Chapter 359

Chapter 359: Demon Suppression Tower

The next day.

On Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, on another peak facing the Parted Clouds Palace from afar, Yu Sheng and the others walked toward Demon Suppression Tower under Immortal Yuan Ling and Xuan Che’s lead.

“Many dangerous and uncanny things in this world must be contained and sealed by various means. Each group has its own methods,” Immortal Yuan Ling said as he strode along the mountain path, casually introducing things to his guest. “The Borderland is recognized as the best in this area. The ten Level-Three containment standards established by the Special Operations Bureau, and the various containment facilities that match them, are often seen as the model. Our Demon Suppression Tower borrowed many containment ideas from the Borderland.

“The entrance to Demon Suppression Tower is ahead. We built it on a spiritual node of the mountain-protecting formation, using the formation’s power to strengthen its defenses. Beneath this node is also a smaller independent formation, in case of accidents.

“The Grand Void Spiritual Axis is not like the Borderland. There aren’t as many strange otherworlds and bizarre phenomena, so we never built a complex containment system with many facilities. We only divided Demon Suppression Tower into different containment zones.

“Less dangerous things are stored on the upper levels. More dangerous ones—and certain vicious criminals we captured—are held below. At the bottom, the tower also connects directly to the Hall of Divine Mechanisms, where specialists study things that are relatively controllable. It is basically like the Borderland’s ‘danger laboratories.’

“Demon Suppression Tower was not built overnight, and it did not stay unchanged after it was built. In my grandmaster’s era, there was an area called the Evil-Spirit Hall, which held a dangerous and bizarre spirit body dug out of the mines on Everdark. By the time my master led Spirit Mountain, that spirit body was refined into part of the mountain-protecting formation, and the Evil-Spirit Hall was converted into the Soul-Sealing Prison, used to temporarily hold captured demonic and heretical figures…”

Immortal Yuan Ling kept speaking until he finally stopped in front of a cliff.

“We have arrived. This is the entrance to Demon Suppression Tower.”

Yu Sheng stopped too and followed his gesture. He went blank—along with Irene on his shoulder.

Before them was a steep cliff that looked like it had been split by a giant blade. On the cliff face, there was no “tower” at all. No visible structure. Only a massive relief carving.

The relief was clearly part of a towering structure. At a glance, it felt like the tower’s main body had been “melted” into the mountain, leaving only part of the outer wall—including the door—“printed” onto the cliff. The details were razor-sharp, yet there was no visible way in or out, because even the “door” was only uneven grooves in stone.

Yu Sheng stared, stunned. Then his gaze traced higher along the “carving,” and he saw that the upper part of the relief even had “people” moving. They were carved into stone too—vivid human shapes—yet they walked and patrolled above the door like living guards.

“Holy—” Irene craned her neck, grabbed Yu Sheng’s hair with one hand to keep herself from falling, and blurted out in awe.

“Don’t grab my hair!” Yu Sheng hurried to pry her surprisingly strong little claws loose. “I’m already starting to lose hair lately, you know!”

“This is so cool,” Irene said, clearly not listening. She switched hands and kept clutching his hair. “Look! The people up there are moving!”

Immortal Yuan Ling laughed and didn’t explain. He turned toward the cliff and clapped lightly three times.

The next second, the moving relief figures stopped. They looked down as if observing something. Then two of them jumped straight off the cliff.

When they landed, they were no longer stone. They’d become two mountain-guarding disciples in flowing silver armor, flying swords circling beside them. They bowed deeply to Immortal Yuan Ling.

Irene blinked, then grabbed Yu Sheng’s hair with both hands and yelled, “…They’re actually real people?!”

Yu Sheng was impressed too, but the painful tug on his scalp made him think the first thing he needed was to start wearing hats.

“Looks like illusion technique plus space-folding,” Foxy narrowed her eyes, studied it seriously for a moment, then spoke with great confidence. “They taught it at my school! But I slept through that class…”

Luna nodded after hearing that. “Mm. Right.”

At this point, Yu Sheng didn’t even try to judge whether Luna’s “Mm. Right.” had meaning. He suspected it was just her unlock sound effect—proof she’d exited sleep mode.

Immortal Yuan Ling spoke briefly with the two disciples guarding the entrance, and they withdrew. Turning, they stepped back into the cliff.

A moment later, a grinding sound rumbled from deep within the stone relief. The “door” carved into the cliff slowly opened to both sides, revealing a deep corridor lit from within.

“Please,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, gesturing. “That Divine Armament Peak is currently being dismantled in the Hall of Divine Mechanisms. Qian Ji Immortal will arrive shortly. We can go see the Hall of Divine Mechanisms first.”

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

Just like the Special Operations Bureau headquarters “building,” this so-called “tower” didn’t feel like a tower at all once you walked inside.

Yu Sheng felt like he’d entered a massive, complex maze—and the direction of gravity inside it was all over the place. Ancient, grand corridors crisscrossed everywhere. One moment he was walking on a normal floor; the next, his vision blurred and he realized he was standing on an upside-down ceiling.

After passing through many such strange corridors, he stepped onto a long suspended bridge. Beyond it were rows of isolated “cells.” They weren’t connected directly to the bridge; instead, huge mechanism-driven floating bridges moved through the air, constantly changing which cells were linked.

They advanced who-knew-how-far like that, and then Yu Sheng’s view suddenly opened up.

The bridge ended. Ahead was an enormous open space, like a gigantic vertical shaft. Along the “shaft walls” were caves of all sizes. Some had heavy stone doors and solemn pillars. Some entrances were decorated like small pavilions. Others were bare stone holes—yet every single one of them leaked an unsettling, dangerous aura.

Along the shaft walls, crisscrossing pathways were carved and built. Terrifying guardian behemoths and automatons patrolled them, monitoring each “prison cell.”

“The ‘cells’ we passed earlier were ordinary prisons. This ‘shaft’ is the main containment zone,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, raising a hand. “Here are the many demonic beasts and evil entities subdued by Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain over hundreds and thousands of years. Quite a few are extremely dangerous, out of control.

“The most dangerous ones are not even here. They are deeper inside Demon Suppression Tower—straight through the mountain, down to the underground, sealed with the power of the earth veins.

“Of course, we do not need to go that deep today. The route to the Hall of Divine Mechanisms is this way…”

He lifted his dust whisk and flicked it toward one side of the shaft wall.

A staircase clinging to the wall—what had looked like a normal curved ramp—suddenly roared to life. Driven by a giant mechanism, it linked up with another ramp on the opposite side. At the end of the stairs, an invisible door appeared.

Yu Sheng crossed the ramp, passed the guarding divine beast and the several-meter-tall automaton in front of the door, verified his identity, and entered the Hall of Divine Mechanisms, where the giant Divine Armament Peak was being dismantled.

The hall was brightly lit, with a towering ceiling. In the ancient, imposing round chamber, the twelve-meter-tall Divine Armament Peak stood quietly on a platform. Scaffolding wrapped around it, and Spirit Mountain cultivators in short robes worked busily in the air and on the structure.

When Yu Sheng entered, the chest and back armor had already been removed. Parts of the arm guards and head plating were also gone. With the heavy armor stripped away, what lay beneath was a mechanism structure so complex it made your eyes spin.

It looked a bit like a robot, but it was obviously a different system.

A robot’s engine wouldn’t have that many talismanic runes.

Yu Sheng stepped closer to the dismantling platform and stared up for a long time, awed, until he accepted he truly couldn’t understand any of it.

But Irene beside his head was watching with intense focus, her small face unusually thoughtful.

“You can understand it?” Yu Sheng asked.

Irene said confidently, “Nope!”

“Then why are you staring so seriously?”

Irene folded her arms, thought for a moment, and her eyes spun. “I just suddenly had an idea…”

Foxy turned her head. “Benefactor’s ‘I have an idea’ got passed on to you too?”

“Hey, don’t interrupt!” Irene waved hard, then kept staring up at the twelve-meter-tall Divine Armament Peak as she spoke slowly. “Yu Sheng, do you think it’s possible for you to make me a body that’s about 1.6 or 1.7 meters tall—”

Yu Sheng blurted before she could finish, “Didn’t we try that? Spirit infusion just shr—”

“And then I pilot it from the inside,” Irene said.

The rest of Yu Sheng’s sentence snapped off and got stuck in his windpipe.