The moment that Bai Tianyi reached the fifth floor, Xue Wei opened his eyes and the two of them exchanged glances before Xue Wei stood up. With this tacit understanding, the two of them descended the stairs and left the Soul Tower.
While being in the tower, neither Bai Tianyi nor Xue Wei discussed what they had discovered. Instead they walked shoulder to shoulder out of the tower, greeting a crowd that was looking at them with stunned expressions.
It was impossible to say exactly which one of them had been the one to step into the ninth floor. They only knew what they had seen from the lights on the tower, which did not divulge names, and thus they looked at them with the eyes of a hungry wolf, their questions in their throats ready to emerge, but neither Xue Wei nor Bai Tianyi paid them any attention.
After glancing at the crowd, both Xue Wei and Bai Tianyi were aware of their purpose, but neither of them had any intention of telling them anything. They quickly departed from the area under the stunned expressions of the crowd.
One has to remember—they were both two-eyed experts. Although one of them was clearly a monster, they did not have a high position in society, and it was only natural if they had tried to integrate themselves with the higher ranking teachers and students.
When they finally regained their senses, they found that Xue Wei and Bai Tianyi had already vanished into the distance, neither having turned around even once.
When they were out of the crowd's hearing range, Bai Tianyi started to tell what he had encountered. “There was nothing on the ninth floor,” he complained. “I was there, and there was not even any pressure or even a shred of soul power. I have a feeling that there might be some sort of secret there, but after spending a full day inside I found absolutely no clues.”
”On the eighth floor, the pressure was so heavy that even I felt that it was heaven. I stayed there for the majority of the time, and I managed to break into the third layer of the Earth Knight rank.”
”There was no one else on the floor, so it seems that it is very difficult to reach the eighth floor,” Bai Tianyi continued to explain. “But on the seventh floor, there were three young ones.”
”One of them was clearly pus.h.i.+ng himself beyond his limits to be there, and I think I in fact injured him seriously when I went to the eighth floor because of shock, while the other two were much more tranquil.”
”On the sixth floor were eleven experts, and you saw the fifth floor yourself.”
”What was your gains like in the Soul Tower?” Bai Tianyi asked curiously. He had gained a lot of energy and actually managed to break into the third layer of the Earth Knight rank, but Xue Wei had also gained quite a bit, managing to just break into the first layer of the Earth Knight rank.
It was clear that Bai Tianyi had gotten much more benefits from visiting the Soul Tower than Xue Wei had; he had advanced more and his breakthroughs were much more difficult than Xue Wei, but he had also been on the eighth floor and swallowed so much soul power that it could be compared to a ma.s.sacre of a thousand experts.
Xue Wei had also absorbed a lot of energy, but while absorbing he had observed the Soul Tower. Even when they were quite a few amount of experts in the Soul Tower, the Soul Power never diminished, nor did it run out. The supply was at a steady, constant level all the time, and even when Bai Tianyi had been swallowing it up on the eighth floor like a whale swallows water, the energy had been replenished instantly.
”I a.s.sume that the mystery we are supposed to sort out might have something to do with the Soul Tower,” Xue Wei muttered to himself in wonder. At least that was the most wondrous thing he had encountered since entering the Garden of Shadows.
Bai Tianyi had heard the words Xue Wei said, but he did not comment. In his opinion, he quite hoped that the problem came from the Soul Tower, since that meant that they would spend even more time within the tower and his breakthroughs would be even faster than before.
Having once stood at the apex of the world, Bai Tianyi had a hard time accepting that he was no longer able to wield even a fraction of this strength.
Although he was no longer weak, he was not considered strong yet, and this caused him to be endlessly frustrated. This was something he would never admit, but Xue Wei could feel it through their connection.
However, although Bai Tianyi wanted to break through into stronger and stronger boundaries, he was aware that cultivation was not something that was achieved overnight. It was something one obtained after traversing a long, arduous journey step by step.
Xue Wei had lived for years as a waste who could not cultivate, and although that had changed a few years ago, he still felt fortunate that his reality was different from what he had imagined it to be back then.
For him, it was a joy to walk down the path of cultivation, to feel his body strengthening bit by bit and his inner energies swell with time. He did not fully understand the longing that Bai Tianyi felt, but he was not dismissive towards it.
Together in silence, Xue Wei and Bai Tianyi returned to their courtyard. The behavior of the core students was as peculiar as it was before, all of them looking at them with curiosity but none of them stepping forward to actually initiate conversation.
Although the multi-eyed experts were proud of their abilities and their amount of eyes, they were all gifted with quite some intelligence. They could easily guess that these people who had appeared with two eyes and managed to become core students could not be simple.
Returning to the courtyard, they quickly awakened Lin Xiao and Hei Gou from their cultivation and gathered in Bai Tianyi's bedroom. They had not seen the shadows of Mo Yi or Mo Er since they returned, but none of them cared about it and quickly started to discuss what had happened in the last week they had been apart.
”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 ma.s.s disappearances of a lot of people, ma.s.sacres 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 eight 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 ma.s.sive 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 thought of these things, a thought suddenly appeared within his mind.
