The 1000th Reincarnation

Zephyr hopped off his bed, grabbed his sword next to the kitchen table, and sneakily opened his door, making sure to not make any noise. When he got outside he closed his eyes and concentrated. 

With his eyes closed, he sees a faint yellow line that passes through a small house right across from his house. 

Bingo

He slowly walks towards the house making sure to focus on the yellow aura in front of him. Slowly opening the door of the house, he sees a messy restaurant with heaps of chopsticks and bowls on the floor. The tables were all greasy with sauce plastered everywhere. 

What the hell happened here?

Ignoring the mess and making sure Zephyr didn't knock over anything, he continued to follow the faint yellow aura. He eventually approached the back bar where the bartender served drinks. 

The yellow aura is going downward? What the hell?

Searching around the back bar, he touches everything. Under the bar table, on the shelves, and the brown wooden cups they used to poor drinks. Upon further examination, he felt a strange aura coming out of one of the cups. 

What? Why is there a minuscule amount of mana in this one cup? 

After touching every single cup and placing each one on the counter he discovered that each cup had different amounts of mana inside. Zephyr roughly ordered them based on how much there was but it was hard to tell because there was just so little inside. 

What do I even do with this information? 

After pondering for a bit, Zephyr decided to recheck everything but this time tried as hard as he could to detect any other type of energy that could be lingering. As Zephyr reached under the counter again he felt something dark and cold. 

Wait, is this dark energy? 

Dark energy is the energy that was similar to qi but instead of taking the energy from the life and surrounding area, it took the energy from the surrounding death and destruction. These two energies would easily repel each other but unlike qi, mana easily stuck to dark energy, the dark energy sucking the energy of mana for whatever reason. 

Zephyr had noticed that the dark energy had been arranged across the wooden platform under the counter in little circles, one having a larger concentration than the one before it in increasing order. Zephyr put the wooden cups from left to right on the platform starting with the lowest concentration. As Zephyr finished up he felt the mana leaving the cups and a small opening appeared right under the counter next to the platform where he put the cups. 

After debating whether Zephyr should crawl through the hole that angled downward into darkness, he figured he had no choice so he slowly crawled through. 

After crawling out of the hole, he slowly stands up revealing a cavern lit up by a row of torches. Slowly unsheathing his word, he walks carefully still trying his best to follow the divine energy. 

After walking for a couple of seconds, he spots a shelf with a box dead on the center platform. The divine energy gets stronger as he approaches the box confirming that this was exactly what Zephyr was looking for. 

As Zephyr approached the box, he felt a strange foreign energy. Not from the box but somewhere near the box. 

Zephyr moved to the right of the box pushing it aside. 

A chest? There's a strange, foreign energy in this box, I've never felt this before. 

For a second, Zephyr didn't want to approach something that he didn't know anything about but something was calling him. Something beckoned him to find out what was inside the box. 

Zephyr lifted the box out of the whole Unsheathing his sword, he formed a layer of qi over the sword allowing him to cut the chain tethering the lock on the chest. The chain was made of a weird metal with a language he had never seen. More importantly, the dark energy seemed to envelop the room even more as soon as he broke it. Zephyr couldn't wait any longer, he had to find out what was in that box. As Zephyr got closer to the box his vision got darker, it was like the darkness had completely enveloped him. Zephyr lifted the lid revealing a tome. 

The tome was wrinkly and old. The texture was similar to that of a human and it felt somewhat... alive. At this point Zephyr, barely being able to see, being blown with winds as strong as a hurricane, coldest as can be, reaches his hand and touches the book when it just turns... black.