The Dawn of the New World

"What? What's wrong?"

Grey shook both his heads, stomping his front legs on the rocky ground with such force that it created a small cloud of dust.

Hao Xuan swiftly leaned forward and ran his hands through Grey's mane to calm him down.

"Woah Woah, relax! What's going on, huh?"

"Neigh" x2

Grey backed up several steps against Hao Xuan's will and only then relaxed a little.

Hao Xuan could feel the tension and the nervousness in Grey's muscles.

Grey had seen the Scorpion King who was the strongest Sever under Hao Xuan's control and he still hadn't reacted with such apprehension, which gave Hao Xuan quite a huge reason for concern.

But since he was already here, he didn't want to leave before at least seeing the gate for himself.

"There there, it's fine you don't have to go any further, you can go back now," Hao Xuan said in a coaxing tone while patting one of Grey's heads before recalling him back to the beast token.

Having eaten most of his rations, Hao Xuan was finally feeling a little content. His body's condition was much better now so he was ready for the next step.

There was of course still the issue of the Nidhora remaining but before finishing up the current task, he didn't want to wake up the slumbering dragon, literally.

The first thing he did was to examine his surroundings with extreme care. Right now he was a hundred meters away from the foot of the mountain.

The mountain itself was completely bare with little to no signs of vegetation. In fact, there was absolutely nothing growing anywhere the mountain either, the last leafy bush was several tens of meters behind Hao Xuan and it was discolored as well.

There was a rough rocky trail in front of him, leading up the right side of the mountain. Hao Xuan stayed on full alert as he neared it. There were various fresh tracks going towards the mountain.

"Looks like I won't be alone..."

Someone had already found the gate but the question was who?

Staying downwind, Hao Xuan quickly crossed over to the other side of the trail and followed alongside it, jumping from one boulder to another that lined the left side of the track.

While sticking to that position and speed, it took him less than half an hour to reach the end of the trail which seemed to have been cut off with a knife. There was a gigantic empty space in front of him.

A cacophony of noises followed by a multitude of colorful lights slowly started to bleed towards Hao Xuan's direction as he got closer to the gap in the mountain.

Being even more cautious than before Hao Xuan inched closer little by little, taking care of every single rock in his way. He was less than 10 meters away from the edge but crossing that little distance took just as many minutes.

When Hao Xuan finally reached the gap and peered downwards, he was left completely stupefied.

It looked like someone had cut a portion of the mountain off and thrown it away somewhere. There was a hole on the mountainside, at least 1500 meters wide. Hao Xuan was standing on one side and could clearly see the other end.

It was about 200 meters deep.

At the bottom of the hole were thousands of men and beast running around. Some were moving rocks and clearing the way, further expanding the hole. Some were placing support pillars along the sides to keep it from collapsing inward.

This didn't look like a short term project at all,

And in the center of it all was a metallic door, about a hundred meters in length placed on the ground. It was still completely intact without any obvious signs of damage.

This door was much different than the one Hao Xuan had seen before that had the image of the 734th God of War engraved on it (CH464).

This one was much smaller in size and there were no large engravings on its surface, at least not as big as the other one. It was also darker in color as if it had been degrading under the changing seasons for a long time.

The door was opened outwards halfway, showing a gigantic staircase leading straight into the ground.

There were dozens of individuals coming in and out of the door carrying various things on their backs.

"Holy shit, what are these people doing?" Hao Xuan unknowingly muttered out loud. Thankfully there was no one nearby to notice.

"Baracus, can you zoom in? Give me a better view?" he couldn't see clearly so he asked for help, but the response was not what he expected.

"Negative. Blood energy is still too low and the numbers of the nanomachines still need to be recovered to a suitable degree. ETA: 31 hours."

"Fuck sakes..."

With no other choice, Hao Xuan grabbed hold of a protruding rock and starting climbing down.