Sign-In System: Starting With Invincible Physique-Chapter 36: Eyes of Truth

Chapter 36: Eyes of Truth

[Sign-In Reward: Heaven-Grade Mystic Force — Eyes of Truth.]

[Would you like to integrate the Eyes of Truth?]

Integrate?

Instinctively, Rhain braced himself.

His muscles tensed, expecting the same bone-shattering, soul-rending agony that had accompanied the integration of the Abyssal Sovereign Physique.

"Integrate," Rhain exhaled and commanded in his mind.

But the pain didn’t come.

Instead, a gentle, incredibly soothing sensation washed over his face.

It felt as if a stream of pristine, glacial water had been poured directly into his eyes.

The soothing coolness lasted for only a dozen seconds before slowly fading away.

Rhain opened his eyes.

Externally, the change was minimal.

His dark, abyssal grey irises now held a faint, ring of golden light around the pupils.

But internally, the world had fundamentally changed.

Information regarding the Heaven-Grade Mystic Force blossomed in his consciousness.

Eyes of Truth.

A supreme ocular ability divided into three primary functions.

First: Illusion Piercing. Under the gaze of the Eyes of Truth, all forms of disguise and illusions were completely useless. Nothing could be hidden from his sight.

Second: Essence Insight. The ability to see the fundamental flow of the Essence in the world. He could easily observe the internal meridian pathways of living beings, and perceive the microscopic details of the world.

Third: Absolute Perception. He could track the trajectory of incoming attacks before they even fully formed, and instantly identify structural weaknesses in arrays, techniques, and physical bodies.

Rhain blinked, testing the newly acquired ability.

He channeled a microscopic fraction of his dark essence.

The faint golden rings in his irises instantly ignited, turning his pupils gold coloured.

The dense, grey-misted forest before him suddenly lost its mystery.

He could see the Essence drifting through the air like glowing, colored currents.

Suddenly, his gaze snapped to the left.

About fifty paces away, hidden completely perfectly within the dense brush and shrouded by the valley’s grey mist, was a dormant beast.

To the naked eye, it was completely undetectable. Its natural camouflage was flawless.

But to Rhain’s Eyes of Truth, the beast was glaringly obvious.

He could clearly see the dense cluster of violent, blood-red essence circulating within its body.

Beasts possessed a primal instinct when they were being watched.

It instantly realized its flawless ambush had been compromised.

ROAR!

The brush violently exploded.

A terrifying creature lunged.

It was a huge ferocious panther roughly the size of a small carriage, possessing six muscular legs and a whip-like tail.

The aura it emitted was easily rivaling a human cultivator at the second level of the Essence Condensation Realm.

It crossed the fifty paces in the blink of an eye, its massive jaws opening wide to snap Rhain’s torso perfectly in half.

Rhain’s golden-ringed pupils narrowed slightly.

A chilling smile curved the corners of Renn’s lips.

His five fingers suddenly clenched, and an extremely compressed dark essence wildly gathered between his knuckles.

Bang!!!

The punch landed squarely on the giant leopard’s neck.

Snap—Plop!

A chilling sound of bones cracking rang out, and the giant leopard’s massive body suddenly stiffened in mid-air.

Its bloodthirsty and ferocious beastly eyes bulged outwards dramatically, then widened rapidly, completely losing all its light.

It was dead before it even hit the ground.

Rhain slowly lowered his right arm.

The golden light in his pupils gently faded.

Rhain looked at the lifeless corpse a few metres in the distance.

A pool of dark red blood was already beginning to spread across the rocky soil.

This was the first time he had killed something.

In his previous life on Earth, he had never even been in a real street fight, let alone taken a life.

Logically, he should have felt something.

But as Rhain searched his own heart, he found nothing.

The brutal reality of this world had now changed him so much that he didn’t even care that a life had just been extinguished by his own hands.

"Terrifying," Rhain let out a slow, quiet breath.

He slowly withdrew his gaze from the dead panther.

A thought struck his mind.

If this place had Hidden Sign-In feature, could it also have Location Sign-In areas.

"System. Open Map," Rhain commanded in his mind to verify.

A translucent interface materialized at the edge of his vision.

The familiar layout of the Azure Cloud Sect appeared first.

The silver lines were now dim, and the four pulsing blue dots—the Library, the Battle Arena, the Herb Garden, and the Sect Master’s Hall—were all completely greyed out.

But right next to it, a new tab had appeared.

[Map: Ancient Black Hollow Realm]

Rhain selected it.

A massive, incredibly expansive map unfolded before his eyes.

It revealed a map exponentially larger than the Azure Cloud Sect. In fact, it was vast enough to rival the entire Greymist Beast Mountain range.

It was perhaps the size of several large counties.

And right in the absolute, dead center of the massive map, a single, brilliant node pulsed with an intense purple light.

[Location Sign-In: Core of the Hollow Realm.]

A Location Sign-In.

Rhain’s breathing slowed as he checked his own position indicator.

A small white dot was blinking on the far southern periphery of the map.

He was incredibly far away.

Traversing that distance in a realm fraught with spatial traps, ferocious beasts, and hostile cultivators would not be easy even with his incredible speed.

Rhain closed the System interface.

The Hollow Realm would remain open for three full days. The central node wasn’t going anywhere.

"First things first," Rhain said softly.

He reached into his dark robes and pulled out the small jade pendant Harmon had given everyone before their departure.

The Location-Tracking Talisman.

His absolute first priority was finding Seris.

With the Ironpeak and Barlowe alliance explicitly ordered to slaughter any Azure Cloud disciple they encountered, she was in extreme danger.

Even with her sudden breakthrough to the eighth level of the Essence Awakening Realm and her strange, innate icy essence, the sheer numbers and ruthlessness of the enemy experts were too great a threat.

Rhain injected a trace of his dark essence into the jade.

The pendant emitted a faint vibration.

A glowing projection appeared a few inches above the jade surface, acting as a localized compass.

In the absolute center of the projection was a bright green dot—his own position.

Scattered across the translucent projection were several other flickering green dots.

Most of them were extremely distant, barely registering on the very edge of the talisman’s sensing range.

However, two dots caught his immediate attention.

One was roughly ten miles to the north, moving erratically.

The other was much closer. Only about three miles to the east.

And it was completely stationary.

Rhain frowned slightly.

The talisman only identified the presence of Azure Cloud Sect members; it did not differentiate between an elder and a disciple, nor did it reveal their exact identity.

There was no way to know if the dot to the east was Seris, Victor, Elder Torin, or some other disciple.

But a stationary dot in the Hollow Realm was rarely a good sign.

It meant the person was either hiding, severely injured, or already cornered by a ferocious beast or an enemy.

Or worst. Dead.

Rhain’s dark grey eyes turned chillingly cold.

He clenched his fist, extinguishing the projection, and safely tucked the jade pendant back into his robes.

Three miles east.

He looked in the direction.

Swoosh!

Using the Shadow Flicker Steps, Rhain vanished from the ridge, shooting through the colossal trees with blurring speed.

_________________

Deep within the Hollow Realm.

Bang!

A middle-aged man in the azure robes of the Azure Cloud Sect stumbled backward, his back crashing heavily against the trunk of a colossal tree.

Elder Dylan.

An expert at the sixth level of the Essence Condensation Realm. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Right now, his complexion was as pale as paper.

A horrifying, gaping wound stretched across his abdomen, continuously leaking dark red blood.

His right arm was completely mangled, bent at a horrifying angle.

He stared dead ahead, his eyes wide with absolute horror.

Walking unhurriedly toward him was a figure draped in dark grey robes.

His face was entirely covered by a dark cloth mask, leaving only a pair of dead, emotionless eyes exposed.

"Son of a b*tch..." Elder Dylan coughed violently, spitting out a mouthful of blood, and roared, "Don’t think I will die quietly!"

Knowing that death was absolutely certain, Dylan abandoned all defense.

He violently burned his essence to forcefully push his cultivation to its very limits.

A dazzling, silver-white light erupted from Dylan’s uninjured left hand.

It was the Azure Cloud Sect’s rare grade martial arts.

The compressed essence formed a brilliantly sharp blade of energy that tore through the heavy air, aiming directly for the masked man’s heart.

The masked man didn’t even slow his pace.

He simply raised his right hand.

He didn’t use any martial art.

He just swatted his hand forward, his fingers coated in a thick, blood-red aura that reeked of countless slaughtered lives.

CRACK!

The sword technique fueled by the force of a Level 6 Condensation expert’s desperate attack, was instantly shattered.

Before Dylan could even draw a breath, his eyes nearly popped out with absolute dread as the masked man appeared right before his face.

A large, calloused hand shot out, wrapping like an iron clamp around Dylan’s throat.

The masked man hoisted the elder entirely off his feet.

"Ah... guck..."

Dylan kicked his legs helplessly in the air.

The masked man stared into Dylan’s hysterical, bloodshot eyes.

"I like that look on your face," the masked man finally spoke. "It is truly a pity I cannot drag this out longer."

He casually slammed Dylan back down against the rocky ground.

BOOM!

The impact shattered the earth beneath them, creating a small crater.

Dylan laid in the dirt, heavily gasping for his final breaths. His vision was blurring, but the absolute hatred and unwillingness in his heart kept him conscious.

The masked man reached up with his bloodstained hand and grabbed the edge of his dark cloth mask.

With a swift pull, the mask was removed.

Dylan, fighting through the blinding agony, forced his eyes to focus on the man.

Hideous, centipede-like scars crisscrossed over his cheeks and nose, completely warping his features into something monstrous and terrifying.

It was a face that would cause anyone’s scalp to go numb.

As Dylan’s dimming eyes locked onto those distinctive, horrifying scars, his body suddenly stiffened.

He completely forgot the agonizing pain in his shattered limbs.

"You... you... you..."

Dylan raised a trembling, blood-soaked finger. His voice cracked with sheer terror and disbelief. "You are...!"

"Remember my face when you reach the underworld," the masked man whispered, his bloodthirsty eyes gleaming with satisfaction.

"And my name...Vargas."

Dylan’s eyes widened to their absolute limits in sheer terror.

CRUNCH.

Vargas brought his boot down mercilessly.

A chilling, bone-crushing sound echoed.

Dylan’s neck was completely snapped.

His body violently twitched once, and then his eyes rapidly lost all their light, staring openly into space with a vacant, horrified gaze.