Chapter 43: Extraordinary Sights Within the Fortress

"All right, time to go inside."

"Wait, how are we supposed to get in?"

Looking at the heavily guarded inner keep, Lily could not help tilting her head.

"Get closer, little girl."

Though she had no idea what the God of Jade was plotting, Lily still took the risk of stepping closer to the heavily fortified gates of the inner keep.

"Old man, even with my Face-Changing Talisman... I'm afraid it'll still be nearly impossible to get in."

"Well~ using a little parlor trick like that illusionary trinket certainly won't get us down underground..."

"Underground?"

"Watch closely!"

The previously absent God of Jade reappeared beside Lily once more. His avatar—a sphere of white mist—began to emit a radiant glow. Lily could clearly sense the fluctuations of ethereal energy. In an instant, a rift tore open in the sky right above her head. Gazing into the darkness within the fissure, which flickered with a faint, dim light, Lily felt a trace of curiosity. But before long, she was sucked straight into the tear.

"Ahhhhhh—wait?"

Lily's scream cut off abruptly. She found herself standing before a massive iron gate. To call it an iron gate was an understatement; it looked as though it had been forged from some kind of ultra-strength alloy. Lily looked around. Behind her, there seemed to be a device resembling an elevator, though it had been thoroughly crushed by a fallen boulder. Lifting her head, she could only see a gray concrete dome that completely blocked out the sunlight.

"Haha, this trick of yours is amazing, old man!"

"Whoosh—and just like that, we're right across."

Hearing Lily's praise, the old man could not help chuckling.

"Hehe~ This trick? It's a technique called Void-Rending by Ethereal Energy, something only mighty cultivators who have reached the Void-Self Realm can master."

"Void-Self Realm? Is that a level of cultivating ethereal energy?"

"Mhm... There are other realms too. Once we close the gates, patch up the walls, and reach Liaodong, I'll explain it all to you in detail."

"I have to hand it to you, old man, this skill of yours is incredible! If I had this ability in the future, wouldn't I be able to go anywhere I wanted? For example, the Imperial Treasury of the Heavenly Jade Emperor, hehe~"

"You rascal, always scheming for those few Jade Dragon Coins day in and day out~"

Though his tone was scolding, the God of Jade's voice carried a warmth.

"If you ever use this power in the future, you must use it for the righteous path. If I ever catch you using it for evil, I certainly won't spare you."

"Oh, I was just joking, I know, old man~"

"If you ever use this power in the future, you must use it for the righteous path. If I ever catch you using it for evil, I certainly won't spare you."

"Oh, I was just joking, Great God, I know~"

As they spoke, Lily walked up to the massive gate.

"Buzz..."

Lily sensed the white mist channeling ethereal energy outward. The energy drifted into the thick walls, and immediately, the electric lights along the walls began to flicker and grow brighter.

"Heh~ This looks a lot like those wall-embedded lights I saw in the Western Wastelands."

Lily put her hands behind her back, watching the buzzing, energy-saving light strips.

"Mhm~ It's just that they're so old and degraded, why won't they stop buzzing—? Tsk tsk tsk, even if I plucked them out, they wouldn't sell for many Jade Dragon Coins~"

Lily quickened her pace toward the door, only to feel a powerful surge of ethereal energy radiating from the other side.

"It seems that the Void Gate you mentioned, old man, is right behind this door."

"Indeed, child, indeed..."

The sphere of white mist drifted toward the alloy doors. The God of Jade's gaze swept across the massive portal. It felt as though he could still recall the scene from when he first stepped into this command center as a special operations officer.

"That great war was too long ago, far too long ago..."

"Old man?"

"Let's go, open the door and let's head in!"

The white ethereal energy surged into the walls once more, and the electrically powered gates swung open with a resounding boom.

As a tomb robber, Lily had seen her fair share of these underground immortal creations. Yet even having witnessed countless relics from a millennium ago, the sight before her still sent a chill of uncanniness down her spine.

In the cavernous hall, rows of seats encircled a central device that looked remarkably like a holographic projector. Swivel chairs remained at the desks, but most of them looked as though they had been melted by intense heat, distorted into grotesque, twisted metallic blooms as if poured into bizarre molds.

The desks in front of the swivel chairs had likewise been melted by the extreme heat into jagged, craggy rock-like shapes. Ghostly silhouettes lingered upon them. Despite the passage of a thousand years, being deep underground had allowed these shadowy remnants to survive. The shadows bore human forms.

"High temperatures caused vaporization..."

"Not only did that old god drop lava bombs, but he also personally used ethereal energy to destroy this place..."

The God of Jade muttered softly. Lily didn't understand the old man's words, but she could see the faint ethereal energy flickering on certain seats in the hall—mere wisps of residual energy.

Lily walked over to a seat carrying ethereal energy and found a skeleton leaning against a melted desk. Everything around the skeleton had been melted, cooled, and reshaped, leaving only her bones, encased in a pale blue ethereal glow, completely intact. In the surrounding seats sat several other skeletons much like her. They died in all sorts of bizarre postures, every single one of them with their jaws thrown wide open, as if they had suffered unimaginable agony before their deaths.

Lily squatted down, gazing into the skeleton's hollow eye sockets. She noticed that the skeleton's hand was still clutching a card. Despite the immense passage of time, the card, crafted from some strange material, still looked as good as new.

"Infuse it with ethereal energy, child, and it will light up."

"Just like those lightbulbs?"

Curious, Lily channeled her ethereal energy into it, and sure enough, the card began to glow.

"Zhang Xiuqing... Female... Date of Birth... May 12, 2070..."

"Employed at... What was it... Central Theater Command Center, Central Control Department..."

"LRN, child, those three letters are pronounced like that."

"What?"

By this point, Lily could roughly guess that this card was similar to the household registry books used by the Heavenly Jade court to record commoners, though she still had no clue what the "letters" the old man spoke of were. Even so, she had seen similar characters on skeletons and immortal battle chariots in many underground cities.

"Let... ters? Letters even have mothers?"

The God of Jade chuckled softly in the distance and shook his head.

"Later on, I'll tell you about the past lives of the immortals in your trade of tomb robbing. Right now, we need to meet an old friend of mine first. She can help us close the Void Gate."

The God of Jade took a deep breath and looked toward the mysterious facility still sitting far away in the center of the hall. As the electrical power converted from the white mist gradually grew stronger, the facility began to emit electronic sounds, as if it were rebooting.

Lily tucked the card away into her storage ring; since it was an immortal's gadget, it might be worth a pretty penny. Right beside Zhang Xiuqing's scattered right shoulder blade, she spotted a badge also wrapped in ethereal energy. An emblem was drawn upon it, looking somewhat like a roaring jade dragon, except beneath the jade dragon lay a massive continent. The landmass in the center looked quite similar to the map of Heavenly Jade Lily had seen in her atlases. Even stranger, an arrow with a burning tail was launching upward from the earth, intertwining with the jade dragon.

"Heh, this arrow has fire on its backside, how rare~"

"A rocket, child. That thing is called a rocket."

"A rocket? I've been tomb robbing for so many years, and I've never seen one before~"

Though Lily didn't know what a rocket was, she casually swept the well-preserved, gold-plated badge into her storage ring as well.

"Old man... why is the Void Gate in a place like this? It looks an awful lot like the immortal ruins I've looted before."

Lily walked toward the device in the center of the hall. With every step forward, she felt a powerful wave of ethereal energy surging toward her. It seemed the Void Gate was indeed right here.

"Since we're already here, old man~ before you use this girl here to open the door, shouldn't you explain what on earth a Void Gate actually is?"

The sphere of ethereal energy beside her gave no reply. The God of Jade was simply flying back and forth across the vast hall, inspecting something.

"Old man?"

"Old man?"

"Old man!"

"Don't be so impatient, let me just check if this gate is in good condition."

Lily thoughtfully rubbed the jade lion hanging around her neck.

"And don't forget, once that door closes later on, you've got to lift whatever spell is on my lion."

"I remember~ I remember~"

Back then, the God of Jade had claimed he placed a fatal curse inside her jade lion; the moment ethereal energy triggered it, she would be struck dead by a hundred thousand volts of high-voltage electricity. Though she didn't understand what "volts" meant, Lily still had lingering fears about the current that had sparked from the jade lion. Yet all along the journey, the old man had never used the jade lion to shock her again.

"Could this old man... have forgotten about the curse he placed in my lion?"

Ignoring Lily's slightly resentful expression, the God of Jade finished his inspection, took a deep breath, and flew over to the device at the center of the hall.

It was a device entirely unlike the tables and chairs scattered around the hall. It looked like the meditation cushions used by immortals in bizarre folktales, except that the "cushion" bore the silhouette of a person, vaguely outlining the shape of a young girl.

The girl wore a tight-fitting suit, as if she had stepped straight off the set of some sci-fi movie or cyberpunk world. She had a striking face, with long black hair tied into a ponytail. Unadorned by makeup, she still possessed the vibrant look of youth. Lily scrutinized the girl—she looked to be barely in her early twenties. However, what made Lily feel somewhat unnerved was that the girl's eyes had no pupils, only stark white sclera.

Lily stepped closer to look. Strange blue-glowing patterns covered the girl's face, reminding Lily of the eerie statues she had seen in the immortal ruins, except the patterns on their faces didn't glow.

The girl's projection was not entirely clear, flickering like a ghost. Yet suddenly, this "female ghost" raised her head and looked directly at the sphere of mist.

"Long time no see, little U."

The God of Jade spoke to the figure in the hologram as if greeting an old friend.

"Did you find your brother, that rascal... Back then, he turned the city upside down and disrupted that old god's plan, heh~ Yet in the end, he left you all alone, sacrificing himself for the safety of the city's androids... Alas. You and the Dragon-Rising Country, along with all my comrades and brothers, became like wandering ghosts. Alas~ a thousand years have passed in the blink of an eye."

The God of Jade, who had never once wept in front of Lily, choked up slightly in his speech. This God of Jade—who had coerced, bantered, acted somewhat unreliable all along the way, yet carried a divine majesty—now looked like a grieving old man.

At that moment, Lily realized that even after walking this entire road together, she still didn't truly understand this true god of Heavenly Jade. She could only sniffle and quietly watch the grieving ball of white mist murmur to itself.

"Little U... back when Stardust City fell... if... if I had possessed the power..."

The true god let out a long sigh.

"Ah, what's done is done, the wood is already carved into a boat. People must look ahead! I'm sorry, child..."

As he apologized, the ethereal energy around the God of Jade drifted out like soft silk threads, pouring straight into the device beneath the holographic projection.

"Beep—beep—beep-beep—"

As the ethereal energy continuously flooded into the device, loud startup sounds echoed through the dead, silent hall, followed by the roar of machinery engaging.

"Beep!"

Accompanied by another crisp system chime, the girl, little U, who stood before Lily, suddenly rose to her feet and spoke:

"System data reboot initiated. Progress: 25%, 50%, 75%..."

As the reboot progress advanced, cyan pupils finally emerged within little U's white sclera. Yet Lily could not detect a single trace of the vitality that should belong to a living person within them. Although the phantom projection grew clearer as the system rebooted, Lily still felt that the girl before her was merely a puppet controlled by strings—after all, she was just a holographic projection, or perhaps, as little U herself had said, just a part of the system.

Yet the gaze the God of Jade cast upon little U remained utterly sincere.

"100%. Repeat, the Heavenly Dao defense system has rebooted. Repeat, the defense system has rebooted."

"Defense... system? Hey—old man, is your daughter here alright...?"

Before Lily's astonishment could fully settle, blinding lights suddenly switched on, illuminating the dark hall as if it were broad daylight. The little U standing before them radiated a peculiar glow—the brilliant light of white ethereal energy.