V1C36: Curious Chambers

To prevent both of them from falling into some trap at the same time, Fen Zhi stepped away to the other side of the passageway before Yi Wei came into contact with the glass.

She shielded her body in blood-like planar energy, applying every defensive technique she had in her arsenal. For whatever reason, she felt a certain degree of danger from that sheet of glass, and thus she prepared to tear her hand away the moment something occurred. With every defensive measure applied twice, she reached out with a single finger, and touched it…

… Nothing happened.

Nonetheless, she revoked her hand immediately, and instead scanned it with her spiritual will. Something within blocked it from going too far, but she was able to see the very surface. Besides a large quantity of mysterious things within, there was a familiar set of array nodes inside of it.

‘So, it might also react to the planar energy of the Kong Mental Arts. Might as well attempt it,’ Yi Wei shrugged, engaging her mental arts before placing her finger back on the glass.

The violet energy floated through her arm and out of her body, into the pane of glass, where it sank deep into the surface and continued on, moving away. For some time, there was no reaction, until the dark crystal lit up with a sharp blue light. It occupied a perfect rectangle and the majority of the glass, but it had no clear purpose to it at all.

For a few seconds, that was all that she saw, until the image finally changed. Two smaller rectangles appeared in the middle of the blue, with a word on either one.

‘Open, and Exit? I suppose I want to open the door, so…’ she hesitantly touched the upper rectangle.

Upon that interaction, both of the shapes vanished, and a door appeared within the stone to her left, opening up slowly with the loud creak of old metal. While it opened, a small, slightly incomplete circle spun in the middle of the blue light, and when it was finished, both it and the light dimmed to nothingness.

“Well, that worked,” Yi Wei muttered as she waved Fen Zhi over.

Contrary to her expectation, the moment the assassin got closer, she looked at her questioningly, “How… did you manage that?”

“What do you mean? I just tapped that thing – a button of sorts, I guess – and it opened.”

“Button? I only saw… a number of lines… of words… maybe numbers… I was too far away to see…” she explained, “I’ve never seen anything like this… in my usual places of deployment… Is this common near the… Yi District?”

“Nope. Never seen anything like this. If I activate this again, could you tell me what you see? I’d like to figure out what the cause of this discrepancy in our views is.”

Fen Zhi nodded, so Yi Wei sank another wisp of violet energy into the glass pane, causing the blue light to return. This time, the two buttons said ‘Close’ and ‘Exit’, with those characters written on a bright white background. Other than that, there were no differences.

“To me… it looks like a few dozen lines… of symbols… though I don’t think… they’re of the common language…” the assassin said, pointing to the supposed ends of each line on the glass, where Yi Wei saw only blue, “I think… there’s some sort… of pattern to it… but I’m afraid I don’t… understand it at all… and it’ll take a little too long to copy…”

“That’s fine, don’t worry,” Yi Wei said, moving her hand away from the glass.

After a minute of glowing idly, the light dimmed and went away, disappearing without any hints of being there before.

However, that time allowed for Yi Wei to spread her spiritual will throughout her body, and to observe the exact cause for the difference in their understandings of the blue light. As it turned out, the only thing that was different within her body when she viewed the glass… were the mysterious characters. Just like the time she became rather exasperated about her family, they were strangely active, shaking and jittering in place whenever she looked upon the blue surface.

‘Now, I naturally have to wonder whether this is just some natural function of the characters, which would allow me to comprehend whatever those symbols mean, or if this is something specific incorporated into either the glass or the mysterious characters,’ she pondered, resisting the urge to pull off the glass and examine whatever is behind it, ‘The first would simply mean that they store not just cultivation techniques, but also certain languages, codes or something else. The second would suggest that there is some connection between the characters and this cave, and potentially to the Kong family. However, with these characters holding such an immense power, being capable of absorbing planar energy and sustaining cosmic energy, I can’t imagine how the Kong District would have been reduced to such a state.

‘Actually… Where did these things come from?’ her attention remained on the characters, watching them as their many pieces hovered in the middle of her dantian without any clear purpose to their minute movements, ‘I’ve had them ever since I’ve been able to see into my own body with my spiritual will, and yet no-one else has been able to notice them, even when they have detected my perfected stages. They seem to change as I cultivate, growing from simple text to shards of a strange stone. They contain information, varying from cultivation techniques to what appear to be vague memories and emotions… What are they?’

She had been able to find a convenient name for her specific planar energy after staring a little too long into the constantly changing nebulae within it, but the characters evaded this fate. For one, she couldn’t even be certain what they truly looked like, nor whether the uses she had found so far were meant to be the primary ones, or if she had been using a sword as a hammer this entire time.

“Yi Wei… should we get going?”

“Hm? Oh, right, sorry. I got a little distracted,” Yi Wei awkwardly laughed, sealing those thoughts via the Kong Mental Arts so that she would be able to return to them when the time was right.

As far as she could tell, that wasn’t the original intention behind that technique, but more of an accidental feature. It assisted with memory in general and allowed for the compartmentalisation of certain memories in such a way that they wouldn’t affect one’s psyche and would remain purely as information. However, if those memories were then converted back into memories, all of the emotions and thoughts associated with them would rush back, as if that memory had happened just a moment ago.

She had simply been experimenting while sitting around in the woods, to see the full extent of the Kong Mental Arts’ abilities, when she had stumbled upon this possibility. Unfortunately, the more time had passed since the occurrence of that memory, the less effect it would have. Thus, she couldn’t recover passing thoughts from when she was eight, nor was this as effective on the memories of the Thunder Lord (or else she would have made herself feel even more awkward around women than she could already be), but so long as she sealed the memory early on, it would not be affected by the erosion of time – or, at the very least, that erosion would be significantly slowed.

“Alright, follow me. Be prepared for anything and tell me if there are any more of those symbols,” she stated, striding into the open door, projecting a protective barrier in front of herself to prevent any traps from damaging her.

Without realising it was there, she crossed another thin barrier between rooms, but this time she was not met with water, nor with darkness, but instead with bright, unpleasant, overly white light. Unlike the small pit and the dark corridor, this room was large, in terms of all three dimensions, easily exceeding the size of several combat arenas put together. Much like an arena, however, it was mostly empty, exposing a flat, white metal floor and similar walls and ceiling, with the only notable object being the item in the middle.

That one object, however, was as interesting as a thousand different artefacts.

It was a large glass tube, going up from the floor up to the ceiling, with countless tubes made of some sort of dark material stretching out from a circle at the top to various slots at the bottom.

In the middle, a small flask floated like a piece of ice would float in water.

“Is… is that an illusion?” Fen Zhi questioned, not moving a step closer or further away from the central glass tube, her intense desire for the item within combatting the fear of being tricked or losing her opportunity to set her hands upon the Third Eye Elixir once again.

Yi Wei examined it closely, applying every single mental and anti-illusory technique she had to her sight and spiritual will before slowly shaking her head, “Doesn’t look like it. At least, I can’t see through it, so even if it an illusion, it isn’t one that a cultivator of my level would be able to see through. Not even the Third Eye helps.”

“… I see… Then, maybe that information… was incorrect?”

“Hey, don’t make any assumptions like that, or else your hopes will probably be shattered way too many times. For one, I don’t know whether that flask has the elixir inside it, or if it’s just water.”

“Right…” the assassin hung her head in her own, suppressed manner, “Let’s continue.”

She nodded, and progressed further, walking as closely to the glass as she was able to before the vast quantity of dark tubes obstructed her. That proximity allowed her to notice that the visual of the flask was a little strange, so she instead stepped to the side rather than trying to advance.

“So that’s how it is…” Yi Wei sighed, turning to Fen Zhi, “I might be able to see through illusions, but if something is real, none of my abilities work.”

“What…” the assassin followed her lead and walked around the glass, quickly realising the same thing.

The glass flask was not an illusion, but instead some sort of projection onto the glass, cast by something at the top of the glass. When viewed from the front, it seemed to be as real as anything, but the moment they observed from the side, it was clear that it might as well have been a moving painting on the glass surface.

“Oh… Thank you… for the warning…” Fen Zhi sighed, staring at the glass longingly for a while, “What do you think… this might be for?”

“Don’t have a single clue. Might be intended to trick an explorer, or maybe it’s simply here to show that the Third Eye Elixir is somewhere deeper within. Frankly, this entire style and aesthetic is completely unfamiliar to me, and I have never read of anything like this in all of my years of reading and study,” Yi Wei replied, “I can’t even understand whether any of these tubes have some function, or if someone just put them here for fun.”

“For fun… would be… worrying… What other things… could be here for fun?”

She didn’t have a suitable response for that, so she looked around for any other clues. Three of the walls of the room, those being the one behind her, as well as those to their left and right, were mostly featureless, with the natural exception of the door they entered through.

The last wall, the one behind the glass tube, was the only one with anything notable. It had no just one, but two rectangular outlines cut into its surface, an equal distance from one another and from the corners of the room. Their shapes matched the door that they had used for entry, and thus they quickly concluded that they had to be obscuring the passage forward.

Although the number of doors was somewhat worrying, as they might force them to split up and thus miss key details that the two of them together would never miss, what took precedence was finding a method to open them. After all, with how peculiar this area is, it wouldn’t be too surprising if one door was intended for entry, while the other was for exiting, or if one was simply four lines cut out in a wall while the other was the real way into the next area.

“Do you see any floating lines of that unknown language, or perhaps another black sheet of glass randomly placed in a floor or wall?”

“No… In contrast with the corridor, this… light above us… is far too bright…”

“It’s a bit like someone had pulled the sun down, a little too close to the ground, then removed any of the pleasant orange colour from it,” Yi Wei agreed, contemplating throwing something at it to try and return to the pleasant soft light of her Glowing Array, “If this is intentional, then I don’t have a clue of what to think about whoever created this place.”

“Mhm… Do you want me to break it?”

“Well, if I said that I didn’t want you to, I’d be lying, but I also don’t know what purpose that light serves. What if-”

Before she could say anything else, she witnessed a small knife flying out of Fen Zhi’s hand, right into the glowing spot at the ceiling. It flew at an impressive speed, surrounded by a dark sword light, and struck the bright point of light.

For a second, it glowed even more brightly than before, then exploded.

The entire room was plunged into darkness, the only respite being the Glowing Array bound to Yi Wei’s front.

“Uh… Sure. That works. If there is a spirit watching over this, and that spirit liked that overly bright light, then it was not my fault,” said Yi Wei, raising her hands into the air as to demonstrate her peaceful intent, though she lowered them quickly once she was not met with any response, “Alright, we don’t seem to be dead yet… Can you not give me more warning in the future?”

“I will try… But it seemed like the only… way to progress…” the assassin woman replied, walking over to the spot beneath the light source to retrieve her dagger. It lay in the middle of a large pile of glass shards, all of which were surprisingly blunt.

Yi Wei raised one eyebrow, then turned slightly and pointed to the middle of the room, “I’m pretty sure that was also an option. It would also make much more sense, considering the fact that it contains some weird projection of the object we are looking for, instead of a random light source that might have gotten a little too bright since it was first created… with glass… was it some sort of lantern? It could have been amplified by an array…”

Her thoughts drifted off, but just like the last time she allowed herself to think for too long on something insignificant, something unexpected interrupted her.

A sound, deep and grating, burst out of nowhere. It was loud, repeating over and over, but it was somewhat difficult to describe, the exact origin of such a noise being completely unclear. Perhaps the best descriptor of this sound would be one of alarm, a sort of warning about something or someone, like what might be used within a town or camp to alert its inhabitants to a threat.

They covered their ears, for this noise was utterly unbearable and deafening, though they were still able to hear a hint of grating stone beneath the alarming noise. Glancing in that direction, they observed both doorways opening slowly.

“WELL, AT LEAST THAT GUESS WAS CORRECT!” Yi Wei shouted over the top of the sound.

“SHOULD WE… SPLIT UP?”

“SO FAR, THERE HAS BEEN NO BENEFIT FROM THE THIRD EYE, SO IT MIGHT BE FINE!” she suggested, pointing to the right door, “I’LL GO THERE! SHOUT IF THERE’S SOMETHING ILLUSORY!”

“I DON’T THINK… YOU’LL HEAR ME… BUT ALRIGHT…”

Upon making that decision, they separated and entered their respective passages, passing through another set of odd membranes that cancelled out all of the sound, including that dreaded noise. In front of her, Yi Wei saw a second corridor, made of the same stone panels as the first one. Thankfully, it was also as dark, and thus it didn’t feel like someone was burning her eyes out.

‘On the positive side of things, my eyes have grown a little stronger as a result, meaning that it will be easier for me to practise any eye-related techniques in the future, whether they are simply for vision or if they have an offensive purpose,’ she said to herself, healing the remaining damage with cosmic energy.

In general, eye techniques and skills were not the most common in the Planar Continents, and even then, combat techniques involving them were typically limited to rapid inspection or deduction in battle. Shooting beams of light or energy from the eyes was uncommon, and foolish, as eyes were the most vulnerable point on the body of a human. Furthermore, they had few meridians in their proximity, allowing for little variation and limited usefulness in battle, while using a similar technique with one’s arms or legs would naturally allow for far more specialisation in the skill of choice.

‘No, I’m getting distracted again. If I do this again, maybe a second noise of alarm will appear here.’

Rushed by the thought, she advanced through the corridor quickly, keeping an eye out for any illusions in her way.

Much to her surprise, she went through the entire passageway without noticing a single false sight, not even those that were generated the same way as the floating flask within the glass tube in the previous room. When she reached the end, and crossed through another imperceptible barrier, there were still no illusions in sight.

What she did see, however, was a human skeleton, seated on a simple chair, with bones made of gold and a different flask within its hand. It was filled with a golden liquid, though its consistency did not match anything Yi Wei was familiar with.

Other than this, the room was empty.

‘Another elixir? Does it strengthen the bones, or is it a mere coincidence that it is being held by a golden skeleton?’ she wondered, ‘No, gold in itself is ineffective, unless it is immortal gold, in which case this is an insanely valuable treasure and if anyone discovers that I or someone else has consumed it, then they will immediately demand that I cut off one of my limbs so that they could live the rest of their lives in peace, without any need to work, unless they want to advance in their cultivation and desire some particular artefact or medicinal pill.’

She approached the skeleton and inspected it, searching for any sign of a trap, whether it be in the form of an inscription, array or even something mechanical. Yet again, she found nothing.

‘Is this some tradition? Do elixirs have to be put out in plain sight, without anything preventing them from being taken by whoever wants them, or was this place and the Lock Obelisk array made by the same person?’ Yi Wei questioned yet again, nervously reaching for the flask.

The moment she touched it, the hand of the golden skeleton fell apart, the individual finger bones dropping to the floor without any hint of grace. Following after it, the rest of the bones began to fall, collapsing onto the floor into a golden pile of bones, with the skull falling onto the very top, its empty sockets looking right at the flask in her hand.

She crouched down and tapped on the skull with a little bit of her strength. It caved in immediately, causing her to breathe a sigh of relief and disappointment at the same time.

‘Well, that is the best outcome, I suppose. If this was immortal gold, and if this elixir – if that even is what it is – is capable of transforming my bones into it, then, as I had previously considered, I’d be doomed. If this had been immortal gold, but this elixir wasn’t related to it, then I would need to find a place to sell this as soon as possible, get a lot of planar shards, absorb them, advance in my cultivation and then keep making more via the great arts. Now, the only three possibilities are that the elixir will still make my bones into immortal gold, perhaps as some final work of this golden skeleton, that it will turn my bones into actual gold, without any good reason for this, or that this elixir has some other effect, and that I won’t have any idea what I’m getting into… again. Can it go any worse than randomly growing a third spiritual eye? Probably…’

However, she had remembered something since realising that she had consumed the Third Eye Elixir, and that was a small fact mentioned within a book called ‘An Introduction to Elixirs, or: Heaven Defying Tome of Omniscient Knowledge of Elixirs’, and that was that they rarely had negative effects due to the specific nature of elixirs, as well as the way they were made. Regardless of their exact effects, few would be strictly negative to the human body or mind, and even if they were not completed perfectly, they would lack effects more frequently than gaining negative ones.

Thus, although consuming random liquids out of ancient flasks was certainly not a wise idea by common standards, it was not as dangerous as consuming random pills, as those would be far more likely to have some sort of negative effect.

Once, there was even a story of an expert storing their will inside of a pill, which they then left behind under the guise of an unparalleled inheritance for whoever found it. An unfortunate person consumed it, believing themselves to be about to become a great expert. Naturally, they did not expect themselves to become an expert far more literally than they had imagined.

Unlike the stories of the Lady of Ashes, this had far less validity to it – presumably, even if that expert was real, they wanted to erase any mention of themselves, for such practises were considered taboo in the cultivation world. After all, most experts, regardless of their realm, possess a strong body, whether through body cultivation or planar reinforcement, and a great deal of offensive capability, but any attack on the mind, especially one as direct as a will entering the body without having to deal with any external barriers, could still be fatal unless it is noticed in time. Naturally, the majority of cultivators didn’t want such a fate to befall them, so they quickly decided to oppose it.

‘Anyway, I don’t have any means for comprehending the effects of this, so I might as well drink it,’ Yi Wei though, sniffing the fluid within the flask, discovering it to have a similar scent to the other elixir.

To be safe, she circulated her planar energy throughout her body, engaging even the one hundred and eight suns within her meridians, which had almost stabilised themselves within her body, contrary to her initial expectations for the Dawn Star Body, then downed the golden fluid in a single go. It went down her throat, passing through the body until it spread out throughout her entire being, flooding primarily to her bones.

For a moment, it did nothing of note, but then it seemed to activate, accelerating significantly as it rushed into her bones. It seemed to simultaneously burn and melt them, wiping away the numerous impurities within them that still remained.

It passed into the bones quickly, and when the bone tissue within her body settled down, she found it to have a slight golden sheen to it, though nothing as extreme as the golden pile of bones by her feet.

When the process seemed to stop, she attempted to comprehend the effects that this elixir had. After a little stretching, some light punching at the air, a few quick sprints from one end of the room to one another and was eventually able to compile every change that it had brought her. They could be succinctly summarised as: nothing at all.

‘In all fairness, had my strength increased from this, I would be more confused,’ Yi Wei thought, sending some of her cosmic energy into her bones.

The reconstruction process occurred slowly, but she estimated that it would take the entire day for it to complete once. Apart from indicating that she should strengthen her energy soon, it also meant that her bones had been reinforced significantly.

‘Essentially, this elixir appears to not be one focused on utility or strength, but instead the fundamental foundation of a human being. If my bones were to fail, then the rest of the body would collapse as well, so, I guess that this was of great benefit to my future. The biggest question is whether that is the final extent of the elixir’s effects, of if it has a similar enhancing element to the Third Eye Elixir, in which case it would be wise to make use of it as early as possible,’ she concluded, sending her spiritual will into the depths of her arm bone.

However, it was suddenly stopped on the surface, preventing her from looking any further into them.

‘What? How is this possible? The entire body is meant to be visible to one’s own spiritual will… the only exception are the bones of the dantian, but… Is there even a use for this? Most people don’t search their opponents for hidden bone damage, and this doesn’t obstruct me from seeing the inside of my ribcage,’ Yi Wei frowned, ‘Alright then, fair enough. Maybe there will be a reason for this and perhaps I could develop a complete resistance to the intrusion of spiritual will.’

Since there were no further changes within a short time period, she considered what to do with the golden bones before deciding that it would be impractical to carry them with her, especially considering how cheap simple gold would be.

There was another open passage at the back of the room, so she crossed it and found herself within a chamber similar in appearance to the previous one, with the same glass tube in the middle, and the same floating vial within it. Only the light source that illuminated it differed, and it did so for the better, no longer hurting her eyes to the same extent.

She glanced to the left and found Fen Zhi’s figure standing in front of an identical passageway.

“Wait, you’re already made it through as well?” she asked, prompting the assassin to nod before she came closer to her.

“Yes… I found this…” Fen Zhi showed her a golden flask, identical to the one that she had drunk minutes earlier, “It was in… the hands of… a golden skeleton… It isn’t the Third Eye Elixir… but I wasn’t sure what it was… so I didn’t drink it…”

“I have. I don’t know its actual name, so I’ve temporarily named it the Golden Bones Elixir. It makes your bones tougher, so you should drink it.”

“Alright… In a minute… First, are we… in the same room as before? Is that flask… also fake?”

“Let’s check.”