Maiden Of The Splitting Moon

Chapter 548 – Time Does Not Wait

"It's still the same as it was the last time I came", she thought. 

As the room that came after the trapped one, it was underwhelming, to say the least. There was a bed, a desk, everything needed for someone's living space. But she's searched it once, there was no point in searching again. 

Rather, Ming Yue looked at the door leading out of the two rooms. 

It was a simple and unassuming door, a normal wooden door. She walked up and opened it, revealing a long hallway before her. It was dimly lit with a strange light and yet there was no sign of a source. No torches or glowing rocks were in sight, it was just stone bricks building up to a desolate hall.

There wasn't even an ounce of decor on it. 

It was quiet, save for the sound of her footsteps. Blood Moon was unsheathed and she walked slowly, keeping her surroundings in check. 

"Where does this lead to?" she wondered. 

Soon enough, she reached the end of the hallway, finding that it led to a set of spiral stairs that went up and down. 

"So this isn't the lowest level… Which way should I go?" 

Ming Yue looked in both directions before expanding her aura, trying to sense what was beyond these stairs. 

"Xue Yue, can you find anything?" she asked. 

Blood Moon began to hum, the reverberations echoed through the spiral stairs. 

"Hmm, either way, it'll be dangerous. Although…" 

The sword spirit paused. 

"Although what?" 

Ming Yue was curious, wanting to know what she had found. 

"It's obvious that the lower levels are more dangerous but, there seems to be something else down there. I'm not sure what. It could be a treasure or a living thing, all I know is that, whatever is the source of this energy, it is different from everything else around us", Xue Yue explained. 

"Something different…" 

Repeating those words, Ming Yue looked down the spiral stairs and slowly descended. Keeping her senses alert, she moved down to the next floor, walking through another hallway that slowly widened before revealing several entrances leading elsewhere. 

Stopping in the middle of it, she looked around before picking one of the entrances. But the cultivator soon came out and went to the next, checking each one all the way to the last entrance. 

"Nothing here, just more rooms for people to sleep in. There must've been hundreds that resided here." 

Finding nothing but dust and cobwebs, she went down one more floor, this time entering a sizable hall. Not incredibly large but not small either, enough for a hundred people to sit comfortably. 

Looking around, Ming Yue took note of everything within this hall. 

"There are mats here, a place for incense, is this a meditation room? Cultivation maybe?" she thought. 

Looking around some more, Ming Yue moved down the hall and walked through a doorway that led to several other halls, each one different than the last. 

"Prayer mats, dummies, what else do they have?" she wondered. 

Looking through all of it, each seemed that each hall served a different purpose, training in some form or manner. 

"Should I… take some of this with me?" 

The thought entered her mind as she walked around. It wasn't as if they were in use and her home did need some furnishings. With that, a few things were no longer there, chairs, a table, a mat, and some more. 

"Not amazing but better than what I make."

She put on a hapless smile, thinking about her own attempts at carpentry and what not. 

"Let's down one more floor and stop for the night." 

As she walked down, Ming Yue still kept her guard up. 

"There hasn't been any dangerous thing yet… What could be down there?" 

Making her way to his next floor, there was one short hallway that split into four paths. Each one with a different angle, some ascending and others descending. 

"Which one?" 

Spreading her senses through each of the four paths, she searched through them finding that they contained a different thing. 

"The first and third paths have a few boxes but the second and fourth. The fourth is a… torture room. The second… a library of some sort?" 

Curious by the second path, she walked down and entered the room. 

It was the largest of the four rooms and was filled with shelves of books, hundreds of them in fact. She moved to touch them but stopped herself. 

"Could any of them be trapped? Or are there any that stand out?" 

Looking at the books from a distance, Ming Yue found a few that were different from the rest. They had an aura to them. Sharp, overbearing, soft, it was a variety and Ming Yue took them off the shelves one by one skimming through them. 

"Sword techniques, axe, bow, hammer… These are all manuals. Whoever wrote them or created them were experts no doubt." 

Going through them quickly, they were certainly powerful techniques but they did not fit her at all. Still, they would be useful to others without a doubt. 

"I should take them back to Heaven's Gate, give it all to the archives. Maybe they can tell me the origin of all these techniques."

Putting them into her spatial ring, she turned to leave before noticing something. Turning back, she looked at empty shelves, giving them a closer look. There were ten in total, six standing opposite to the door with two on both sides. 

Inspecting them closely, her eyes widened a bit as she took a step back and looked at each shelf from afar. 

"Each one has a word carved on them. Time does not wait for anyone, especially not the talented." 

Reading these words to herself, Ming Yue repeated them several times. Her eyes revealed a strange light as she furrowed her brows. 

"What does that mean?" 

She wasn't sure what to make of this phrase, this message. 

"There's another meaning to it, but what is it?" 

Ming Yue didn't know. There was more to these words than just a simple message, that was clear enough in how it was presented. Despite being carved on these bookshelves, it was as if they were written on like brush strokes. On top of that, there was a unique power coming from each word. 

"Whoever wrote this was much stronger than those other experts. Not Sky Realm but… Heaven Realm?"

That much she knew, the feeling these words gave off reminded her of the Heaven Realm expert she knew, the Grand Elder of Heaven's Gate. Rather, this person might even be stronger than the Grand Elder. 

"Time does not wait for anyone, especially not the talented."

Repeating it once more, she gave it one more look before leaving the room. Going back to the starting point, the young woman looked at the fourth path. 

"It's a torture room, luckily it's been cleaned but… there's nothing of use in there."

Torture was something she didn't partake in and had no wish to try. Going back to the stairs, she looked down, seeing no end to it. 

"How far down does this go?" 

Staring at it for a bit, she ascended, going past the floors she searched back to the first room. Going to the stacked stones, Ming Yue touched them, going back to the cavern. Looking up at the crack, she found that it was still nighttime. The sunlight had barely begun to shine.

"Ah, I probably could've gone for one more floor then", she thought. 

"It's not like those stones are going anywhere." 

Xue Yue chuckled. 

"Yes, but how much time do I have left?" Ming Yue asked her of this. 

"Right, our current predicament." 

Xue Yue turned quiet as the young cultivator walked out of the cave, going through the waterfall to see her little home. In that moment, she repeated those words once again. 

"Time does not wait for anyone, especially not the talented. What could this mean for me?"