273 Bloody Marks (2/2)
After a few days had passed waiting for an opening, Xue Wei sighed as he stood up and stretched his stiff body, but still, the level was not emptied out, and in fact, now they were four people on the floor.
His frustration beginning to outweigh his patience, Xue Wei contemplated what to do, and then he had an idea. He began to wander the floor, further and further towards the stairs leading towards the eighth floor. Every step was like a war against himself.
He felt the heavy pressure weighing down upon him; he felt the soul power crashing into his mind and even with the golden dragon refining it as fast as it possibly could, it still felt like trying to run while wading through a deep lake.
His legs began to tremble, and the sweat dripped like rain from his forehead, but he was not giving up. From time to time, he would look behind him to see whether or not anyone was observing him, but after numerous glances, he realized that they were not paying any attention to him at all, and a smile broke out on his lips.
He continued forward until he could go no further, where he halted, checking behind him one last time before just taking the risk and summoning the golden dragon.
The moment the golden dragon spirit appeared, it wrapped itself around Xue Wei's body, and he felt the pressure on him lifting like magic.
Not wasting even a second and without another glance behind, he rushed upstairs the moment he felt the pressure lifting. The longer he waited, the more likely he was to be discovered, after all.
As he reached the eighth floor, he found that Bai Tianyi was sitting in the middle of the lonely room, looking exceptionally bored.
He did not need to do anything special to cultivate, he did not need to do anything else than just sit still, and his body would naturally change it to spiritual energy.
He did not seem at all like a ten year old child.He seemed like a carefree and casual person who had the world in his hands.
”Oh, they left?” He asked when he saw Xue Wei appearing with a golden dragon spirit wrapped around his body.
Xue Wei shook his head and sighed, ”I was not patient at all,” he admitted.
”Did they see?” Bai Tianyi frowned slightly. It was a risk to summon the golden dragon spirit when others were nearby, but he trusted Xue Wei and would never go against his wishes.
Xue Wei shrugged his shoulders. ”I don't think so,” he said, ”but I cannot say for sure. The moment I summoned the spirit, I rushed upstairs, so they might have seen a bit of it, but they probably haven't—at least not all of it .”
Bai Tianyi shook his head. For once Xue Wei had been impulsive, but he understood the impatience Xue Wei felt. They were on a tight schedule; the sooner they got clues, the better.
”Well we will gain nothing from brooding over the issue anymore,” Xue Wei sighed, knowing he had been slightly out of character and impatient, ”let's go to the ninth floor.”
Bai Tianyi was also aware that there was no way they would be able to change anything that had already happened, so instead of harping on about it, he stood up, and the two of them moved towards the stairs.
After Xue Wei summoned the golden dragon spirit, he was incapable of feeling the pressure. He could simply no longer sense it.The dragon just absorbed the energy as fast as it could, gulping down the soul power like a bottomless hole, seemingly unable to become full.
The golden dragon spirit was similar to Bai Tianyi's body; both of them were made out of pure energy and could absorb spiritual energy with inherent proficiency.
As long as the golden dragon spirit was out, his cultivation would rise at a speed completely unlike before. At the same time, he could now enter the ninth floor.
Although he was tempted to stay on the eighth floor for some time and cultivate with the golden dragon spirit, Xue Wei decided to wait with this until he had solved the mystery of the ninth floor.
The walk towards the ninth floor was casual and carefree; the pressure was not at all capable of controlling him anymore. As they reached the ninth floor, they found that the pressure was still nowhere present as Bai Tianyi had observed previously, so Xue Wei retrieved the golden dragon spirit and began walking around the floor, looking at everything around him.
As he looked around, he found nothing special on the floor, it was just as bare as Bai Tianyi had told him, but something kept telling him that there was more to this floor than meets the eye.
After a bit of time pacing around the room, he found that there were some red marks on the walls all around. At first, he thought it was a decoration, though the longer he looked, the more he frowned.
The red marks came in different shades.Some even seemed to be freshly painted, while others seemed to be old and almost black with age. Upon closer inspection, accompanied by the colored marks were small indentations resembling scratch marks all over the walls too. When one looked at it all casually, it looked like a decoration, but when examining it, Xue Wei found that all the walls were filled with scratch marks and both new and old traces of—there was no denying it—blood.
Although there was blood painted on the walls, there was no scent of blood in the air, and both the floor and the ceiling was completely white, with no signs of blood or scratches at all.
Looking at this, Xue Wei frowned. What was the reason behind these bloodied marks? Was the ninth floor perhaps not meant to be traversed but a place where people were being sacrificed to feed the soul tower with soul power? Xue Wei was unsure, but he understood they had to leave as soon as possible.