"So it's really a cursed armor?" Liu Xing asked Prince Yang Jinyan who ran at his side.
They were climbing down long spiraling golden stairs. Truth be told, Liu Xing wanted them to move as fast as possible—with his full speed, he could descend to the bottom of the castle in no time. But doing so would mean leaving behind Yang Jinyan, Yang Hongyin, and Yang Suyin, which was illogical. Their odds of surviving and winning this battle were better if they moved as a group right now. Still, even if Liu Xing thought they were slow, a mortal would see the four of them move like blurs, as difficult to spot as a jaguar moving in the middle of the night.
The other reason why they were able to move so leisurely by Liu Xing's standards was because there were no abominations attacking them. This was worrying. If they weren't attacking here, where were they? Coincidentally, the sound of the giant footsteps had stopped, leaving the golden castle unnervingly quiet. The silence made Liu Xing's heart tighten as he wondered if he had forgotten something or made a mistake.
So, to distract from his anxiety, Liu Xing asked questions about how powerful Yang Hongyin and the Twelve Sun Armor were, which was why Prince Yang Jinyan mentioned once again that it was actually a cursed armor.
"Yes, although I think it's either false information, or it's not cursed anymore." Prince Yang Jinyan glanced to his left, where Yang Hongyin glided down. "You don't feel like killing me, right?"
"No," she said calmly. "Not even a bit."
A curse to make the wearer kill the emperor of the Twelve Sun Empire—it was quite a dangerous treasure. After all, Prince Yang Jinyan had intended for Yang Hongyin to wear it even knowing she might try to kill him.
"Are you sure it's not because you're technically not an emperor yet?" Yang Suyin commented from Liu Xing's right. "What if after your inauguration later she tries to kill you?"
"The chance is there, but it's quite slim." Prince Yang Jinyan pinched his chin. "After all, it seems Liu Xing here successfully exorcized the curse."
"I didn't claim that. What I said was that the armor was shrouded in darkness, and as far as I know, that darkness doesn't work like a curse. Although the last time I saw it, it was used by a demonic cultivator to enhance his techniques. One of them was to take over another's body."
"Taking over another's body can be seen as a curse, I think," Yang Suyin said. "I imagine if Yang Hongyin were truly cursed by that armor, it would probably try to hijack her body. Either by completely suppressing her mind or manipulating her so she would kill the emperor."
"An armor that controls the wearer," Hong'er—Yang Hongyin—muttered. "It's a bad gift for your future wife, dear."
Yang Jinyan's eyes widened. "I'll give you a more beautiful dress later!"
Yang Hongyin smiled, then nodded, looking satisfied with Prince Yang Jinyan's answer.
"Anyway," Prince Yang Jinyan cleared his throat. "At the very least, right now she can use the abilities of the Twelve Sun Armor without worrying that she'll try to kill me. This armor has several capabilities. You already saw one in action. It can heal the wearer from grievous wounds. Another function is to enhance her overall quality of qi, making her techniques stronger by leaps and bounds, and the most impressive ability of this armor is to create a qi construct that's quite large and formidable: the Twelve-Headed Bird. This armor scales according to the wearer, so if she breaks through to the next stage, the armor would become stronger."
"There must be serious drawbacks to the armor," Liu Xing commented.
"Yes, it uses quite a lot of qi. The twelve gems on her crown are the indicators of how much qi she has. If all the gems become transparent, then the armor would be useless. That's why you need to use the armor's abilities as effectively and efficiently as possible. The tales of the second emperor said that it needed fifty years for the gems to recover their qi."
"Can it be recharged?" Liu Xing asked.
"Yes, although it needs an unimaginable amount of qi."
"All right." Liu Xing noted this information in his head. He was quite sure his potent qi could recharge it. While it probably wouldn't restore it to full capacity, he was sure it could make the Twelve Sun Armor usable again.
The conversation died out with that information, and they arrived at the bottom of the stairs.
When their feet touched the giant room that looked like it could hold a party attended by thousands of guests, a vibration could be heard. For a moment, Liu Xing thought the vibration was an enemy, but soon he realized the source was actually from Yang Suyin. The communication orb he clutched in his left hand was vibrating and glowing with blue color.
Without hesitation, Yang Suyin opened the connection. Immediately, a cacophony of shouts, explosions, and general chaos could be heard from the communication orb. "Thank the heavens it finally connected! Help us, help! Abominations suddenly came at us!"
Yang Suyin offered the communication orb toward the Prince, and he snatched it immediately. "Where is your location? I, Yang Hongyin, Liu Xing, and Yang Suyin will come immediately. We have succeeded in getting the Twelve Sun Armor!"
"Thank the heavens! We're at—" A loud crash could be heard, and the floor vibrated. "We've regrouped with the fourth group! Near the entrance to the Emperors' Tomb!"
"All right, hold on for a moment!"
The communication orb suddenly cut off, and Prince Yang Jinyan sent more qi to the orb in an attempt to reconnect it. The orb glowed for a bit more, a static sound could be heard, but no connection was reestablished.
"Either the communication orb there has been broken, or there's something interfering with the signal," Yang Suyin said. "Weirdly enough, there have actually been quite many instances where my communication orb didn't work properly. When I tried to connect to you, Prince, I never succeeded."
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"That's probably because the prince didn't pick up the orb," Liu Xing said. He remembered how the prince's mental condition was in shambles at that time.
"Actually, while I didn't realize you both had come, I would know if my communication orb vibrated. I would ignore it, but I would know it. And as far as I know, it didn't vibrate."
There was something going on with the qi around the castle, but it wasn't really a revelation or surprise. This whole castle was coated by flesh and nests and meatballs... It was no surprise if a communication orb didn't work properly.
"The most important thing is how we can arrive as fast as possible at the underground level," Prince Yang Jinyan said.
"I've been thinking about it," Liu Xing answered, "and I have a solution if you don't mind some destruction."
Running down, or even flying down, while fast, wasn't fast enough. Instead of following the path, they needed to create a shortcut.
"Do it," the prince said.
Liu Xing nodded and kicked the ground hard. Immediately, he arrived near the roof of this large and wide room. He turned his body to face down, and as gravity pulled him down, he channeled some of his potent qi into the gauntlet he was wearing on his left hand. Immediately, a lightning ball two meters in diameter materialized in front of him, and with a palm strike, a large lightning pillar descended into the floor. The impact shattered the stone instantly, creating a deafening rumble and sending up clouds of dust. Even though he couldn't see through the debris, Liu Xing knew that his lightning pillar was boring through floor after floor of the castle, carving its way down.
"We're lucky the main array function of the castle is broken," Yang Suyin commented below. "Otherwise, it would be hard to even drill a hole the size of a coin."
When the lightning pillar receded, Liu Xing unleashed another lightning pillar strike, since while it had created a hole through dozens of floors, he could see that his attack still hadn't pierced through all the levels. While doing this, he pondered what Yang Suyin said.
Was the main array destroyed purposely or not? If destroyed purposely, what was the objective? Was it connected to the fact that this castle was coated by flesh and full of meatballs?
As he thought this, he tried to sense the qi around him, trying to feel everything. Qi sensing was something he needed to do actively. It didn't count as a technique, so sometimes people called it a skill, like the skill of playing an instrument. The reason, at least for him, was because his body was so used to the qi around him that he sometimes forgot that this world was bathed in qi. There were some exceptions, like when he felt extreme danger or when he was in the middle of a fight, but generally he needed a conscious effort to use this skill. Of course, there were many talented people who always felt the qi around them, but he wasn't one of them.
When he felt the qi around him, it was like being in the middle of a bush made entirely of needles that could injure him if he moved carelessly. He also felt the qi around him was dark, prickly, and pulsed dangerously, like a tiger's breath in the dead cold night, creating a mist around its nose while its claw pressed against his neck. He tried to expand his qi sense until he could feel other qi that definitely came from human cultivators, although he couldn't pinpoint exactly where they were, as well as a source of another dark qi that felt like it was circling them.
When his second lightning pillar receded, a hole piercing through every level of the golden castle was successfully made.
"Let's go!" Prince Yang Jinyan was the first to leap into the hole, followed by Yang Hongyin, Yang Suyin, then Liu Xing himself.
Together, they fell within the hole he'd made, as if they were falling into a deep and dark well. Liu Xing's eyes tried to check the area around him, wondering and hoping some abominations would decide to attack them. The silence that occurred actually made his heart feel anxious and his stomach queasy, as if he had missed something problematic.
The silence was broken by a shout of desperation, like someone trying to move a boulder that crushed their legs. Hearing this, the prince, Yang Suyin, and Yang Hongyin turned their heads toward him, and he nodded. Yang Suyin was fast, and Yang Hongyin, with her Twelve Sun Armor—which didn't look like armor at all—was probably strong. But he was both, and so, it was logical for him to move first.
Without thinking too much, he summoned his shield and kicked it, passing his three companions to dive straight into the underground level.
When he was halfway through the hole, he activated his Lightning Cloak Technique and accelerated faster, until the world became blurry. He readied his lightning blade in his left hand, clenching his stone blade with his right hand, and reloaded his gun with qi from the Ethereal Pearl.
In just a moment, Liu Xing's feet landed on the ground. When he landed, the floor beneath him cracked, as if he were not a human but a boulder compressed to the size of a human. At the same time, he scanned the room so fast that in the blink of an eye, he knew everything around him.
The room was spacious and high, with giant golden double doors so tall they could easily be crossed by a giant. In one corner of the room, behind him and to the right, a group of cultivators was fending off ten abominations: five snake-limbed ones, two worms, one giant black dog with a singular giant eye on its back and hundreds of little eyes dotting its body, an abomination that looked like five people mashed into one with ten arms and ten feet, and a single abomination that looked almost human, wearing a torn red robe that revealed flesh full of disgusting pustules. This particular abomination held a member of the Yang clan by the neck, choking him, with a cold expression on its face full of scars, with tiny eyes dotting the scars as if under its facial skin was full of eyes. Feeling the qi around it, Liu Xing realized that he finally needed to deal with a Sun Refining abomination, one that was probably a member of the Yang clan before.
Three members of the Yang clan lay as bloody messes on the floor, while fourteen others looked pale and scared beyond measure, as if they had seen a nightmare come alive.
Seeing this, Liu Xing dispersed his lightning blade on his left arms, turned his body instantly, kicked the ground, and launched himself toward the Sun Refining abomination while shouting. His shout worked as intended—instead of snapping its victim's neck, all the abominations turned their heads toward him.
Liu Xing gripped his stone blade with both hands as hard as he could and flooded it with so much potent qi that it glowed like a blade enveloped in purple flame. It felt so heavy, as if Liu Xing wasn't swinging a blade but rather a hammer that weighed a ton. Yet, Liu Xing couldn't shoot a crescent qi toward them. That kind of attack could potentially harm the people he tried to save. So, he summoned his shield, accelerated faster and faster until the wind around him exploded, and in the blink of an eye, he arrived at the side of the Sun Refining abomination.
Up close, he realized how tall this abomination was—almost three meters high, dwarfing him. From the side, Liu Xing swung his stone sword horizontally, aiming to split its stomach in two. But when his blade hit the stomach, instead of cutting it, it folded the body in half, then shot it with so much force that when it hit the wall, the wall exploded. Luckily, the abomination's hand had loosened its grip, so the man it gripped fell beside Liu Xing.
"Are you all right?"
The man touched his neck, gasping for breath. Liu Xing didn't wait for an answer though—without pause, he launched himself at the rest of the abominations and swung his stone blade at a nearby snake-limbed abomination with yellow skin. It didn't have arms on its chest, so it didn't have the annoying ability of regeneration, but before Liu Xing could cut it in half, its body turned into yellow light, his stone blade passing through it.
Liu Xing's eyes widened. He had already fought thousands of snake-limbed abominations, and he knew almost all of the snake-limbed abominations he had fought. This one was not one of them. He had never fought this one.
"Strong and dangerous," the yellow light said. Its top half suddenly materialized at his side, and it tried to punch him with its red snake arm.
As Liu Xing summoned his shield, he could see its face. Its face was human, with a calm demeanor, its ears also human, and there was nothing coiling or tied around its neck. It didn't wear clothes, yet its yellow skin almost looked like clothing, with individual threads visible.
Liu Xing knew, without a doubt, that this single abomination was an anomaly.