Author littel note, "Pepega moment here, been naming Liang Yu as Huang Yu, i apologize i fixed it now i'll go back to the other chaps and rename it back."
***
In the Northern Domain, a large compass capable of carrying several people on top of it manifested right in front of the Wind Palace.
Several Heavenly Wind Guards rushed up to intercept the compass, but seeing the person on it caused them to pause.
He was holding a pot, a pot with an incense burner, this pot didn't belong to the Wind Realm and was an item that was despised throughout the Vast Expanse. The man who held it as if he was holding a toddler looked as if he had aged a thousand years. His eyes were sunk in, his face was riddled with scars and his usually white robes had not a single spot that was not red anymore.
"Senior brother Han!" one of the guards hurried towards the man and grabbed him before he fell unconscious.
"Tell…young Prince Zhang… that I completed…my mission," he said and immediately lost consciousness.
It didn't take long for Zhang Tian to hear the news and he immediately rushed toward where the guards took Han.
"Where is he?!" spoke Zhang Tian only to find an unwanted person in the treatment room.
The person that caused all of this, was Lin Tian, the one that was supposed to be the heir to the Wind Throne. He was a young man, who resembled Zhang Tian greatly, in his hand was the same pot that Han had just brought.
"Older Broder, you seem to be in a hurry, I wonder if this is the reason for it," the younger brother, Lin Tian spoke in a wide grin.
"Put, that, down," Zhang Tian spoke, his voice a clear command.
"You see brother, I don't really like being told what to do, especially by someone of a lower cultivation base than me, I mean, you've been trapped for a thousand years, you should really know your place!" the younger brother said and raised the pot high as if to break it against the ground.
Zhang Tian, for the first time perhaps, since anyone had ever seen him, was enraged.
"I SAID!" spoke Zhang Tian, and the mere voice, was enough to send shockwaves through the entire capita, "PUT THAT DOWN!" the voice increased in potency and was not only powerful even space itself around the capital threatened to tore open.
Lin Tian's face paled, "H-how?! How are you able to use the Voice of the Wind! That's not something even I could do!" he said. And as if rage boiled against the 'unfairness' of the talent his older brother has, Lin Tian threw the pot against the ground.
Zhang Tian's rage couldn't reach any higher as he saw the pot about to be crashed, but as if the world itself slowed down, the pot seemed to freeze in time, and a gentle hand seemed to slowly go under it and pick it up before it crashed against the ground.
The hand belonged to a person that was close to both of them.
"Mother," Lin Tian spoke. But before he could finish his words, a resounding slap shocked him back to reality.
"You caused enough problems… leave my sight," she said.
Before Lin was about to retort, he saw the look on his mother's face and remembered an old tale.
Of the four heavenly kings, there was one person that was on the same pedestal and maybe a bit more than all of them, the inarguably strongest being on the Vast Expanse a woman with an incredibly cursed temper that once enraged, she wouldn't stop before the destruction of several dozens of planets.
Lin decided that it would be wise to leave the matter as is for now, and leave while giving Zhang Tian a spiteful glance first.
"Zhang'Er," she spoke as she handed Zhang Tian the pot.
"What do you want to do with this?" she asked.
"I need to pay back the person who aided me, this is the least I could do," he said.
She had a sorrowful look on her face as she said, "It's all my fault, I shouldn't have spoken back then, I should have kept my mouth closed," she said.
"Don't worry about it," Zhang Tian said, "You only spoke of Shen Bao due to being happy that I made a friend, right?" he asked.
She nodded back to him.
"Then, you clearly meant no harm, so worry not, these people here," Zhang Tian said while he showed her the pot, "They are friends of Shen Bao, his sect, I should be able to bring them back," he said.
"Dabbling with Souls is an ugly thing," she said.
"It's the only way, they didn't die yet…" he said.
"But they're not among the living," his mother replied, then she added, "Would you trust me with those souls?" she asked.
"What do you mean, mother?" Zhang Tian asked.
"This is something that I've hidden from you, and only a select few know of…among them, your father, and that despicable Poison God," she said.
The words, Poison God caused Zhang Tian's ears to perk up, it was rare when his mother talked about her past, and even rarer when she mentioned the Poison God.
"It's due to my research, and the help of the Poison God that we created that thing in your hand. The Poison God asked me to help him make something to extract poisons from the Baleful Mist Plant for his cultivation, and in exchange, he'll gift me the Eternal Youth pill.
And I helped him by making that. Even if he had kept his end of the deal, that bastard made it so that the pots would extract souls instead of the mist, and I forever hated him for it, for now, the Fire King uses that same loathsome pot to harvest the souls of many innocents. My name is forever smeared by this cursed thing. However, I know best how to extract souls without harming them. I'll only need new bodies to host them in," she said.
"I never knew this about you," Zhang Tian said.
"Everyone has secrets, son, even your parents," she said.
Zhang Tian hesitantly gave up the pot for her, since he himself didn't know much about her, but at the same time knew that if she spoke a promise, she'd never break it.
***
The first Floor was pretty spacious for a prison floor, it was actually on a different level compared to the other floors.
Looking around, I was a bit stunned.
What seemed to be a floor was actually an open area, in the skies.
We were apparently inside a massive floating island that seemed to be hanging by gravitational laws. Looking around I was able to understand a bit more about the actual purpose of the shackles and why the second prisoner wasn't able to leave as fast as the first one did.
Around the main floating prison were four main roads that led to different floating islands. Three of them were connected by a long bridge, and one of them was disconnected from the main floating prison.
And I didn't even need to use my divine sense to realize that the man that Snitched was trapped on that island that is separated from the rest of the prison.
He was teleported there randomly and needed to figure out a way to leave. However, I still don't see the 'exit'.
"Shen Bao, we need to go!" Liang Yu said.
I turned my head to face where she was looking and in the far distance across the bridge were several cultivators that were rushing towards us.
"Right," I said and then pulled her hand and moved to one of the long bridges leading to the other islands.
"They'll catch us like this they can use Qi," she said as she kept a lookout behind us at the closing cultivators.
"Not if I were to do this," I said as I threw one of the Explosive talismans I obtained from the hidden passage.
Liang Yu's eyes widened as the talisman landed softly on the bridge.
"Wait if you blow that up we'll die!" she said.
"I'm not an idiot, don't worry," I said as we both kept on running as fast as possible.
Soon the other cultivator party made it to the bridge and were about to come after us.
Yet, one of them stopped the other.
"It worked I said as I continued running forward.
"What happened why did they stop?" she asked.
"Because they think that I'll blow up the bridge the moment they step on it. They followed us on foot meaning that flight is impossible in this area. And if they were to arrogantly cross the bridge I could easily blow it up," I said.
"But we're still on the bridge, wouldn't they think that we won't dare do it?" she asked.
"Would you trust your life against the life of a desperate person?" I said.
"No," she said.
"Exactly, they believe that we already lost since we have no more Pieced of Information, so it might come to their mind that we can be petty and might bring them down with us. They only need to wait for a bit or obtain a few other prisoners to win, so why bother with us," I said.
She nodded as if she understood and the two of us managed to reach the other side of the bridge.
Once I was there, I looked in front of me.
It was an old gaol (Jail) like structure. That was structured like a small dome with one single entrance.
The gaol's entrance was barricaded with a lot of steel bars that seemed to have seen better days.
There was no method to open these things like an inscription, but there was something that looked like a keyhole.
I realized that the shape of this keyhole was the same as the shape of the shackles on our hands.
I slowly then placed my hands into the small protrusion and twisted my wrist, causing the whole structure to shudder and the bars to slowly screech and retract.
The gaol opened up for us and we were able to go down by then.
Just as I walked alongside Liang Yu she shuddered.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"I… can use my Qi again," she said.
And immediately the first thing she did was use Qi to purify her body and cleans away the sweat.
"Much more comfortable," she said grinning.
I smiled back at her but was at the same time worried.
"Can you walk back outside and tell me if you can still use your Qi?" I asked.
She didn't question why and did as I asked.
And just as she stepped out of the gaol she frowned, "I can't use it again, it seems that place has a law that allows the use of Qi, I wonder why?" she questioned.
I had a bad premonition about this. The test clearly explained that we can't use Qi against cultivators, but here we're allowed to use it, meaning that we're expected to use it…
"I think there is something downstairs, keep your guard up, we're probably going to need to use our Qi," I said.
And she understood that we may be asked to risk our lives soon.
The inside of the gaol was a spiral staircase leading down. It was dark and even using divine sense wasn't enough for us to scan the way ahead. The whole structure was made to muffle Divine Sense powers.
I then had X come out of the holding bag. He then used his eyes as flash lights lighting the way for us.
The three of us progressed down smoothly without any problems of sorts, there were no traps or no obvious dangers at first, but the sense of danger for some reason kept increasing the lower we went down.
"What is this building," Liang Yu asked. "This whole test is strange," she said.
"I could agree to that. It bothered me from the first time we got here, this place is a really good place to hold prisoners, but how come there were no prisoners while we were roaming the place," I said.
"I don't know, maybe it got discontinued?" she said.
"I highly doubt that such a facility with so much invested in it would be disregarded and used only for test. Perhaps there was a reason there were no more prisoners here, and I believe that the reason might be these gaols," I said.
Just as we arrived to the bottom of the stairs, X turned off his lights immediately the moment we heard something moving.
Divine sense is completely useless here. But one could still see if their eyes get used to the dark especially with my Sky Pearl I was able to see shapes.
I immediately held Liang, stopping her from taking another step forward.
I then sent her a sound transmission message, "We have company, and not the good kind," I said.
I peeked from behind the wall leading to the main room and was able to see…things. That shouldn't be called humans in there.
They were not people and didn't look like beasts, but they were half of both. A half-human at most.
They had large eyes, and an elongated jaw, they were fully humanoid but they had fur in some places and skin in others. They seemed to be sleeping for now and on the other side of this hall, there was a simple box on the other side of the room.
And I could bet that what would be there is nothing but the piece of information that we needed to find.
"This is going to be problematic," I said.
"What is?" I got an instant reply.
"These creatures here, they're all at the Soul Formation stage or higher," I said. "If we wake any of them up, we'll probably end up dead," I said.
