263 News Spreading Far and Wide (2/2)

”Everything here was the same as one could expect,” Lin Xiao said with a shrug of his shoulders. ”Many experts appeared to speak with us, but we had told Mo Yi not to let anyone disturb us, and thus no one was able to go further than to the entrance of the courtyard.”

”We have been cultivating while waiting for you to return from the Soul Tower. Although there is a surplus of soul power within this area, there is also a decent amount of heaven and earth essence for us to absorb, so our cultivation speed has not been slow.

”Although we have not broken through, that would also be too much to expect within a few days, but our foundations have been consolidated and we are almost at the bottleneck of our realms.

”How were your gains in the Soul Tower?” Lin Xiao looked at Xue Wei curiously, and to his surprise, Xue Wei frowned in response.

”The Soul Tower is a great place to cultivate one's spiritual energy,” he began hesitatingly. ”The soul power within is so dense that it can increase your cultivation speed by a lot, depending on how far up you go. On the second floor, you can get double the efficiency, on the third floor it's three times the efficiency, and so on, all the way up to the eighth floor.”

”What about the ninth floor, then?” Hei Gou did not know much about the Soul Tower, but he did know that it had nine floors, and he could not help but frown when Xue Wei only said to the eighth floor.

”The ninth floor is a scam,” Bai Tianyi said with a grumbling voice. ”There was absolutely no energy. All there was, was an empty room. I wonder what exactly the point is.”

Xue Wei's brows furrowed. ”I want to get to the ninth floor and have a look for myself,” he said. It was not that he did not trust Bai Tianyi, but it was simply too strange that the top floor was completely empty.

Bai Tianyi did not feel insulted by Xue Wei's words and nodded his head. ”You should,” he agreed. ”I couldn't find anything, but you might be able to. Who knows.”

Lin Xiao and Hei Gou exchanged glances with one another, understanding that there might be something in the Soul Tower that they were looking for, but for now it was not possible to fully explore it.

”Since we cannot go to the Soul Tower, you guys have to deal with that. What do you want us to do while you investigate the Soul Tower?”

”That is quite easy,” Xue Wei smiled. ”This place fortunately does not discriminate against Primordial Beasts, so Hei Gou, you and Lin Xiao are to socialize with the other experts within the academy and establish an intel network for us so we can tap the grapevine for the latest news and rumors.

”At the same time, I need you to really focus on information about people that have been 'spirited away', or mass disappearances of a lot of people, massacres or somehow. The Soul Tower has a lot of soul power, and soul power comes from the dead. To have that much soul power in one place, they have to have killed a whole lot of people or have some other way to gain access to soul power that we do not know of.”

”I found it quite strange,” Bai Tianyi suddenly said. ”The soul power was so dense that even if you were to kill people for it, you would have to constantly execute people to make the equivalent of the eighth floor possible; it is not a possibility at all through ordinary means, so they need to have some other way of gaining soul power.”

”But how else can you gain soul power?” Xue Wei asked with a frown. Bai Tianyi just shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he had no idea.

Silence descended over the small room, and the four friends could not help but sigh in unison, all of them quite unhappy with the elusive task they had been given.

There was simply too little information about their issues. They did not know exactly what was happening, and they were completely foreign to this location so figuring out what was out of place would take time.

Fortunately, they had two years to solve the problem, but when one considered that the other inhabitants of Yan Dalu had actually tried to spend their entire lives trying to solve this problem, they could not help but feel slightly frustrated.

”Well, Xiao and I will start gathering information in that case,” Hei Gou finally said after their mutual moment of self-pitying and then picked up the task at hand. They would get nowhere by feeling sorry for themselves. They had to act.

”Many have tried to come in contact with us over these last few days, so I am sure that we will be able to mingle with the rest of the core students quite well,” Lin Xiao added.

Xue Wei nodded his head. He felt at ease knowing that those two would deal with that, but he was at the same time worried about his own task.

Although he had managed to reach the fifth floor on his first venture up the Soul Tower, there was a massive difference between the fifth floor and the eighth floor. The pressure on the eighth floor was so much heavier by comparison that Xue Wei would be squashed like a fly if he were to enter it at his current level of strength.

But Xue Wei wanted to enter the ninth floor. He had to figure out a way to get up there, and preferably a way that did not take too long. He only had two years!

As he contemplated these things, an idea suddenly appeared within his mind.