Chapter [B4] 25 — Heaven’s Mandate
I followed behind Elder Tian Feng, as we walked out of the chamber he’d been in. It took me a little while to realize where I was, since I had only really arrived here once before.
“We’re in the royal palace?” I asked, surprised that this was where I’d arrived out of all the other places.
“Indeed. Things have been changing over here. But more importantly, the thing you must do, the thing you must obtain, really, is here,” Elder Tian Feng said.
I followed behind him as we began to walk down stairs. The usual ornate displays quickly began to fade as the palace walls soon became unpolished stone that looked like it had been created nearly a thousand years ago. The further we went, the thicker the Qi in the air got, and the darker the world around me got. Which also let me know that I barely needed any light to see now, just another one of those things that had been caused by my rapid surge in power and recent brush with divinity that I still wasn’t so used to.
The stairs continued to descend further and further, the terrain becoming older and more rugged and the Qi becoming more and more dense. It was so much that I found it surprising that this place wasn’t teeming with Qi crystals, or that more of it hadn’t just leaked through.
After nearly fifteen minutes of walking, the stairs finally ended. This deep into the earth I could barely feel the bones of the world below me, deep dark things with massive pools of miasma lurking underneath. And yet, this place was anything but, filled with the most potent Qi I’d ever felt anywhere.
Belatedly, I noticed how much it was, and that this amount of Qi was not necessarily a good thing as it’d be bearing down on other people. I glanced towards Elder Tian Feng and noticed the elder starting to show signs that even he was finding it too much to be here.
My curiosity only grew, as we walked into an open segment with the roof far above our heads, and then, at the end of the chamber was a large gate.
If a gateway could impose itself and have an aura, then this one certainly did. The gate was massive, as if it was built for giants. Roughly ten times as tall as I was, the entire thing was built of stone and had carvings marked into it. A circular engraving was set within it, four divine beasts carved in symbols around the symbol of the Azure Jade empire.