Gateway of Immortality

Chapter 1254: Cell

Within the array, there were not only flesh puppets, but all kinds of other transformations as well, each one concealing deadly danger.

However, for one thing, the array had no master controlling it. For another, many of the black towers were already damaged. Though its power remained formidable, it also contained quite a few flaws.

Whoosh! Whoosh! They had just passed through a stretch of soul-eroding yin wind when blood-colored divine light came blasting toward them.

Above them, it looked like a starry sky, with blood-red stars floating overhead and shooting out vicious beams of divine light.

Qin Sang always managed to evade danger in advance, weaving through the gaps between the beams.

The Black Tower Array was extremely complex, vast in scope, and endlessly shifting. It would not be possible to grasp the full workings of the entire array in a short time, so Qin Sang could only follow the guidance of the Lightning Thought Orb.

By now, even he could no longer tell where exactly he was.

The Lightning Thought Orb had grown brighter and brighter, to the point of becoming dazzling.

The fat chicken suddenly pointed at a black tower in the distance and shouted anxiously, "Master, my mother may be trapped inside that black tower!"

Qin Sang followed the direction he pointed and saw a black tower flickering in and out of view amid the divine light.

He had the fat chicken sense it again. After confirming it was correct, he quickly headed toward the black tower.

Back then, Jingyu had not been weak, yet she had still been trapped here. There had to be hidden danger within. Naturally, Qin Sang remained cautious.

He ordered the Sky-Eyed Butterfly to fully activate its Sky Eyes and observe carefully.

Under the guidance of the Lightning Thought Orb, Qin Sang drew closer and closer to the black tower. Strangely, however, the surroundings of the tower looked no different from anywhere else, as though everything were normal.

There were no flesh puppets guarding the entrance, nor were there any powerful ancient barriers.

Could the danger be hidden inside the black tower? Qin Sang pondered silently.

He had not yet entered any of the black towers and had no idea what the inside looked like.

The tower before him appeared intact, with only a few fine cracks near the top.

When Qin Sang arrived in front of it, he found a stone door on the lowest floor. The door stood half open, and inside was a broad corridor made of black stone.

Standing before the stone door, Qin Sang only felt an even more sinister aura coming from within. He listened for a moment, but there was no sound at all inside.

After hesitating briefly, Qin Sang instructed the fat chicken to stay behind him, summoned the ebony sword and the eighteen devilish banners to guard his body, and stepped inside.

The moment he entered the corridor, Qin Sang suddenly felt a fierce wind rush straight at him. His expression changed slightly. The ebony sword flashed, erupting with dazzling sword light as it slashed forward.

Boom! The loud crash echoed continuously through the corridor.

Qin Sang focused his eyes and saw that the one who had attacked him was a humanoid figure clad entirely in black armor, its face also completely covered.

The black-armored figure was built like an ordinary person. In its hand, it gripped a black chain that rattled loudly, and its body gave off a dense, malevolent aura.

Before entering, Qin Sang had clearly sensed that there was nothing here. Yet suddenly, a black-armored figure had appeared.

The attack had come too abruptly. Caught off guard, Qin Sang had nearly used his full strength in that strike, yet he had only severed the chain in its hand into two pieces and split open its faceplate.

To his surprise, he found that beneath the faceplate there was nothing at all, only a mass of blood qi.

And after swaying once, the black-armored figure actually swung its broken chain and attacked again.

A puppet? Or some other kind of thing? Qin Sang guessed inwardly, but his hands did not slow in the slightest. In an instant, he slashed out more than a dozen times. Seeing that the black-armored figure seemed to have no weak point, he could only forcibly cut apart its limbs and torso.

With a clatter, fragments of black armor fell to the ground, then silently melted away and disappeared.

Qin Sang glanced around and noticed rows of stone cells lining both sides of the corridor.

Only after entering did he realize that the tower’s damage was far worse than it had appeared from outside. The walls were covered in spiderweb-like cracks, and most of the stone doors had already collapsed outright.

His gaze shifted to the stone cell closest to the corridor entrance. It was merely an ordinary room, with nothing remarkable about it.

Then he looked at another cell farther inside that was still relatively intact and noticed something different.

Just as he was about to take a closer look, a rumbling sound came from deeper within the corridor. Then a group of black-armored figures charged out, carrying every kind of weapon imaginable.

Qin Sang immediately became alert. At the same time, he used the Sky Eyes to carefully examine that intact stone cell. He saw that beyond the stone door seemed to lie endless darkness, swallowing up his vision.

Faint blood-colored runes appeared on the stone door, then vanished in an instant.

It was obvious that this place had been reinforced by profound barriers and talismanic arts. Qin Sang also discovered that inside the stone door there was a hidden illusion realm, along with all kinds of runes he could not understand.

The ancient barrier talismans on the stone door were not solely directed outward. Half of them were directed inward, and their power was no weaker at all.

A prison cell? Qin Sang thought to himself. Recalling what he had seen and heard in Abyssal Ruin, he felt that this place was a massive prison, and these black-armored figures were clearly its guards.

No wonder the black towers had been arranged into a grand array.

As long as someone controlled the array, it could generate endless transformations. Combined with the flesh puppets hunting outside, even if a prisoner somehow escaped from a black tower, there would still be no possibility of escape.

If so, then Abyssal Ruin, Blood Lake, and Sin God Palace were likely all one system, all prisons. He could not imagine what kind of power Ziwei Palace had once been, to construct so many terrifying prisons.

This stone door remained tightly shut, and the inside was deathly still. Could there still be prisoners lingering alive in here to this day?

Still, the barrier on the door was far weaker than the devilish barrier jointly laid down by the three races. The prisoner’s cultivation must have been far inferior to that of the Devil Monarch, and also inferior to the mysterious person imprisoned alone in the Heavenly Corpse Sect’s headquarters. The chance of anyone surviving until now was very small. Most likely, these had all been small fry back then.

Thinking of the vicious Devil Monarch suppressed in the Seven-Kill Hall, Qin Sang felt that the prisoners confined here were probably no benevolent people either.

These black-armored figures were likely manifestations created by the black tower’s barrier. With the black tower damaged, their strength was no longer what it had once been, but they were still quite powerful and could withstand several sword strikes.

If these black-armored figures were the only problem, then though troublesome, they were not enough to be truly concerning.

A thought stirred in Qin Sang’s mind. The ebony sword shot toward the incoming enemies like lightning, then flickered midway and split into countless streams of sword light.

In an instant, the black-armored figures were drowned in a rain of swords. A chaotic series of clangs rang out, and before they could even get close, they all met the same end as the first black-armored figure.

Unexpectedly, the moment these black-armored figures died, even more rushed out from within.

Qin Sang did not dare hesitate. He immediately charged forward with the fat chicken. After a fierce bout of fighting, he reached the end of the corridor and saw the stairs leading to the second floor. Without stopping, he went up.

The ebony sword rampaged through the crowd, and it was impossible to tell how many black-armored figures it had already cut down.

They seemed endless. If he remained trapped here too long, even Qin Sang would eventually be worn to death.

In one breath, he climbed all the way to the sixth floor.

"It’s here!" The moment he stepped onto this floor, the fat chicken suddenly pointed at the first stone cell by the entrance and cried out excitedly.

This floor was the same as the floors below, the same corridors and prison cells repeated over and over. The fat chicken stared fixedly at this stone cell. The guidance from the Lightning Thought Orb was pointing directly inside it!

Qin Sang was startled and flashed over at once.

This stone cell looked no different from the others. Its stone door had been completely shattered, and several chunks of rubble lay scattered on the ground. Qin Sang swept his gaze across it, but could not detect the slightest anomaly.

But the guidance of the Lightning Thought Orb could not be false.

Qin Sang set up a sword array at the doorway to block all the black-armored figures, then carefully examined the cell. At last, he discovered a faint trace of something unusual on the floor.