I continued down the creepy and cold corridors underneath the hut. The stairs were worn and old. There were heaps of dust, as a matter of fact for every step I took, I felt my foot slightly sinking into the settling dust. One wrong move and I'll be sneezing and coughing for days to come.
After a minute or so climbing down, I found myself in a large and open hall, it was a far cry compared to the humble hut on top.
Here, there were a couple of dozen luminescent pearls shining lighting from the ceiling and illuminating the place. There was a massive bookshelf that was at least ten meters high to more than fifty in width covering the entire side of the room, it was so large, big, and amazingly in perfect condition despite the passage of what seemed to be eons.
The bookshelf had loads of manuals, books on various subjects, and a few materials that I've never seen before.
On the other side of this massive bookshelf were tools, parchments, talismans, completed and incomplete, loads of inscription materials, and some crafting materials that were just strewn across the ground with no regard to their value.
For example, there were a few pieces of Spiritual Obsidian. A fourth-tier crafting material, with a value comparable to my own Creeping Demise's material. And it was just thrown on the ground as if it was a piece of trash. On the table, there were so many tools that I salivated at them.
Crafting materials are rare, but good tools to create objects are even rarer, for example, a Crafting Scalpel, is a sharp scalpel similar to that of doctors, only this one is used to scalp metals while keeping the precision and shape of the object in mind. And there was one right in front of me. Not to mention even many more, weightless hammers, tuning valves and so many more objects laying around.
The man who made this whole place seemed to be interested not only in inscriptions but also in craftsmanship. And this was probably where he spent his off-time while he was making this prison.
Master Rain, I wonder what kind of character he was?
But why did he leave all of this stuff here? Something I'll have to answer later but for now…
I looked at the whole area with greed in my eyes and pulled out the poison God's book.
"It would be a waste to just leave everything here."
The poison god's book greedily sucked in everything in the room. Even in the books, nothing was spared.
I have a lot of stuff in my poison god's book, and I still need to go over many of them, the Black Nether Rose, and the Veridian Heart Flame. Not to mention these high-quality ores and materials. I'll probably be able to upgrade X to an even higher level.
After making sure that I didn't leave anything, I decided that it was time to leave, but just before I turned, I noticed something that I wouldn't have seen if I didn't take all the books from the shelf.
There were slight signs of inscriptions on one part of the shelf. And when I got closer, I realized that this was actually a lock mechanism.
What would a lock mechanism do here?
I immediately answered that question, "Hidden door!"
I removed the dust over the inscriptions and began studying them. It was nothing compared to the inscriptions on the trapdoor.
This inscription here is on a whole other level, dare I say…on the same level as the one on the palace.
Damn, I'm really tempted to see what's behind this, but the Palace Inscription was really hard to figure out.
I had two options, try and attempt to unlock this, or just leave.
My sense of curiosity is preventing me from actually taking the second choice. After all, if there was a lock this tight, there had to be something important behind this.
I sat down and began going through the inscriptions on this lock. There were a lot of symbols, but thankfully I decided to study them instead of leaving. At first glance, this lock would appear similar to the locks made by the inscriptions on the palace. But there was a huge difference. The palace was a huge piece of work, and it definitely took a long time for Master Rain to create the inscription, but this lock, was small and only served to block people from entering.
This small lock was inherently lower quality than the palace, just because Master Rain didn't have enough space to make it even stronger. Also, this lock didn't seem to be made with defensive measures in mind, after all, he was the one responsible for imprisoning the Young Prince of the Wind Celestial Realm, who would dare steal from him or come here and put his nose where it doesn't belong.
I studied the inscriptions on the lock for days, and in that time I was continuously stuffing my mouth with Soul Strengthening Pills. Using the Mind's Eye for such an extended period is dangerous, but I bet it's worth it.
The first three days I spent just memorizing the layout of the lock, on the fourth day, I managed to understand how the mechanisms work and the interlaying mechanism that allowed every inscription to send command to the other.
Just a passing note, this man, Master Rain had such a great ingenious way of creating inscriptions that it was mind-boggling. The fact that he actually used some sort of space law to interlay two inscriptions in one and making all work together was astonishing.
If I were to try and make the same thing I'll definitely fail because without a proper understanding of Space Law, this would be nothing but a dream to mimic. However, there was a slight problem with Master Rain's work.
To make it simple, if I and Master Rain were told to make two lock inscriptions, mine would be a steam engine while he would be the most advanced car motor in the world.
That was both good and bad, good because he would allow for greater malleability and far greater power, but bad because, the most advanced motor, with all of its gears and intricate designs, would fail spectacularly if a wrench was thrown in its gears.
My mind began hurting badly on the sixth day, and the force of rejection from this world became so overbearing that I felt that my own existence was becoming uncertain, I could honestly feel that my hand was slowly turning translucent.
I don't have much time…
Thankfully, on the sixth day, I managed to inscribe my way through the protective layer of the inscription, though that doesn't mean I managed to unlock it, I was able to add something to the inscription. And I only needed to add a reverse flow inscription. This would act as a command to reverse the Qi and have its course against its regular path, and if the main command for the Qi flow was to lock, the reverse would make the whole thing do the opposite.
"Open Sesame!" I shouted, and the bookshelf immediately vibrated as I removed my hands.
It rattles and screeched as it slid to the side, revealing a single room with a massive creation that would make any young kid scream with joy.
In front of me, was an already fully made and complete puppet, only a puppet would be a severe understatement to this massive work of art.
It stood there, like a massive behemoth of creation, a humanoid puppet geared up in samurai armor. Strange as it seems, samurais were of the Japanese culture, but I don't think it's a strange sight here, after all, Buddhism for example exists in a lot of eastern cultures.
The puppet was gigantic to say the least, even if X was standing here, X's head would barely make it past this thing's knee.
The armor on this puppet was amazing, it was beautifully created, with its skirt armor, the cascading pauldrons, and even the masked Kabuto.
There were also four things of interest.
The first was the massive layers upon layers of research paper thrown everywhere. And more tools than ever in the other room, add to it, there were heaps of material that I've never seen, heard of, or even read about, just laying about.
The second was the fact that this massive creature had four sword sheaths, but only two hands, and yes sheaths, the swords don't seem to be around here.
The third thing, was the two ridiculously scary objects just… hovering near this damn puppet. It seems to be two pieces of a set, and taking a step back I realized what this was. It was an Oni-Mask, a demon mask that was the same size as the whole puppet and it was just casually hovering next to the puppet.
The Oni-mask was frightening, it had four fangs, counter-protruding, and its eyes tracked me, even if the puppet seemed dead and unmoving, the hovering mask was following my movement closely.
And the final thing was the reason, why this puppet was here.
Its stomach area was open and inside it was something that made my skin crawl as I saw it.
There was an octagonal diamond-like object held within a glass container, and from the container, several tubes, lay lines, and a lot of conductive traces of inscriptions led from the small jewel to everywhere around the puppet.
i shuddered as the realization came to me, the value of such thing, back in what the Prince called a backwater planet without any Qi... this thing would make people wage wars that could last for centuries
"Saint Qi Spirit Stone…"