn't unusual; most of the doors were open. But something strange was happening in this one.
He didn't think he was going crazy—he had seen something shining there!