Chapter 436 (1/2)

”Are you sure we are going the right way?”

'Affirmative, the entrance is exactly 457,45 meters north-east.'

”Ah yes, sure it is…”

Zhang Dong looked at the red marker on his minimap. While what Bob said might have been true he was calculating the distance in a straight line. At this moment in time, he was walking through some dark corridors filled with cobwebs.

This part of this secret ground was unknown to him as he had never visited it before. The last time he was here they were all shoved into the testing chamber and teleported away. All the other passages were blocked off by the Dark Palm Sect cultivators. Finally, after all these years he was able to examine this place in detail.

There was actually a series of corridors under the whole structure. When looking at his map he was now somewhere under the trial chamber. Apparently somewhere under here, there was a secret entrance that the Dark Palm Sect didn't discover.

”Some of these tunnels had been dug up, probably they were trying to find another entrance like me.”

It was clear by how it looked down here that the Dark Palm Sect and perhaps the sects that came after it were excavating this site. There were half-finished tunnels everywhere, it was clear that they tried to dig their way behind that large chamber door.

”This rock structure… No wonder they were itching to get in.”

Zhang Dong punched one of the walls after injecting his fist full of Qi. The ground shook but instead of the wall being smashed into pieces his knuckles were injured. The material that the walls were made with was clearly something above the level of regular cultivators.

The stone was incredibly hard but not the same as the one that he discovered at the cube location. There was also no dark spot in his minimap which confirmed his theory that this was something else. The person that made this structure was probably someone with a system like him. It was possible that he either bought the knowledge on how to build this place from the system store.

He arrived at his destination. Many tunnels were leading to this large cavern that had been dugout. He could see at least half a kilometer of nothing but white walls from left to right. The cultivation nuts clearly didn't give up lightly and tried to find some kind of weak spot here but weren't able to continue.

'This makes it seem that the immortal abode is here and it doesn't just teleport us to some kind of distant location.'

These white walls spread in all directions. He could feel some spiritual energy that was reinforcing them and absorbing any hits that he delivered. In most cases, such structures required some sort of power source to keep their effects. But it could also just be some special material.

”It should be somewhere here…”

He floated up into the air, the walls were quite smooth and uniform in all directions. On the ground, he could see some destroyed tools such as pickaxes that were probably used to attempt a breach. With the help of his minimap marker, he was finally able to find the entrance spot.

”Well then, do your thing, Bob… I don't really feel anything out of the ordinary here…”

After pressing his palm on the smooth wall he tried to examine it with his spiritual sense. There wasn't anything that he could spot, it was clear that without the system he would be unable to venture any further.

'Interfacing… please wait…'

Zhang Dong felt a bit apprehensive about overusing Bob. It was still unclear to him what this AI program was. For the time being it was helping him, without Bob he would have been unable to return from that other world. But this also didn't mean that this being wouldn't somehow betray him in the future.

There were stories of cultivators leaving a slither of their being in items. Then they would use some occult means to inject them into other cultivators. Slowly they would grow in power and finally at a certain juncture they would strike. When the cultivator was at a weak point they would try to overtake their very soul and body. What if Bob was leading him into certain doom and the person that made him would try to take over his body?

'That's a possibility but with how big my soul has gotten I'm not sure if they will have it easy…'

This was a possibility though it was somewhat far-fetched. For the time being, he could only throw this reasoning to the back of his head while venturing forward. As he was worrying Bob finally was done with his interfacing and a strange sound of pressurized air came from the wall.

'...Task complete, opening… please stand by.'

He flinched slightly as a door appeared before him. It opened upwards while accompanied by screeching. It was clear that this opening had not been used for quite some time, even some dust had crept in.

'I guess here goes nothing…'

It was finally time to take the plunge inside, he couldn't really see much as there was no light. Even though he tried to use his spiritual sense to see what was inside he couldn't see anything past the entrance. There was probably some kind of high level formation blocking him from peeking inside.

'Well, I found a side entrance as I told you, I'll be going inside now, I'm not sure how long it will take me.'