The Dawn of the New World

From start to finish, neither guard had said anything. They didn't even show any emotions looking at Hao Xuan. Like he wasn't even there.

Judging from how they handled themselves and the looks in their eyes, Hao Xuan guessed, and rightly so, that they should have the same intelligence as that of a 16-18-year-old human. But as to their power, he was not able to see through it.

The guard on the left had pushed open the almost 8-meter thick metallic door like it was made of light wood so its physical prowess alone made it stronger than 70% of normal cultivators around the Spirit Realm. Only cultivators that had good physiques and constitutions would be able to go head to head with these guys using raw strength. Hao Xuan was, of course, one of these people.

His strength was 14 times higher than that of someone at his level should be. With a dull smile, Hao Xuan nodded at the guard on the left and reached out with his left hand, placing it on the vault door like he was using it to climb in.

It looked extremely simple but Hao Xuan's muscles were flexed to the extreme under his clothes. If not for Nidhora's power concealing his body in her shadow, his biceps would have bulked up to almost double the size.

Using 50% of his overall strength and a bit of Chaos energy, Hao Xuan clenched his hand.

Instantly, the vault door made a sound like it was crying and the entire section Hao Xuan was holding onto bent like it was made of wax.

Both the guards and Hao Xuan himself were startled by the sound. He quickly pulled back his hand and saw the handprint on the vault door, embedded eight inches into the metal door.

"!!!"

Both the guard's expression changed to one of shock and then that of wariness as they looked over at Hao Xuan with deathly glares but found him staring at his own hand in confusion.

'Is that door made of normal metal? How the fuck did it just bent in like that? God damnit! Now I gotta pay for this shit too. Wait! I can just pretend it had nothing to do with me!' he was panicking inside but kept a straight face.

Hao Xuan looked up at the guards and shrugged innocently before casually walking in like what just happened had nothing to do with him.

The guard on the left raised his hand to try and stop him but Hao Xuan was like a shadow and had already gone in.

Even this alien roach was left speechless at the human's actions. But seeing as Hao Xuan had already left, both the guards came up to the vault door and did the same thing as Hao Xuan. After a few tries, they both gave up.

There was not a single scratch on the metal door. And how could there be? It was mined from asteroids that were found orbiting black holes. It was a little rare to find but extremely dangerous to get as any ship that got close enough would be swallowed by the black hole. Yet the asteroids with this metal were unaffected by the black holes pull for some reason.

It was extremely durable and could block every single type of physical and energy-based attacks. Or that's what they thought until now.

Under the breathing masks, both the guard's mouth were opened wide. No matter how they tried the door was unaffected.

**

Hao Xuan breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't hear the guards running up to him.

'Looks like they gave up, thank god...'

After the vault door was a stone hallway. There was dust everywhere and it looked pretty old. It should have been here for a long time.

Hao Xuan's brows furrowed.

He thought the roaches had dug into this place randomly but that did not seem to be the case. It looked like they knew this structure was here and was their target all along. From an initial examination, it seemed to be thousands of years old.

Hao Xuan moved along the hallway while looking around. There were missing tiles every few steps but that seemed to have happened a long time ago. There were scratch marks and what seemed to be dried blood in a few places as well, like a fight had taken place.

The hallway twisted and turned several times before finally opening up into a giant circular room.

"Ah, welcome welcome!" before Hao Xuan could even enter, he heard a raspy voice from the other side. But after taking a single step inside he saw the person that was talking.

There was only one individual in this more than 50-meter wide room. He was standing on the right side next to big piles of 'something'. The piles were covered by some type of cloth-like material that occasionally moved on its own so Hao Xuan wasn't able to see what was under it.

Hao Xuan looked over to the man that was looking in his direction. He had just spoken in the beast world's most common language.

This was the trader Hao Xuan had come to meet.

He was about 1.6 meters tall with a hood covering the top half of his body completely. Even his face wasn't visible under it no matter how hard Hao Xuan tried to see. His figure was slightly hunched and he looked like an old man from afar with the drooping shoulders.

"Welcome dear customer!" the trader raised his hands like he was welcoming back a hero.

But instead of replying in a cordial manner, Hao Xuan chose to go in a different direction. From what Poriverse had known about these guys, showing things like gentleness and friendliness would make them look down on you. They as a species respected the cold-natured individuals so being nice to them would not go well.

"Which house are you from?" Hao Xuan asked emotionlessly. His tone neither amiable nor aggressive.

The trader faltered.

"Dear customer, why don't you have a seat first?" he tried to play it off.

Hao Xuan's brows visibly knit together in displeasure. He opened his mouth and out came a strange language that sounded like Latin but with a lot of clicks.

This was the language used by the upper echelon of the Cadivus society. If one did not belong to a house, they would not even be able to understand it and only the ones from the main bloodlines were allowed to speak the language.

"Which house do you belong to?" he asked.

The trader's body shook like a bolt of electricity had just gone past him.