174 Chapter 173: The Dragon King’s Palace (1/2)
”NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I yelled, clutching my head when the awful news sank in.
”What the hell, man?!” Long Shen demanded, visibly taken aback. ”Why are you screaming like that all of a sudden?!”
”B…but…” I protested in panic. ”If this is the Dragon King's Palace and if you're the Dragon King, then by the time I get out of this Spirit World, a few hundred years would have passed in reality and my friends and family would all be long dead!”
”They won't be if they are cultivators,” Long Shen pointed out, crossed. ”Cultivators live very long lives. Most live for hundreds of years, some even live for over a thousand or two thousand years. They'll be fine.”
”Uh, I don't think that's how cultivation works,” I muttered. ”It helps you live a longer life by maintaining hygiene and staying healthy, but it doesn't make you an immortal.”
”That's all academic, anyway.” Long Shen coughed. ”Don't worry. Time flows here the same way as in the outside world. So if you spend three days here, only three days will pass in the outside world. You don't have to worry about uncoordinated time and temporal paradoxes or temporal dilation and all that nonsense here.”
”Really?” I felt relieved. ”Thank you!”
”Don't thank me yet.” Long Shen grinned mischievously. ”It also means that if you're stuck here for years, that same number of years would have passed outside in the outside world. There is no convenient cultivating or training here for decades and then coming out to find out that only a few days or months have passed.”
”Dude, we've already ripped off a bunch of xianxia stories. I don't think we need to rip off Xian Ni or Renegade Immortal as well.”
Especially given how ruthless Wang Lin turned out to be (though he's much better than Lin Feng from Peerless Martial God), I certainly had no intention of emulating him. Granted, Wang Lin had very good reasons for becoming ruthless, and he wasn't evil, which made him way, way, way better than an asshole like Lin Feng, but he was a little too cold-blooded for my liking. That wasn't to say I was in the pacifist camp where people should spare those trying to kill you, but he was…well, never mind. This had nothing to do with the current situation.
Point is, I was glad there was no different temporality in alternative spaces bullshit here or I would be either crying when I got out, or those existences beyond the fourth wall would be demanding that I exploit this and become the typical overpowered protagonist. Like those dudes thinking it was somehow practical for me to make return trips to the abyss of Shen Lin Forest, fighting through hordes of demonic creatures and spending months climbing or descending levels just to exploit the miraculous Green Dragon Spring. No thanks. As miraculous as those effects were, it just wasn't worth the trouble or time. Not to mention, there was a limit to how much I could take. I certainly couldn't bring the whole goddamned spring with me, as much as Da0_King wanted me to. At that time I only had a bottle of water with me, what was I supposed to do? And I ended up spilling the damned water during the battle with the Hydra so it was a moot point anyway.
For some reason people wanted protagonists to exploit loopholes and become overpowered, then cry and rage when they don't. Like, seriously, if I gain a Deus ex Machina or a cheat item right from the start, then there was no tension in the story, I would be winning every battle and not needing to fear for my life. There was no need to read on because quite obviously I would never die and lose because I had miraculous healing water.
Even now that I had a void storage device that allowed me to theoretically store infinite amounts of water from the spring, it honestly wasn't worth the trouble falling through the abyss and spending months fighting demonic creatures to reach the spring and return home. Besides, I had no idea how to get there. I was unconscious when the river swept me away from the Hydra, and from what my classmates told me, the Glacial Gemstone trap no longer worked after that one time it was triggered, so there was no way to get to the abyss again, and no one had any idea how to get back down there or they would have dispatched a rescue party to look for me in the first place.
”Are you done?”
Evidently I had been rambling to myself, for Long Shen was patiently watching me and waiting for me to finish. I immediately shut up and nodded.
”Sorry.”
”It's fine.” Long Shen turned away. ”Since you've come all the way here, you might as well come in.”
I followed him into the palace, and into a magnificent hall filled with gleaming marble pillars and a lot of ostensible decorations. Chains of shiny pearls hung from the ceiling, with a single chandelier lighting up the whole place. On closer inspection, I saw that the chandelier itself was composed of countless pearls.
Yeah, well, pearls were produced by oysters, and oysters were marine creatures. Though I was wondering how I ended up in the sea instead of a river – there was a huge difference between the two, the sea was saltwater and river was freshwater – I was wise enough not to ask and make a fool of myself. No doubt Long Shen would laugh at me without answering.
”Please, take a seat.”
Long Shen gestured affably toward a luxurious couch in the hall, which looked as if it was made out of silk. He then took his place in an immense throne, settling comfortably into his embroidered seat and leaning back against the red and gold cushion.
”Er…”
”I know you have many questions.” Long Shen raised a hand to forestall me. ”But none of them matter. What you need to focus on is achieving enlightenment and comprehending the Spirit Diagram engraved in the pillar.”
”Aren't we already inside the Spirit Diagram?” I muttered. Long Shen merely grinned in reply.
”What do you think?” he asked mysteriously. I knew it. The old bastard wasn't going to give me a straight answer. I had to figure everything out on my own.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced around. I had no idea where to start, and while I could feel immense amounts of qi emanating from Long Shen, I doubted I was supposed to start probing him. My host might be putting on a friendly façade, but the power he exuded was intimidating to the extreme. His gaze was intense.
”You're looking at the wrong place,” he told me unnecessarily, his grin spreading a little wider. ”I'm not the one you should be focusing on.”
”Then what?” I demanded, but Long Shen shook his head and wagged his finger at me, as if he was lecturing a petulant child.
”You don't seriously expect me to be handing you the answer on a silver platter, do you? That will defeat the whole point of you comprehending the Spirit Diagram. No, you'll have to achieve enlightenment on your own.”
I frowned. Something wasn't right about this whole situation, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then the coin dropped.
”If that's the case, then why invite me to your palace at all? Why allow me to set foot inside your main hall?”
”What are you talking about?” Long Shen was still sporting that cryptic smile, which was beginning to get on my nerves. ”You're the one who found your way here. I might not be able to give you any hints, but I'm not going to deliberately obstruct you either.”
”I found my way here?” I repeated incredulously. Long Shen merely continued to smile, but said nothing.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and thought back. How did I get here? Right, the goldfish led me here. But that was because…
…because I noticed something different about the goldfish. And I made the conscious decision to follow it. And my gamble paid off. The goldfish led me here, after I acknowledged it as my guide.
Was that what Long Shen meant when he said I found my way here?
Assuming that I was right, what was the next step? What was I supposed to do, now that I was in the Dragon King's palace? Wreck the place?
No. The Dragon King was too powerful. I knew instinctively that Long Shen was practically on the level of a god. With that much qi flowing around him, he could easily crush me with a single finger, as if I was nothing more than a mere ant.
Violence was not the solution.
Think…what did I do? The goldfish…there has to be a clue…
Then I remembered. The reason why I discovered the goldfish to be different was because I reached out with my Heaven and Earth senses and detected its presence. I ignored the tremendous amounts of qi crushing all around me and focused on the little guys swimming around me.
Could I not do the same here?
Calming myself down, I kept my eyes closed and reached out with my Heaven and Earth senses. Ignoring the godlike amount of qi that swirled around Long Shen, I felt for other sources of qi. It took me several seconds, but I was rewarded for my efforts when I detected faint amounts of qi all around me – qi that did not come from Long Shen.
They were coming from the palace. The very architecture of the Dragon King's Palace itself.
Opening my eyes, I glanced up and studied the structure of the palace. To my astonishment, there were countless images inscribed and sculpted into the very fabric of the walls and ceiling. These were no mere images. I could sense a vibrant flow of qi running along those vivid lines, seething with arcane power.
Isn't this the Spirit Diagram all over again?
Reminded of when I was communing with the Spirit Engraved Pillars in the outside world. This was another level of Inception. Spirit Diagrams within a Spirit Diagram. Someone had been watching too many Christopher Nolan films…his Dark Knight Trilogy was still the best, though.
In any case, I realized something different about these Spirit Diagrams. They weren't simply the same water motifs as the one I saw in the outside world. They depicted humans. Lots of humans moving and fighting and attacking.
No. I was mistaken. The Spirit Diagrams weren't featuring lots of humans. They were depicting a single human. The same guy was being replicated and reproduced over and over again throughout the walls and ceiling.
But his movements were different.