Chapter 514: Colour fortress of death (1/2)
At first glance, it went without saying that this place just outside of the doorstep looked fabulous. Vast patches of land filled with nothing but golden heads of the ripe wheat, vast squares coloured in a single theme of one kind of flowers, and a grand construction in the very middle of this picturesque scenario.
Yet this sight required only a few moments of one's attention to fall apart. With no homes for the field caretakers anywhere in sight, the reality of this entire place was instantly put under question. The grandeur of the castle was impossible to achieve without devastating harm to the nearby areas done in order to obtain the building material!
Seeing those contradictions, rather than watching this great sight with my eyes directly, I switched to my altered energy vision. And just like that, all the beauty of this place turned into a hellish landscape.
As far as one could see, a field of dead ground, deprived of any bit of vegetation stretched all the way to the foothold of the fortress, decorated with more rotting bodies than there was people in the entire goose sect. Yet despite how ugly those corpses looked, in their half-decomposed state, just the difference in the clothing of each and every single one of them showcased that while they were all in the state of decay, something was stopping them from returning back into nothing more than just dust.
”Okay then, here goes nothing…”
After confirming that there was no fluctuation of the energy that would announce the closing of the entry to this place, I stepped through the doors. Yet while my energetical vision was still on, no magic was altering my other senses. That why, when I walked down the path leading to the main gate of the deadly fortress in the middle, I could watch fields filled with bones while sniffing on the lovely smell of blooming flowers.
Step by step I was getting closer to the gates while observing how the area surrounding the castle turned fuller with gore and the stench of the death. After crossing the half-way mark to the castle, the smell of the rotten flesh got so strong that even the beautiful scent of the flowers couldn't mask it.
At some point I even guessed that this place was some kind of highest trail for the sect disciples, forcing them to press forward despite what surrounded them, killing anyone who wasn't strong enough only to reinforce the looming aura of this place and make traversing it for the next batch of challenges even harder…
But with no real pressure that would stop or at least hinder me from advancing, I swiftly pushed this idea aside. In the end, even when I reached the gates of the fortress, outside of the foul stench of the rotting meat, there was no pressure weighing down on me at all!
”What should I do now…”
Speaking to myself, I placed my hand on the hardwood of the gate, hoping to learn whether it was reinforced just like the front door leading to the sect master mansion. And just like I thought, while right now it was nothing more than a piece of thick wood with some iron reinforcing it, I could trace the trail on which spiritual energy would normally flow and harden this surface.