"Ouch. That hurts...", Zhen Liu groaned as he sat himself up, "at least I didn't break anything...I hope".
Luckily for Zhen Liu, he didn't bang his head or twist his ankle when the fallen scroll tripped him up.
He was, however, covered in bumps and bruises from all of the books in his arms falling on top of him, and his butt was sore from hitting the cobblestone floor, but those were just superficial wounds at best.
"Ouch...why does my hand feel moist"?
Zhen Liu was ready to get up and dust himself off, but then he noticed his left hand felt unusually warm and mildly wet. Perturbed by the sensation, he examined his hand.
A long gash had opened across his palm, blood smeared across it and the stone floor.
"Damn it, of course I somehow split my hand open on the floor", Zhen Liu hissed as the pain in his hand finally registered, "Gonna need to go find blood clotting pollen or something, got to love natural magical cures."
As Zhen Liu cursed at the pain in his palm, he failed to notice that the blood he left on the floor had quickly vanished.
If he had been paying closer attention, he would've noticed that a strange aether diagram had formed on the stone floor and rapidly absorbed his blood like a sponge before disappearing.
A loud rumbling sound echoed throughout the chamber, stopping Zhen Liu's muttering.
"What was that?", he asked no one as the room began to shake. "An earthquake? Now?! Of all the crappy-"
He stopped mid-sentence as his footing became unstable.
"Oh crap! Less griping, more running you moron!"
Surrounded by dust suddenly disturbed from the library's shaking and the occasional falling book that would suddenly swing back into place in a fruitless attempt to stay on the shelf, Zhen Liu got to his feet as quick as he could and ran straight for the exit, dodging books left and right. What the hell was going on?!
However, as he returned to the center circle, he found that the center circle was no longer there.
Instead, the floor was in the middle of splitting apart before his very eyes. Large segments of it began to slide away like the lens to a camera
Despite the shaking ruins around him, he watched as moments later, a strange, clockwork pedestal emerged from the ground. Laying upon it was a single, naked scroll with a wax seal.
While the scroll itself didn't look impressive, Zheng Liu could recognize it was a formula scroll and could feel the sheer amount of power radiating off it. His heart began to pound in his ears as he felt the aura of the scroll impose a heavy gravity upon him.
"Huh...this power," Zhen Liu gasped, "I've only heard stories about such a phenomenon occuring when- could it be a Universe-Class formula"?!
Zhen Liu took a step back at the thought. He had combed over this library a few times now and this was undoubtedly the most powerful manual in this entire ruin, not even anything in the secrets compartments of the Zhen Pavilion could match the aura of this formation manual simply existing! How in the hell did something that rare end up here?!
Now that the scroll was revealed to the world, the rumbling around Zhen Liu began to subside. Hopefully, Tiny and Mini wouldn't notice and worry about him...actually, hopefully Mini wouldn't. Tiny would probably just comfort Mini for a bit and write him off as being dead to herself.
Out of crisis and bleeding a little less than before, Zhen Liu recalled more lessons from his youth.
Every art and formula in Valresta could be divided into four classes of strength. From weakest to strongest, these classes were: Corporeal, Ethereal, World and Universe. Aside from a pure power difference between the four classes, each of the four classes also had different utilizations of aether. It should also be noted that each class could further divided into three levels of power: minor, intermediate and major.
Corporeal class arts and formulas were the most common of the four and namely involve the practitioner to infuse aether into their limbs or equipment. Not overtly powerful, but practical and anyone with enough practice could learn them. Unfortunately, this did not apply to Zhen Liu. Whenever he tried to circulate the aether as instructed, it just fizzled.
Ethereal class arts and formulas were a bit more uncommon, but still within the realm of regular circulation. This class of arts involved the practitioner being able to release aether in more obvious ways and in the form of unusual manifestations.
Long story short?
Energy blasts, laser beams and hard-light constructs. When Zhen Liu tried to perform these arts in the past, it would end with a flashbang to his face.
World class arts and formulas were rare and incredibly powerful. This classification used not only aether that the practitioner could gather, but supplemented it with the aether found in nature and the terrestrial world in order to perform feats that could best be described with the words: focused natural disasters. As far as Zhen Liu knew, only international spanning organizations and the royal families of empires and kingdoms had these things.
The last classification, Universe Class, might as well be a myth for how little they appeared throughout history. Zheng Liu had heard tales and some rumors of super ancient hermits and secret organizations having a single art of this level or a single formula, but he wasn't sure if he could believe that. Besides if it was true, what could he do about it? Go find the nearest secret order and beg? As for the power of such things...the only recorded moment of anyone using a Universe Class skill, resulted in the destruction and rebirth of an entire continent.
Which was why Zhen Liu wasn't jumping for joy, but was carefully eyeing the scroll just laying there. Normally such treasures would have a super aether beast, traps to the nines or a crotchety old ghost guarding his dying secret. The fact that he wasn't dead by now seemed to make such things unlikely...for now.
"Okay, what the hell", Zhen Liu grumbled as he scratched his head with his good hand, "practically every formula and skill I found so far was Ethereal class, major Ethereal at best, why is this thing showing up now"?
Zhen Liu paused for a moment before quickly looking at his wounded hand.
"Huh...a blood seal? Hmmmm".
At this exact moment, Zhen Liu the crippled potentiate had reverted back to Thomas Lee, the super nerd.
Thomas began replaying every movie, TV show, video game and book he had ever seen back during his lifetime on Earth, to try and figure out why this was happening and whether or not it was a good idea to even look at it.
The first possibility that came to mind was that this place was probably some super vault used by elite clans from ancient times and that his (new) bloodline just happened to be a descendant of one of them. But as far as Zheng Liu knew, his family wasn't a branch of some super clan and had a relatively modern history...at least that's what he thought.
"Things to ask mother and father later, wait...I don't think they know I'm still alive...Okay that will be future me's problem."
The second possibility was that this place was a Universe Class seal meant to lock an ancient evil, the scroll was actually a fake and the soul of the aforementioned evil was sealed inside it. If he opened it, whatever was inside could bust loose and take him over.
"Doubtful. Universe Class seals require Universe Class power, not the blood of some crippled schmuck... unless...".
Possibility number three was that Zheng Liu's body had some weird constitution due to either a birth condition or the fact that he was "technically" a new person, meaning that his blood could be considered "special" based on application.
"The fact that I can't cultivate or use any skills...kinda lead credence to this idea, or I could be and if this thing is powerful as I feel it is, I get to know what a true explosion feels like".
Possibility four: All of the above.
After racking his brain over whether or not it was a good idea to use the scroll, he figured he had about a fifty-fifty shot of it either being a curse or a blessing.
Ultimately, while the side of him that was Thomas wanted to just throw caution to the wind and take it, the Zhen Liu side of him told him to just walk over to see if it had a label or something.
Luckily for Zhen Liu, the name of the formula was written on the outside of the scroll in black swirling ink.
"Chaos Body Forge. Ominous...wonder if it's related to death aether..."