Chapter 811: Lighting the Powder Keg.
=Wait…now that I think about it… what’s the plan if our intruders actually just…bypass the challenge rooms we set up for them? I mean, all of the kaijin are already in place. Are they just gonna act when they attempt to leave?=
=Ah.=
=Which they?=
=Of course…=
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“Huh… y’all remember that weird training order we got like…a year ago? The one with the crocodiles?,” Zhen Feng asked his cousins.
“I…vaguely, why?,” Zhen Guo replied.
“Random thing, I learned that the guy who commissioned us to do that has been keeping those crocodiles in a pit pond in his front courtyard.”
“Seriously?,” Zhen Tai chimed in.
“Yup. Saw him throw down a whole cow for them to eat…followed by three men.”
“Huh…what kind of cow?”
“It was-”
“Can we please not talk about man eating crocodiles while we’re trying to walk across a narrow walkway of death?,” Zhen Yue interjected.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“Seriously, how long is this room?!,” Zhen Xing hissed.
Despite having recently hit a breakthrough in regards to their cultivation levels, the Zhen Clan scions were still only Aether Masters. This meant that while they did receive a comprehensive boost to their physical abilities and gained the ability to express a unique aether aura, they still weren’t at the level that allowed them to fly freely.
As such, the Zhen Clan scions were forced to carefully walk across several narrow pathways that had them teeter between life and death.
Well, teeter between pits containing various types of deadly and mysterious aether beasts, but those were basically the same thing.
On the plus side, there were enough walkways that the Zhen Clan scions could balance on their own and not worry about tripping someone up to their front and back. Unfortunately, there was also a enough space that they wouldn’t be able to support each other if they fell to the left or right, at least not easily.
Unsurprisingly, they weren’t exactly used to being in such a situation.
“You know, I used to boast about being the most nimble of us,” Zhen Guo commented to try and keep his mind off of the weird looking hyenas dozing to his left and right. “Not anymore, this is bullshit and I’m going to be doing more tightrope exercises when we get back.”
“When? Not if?,” Zhen Xing asked with a slightly sardonic tone.
“Trying to maintain a positive mindset here…it’s either that or I imagine myself getting eaten by-AH!”
“Xiao Guo!”
About halfway through the room, Zhen Guo ended up tripping up due to a combination of getting distracted and the narrow walkway he was on being more worn away than anticipated.
To his credit, Zhen Guo did attempt to catch himself via reinforcing his foot with aether and stomping ahead to correct himself.
*CRACK!*
“Uh oh!”
The walkway turned out to be more fragile than anticipated. The moment Zhen Guo’s foot made contact with the stone, it broke away and caused Zhen Guo to start falling to the side.
Thankfully for him, Zhen Hai was on the pathway on the same side he was falling towards.
“Xiao Guo! Catch this!”
“Ow!”
Before Zhen Guo could fall to his doom and get eaten by hyenas, Zhen Hai managed to catch him via using his [Shark Fang of the Berserker] as a surface for him to grab at.
Due to the power disparity though, Zhen Guo ended up piercing his hand in the process.
“Shit! You okay?,” Zhen Hai asked with genuine concern.
“I’m good. I’m good,” Zhen Guo managed to squeak out despite the stinging pain shooting up and down his arm.
The pain was actually so excruciating, that Zhen Guo didn’t notice that his hand bleeding as a result of his grabbing of Zhen Hai’s weapon. Not did he notice that the blood was staring to drip down his arm and into the pit below.
Well…not until they heard the sound of a creatures rustling beneath them.
*Sniff, sniff!*
“Uh oh.”
Followed by several blood curdling howls…and then even more animal sounds.
“AO, AO, AWOOO!”
“CROOOAAAAK!”
“ROAR!”
“Oh fucK!”
“RUN!”
…
[So…twenty second headstart?]
[Make it ten.]
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‘Where the hell is that key?!,’ Olstenna thought to himself as he partied through yet another piece of shrubbery. ‘The hell kind of ruins is this place?!’
Shortly after arriving to this strange statue garden room in the middle of a labyrinth, Olstenna had planned to skip the room altogether and hope that he could run into a monster or an enemy warrior. In other words, something that required him to make use of his brawn.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
The door opposite to the entrance he walked through was locked, and as he discovered after blasting the thing with a full power blast, was impervious.
On the bright side, after he blasted the door with all his might, the door glowed in a manner that suggested that all he needed to get through, was to find a key that was located in this weird looking garden.
At least, that’s what he gleamed after noticing the keyhole to the door glowing like a candle in a pitch black room.
Under this assumption, he began to search the room up and down like crazy.
A part of him had wanted to burn the whole garden down in aether flames, but his instincts told him that doing so would be hazardous to his health.
‘Where the hell is that-Ah ha!’
Thankfully he didn’t have to look much longer after he started inspecting the statues.
In one of the statues’ stone hand was an obviously metallic key.
Olstenna may not have been the brightest lantern at the festival, but even he could put two and two together.
‘Alright, I just need to-huh?’
However, as soon as he tried to pull the key free, he felt a surprising amount of force preventing him from doing so.
‘What the…’
Evidently, he was so focused on the key, that he failed to notice the sound of grinding stone and movement occuring behind him.
‘Come on, come on!’
*Thunk, thunk, thunk!*
One after the other, several of the statues had suddenly come to life and were now slowly making their way towards Olstenna.
That said, there were at least two statues that were still…waiting.
…
[Ya think he’s gonna notice the zako about to smash his skull in?]
[Judging from how he’s chewing on that stone hand…no. No he will not.]
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[Hello and welcome!]
“Are…are we in heaven?”
“Either that or hell.”
“Doesn’t matter, this place is significantly more pleasant than anticipated.”
When Victor, Simos and Graff entered the threshold of what appeared to be an indoors hot spring, they were expecting the worst.
Pools of boiling blood, demonic entities that were horrible mockeries of most mortal forms and all manner of ancient curses and runes that threatened to turn their insides into outsides if they so much as looked at them wrong.
Instead, they found the inside to be similar to a public bath house, the writings on the wall to be nothing more than decorative poems and the attendants were…simply put, otherworldly beauties.
Flanking on their left and right were over a dozen or so attendants sitting in a position that a certain otherlander would recognize as being a seiza position.
Absolutely none of these attendants, who wearing nothing but very simple bath robes, looked like any human or bloodliner the trio had ever met before. If anything, these attendants all appeared to be like statues, made from wood, stone, metal and bone, that had somehow been given life and form.
Then again, it may also have also helped that these attendants were built better than even the most voluptuous of prostitutes and had faces that would put even the most beautiful of noblewomen to shame, but that was neither here nor there.
As the trio stood there, flabbergasted at the borderline utopic position they were in, yet another beauty had entered the scene.
Unlike the attendants though, this new beauty had a more mature charm to her and was dressed in clothes that suggested that she was the bath’s hostess. Just like the attendants though, she appeared to be a living statue as well.
Before Victor, Simos or Graff could even get a word in, the hostess said her piece.
[Welcome, esteemed guests, to the Nowhere Bath. Please, come this way. We have a special bath for gentlemen such as yourselves.]
“Uh…sure,” the trio absentmindedly agreed.
Evidently, not a single one of them noticed how there was a very strange energy in the room that seemed to rob them of their common sense.
“Hey… weren’t we in the middle of something else?”
“I don’t know…”
“Who cares…I wanna bathe…”
“Fair…”
…
[Do…do we really have to save these guys?]
[Do you want to see what happens when Paralust manages to posses a proper human body and not a zako?]
[Having been that before…no, no I do not.]
[Exactly.]
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“Ya know… I’m still surprised you got Tiny to agree. She only ever seem to listen to Xiao Liu or the Patriarch.”
“Mothers’ know when another mother needs them to help scold their children.”
“Kuu!”
“That and Mini seems to want to bug Xiao Liu too.”
