56 A conspiracy afoo (1/2)

Bai Yun took the better part of the day to reach the hell pit. Bai Yun had heard that not many people would visit this place but it was worse than he had imagined. Even though there were many gates to the beast garden and only one for the hell pit, the queue for the hell pit was much shorter than the one for a single gate of the beast garden. It took Bai Yun barely any time to enter the gate and head downwards.

Once the entered the hell pit, he came upon a stairway. Hell pit was naturally formed and one of the main reasons the founder of the Bai clan chose this place to settle down. The hell pit was in the shape of an egg, with multiple levels to it, and it would get wider as it came down at first. But then after seven levels, it would start to get narrower and narrower. No one knew how many levels there were to the hell tower. The deepest anyone had gone was the eleventh level.

This stairway was initially not a part of the hell pit but later created by the Bai clan. It extended until the sixth level. The material from then on was far too hard to make a proper staircase. The people who wanted to descend from then on had to take the natural path down.

Bai Yun descended the stairway and entered the first floor. Once he entered the first floor, he came face to face with a large field. The floor of the large field was set aflame with knee-high flame. The flames were a light shade of red and almost seemed ethereal.

The large area had a few people scattered here and there. Bai Yun looked at the flames for a while and then stepped into the field. The moment he did so a few flames climbed up his legs and into his body, which he easily isolated with the god sense. He then used his qi to isolate the rest of the flames from his body.

Bai Yun then sat down and slowly started to analyze the flames. The moment he looked at this he knew that these were indeed hellfire. He slowly started to look closer at the flames. But the more he did so, the more he frowned. Bai Yun started to sense that there was something else added into the hellfire. But this thing also had the same characteristics as hellfire, meaning that it also came from hell. It was no wonder that the person who was in charge of the hell pit was unable to sense it. Only someone like Bai Yun who had personally experienced the true hellfire could see the difference. Even then it as extremely difficult. He could only tell of the existence of the extra thing from his god sense. Not even his perception or soul tendrils could grab hold of them.

Once he realized, he thought that the extra thing could be the cause of the problem. There wasn't enough of the extra thing that it itself was the added pressure. So it could be that it was simply increasing the power of the hellfire. But he couldn't be sure. This could have its origins on the deepest parts of the hell pit. In which case, he had to go down and check.

With wasting any time, Bai Yun stepped back into the stairway and went down to the second level, the region for foundation establishment cultivators. There were no checkpoints on the stairway and no one stopped him either. It someone died due to biting off more than they could chew, it was considered as the fault of that person. The Bai clan had no shortage of people. Someone would step up to take over his place.

The flames in the second level were slightly darker than the flames above and also came up to a person's thigh. Once Bai Yun entered the foundation establishment floor, he felt the increased heat hit him like a charging elephant. Bai Yun simply stood on the stairway and extended a single finger into the flames.

A second later a wisp of flame entered his body. Bai Yun isolated the flame with his god sense in an instant. But the heat of the flames was too much for Bai Yun at his current cultivation. His finger had burned due to the flame.

Ignoring his finger, Bai Yun climbed back up to the qi condensation area. On the way, he was quickly analyzing the flame he had captured. Bai Yun quickly realized that the extra ting that he found in the first level was not present in the second level, making him more confident in his hypothesis that the extra thing in the hellfire was the cause of the change.

But there was not enough of it in the flames for Bai Yun to positively identify the object in the flames. Bai Yun knew that he would have to go deeper into the region to collect more of the flames to identify the source of the problem.

Bai Yun walked straight into the deeper regions of the hell pit. He soon came into a gate in the floor, through which he could enter into the inner areas.

The rate for staying in the inner areas was one clan point per hour for the middle area, and two clan point per hour for the innermost area, where the flames where the highest. The rate was not too high since the rates for the clan's resources were based on two actors, availability, as well as energy spend to maintain the resource. The hell pit's source of strength came from the hellfires that rose up. The arrays that reduced the intensity only took up nominal energy to maintain. And the reason the gravity chamber was so costly was because each use of the gravity camber used a lot of energy.

Thus Bai Yun went through the two outer areas to reach the innermost area. The innermost area was different from the outermost area in that it contained special stone seats. There were eight hundred such seats, and thus only eight hundred people could use the innermost area at the same time. But this was not a problem as less than a hundred people were in the innermost area currently. The innermost area would only get crowded a few days before the clan competition as everyone tries to do everything they could to improve their chances for a breakthrough on the first night.

These stone seats were situated on top of some small holes through which the flames would come out, like pans on top of an oven. This would concentrate the power coming from the hell pit and allow one to easily absorb them. In the other areas the flames rose from the ground, but here the flames were only on the seats. This meant that sitting on top of these stone seats were far more effective than sitting outside.

Bai Yun went into the innermost area quickly. Once inside he went around the innermost area trying to identify the source of the extra thing he felt earlier. As he went around, he felt a few people staring at him and even heard a few snickers. At first, he was confused, but then he understood. The four year old mission must be famous. All of them must have correctly assumed what he was here for.

The first time Bai Yun went around the inner area, he couldn't see what the source for the extra thing was. The next time also left him with the same results, but he was at least able to confirm that the amount of the extra thing here was at least greater than the outside. But even then the mystery did not resolve itself.

Resigning himself to failure, Bai Yun sat down on one of the empty seats to think. But the moment he sat down, his eyes flew wide open. He could see than the concentration of the thing was even greater here than outside the seat.