Chapter 30 – The Soul-Bewildering Staircase

Xiao Zhao was furious. Uncle Yuan’s Gu arts were no small matter—he had sacrificed his own life to lure them into the tomb and set in motion the grand plan of opening the burial hall’s gate.

Yet, as it turned out, this group of people had a map but could do absolutely nothing with the hall’s door. That was why they had released Chong Mingxian as bait to hook Zhan Changfeng.

“Chieftain, I think what Young Master Cheng said is entirely reasonable. Perhaps this Crown Prince has no idea how to break the deadlock at all.”

Nearly seven hours had already passed, and even Wu Bing felt deep impatience. He loudly called out Zhan Changfeng’s name, and seeing she did not react in the slightest, he reached out a palm toward her.

Jiang Wei immediately moved to stop him—but someone was even faster!

An iron tail swept across and drove Wu Bing back several steps.

Wu Bing looked warily at Zhu Yan, who had appeared once again. “Both she and I wish to break open this door, so why do you only stop me, yet let her do as she pleases!”

Zhu Yan lazily let out a yawn, tilting its head as though genuinely pondering the question. After a moment, it spoke in a human tongue—yet its voice was utterly at odds with its majestic form, sounding like that of a small child.

“She has a feeling on her that I’m familiar with. I like to play with her.” It slowly circled around Zhan Changfeng. “And from what you’ve all been saying, she is the Master’s offspring. If she wants what the Master left behind, then so be it, give it to her.”

Wu Bing: “…”

Give it to her, just like that—are you not being a little too generous?

Jiang Wei: “…”

Hold on—this ‘playing’ you speak of, are you referring to the way you just chased us half to death?

Could this spirit creature be no older than three and a half?

Wu Bing’s frustration boiled within him, and he suddenly realized that even if the door were opened, with Zhu Yan guarding her side, he would never be able to get what he wanted.

Thinking of this, a cruel resolution hardened in his heart. Zhu Yan had commanded thousands of terracotta soldiers and fought his forces for seven days and seven nights, suffering great damage to its vitality before retreating out of the underground palace. Not much time had passed since then—it surely had not recovered so quickly. Why not seize this chance to strike it down once and for all?

Wu Bing had long known that Gu poison was useless against a spirit creature whose true form was a bronze statue, so he used brute force directly. With a single command, the Gaotian Tribe members—who had been prepared all along—flung four cloth strips to bind its four hooves.

These cloth strips were tough and not easily torn, and on top of that, they had been soaked in Broken Copper Liquid for a full half-month, making them extraordinarily corrosive to anything made of copper.

Zhu Yan was clearly in distress, its roar laced with pain.

At the same time, the terracotta soldiers and the four great warrior statues all began to move, a faint killing intent surging as they all charged toward the Gaotian Tribe.

At this very moment, Zhan Changfeng had reached a critical juncture. After ceaselessly practicing and working through the five hundred intricate configurations, she now had a clear path through all one thousand and eighty.

She began reversing the process, and it went very smoothly. With each of the one hundred and eighty configurations she reversed, her understanding of them grew ever deeper.

She extended her hand, picked up a white piece, and placed it down.

This was the first configuration she had comprehended herself—and also the most powerful, the one hundred and eighty-first. As the board was solved, all the pieces transformed into characters and shot straight into the space between her brows. Wait—!

Zhan Changfeng was startled. They had truly transformed into characters—it was not her imagination?

Those one hundred and eighty-one characters linked together into a complete scripture—the Dragon Scale Divine Scripture!

The complete Mystical Gate Escaping Techniques, the Thirteen Chapters of Military Secrets, and the legendary upper volume were all encompassed within.

That upper volume was not a technique for eternal life, but rather a detailed guide to cultivating magical arts. Its name: the Five Elements Dao Scroll.

The seven-zhang-tall massive gate thundered open after she placed her piece. Without sparing a thought for her newly received Dragon Scale Divine Scripture, she stepped inside ahead of everyone else.

After such a turn of events, Wu Bing’s blood surged with excitement—she had truly broken the seal!

Paying no further mind to the fight with Zhu Yan, he swept his robe and rushed in like a gust of wind. But who could have expected—he stepped into empty air!

Wu Bing’s reflexes were lightning-fast; he immediately grabbed onto the floor’s edge. At this moment, the person behind him could not stop in time and tumbled straight down, their agonized cries growing fainter and fainter, echoing from above to below for a long, long time.

Splash!

It sounded as though they had fallen into water.

Wu Bing climbed back up and peered downward. This accursed place was bottomless—like a gaping, sinister maw of blood and darkness lurking in the depths.

His cheeks trembled slightly, his heart pounding like a war drum, as though he had just walked a circle around the gates of life and death.

Everyone halted at the doorway, gazing in with grave expressions. Inside appeared to be a great abyss—thick with mist, battered by howling winds, and narrow stairways only an arm’s width wide crisscrossed through the air, seemingly leading everywhere yet resembling a labyrinth, offering no visible way out.

Wu Bing carefully extended one foot and placed it on the narrow stairway. It felt completely hollow—as though he had not stepped on anything solid at all.

“Grandfather, what are you doing? You just stepped on empty air,” Wu Cheng pointed out.

Had he truly stepped on empty air?

Wu Bing stared at his foot, which hung uselessly on the ‘stairway,’ his expression deeply conflicted.

Songshi Zi clicked his tongue and suddenly felt that all those flowing sands and Rotting Jade traps were utterly feeble in comparison. “So it really is a Soul-Bewildering Staircase.”

Wu Bing turned and fixed his gaze on him. “Say that again?”

“Heh heh,” Songshi Zi replied calmly, meeting his eyes without flinching.

A dark gleam stirred in Wu Bing’s eyes. “I have long heard that the Daoist masters of Liyun Temple are broadly learned and highly knowledgeable, skilled especially in obscure secret arts. I wonder if you might be kind enough to give us an explanation.”

Songshi Zi waved his hand dismissively. “Forget it, forget it. I’m just a prisoner. I might be dead the next second. Soul-bewildering, staircase—I can’t seem to recall anything about that.”

“Still daring to bargain?” Xiao Zhao muttered a string of Gu incantations, and instantly black lines began writhing across Songshi Zi’s face, as though something were burrowing beneath his skin.

Songshi Zi let out a muffled grunt and bit through his lip. The greater the pain, the fiercer the defiance blazing in his eyes—his contempt plain to see. “Liyun Temple may be small, but no one within its walls has ever groveled for their life.”

Xiao Zhao furrowed her brow, uncertain whether to relent or continue stirring the Gu worms, but fortunately noticed Wu Bing give a slight wave of his hand.

“The Daoist master’s integrity is truly admirable. I have given much offense before now,” Wu Bing said. “As long as what the Daoist master tells me is of use, I will withdraw the Gu and return your freedom. How does that sound?”

Is this what passes for integrity?

Qiao Shan Ke cursed inwardly. These two old foxes both spoke with their eyes wide open and their tongues tied to nothing but lies. They were going to remove Songshi Zi’s Gu—so what about the one on his own body? This was going to be difficult, difficult, difficult.

Songshi Zi had no intention of trusting Wu Bing’s empty promises, but he did not rush to demand the Gu be removed either. Instead, he spoke at length: “The Soul-Bewildering Staircase is also one of the rare burial chamber mechanisms in the world. An ordinary Soul-Bewildering Staircase uses the layout of the stairs, miasma, or even sound to disrupt a person’s perception, causing confusion akin to encountering a ghostly wall with no way out.”

“However,” Songshi Zi continued, “passing through one is not terribly difficult—simply close your eyes and neither listen nor look.”

“You rotten Daoist, are you toying with us?” Wu Cheng felt this was absurd. Just look at those narrow, suspended, crisscrossing staircases—never mind closing your eyes, even with them wide open you’d fall off.

“Grandfather, isn’t it just a matter of one’s sense of direction? We come and go freely along the roads of Flag Mountain—are we really going to be afraid of this?”

“If the young one doesn’t believe it, go try it yourself!” Songshi Zi was perfectly composed—so composed that it seemed as if anyone who went in would not be coming back.

Wu Cheng was young and headstrong. “You’re just bluffing. That little girl went in, so why couldn’t I?”

Songshi Zi sneered. “At its core, the Soul-Bewildering Staircase is simply an application of the Eight Trigrams and the Six Combinations. But the Mystical Gate Escaping Techniques is the most profound predictive art in existence—all current methods of divination originated from within it. Would she be so easily bewildered?”

“On that note, let me offer one more warning. What use miasma, stair layout, and sound are the marks of an ordinary Soul-Bewildering Staircase—but judging by the situation before us, this one likely has a formation array placed upon it. One wrong step, and you may never come out again.”