Jianmen watched as the pieces came together from different places and stuck themselves together, and before any of the statues or armors could get back to their former shape, he just stomped on them to break them apart again. But they just kept coming back into shape.
“Hmm.” Jianmen picked up one of the pieces of armor with his left hand and put it in front of his eyes. There was a gentle force pulling it towards the ground, but it was still held in place by Jianmen’s hand. Then, Jianmen stepped to the side and moved the piece to a different position, and felt that the force was pulling from a slightly different direction, but it was obvious that the position the force was pulling the piece towards was still the same.
Just this moment, a stone statue grew roughly back into its former shape and lunged at Jianmen from behind, but was smacked in the head and turned into pieces again.
Jianmen gently pushed his right index finger at the space between the piece of armor and the position it was being pulled towards, and with his Xuanli concentrated on the tip of his finger, a thin and almost completely transparent energy thread was picked out by this finger. After discovering this energy thread, Jianmen quickly memorized the energy signature of this thread and infused his eyes with Xuanli. In an instant, he could see that there were countless energy threads like this connected to the pieces of the statues and the armors together, and even when they became whole like they were before, there were still many threads wrapped around different parts inside them seemingly serving as a means to control their movement. And the other ends of the threads were all connected to the ground, and when Jianmen kicked one of the statues to the corner of the wall, he could see that there were threads extending from the wall as well.
“The gate’s open.” Josephine Wong’s voice resounded in Jianmen’s ears.
“On my way.” Jianmen bashed another armor into pieces, then placed a small folded paper sigil inside its hollow body. When he reached the open gate of the main building, the paper sigil released a golden flame and engulfed the entire armor from the inside.
This time, the metal materials that made the armor were melted out of shape and the pieces that it consisted of all stopped moving, and all the energy threads connected to it that were invisible to the naked eye caught on fire as well. One could see there were very small sparks released from the burning armor, all of which moved towards the nearest surface of ground or wall in the area.
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“Do you know where it could be stored right now?” Jianmen asked when he got to Josephine Wong and Glenda Grimes’ side and closed the gates behind him.
“From the information about the Hellinger Family on Division records, they had a secret armory of some sort. But we’ll have to find it first. There’s no information on where it is.” Josephine Wong sighed and said.
“I have very limited knowledge about this actual castle itself, unfortunately. I know more about their deeds and history but it doesn't look too helpful right now .” Glenda Grimes said: “But if I have to guess, I’d say it’s somewhere underground. Since they are quite an old fashioned family when it comes to lifestyles and prefered arts. And this looks like a classic rich family castle.”
“Let me try a movement tracing spell, no guarantee that it will work though.” Josephine Wong put her hands together and let her fingers crossed and got into a praying-like pose. Then she opened her hands and a light purple mist was released from her palms.
The mist formed into a single stream and curled around in the air for a few circles, then it rose up and slowly flowed towards one of the doors on a higher position of the interior wall.
“Signal’s kinda weak, but I found it.” Josephine Wong chuckled.
“In this environment? With this much negative energy around?” Glenda Grimes scraped some very small stone dust off from the ground using her rapier, took a good look at it and said: “It must not be that long ago.”
“Agreed. Let’s hurry.” Josephine Wong nodded as they heard the banging on the metal gate behind them.
All three of them flew up to the door on the wall and followed the trail of the purple mist down a pathway. But before they could get anywhere, they found that the structures of pathways and tunnels disappeared in a short distance front of them, and what lay before them was an empty space with a debris and broken internal structures in the background - it was as if the entire building was hollowed out from the inside by some kind of destructive creature that inhabited it.
“Shh…” Josephine Wong slowed down her steps.
“I can’t sense anything.” Glenda Grimes shook her head.
“Exactly. This is why it worries me.” Josephine Wong narrowed her eyes and turned to Jianmen: “Can you sense anything? Any spells you can use?”
“Not really. And not without making our presence known, unfortunately.” Jianmen slowly ran his right hand in the air as if he was feeling the texture of the air, but with a frown on his face: “How about good old fashioned night vision goggles?”
“Good idea.” Josephine Wong twirled her fingers and constructed three pairs of simple goggles from thin air and dispensed it to the other two teammates.
With these goggles on, they could see the thermal layout of the environment as well as the empty space that lay before them. These were not simply magical constructs that mimicked the functionalities of the civilian night vision goggles, but had enhanced abilities to pick up the fluctuations in background energy signatures as well. Also, the goggles were tuned in such a way that the difference in temperature be shown more distinctively so that they could pick up more signals than normal night vision goggles would.
There were no obvious signs of anything dangerous in the empty space, aside from one thing - a long string of stripes at the bottom of the space, that had slightly different colors in the vision of the thermal goggles.