Chapter 358

Chapter 359: Demon Suppression Tower

The next day.

On a mountain across from the Parted Clouds Palace in Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, Yu Sheng and the others followed Immortal Yuan Ling and Xuan Che toward the Demon Suppression Tower.

Immortal Yuan Ling walked briskly along the mountain path and explained as he led the guests: “Dangerous and strange things in this world must be contained and sealed with many methods. Every group has its own way. The Borderland is the best known for this. The Special Affairs Bureau’s thirteen-level containment standards and its various types of containment facility are seen as models. Our Demon Suppression Tower also learned much from Borderland ideas.

“Up ahead is the entrance. We built it on a node of the mountain-guarding formation to strengthen its defenses, and there is a smaller, independent sub-array under the node in case of accidents.

“The Grand Void Spiritual Axis is not like the Borderland. We don’t have many bizarre Otherworld events and oddities, so we did not build a huge, complex system of facilities. Instead, inside the Demon Suppression Tower we divided different containment zones. Lower-risk things are stored on the upper levels. Higher-risk things, and some vicious criminals we captured, are held deeper below. The base of the tower also connects to the Hall of Divine Mechanisms, where specialists study items that are relatively controllable. That is similar to the Borderland’s hazardous labs.

“The tower was not built in a day, and it has changed over time. In my ancestor’s era there was a special area called the Hall of Malevolent Spirits. It held a strange and dangerous spirit body dug from the mines on the Everdark moon. When my master took charge of the Spirit Mountain, that spirit body was finally refined into part of the mountain-guarding formation, and the Hall of Malevolent Spirits was rebuilt into the Soul Sealing Prison to temporarily hold captured evildoers.”

He stopped before a sheer cliff that looked like it had been cut by a giant blade and said: “We’re here. This is the entrance.”

Yu Sheng halted, followed the direction of Immortal Yuan Ling’s hand, and stared in a daze along with Irene on his shoulder.

There was no “tower,” not even a trace of buildings, only a massive relief carved into the rock face.

The relief showed part of a tall tower. It looked as if the tower’s body had been fused into the mountain, leaving only a slice of outer wall, including a door, pressed into the cliff. The carving was detailed down to tiny lines. There was no normal way in or out, because even the door was only uneven grooves cut into stone.

Yu Sheng stared, then looked higher. On the upper half of the relief, “people” were moving. They were stone figures carved in lifelike detail, yet they walked posts above the door with the grace of living guards.

“Whoa,” Irene gasped. She craned her neck and grabbed fistfuls of Yu Sheng’s hair to keep from slipping, eyes wide with wonder.

Yu Sheng flinched and said: “Don’t grab my hair. I’ve started losing it lately.”

“This is so cool,” Irene said, switching hands but still gripping his hair. “Look, the figures are moving.”

Immortal Yuan Ling chuckled. He didn’t explain. He turned to face the rock wall and clapped three times.

The stone figures stopped and lowered their heads as if checking something. Two of them jumped off the wall a moment later and, as they landed, turned into living mountain guarding disciples in flowing silver armor with flying swords circling at their sides. They bowed deeply to Immortal Yuan Ling.

Irene froze, then grabbed with both hands and yanked Yu Sheng’s hair even harder as she shouted: “They’re real people?”

Yu Sheng was impressed too, but the pain on his scalp made him think of something else. [I really should start wearing a hat.]

Foxy narrowed her eyes and studied the scene, then said seriously: “Looks like an Illusion Technique plus space folding. We learned this in school… I slept through that class.”

Luna listened and said: “Mm, right.”

Yu Sheng no longer tried to judge whether Luna’s “Mm, right” meant anything. [He suspected it was only her unlock sound effect to tell people she had exited sleep mode.]

Meanwhile Immortal Yuan Ling spoke with the two disciples at the tower door. They saluted, stepped back into the wall, and vanished. A click-clack echoed from deep inside the rock. The carved door slid open to both sides, showing a lit corridor.

Immortal Yuan Ling gestured invitingly and said: “Please. The Assault Titans are being dismantled in the Hall of Divine Mechanisms right now. Immortal Qian Ji will arrive later. We can go take a look first.”

With expectation and curiosity, Yu Sheng followed Immortal Yuan Ling and Xuan Che into the Demon Suppression Tower.

Like the “building” at the Special Affairs Bureau’s headquarters, nothing inside felt like a tower. It was more like stepping into a huge, complex maze where gravity twisted around. One moment Yu Sheng walked on a normal floor, the next he blinked and found himself standing on an upside-down ceiling. After many such corridors, they came to a long hanging bridge. Beyond it were many isolated compartments. None were directly joined to the bridge. Floating walkways, driven by massive mechanisms, drifted back and forth and changed which rooms connected.

After they went on for who knew how far, the view opened up.

The bridge ended at a giant open space like a colossal vertical shaft. The “shaft wall” was dotted with caves and chambers. Some had thick stone doors and ancient pillars. Some were shaped like small pavilions. Some were bare holes in rock that breathed an uneasy, dangerous air. Along the walls ran crisscrossing paths. Guardian behemoths and automatons patrolled them, watching the state of each cell.

Immortal Yuan Ling raised his hand toward the shaft and explained: “The compartments we passed are ordinary cells. This shaft is the main containment zone. Here we hold many demons and malevolent spirits subjugated by Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain over the centuries, including very dangerous runaway entities. The most dangerous are not here. They are even deeper, through the mountain into the earth below, sealed with the strength of the earth veins.

“We do not need to go that far today. The path to the Hall of Divine Mechanisms is here.”

He flicked his dust whisk at a curved stair pressed to the shaft wall. The stair rumbled, lifted, and linked with another slope across the gap. A hidden door appeared at the far end of the stairs.

They crossed, passed a stone guardian beast and a several-meter-tall automaton, verified their identities, and entered the Hall of Divine Mechanisms where the Assault Titans were being taken apart.

Lights blazed under a soaring roof. In the grand circular hall, a twelve-meter Assault Titans stood quietly on a platform. Scaffolding ringed it. Cultivators in short robes stood on the frames or floated around it, busy at their tasks.

When Yu Sheng came in, the chest plate and back plate had already been removed, along with part of the arm armor and some head plates. Beneath the thick, heroic armor lay a tangle of mechanisms so complex it made the eyes blur.

It looked a bit like a robot, but clearly was not the same kind. A robot engine would not be covered in so many arcane talismanic runes.

Yu Sheng walked to the platform and stared up in awe at the huge, ancient automaton until he confirmed he really did not understand what he was seeing.

He noticed Irene at his shoulder watching with deep focus, a thoughtful look on her small face.

He asked: “You understand this?”

Irene answered boldly: “No.”

“Then why are you staring so hard?”

Irene folded her arms, thought a moment, and her eyes spun with an idea: “I just had a thought.”

Foxy turned and asked: “Has Benefactor’s ‘I have an idea’ catchphrase rubbed off on you too?”

“Hey, don’t interrupt,” Irene said, waving her hand. She kept looking up at the twelve-meter Assault Titans and said slowly: “Yu Sheng, what if you build me a body that’s one meter sixty-seven…”

Yu Sheng cut in without thinking: “We tried that. With spirit infusion it just shrinks…”

Irene finished without missing a beat: “And I pilot it from inside.”

Yu Sheng’s unfinished sentence jammed in his throat all at once.